Wednesday,
February 17, 2021 – Ash Wednesday
“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. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it
without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed
from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond
to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of
immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in
you.” (Roman 12: 1 – 2, The
Message Bible)
What’s not to like? When church starts
up again after the pandemic, they had better put in cushy recliners in place of
the hard, wooden pews – with coffee cup holders. PJs are optional.
Easy, entertaining worship
sounds appealing, doesn’t it? We want
our worship to be comfortable, familiar, relaxed, enjoyable, pleasant, and
non-threatening. Sing songs we know. Say the right things in the right
order. Truth to be told, many of us
would like the whole practice of our Christian faith to be comfortable,
uncomplicated and simple. In and out, easy-peasey, no fuss, no muss. We have
our ticket to heaven booked, so let’s sit back and put our feet up until then.
But these words from Romans
shatter the illusion of an easy and comfortable lifestyle of practicing our
faith in Christ. The apostle Paul lifts us out of our easy chairs. Alternate
translations point out that “to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice,
holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship,” (New International
Version). As the Message Bible explains,
worship is not just a Sunday morning affair for 60 minutes or so, it is the holistic
experience of dedicating all of one’s life to God through Jesus Christ. “Take
your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and
walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.”
Living a worshipful life accepts that being faithful is hard work
sometimes. It means being intentional about
how we go about doing even the most normal of routines so that we reflect the
love of God toward others. It may mean that we are actively looking for opportunities
to practice the love of God. This life-style worship accepts the hard
challenges, the sacrifices, the risks, the tests on the way to follow Jesus’
Way. There are many joys, surprises, successes,
victories as we worship God with our whole lives, but it is not ever just easy,
convenient and comfortable.
Too often, our worship tends to
focus on us and what God can do for us. We give God an hour of our time, and
expect God to take care of us the rest of the week. But Paul’s definition of a
worship life, a life that is holy and pleasing to God, reverses this relationship
between God and ourselves. God is the real audience and our worship, Sunday morning
and every day, is to give to God our utter and complete desire to serve him and
honour him. It is hard to do that from an easy chair.
“You must love the Lord your
God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37,
New Living Translation)
As we begin the Lenten season, a
time for personal reflection, repentance and renewal, may we offer God our
lives in a more vigorous, dynamic, holistic spirit of worship.
It is way bigger than what’s on
YouTube!
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