Pastor Fred continued the series on worship by preaching out of Ephesians 6:5-9. One of the things that hit me as Pastor Fred started out is that does our worship have purpose? One of the things that often gets us in trouble is that when we worship, we just go through the motions. In essence, it is just something that we do so that we can check it off of our list. Whether it is our devotional and prayer life, or coming to church and even sharing the Gospel. Do we do it so that we can check it off of our list and we can go do our own thing. True worship should be in everything we do and takes our all, whether it is worship in a church service to how we work for our paycheck and how we interact with everyone we come into contact with.
I was doing some reading this week and was reminded that worship is sacrifice. As we have gone through this series, Romans 12:1-2 has come up weekly and it is Paul telling us that we are to be a living sacrifice. When we become a living sacrifice, we say that it is not our will but Gods. When we worship and become a living sacrifice, it’s often means that that it is going to cost us something great. Could it mean we get a little less sleep, or go without so others can have something. Often when this happens, God puts us in uncomfortable situations, not because He is a jerk, but it allows u to either trust Him more or to walk away and do our own thing. Sometimes God calls us to sacrifice something that we hold valuable because we have placed it over God and we would rather worship that instead of God. Maybe we Gould spend less time on social media or drop it all together because we either care to much about what other people think or their reaction to some news story or gossip. I know I can be guilty of this, it is saying something just to get a reaction out of someone while sitting back and watching them fume. Sacrificial worship is keeping the right things in the right place and giving God all the glory.
So here is a question I thought of, can we truly worship without joy? We can worship when we are happy, because that is more circumstantial and we are in a good mood for various reasons. Worshipping with joy means we worship despite our circumstances and what is going on. Can we worship when our boss is being unfair, or our significant other said or did something extremely hurtful. True worship is handling those situations with grace, forgiveness and not sweeping it under the rug. Or how about when we are the idiot and do or say something that is hurtful. We shouldn’t have joy because we did those things, but joy in worship comes in seeking forgiveness and making restitution so that it does not happen again.
Over the last few weeks Pastor Fred has repeatedly said that worship happens in all area of our lives. One of the big areas is how we worship at work. Most of us work at places where Christianity isn’t the only option and there are even people who are hostile towards Christianity. Worship at work is more than requesting Christian music be played or praying for our meals during our lunch. True worship is how we work. Do we do things to the best of our ability, do we take shortcuts in our projects, to how we interact and talk with and about people. People often notice and believe in more of what they see us do and how we react people than the words we say. I have worked with people who had the ability to talk about big game, but when it was time to work, they had no work ethic and treated people like garbage and most people knew it.
One of the interesting things with working at Wal Mart is that I work with a lot of younger people and they have no connection with God. There are two guys in particular that I interact with a lot and we are all history fans. So we often share tidbits of history stuff with each other and ask historical questions. My latest question was asking them what famous world leader past or present they would like to interview? I got everything from Julius Caesar to Adolf Hitler. The conversation it led to was interesting. When we worship as we work, people tend to notice and ask questions. Through that, we can build relationships and point them to Jesus.
I will close with this. We are all created to worship God in everything we do, and yess sometimes it is hard work and sacrifice, but life goes better when we do it Gods way.
Grace and Peace
Tom Boustead
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