New Morning Mercies #174

What you worship is not best shown on Sunday morning, but demonstrated by your words and behavior the rest of the week.

The word worship is widely misunderstood. Most people who hear the word worship immediately think of some kind of corporate, formal religious activity. Perhaps what comes to mind is a gathering of pilgrims to lay candles at the feet of Buddha; the singing of a hymn with a thousand fellow believers; or a gathering of a small group on a Wednesday night. In other words, for most people, worship is a word that summarizes the outward spiritual activity of their lives. But the Bible employs this word in a fundamentally different way.

The Bible portrays us not just as people who occasionally worship, but as worshipers. It’s not just that we have a religious aspect to our living. No, this worship thing is much more foundational than that. We have been designed by God to be worshipers. This means that worship is first our identity before it ever becomes our activity. The worship inclination or motivation that resides in all our hearts was placed there to draw us to God, the One to whom we were made to give our worship. There is no such thing as a non-worshiping human being. The only thing that divides human beings is what or whom they worship.

What is it, then, that we’re talking about when we say that we are all worshipers? Well, this means that we all attach our identity, our hopes and dreams, our inner sense of well-being, and our meaning and purpose to something. We all give the functional control of our hearts to something. We all live after something. We all tend to surrender to and serve what we think will give us life.

Scripture says that there are only two possible objects of our worship. At street level, no matter what your theology is, you are either worshiping the Creator, surrendering your life to him, or you are in active worship of some part of his creation. Sin reduces us all to idolaters in some way. We all put ourselves, other people, or other things in God’s rightful place.

Worship of the one true and living God is the only place where life can be found, and worship of anything else is a pathway to doom.

So today, every word you say, every choice you make, and every action you take will be shaped by some kind of worship. Nothing depicts your need for the grace of Jesus better than the war of worship that will rage in your heart today.

For further study and encouragement: 1 Chronicles 16:28–34