Work as Worship

   Pastor Fred continued the series on worship by preaching out of Colossians 3:18-4:1. The crux of the message is how do we bring the sacred  to the secular. As Pastor Fred was preaching, I was reminded of when President Kennedy as he was campaigning for the White House in 1960, he had gotten a question about being Catholic and President. He responded by saying that: 

     “He wasn’t a Catholic running for president, but he was the Democratic Nominee running for president 

       who happens to be Catholic.”

  In essence, he was saying that his faith or worship wasn’t going to affect how he was going to run the country and interact with other world leaders. When we take this view or approach, our faith or worship isn’t that important to change how we do things and see the world. Our faith becomes very private when we do this and we loose that communal feel not only with God, but others also. Here are some thoughts from this weekends message.

  My first observation is about our sincerity in worship, not so much when we are in church, but we live life when we are with our family, at work, or even when we are doing our hobbies. How often do we zone out while we are doing those mundane task whether it is doing dishes, pointless paperwork while at work. Sincerity in worship means that we do those things to the best of our ability, no matter if it is for our best friend or that boss we could care less for. Remember, everyone is created in Gods image, and we worship God in how we treat them and do things for them. 

  The Apostle Paul in his letter to Philemon, he encourages the runaway slave Onesimus to go back to Philemon and to work as he is working for God. This idea of work is more than performing task, but it is glorifying God in all we do and doing things to the best of our ability. Paul also tells Philemon to treat Onesimus with care and respect because he is a believer and a child of God. 

  My second observation is that according to the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 2:10 that we are Gods handiwork and we were created for a purpose. God has created each one of us uniquely and it not only shows the vastness and greatness of God, but our worship back to God is taking the gifts that He gives us and doing them for His purpose. God designed each one of us for a specific task and to reach particular people. Where we get ourselves in trouble is when we take those gifts and use them for not their desired purpose. Even worse is when we become jealous of other people’s gifts and we either try and develop those gifts and become frustrated when we don’t get the desired result, or we sit down, throw our hands in the air and throw a fit. Bringing the sacred a little closer to the secular is taking those gifts that God gave us and taking how He designed us and we go out and we change the world. I call this work as worship, because we are not only worshipping God through song, but in action also. 

  I will close with this and it has been a theme throughout the whole series. We are to be a living sacrifice, and when we do this, it requires everything from us. We can not keep certain things from God, we are getting off of that altar and doing our own thing, we go from worshipping God to worshipping ourselves. When this happens, the secular and sacred get further apart and when we do this, we put God in a box and we only open that box when we need Him. God is not only supposed to transform our song and who we pledge allegiance to, but also in what we do and how we do it.

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead