A dad who tells you how important you are OR a dad who actually shows up for the important stuff in your life?
Friends who keep reminding you how tight you are OR friends who are there when you need them most, never stabbing you in the back?
A “significant other” who makes you really cool homemade cards telling you you’re the best thing that has ever happened to them OR one who respects you, keeps your trust, and doesn’t date around on you?
Someone who tells you how special you are OR someone who shows you?
Well, if you’re like me, the answer is … BOTH! I want the words and the actions, and I’m guessing the same can be said about you.
Well, God is no different than you and me. The worship God is after is a BOTH kind of worship. He wants our words and our actions.
We see this in the two primary words that are used for worship in the New Testament.
THE HUGE IDEA:
ALL WORSHIP
INVOLVES SACRIFICE.
Jesus used one of them in His conversation with the Samaritan woman beside the well. This word we translate “worship” is all about an attitude of honor and reverence. It means literally “to bow before,” or “to kiss the hand of a king.”
The other worship-word has a much less glamorous meaning. It simply means to serve.
It’s the word Paul uses in Romans 12:1–2, a central NT passage on worship. He begins by begging us “In view of God’s mercy, to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.” This, Paul declares, is our “spiritual act of worship.” Or literally, our spiritual act of “service.”
But in
God’s economy
worship = serving.
Worship = life.
Paul was saying, If you’ve seen mercy … if you’ve seen the cross … then offer all of who you are to God in response to all that He has done.
Let’s face it: That kind of full-blown serving is not usually the first thing we think of when we think of worship. But in God’s economy worship = serving. Worship = life.
(Circle the word that stands out/means most to you and be ready to talk about why you chose that word.)
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. ROMANS 12:1, NIV
What God has revealed to us about Himself is beyond our words of gratitude. What He has done on our behalf makes it impossible for us to ever repay Him.
But what we can do in return—and must do—is give Him everything we have through a life of service to Him and to those around us.
That’s what we mean when we say worship is a way of life.
For far too long, people have been cheating God, somehow thinking that if they just keep telling Him He’s great, He’ll be content. Whether their words are genuine doesn’t seem to matter. Whether their lives back up their words is no big deal.
After all, words come so easy. And saying (and singing) them makes us feel a little better about ourselves, even when our hearts don’t back up the words coming from our lips.
But God isn’t honored by words alone. Like any of us, He’s moved by words that are authenticated by actions. When it comes to worship, it’s the total package that matters—what you say, how you say it, and whether you mean it. And our words mean most when they’re amplified by the way we choose to live our lives when we are faced with various opportunities and temptations.
Worship is …
our response,
both personal and corporate,
to God—
for who He is!
and what He has done!
expressed in and by the things we say
and the way we live.
On Sunday morning you may be singing with all you’ve got, maybe even falling on your knees to tell God He’s your “all in all.” But the whole time God may be thinking, “There seem to be a lot of other things in your life lately that you desire a whole lot more than Me.”
In that moment, we are no different from those of ages past about whom God said, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Isaiah 29:13, NIV).
God is no dummy. He knows what’s going on in our hearts. And God knows how easy it is for us to say one thing and do another. That’s why the true test of worship isn’t so much what we say, but how we live.
If it’s true that God sees and knows our hearts, why are we afraid to be honest in our worship?
God has given us “life and breath and all things,” as Paul told those guys in Athens. The only fitting response to all He has done is to give back to Him all that we are. Anything less is not enough. Anything less is not true worship. Anything less only proves that we haven’t really seen Him at all.
Take, for instance, His mercy and grace.
We deserved death, but received life. God’s grace and mercy are really just that simple.
So how do we respond to the cross of Christ?
With a Sunday visit to church?
By dropping two bucks in the offering plate?
Singing a few verses of a chorus we love?
By lifting our hands?
Dropping in on the Christian club at school?
Wearing a cross?
Owning a Bible?
Showing up for youth group a few times a month?
No way! The only right response to such mercy and grace is our everything. All our time, all our decisions, everything we say and are.
Somewhere in the modern culture we’ve become confused, thinking that worship and songs are one and the same. In other words we think singing songs = worship and worship = singing songs.
The church scene is flooded with new worship songs. That’s not a bad thing in and of itself. But it’s deadly when we make a subtle mental shift and start believing that by singing the songs, we’re worshiping in truth.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for worship songs—both old and new.
Singing songs about the cross is fine. It’s actually a very good thing. A biblical thing. Something much needed in the church.
But a song alone is not enough.
Grace requires that we bring ourselves, laying our lives before this merciful God.
This wholehearted, full-on, life-encompassing response to God’s amazing grace is the “reasonable” thing to do.
Giving God everything is our only reasonable response.
Now, check out Paul’s challenging words again, this time from a contemporary paraphrase:
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. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. (Romans 12:1, The Message)
That’s it! Worshiping God is what we do as we respond to His mercy in our “walking-around life.”
It’s not the words I sing,
but me I bring;
I’m the offering laid at Your feet,
My steps the melody, oh so sweet,
All of me in praise of Thee.2
Worship is life!
Grace requires that we bring ourselves,
laying our lives
before this merciful God.