Spiritual Worship

Spiritual Worship

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)

Old Testament worshipers brought sheep, bulls, or pigeons to sacrifice on the altar as offerings to God. But God no longer requires the slaughter of animals as an expression of worship. The holy sacrifice that pleases God is a living person, a surrendered will upon his altar. God wants you to offer your body to him as a living sacrifice, as your way of worship.

To be a living sacrifice is to want the will of God to be done in your life more than you want life itself. Becoming a living sacrifice requires a willingness to go through the fire, to experience all the altar represents—purification and separation for the singular purpose of pleasing God. On this altar everything that is not useful or pleasing to God is burned away. But after you’ve gone through this fire, future flames will not have as much power to shake your joy or your confidence in God. The next time the fire heats up around you, you won’t be so afraid, because you’ll know by experience that the fire will not destroy you.

Are you willing to be poured out as an offering, to become a living sacrifice? Ask God for the faith and courage you need to crawl up onto the altar. Offer yourself to him, saying, “I’m yours. You can do whatever you want to do with me.” This is pleasing sacrifice and holy surrender. This is spiritual worship.

But perhaps you feel you have sacrificed enough in this life, that God is asking too much here. If so, then you have not really seen or understood his great mercy. Perhaps your loss and disappointment have blinded you to his abundant kindness, because when we really see the mercy of God, we simply can’t go on living for ourselves. Pleasing God becomes more valuable to us than our health, more meaningful than our career, more comfortable than our own ideas. The love of God shown to us in his mercy moves us and motivates us to lay it all down, to give it all up, to become a living sacrifice. “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”

Holy Fire, I lay my body on your altar, giving you my secret thoughts, my sexual desires, my abilities, my energies, my emotions, my will.

DIGGING DEEPER