Romans 12:1
"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship."
What is worship? At the end of the day I am drawn to the conclusion that worship is something we do better than we understand. In fact I think its easier to truly worship than it is to understand the meaning of true worship. The reason for this is we were created to worship. We were designed with the capacity to offer praise and worship to anything. When you boil it down worship is offering true love to something or someone. This being the case you can easily see why most important aspect of true worship is keeping God at the center of it. He must be the central focus of all our affections. If we fail to worship God than we inevitably slip into idolatry for we never cease to worship. It is simply what we do!
Worship is a response!
While understanding that our creator, Almighty God, is the only one worthy to receive worship we must determine what should be the proper response of our lives. The Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Roman Christians, "to offer [our] bodies as living sacrifices" to God. What does that mean? A sacrifice is something that has been given; it has been offered; it cost something; it has been fully surrendered to someone else or something else.
Well, what does it mean to offer our lives as "living sacrifices?"
To be a living sacrifice we must fully surrender our lives to God. We must die to ourselves by giving up OUR dreams and plans and pursuing HIS purposes and plans for our lives. Today let us fully pursue becoming a living sacrifice. Let my prayer of response help get you started today.
Pray with me: Lord God, creator of the heavens and the earth, I worship you for who you are and what you have done. You expressed your great compassion for me when you came and gave your life as the perfect sacrifice for my sin (Romans 5:8). Thank you for showing me how to die to self and live for God. Your example challenges me to become a more devoted servant (Philippians 2:5-8). Help me today as I fully surrender my life to you. Show me what to do as I seek to obey you.
3 comments:
Thank you for teaching me again today. We truly are made to worship and we will worship anything if we don't make a conscious decision to worship the living God. These words are powerful...
Great point about falling into idolatry if we don't intentionally choose to worship God. Since we are created to worship then it is easy to see how that can be misdirected to something or someone other than the living God. We should consider seriously that we have the opportunity to choose to worship God while in this mortal body because the time will come when every knee will bow to Him but it will be too late.
The word of God is alive. Thanks BJ for opening my eyes this morning. I will tell you that my day was not as bright as it is now.
God is Good!!
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