March 25, 2019
Good morning Lovelies. Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is with great joy that I am able to come to you again to inspire and encourage you. I experienced issues with my laptop that have been fixed and I’m now able to write to you again. Father, thank You so much that You declare that I am enough in You and because of You. When the lies in my life and heart get loud, help me to listen to Your voice of truth instead. I’m so grateful. I have been so wishy-washy when it comes to taking hold of Your promises and making them mine. But today, I’m putting my foot down! I will not allow human reason to talk me out of my spiritual inheritance. I will set my foot down on every promise that You have given me today. I’m going in! Going On! In the Mighty Matchless Name of Jesus, Amen!
Worship is demonstrated and expressed in many different ways. One of the ways we demonstrate our worship is through sacrifice. What do our sacrifices speak and why is this worship, and do the sacrifices we make and the way we make them matter to our worship. That is one reason why sacrifice is worship, it says God You are worthy and I want to do the things that draw me closer to You and if sacrificing for Your will does that, I will make those sacrifices. Sacrifice is also worship because Worship through Sacrifice demonstrates Faith. Today, “sacrifice” has passed into more generalized cultural metaphors that have nothing to do with worship. “Worship” itself has become a vague concept. Generally associated with prayer, praise and singing. Sacrifice has largely disappeared from the experience of contemporary Christianity.
It is all well and good to say that Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross was once-and-for-all, ad to file it away as such. However, such analyzing of the Cross places ever more distance between the believer and the event. “Do this in remembrance of Me,” has come to be a means of forgetting. The mystery of our salvation, as well as the mystery that we describe as worship is found within the sacrifice of Christ. We have become a generation of people who worship our work, work at our play and play at our worship. Worship involves giving ourselves to God.
Paul labels us as “living sacrifices” in Romans 12:1. Instead of a dead animal sacrifice, we present our bodies to God for his use as living sacrifices. Someone once said “the problem with living sacrifices is that they keep crawling off the altar!” That’s one reason we have to keep offering ourselves to God each day! We keep crawling off the altar! We want to pursue our own agenda, control our own lives; follow our own course in life! Worshipping God, offering our lives to Him as living sacrifices, helps us remember the great importance of recognizing and affirming God’s greatness! It also helps us reset our spiritual compass for life and the week ahead. Further, worship helps us regain perspective!
Worship enables us to keep our Christian life in proper perspective! Paul described our worship as, “holy (set apart) and pleasing to God.” We want our worship to be set apart for the Lord and pleasing to him. We should strive to give God our very best in worship! Paul wrote, “this is your spiritual act of worship.” When we offer or give ourselves to God in worship, what exactly do we give? We give God our present relationships and future dreams. Offer God your relationship with Him. Worship does benefit us. It inspires us to devotion, restores perspective etc., but perhaps that is only a secondary function of worship. Perhaps the primary aspect of worship is sacrifice, the giving up of my own energy, time, desires, preferences, to offer something to God that costs me something because it is worth something. Sacrifice that is not oriented on love of God and love of my neighbor is empty and faithless. At worst it makes a bargain with God.
“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, Romans 12:1-2 (The Message Bible)
Live life, give people hope and share your heart, wisdom and resources. Never place a period where God says there should be a comma.
As always peace and blessings, be safe. Take advantage of your opportunities, but never allow your opportunities to take advantage of you. Remember God loves you and so do I. ©krw 3.25.19
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