A Life of Worship

Chuckle: A Texas cowboy bought a Dachshund when someone told him to "get a long little dogie!"

Quote: "To worship is to quicken the conscience by the Holiness of God, To feed the mind with the truth of God, To purge the imagination by the Beauty of God, To devote the will to the purpose of God." --Archbishop William Temple

"So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life -- your sleeping, eating, going to work, and walking around life -- and place it before God as an offering (your spiritual act of worship)" (Romans 12:1 The Message).

When I mention the word "worship," what comes to your mind? For many of us, it likely would be Sunday morning services at our church where we are fed spiritually each week. That's a wonderful place to start, but that should not be the extent of our worship experience. We should worship God by offering to him our bodies and everything we do each and every day.

I once read the weekly sermon in our local newspaper by Dr. Jeff Miller. He told the story of a mother who discouraged her children from feeding crackers to the seagulls along the beach. She reasoned that by feeding the gulls the children might destroy the birds' appetite for a more healthy lunch of fish. A fish market worker responded that the gulls received so much food from humans at meal times that they didn't fish anymore. They had lost their wild natural instinct to fish for their food. Dr. Miller went on: "Just as the seagulls are dependent upon getting fed at a certain time of the day, I wonder if we are solely dependent upon Sundays to get spiritually fed."

We see in our passage, that every thing we do every day in life should be done as an act of worship. Participation in worship services is very important for our spiritual growth, but we certainly don't have to wait for Sunday morning worship services to be spiritually fed. If we take the initiative in seeking (foraging for) spiritual food, we will offer our bodies as living sacrifices and dedicate even the most routine activities of life to God as acts of worship. Because we hunger and thirst after God, we will regularly seek spiritual food from his Word. Then, God will nourish us and cause us to grow in our faith through our everyday acts of worship.

God wants us to lay aside our own selfish desires and follow him by putting all our abilities, energy, and other recourses at his disposal every moment of every day. He wants us to trust him and depend upon his wisdom and guidance in every aspect of life. If we do this, worship will become a 24/7 activity and we will not become dependent solely on Sundays for our spiritual nourishment. Our actions on the job, in the classroom, or around the house will be done in a way that will honor and please God. If we worship God during the week in all our activities, we will be much better prepared for corporate worship on Sundays.

Love, Jerry & Dotse