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Thoughts of a saint and slave
by Sam Isaacson
Over the last few weeeks we have seen that worship is essentially the way we live our lives. Our worship of God is founded on ‘the gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Romans 6:23), and is the way by which we ‘present [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God’ (Romans 12:1).
I would like us to move on in our study of worship by investigating different forms that worship can take. Some of these will be decidedly familiar, and some will be foreign. In some cases I would hope that we are pleasantly surprised to discover that at times we have been worshipping in spirit and in truth without even realising it!
It would be sensible to identify forms that worship can take based on the definition we put down last time. We made clear that worship is always carried out by making sacrifices, so our investigation will be based on that.
Sacrifice the bad
Our first priority in worship should be to ensure that our focus is healthy. The one which we are giving glory to should always be Jesus over any other, so the first step in worship is to sacrifice anything which displeases him.
John writes that ‘if we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins’ (1 John 1:9) so our worship must begin with the confession of our sins. The confession of specific sins is an important aspect of fixing our eyes on Jesus because it reminds us of the fact that Christian worship is founded on an awareness of God’s forgiving grace.
That being said worship is bigger than that! If worship is the sacrifice of one thing for the glory of something else then surely taking our eyes off Jesus in order to concentrate on sin is also worship, but simply idol worship rather than Christian worship. As a result we can say that seeking personal holiness in our lives is worship in itself.
This is where worship of God truly begins; as we honour him by the way we follow his commands as the psalmist declares (Psalm 119:7) we are taking the first step of worship by sacrificing our false idols of greed, sin, fear and folly, and giving the glory to God.
Sacrifice the good
This is where the Christian world divides - which side do you find yourself on? There are some loud voices on Christian radio and television, and of course in church pulpits, declaring that Jesus’ primary ministry was to show us the right way to live and that the way we become Christians is to follow Jesus’ command to ‘follow me’ by our social action.
What we have seen in our studies so far, however, is that God does not particularly care about our actions unless our entire being is engaged because we are called to ‘worship him in spirit’ (John 4:24). Like the example we saw last week we could be living a good life and demonstrating love for those around us, yet not be worshipping God at all!
The challenge to us, therefore, is to know when it is appropriate for us to make sacrifices of even good things when that sacrifice is founded on our relationship with Christ. Allow me to make some suggestions as to what this could, and does, look like. Please bear in mind that we are by no means limited to these ideas, they are just the beginning! I am sure that we could all identify good things in our lives that could be sacrificed to worship God.
Time is by no means a bad thing, but can be sacrificed for the glory of Jesus. We can give up time doing a particular action and use that time to worship God. This may look like scheduling in regular quiet time to read the Bible and pray. It may look like dedicating Sunday mornings to go to church. Alternatively it could look like giving up an evening or two to meet in a midweek fellowship group, or to serve in the church.
Money is something which is talked about a great deal in the Bible, and again is certainly not a bad thing. But Jesus was moved to say that ‘you cannot serve God and money’ (Luke 16:13); we are required to make financial sacrifices in order to bring glory to God. This looks like regularly tithing as well as giving additional offerings as the Spirit leads us.
Possessions are gifts given by God for us to look after, and are often wonderfully good. These can also be used to worship God. By sacrificing the use of our home we can practice hospitality by welcoming other Christians and unbelievers in for meals and other events. We could consider sacrificing food by fasting regularly. By liberally lending and giving away our possessions we can help those in need; all this gives glory to God providing it is borne out of a love for God inspired by his grace toward us.
Sex is a good gift from God - it is so important that full books of the Bible were written about it, and God saved his statement that what he had created was 'very good' (Genesis 1:31) until he had made sex possible for Adam and Eve. That being said if we are truly Christians we should be willing to make sacrifices in this area by resisting temptation by being faithful to our spouse, not having sex or living together as a couple outside of marriage and perhaps seriously reconsidering our stance on God's view of sexuality in general.
Finally our reputation is a good thing, often won and built up by good character and people skills. This, too, can be sacrificed in order to bring glory to the King of Kings. By looking at this in a little more detail next week we will hopefully see this becoming a little more practical but in the meantime why not ask yourself these questions:
When I dissect my calendar, where does my time go? Could I change so that more time goes towards Jesus?
When I dissect my bank statement, where does my money go? Am I regularly giving my firstfruits to Jesus?
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