A Different Perspective Official Podcast

Believe it or not, God has this edgy, amazing plan to change us on the inside through His love and mercy and grace ... and then for that to work its way to the outside – in what we say and do. That's the plan.
I love meeting people where what I see is what I get. The person that I see on the outside is the person who they are on the inside even, you know, if they're a bit abrasive on the outside at least you know what you're getting. It's the people who pretend to be one thing to your face and then they go around behind your back and tell other people what they really think, they're the ones I feel really uncomfortable with.
There's a certain hypocrisy about being one thing on the outside and another thing entirely on the inside and you know something I think it's the same with our spirituality too. Telling God one thing in our hearts and then doing another thing with our hands, well it just doesn't sit well. Jesus was only really tough on two things, a lack of faith and religious hypocrisy and you know something, fair enough too.
We're talking this week about the fact that what's happening on the outside needs to match what's happening on the inside. You know if we are living one thing in our hearts and another thing out there in public where people can see us, it just doesn't work, you know there's a disconnect, a mismatch and we can't live that out forever.
If inside we worship God in our hearts, "God I lay down my life for you, I bow down, I delight in you, I love you, I worship you", but then on the outside we don't live that out, well this incongruity, this mis-match, it's called hypocrisy. What you see is not what you get.
Over this week we've seen that worship begins in the heart, it's like a man and a woman falling in love and marrying and they go through ups and downs and there are good days and bad days but you know something, in my heart my wife Jacqui is always there, I love her no matter what today brings and it's the same in our relationship with God, worship begins in the heart.
We saw the other day the story of Mary and Martha where Jesus came to their house and Martha was so busy racing around doing stuff she missed out on what Jesus was saying and doing, whereas Mary, her sister, just sat at His feet and listened and soaked it all in and worshipped Him.
We can just run around doing stuff and doing stuff and doing stuff for God but you know if we keep doing that we end up dry and its hard work and we lose heart for the Lord.
But the reverse is also true. I mean, people go to Church on Sunday and they worship God and they sing all those wonderful songs but then, if that's all we do, if we never actually get out and serve God, well that's not going to work either or if we go and tear someone's head off at work on Monday morning.
You see this incongruity between what's happening on the inside and what we do on the outside? Its adulterous, it's professing one thing and doing another and eventually we have to resolve this conflict, eventually we have to say, "well which one is it going to be? Is it going to be what I want to do in my heart and what I'm saying to God there or is it going to be how I'm living my life? I ultimately have to resolve this."
So either we bring our lives into line with what's happening in our hearts or we abandon what's been going on in our hearts, in worshipping God and we go with the desires of the flesh. It's as simple as that; it's one or the other.
The apostle Paul knew that and he wrote it really well in Romans, chapter 12, verse 1. This is what he says:
Therefore, I urge you brothers and sisters because of God's mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifices holy and pleasing to God. This is your act of spiritual worship.
Now let's just unpack that for a minute or two. He begins with therefore and therefore always points back to something else and in this case he's pointing back to the first 11 chapters of the Book of Romans which is all about God's goodness in coming to rescue us through Jesus Christ.
You know if you are ever in any doubt that you can be forgiven by God and that God loves you and that God wants to change your life, if you ever doubt that, do me a favour, pick up a Bible and read the first 11 chapters of the Book of Romans and that's the stuff that causes our heart to get on fire for God, that's the stuff that causes us to worship Him, it's the heart stuff.
So Paul's saying here because of what He's done in your heart, because of that mercy that you've received deep in your heart, because of that, offer your bodies as living sacrifices. Here Paul is saying because of what's happened in your heart, translate that into action.
Now living sacrifices, well what a gruesome picture, I mean it's definitely not a good marketing spin, these people used to sacrifice animals on altars. These people used to watch the Romans crucify men and women but they knew what sacrifice was all about.
And you know when we decide to follow Jesus, it's a sacrifice. There are things we have to let go, there are things that we know are stupid and wrong and bad and not good for us and it can be so hard letting them go but because of what's happened in your heart - let them go. Live your life as a sacrifice to Him.
Now get the next bit, I love this, "... because this is your spiritual act of worship". During this week we've been looking at the fact that there are two sorts of worship talked about in the New Testament. One is about bowing down, it's the sort of worship that people do on Sundays, you know, the Greek word is "prokduneo", it means to prostrate yourself to bow down but that's not the word that's used here.
The word that's used here is "latreuo". In some translations it will come up not as worship but as service and"latreuo" is the word from which we get the English word lateral which means outwards and the concept is, worship through what we do.
Worship and service come together here, two concepts in the one word. This is where the rubber hits the road, the "proskuneo", the prostrating worship is the worship of the heart, the "latreuo" worship, the lateral worship, the doing worship.
The living worship is when I treat someone kindly and gently that really deserves to have their head ripped off today for what they just did to me. Paul's saying that's spiritual worship. When I deal honestly and fairly with someone that I could have ripped off, that's spiritual worship.
Paul is talking here about bringing our lives into line with our hearts, dying to all those things that we'd rather do that we know aren't from God, sacrificing and it's hard and it's tough and the road to follow Jesus always is.
It's dying to self and living to Christ. This, Paul's says, is worship, not just off on some separate Sunday morning sacred zone, worshipping God with our hearts and our lives, clean hands and pure hearts.
What begins in our hearts as worshipping God is meant to work its way out into our lives in what we say and what we do and how we live. A life that worships God is a beautiful thing, it's not proud or arrogant, it's humble yet strong, it's gentle yet confident. Almost a contradiction but it is such a beautiful thing to meet someone who just shines the nature of God from their very lives.
When we worship God with our hearts and our hands it changes us to look more and more like Jesus. I want to encourage you today to think and pray about this whole worship thing. Worship has to begin in the heart, bowing down,"proskuneo" type worship and it needs to be reflected in what we do with our hands and that's hard, it's going to cost us.
Bowing down and letting it work its way out through our lives is what worship is meant to be so that people can taste the sweet fruit of our worship. Worship is not just about singing songs; worship is a way of life.

Sometimes what we do on the outside reflects what's happening on the inside. Other times, we try to hide what's happening on the inside by behaving differently on the outside. And in the long run – that just doesn't work.
Something we love to do, it comes pretty naturally, is to have a disconnect between our spirituality or our faith on the one hand and our lives on the other.
Maybe we go to Church on a Sunday, that sacred zone over there, you know you go there and you sing songs and you worship God. "Oh God, you're so wonderful, I love you so much, I exalt you above all. Lord, I worship you and I praise you", all that stuff. Brilliant, it's great but then on Monday morning we go back to work, the same old, same old. Back in the groove.
If you're a Mum maybe you have to rush to get the kids off to school and then head out to work. Dad, you're on the train or in the car, on the bus doing the commute. Or maybe you're unemployed or retired or whatever, sitting at home alone and that thing we call worship that happened over there on Sunday morning seems a million miles away, somehow it's not connected to the realities of life. It was great while it lasted but now it's back to earth with a thud.
Have you ever felt like that? It's like you have a disconnect between faith over in this little box and life over in that box. Worship's something that happens over here in the sacred zone but when you get back to the real world, well it's hard you know, it's tough, there's a grind, there are pressures, there are issues, people make compromises.
You're not alone; I mean in the West many Christ followers experience that. The sense that their faith and their worship and their prayer and all that stuff is in one box and life is in a completely separate box.
Now in the East, in Asia and places like Africa, peoples upbringing and culture, well the spirituality's a lot more connected with life but wherever or whatever, it's important that we understand what worship is all about. It's not something we put in a box and take out on Sundays; worship is a way of life.
That's the name of this week's series. When we understand what worship is in God's heart then all of a sudden life and spirituality become inseparable.
Just the last couple of days we began to look at the fact that the New Testament talks about two different forms of worship. One verse where both of these forms of worship appear is Luke chapter 4 verse 8. Grab your Bible if you have one, have a look.
Jesus had been led by the Holy Spirit out into the desert, He's been there starving and fasting for the last 40 days so He's weak and He's at a low point and the devil comes to tempt Him. In fact, next year we're going to be doing a whole series on this wilderness passage but just today, I just want to look at this second temptation where the devil comes to tempt Jesus with a grand delusion:
The devil led Jesus up to a high place to show Him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world and he said to Jesus, "I will give you all their authority and splendour because it's been given to me and I can give it to anyone I want. So if you would just worship me it will all be yours." And Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.'"
Here's a standard temptation of the devil. I believe in the devil because Jesus does. A lot of people don't believe in the devil today, well I'm sorry, Jesus clearly does and so do I. And here is a standard temptation. He shows us the world and says, "Look at this wonderful world that I have control of," and frankly you don't have to look very far to see what an enormous influence the devil in fact has.
And the devil says, 'What are you doing out in this wilderness for God? Why are you starving? Why is this so tough? Look, just come and worship me and all this can be yours.' Yeah right! Listen to what the devil says to Jesus:
So if you worship me it will all be yours.
Now this word 'worship' is the first, I guess dimensional type of worship. The Greek word is 'proskuneo' and it's a word from which we get the word prostrate. So to prostrate ourselves, to bow down, to kiss someone's hand, to fall down on our knees and face to worship. It's the sort of worship people do on Sunday mornings in Church. Hebrews, chapter 12, verse 28 talks about worshipping God with awe and reverence.
It's a heart worship, its expressing our allegiance and gratefulness and awe and reverence and wonder of God by singing songs of worship and the devils saying to Jesus, "Now, bow down to me as you would to God" but look at Jesus' reply. Jesus answered:
It is written, 'worship the Lord your God and serve Him alone.
Jesus is quoting the Old Testament, Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 13.
There are two verbs in what He says, worship and serve. Now that word worship the Lord your God is the same word as the devil just used "prokuneo", to bow down but then the second verb, this doing word, is the Greek word "latreuo". It's the word from which we get lateral or outwards.
This word is used a number of times in the New Testament and it is variously translated as serve or worship. To"latreuo" is to render religious service or homage, to worship, to perform sacred services, to offer gifts, to worship God and the observance of rights for worship. You see,"latreuo" is outward worship, its worship through doing and serving.
For Jesus, the answer went beyond simply bowing down to God or the devil as the devil wanted Him to, it included serving God. What we do in our hearts AND what we do with our hands, inside and outside. Jesus said it again when someone asked Him, "what's the most important commandment he said":
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind.
You see, strength is what we do with our heart on the inside, with our strength on the outside. You know something; if what we do and believe on the inside isn't reflected in how we live on the outside, what we believe on the inside will die.
We can't pray one thing and do one thing on Sunday morning singing songs to God and worshipping Him and then not serve Him by living that faith out in life. For God worship is a holistic thing. For God worship is what happens in our hearts and what we do with our hands. In James chapter 2, verse 26, read it. It says:
Faith without works is dead.
If we're going to exalt God in our hearts but not in our lives by the way we think and act and treat other people, it's just never going to work.
Some people struggle to see the relevance of their faith in life. And can I suggest the reason is because they've got worship over here in a little box that they open once a week and that we haven't come to grips with the fact that worshipping isn't just what we do in our hearts, it's not just the songs we sing. When we live out that faith, when we sacrifice the things we want for the things that Jesus wants and it hurts some days, that is worshipping God.
Psalm 24, verse 7 talks about having clean hands and a pure heart. In fact this linking of inside worship and outside worship,"prokuneo" worship which is bowing down and"latreuo" worship which is serving happens over and over and over again in God's word. God just doesn't want us to worship Him once a week; God wants us to live a life that is worship to Him.

Some people are so busy doing stuff, they don't have time for relationships. Other people are so relationship-focused that they never actually get anything done. So, which one is better?
Most of us understand the concept of smelling roses. We're so busy, so flat out running around doing stuff that we don't take the time to smell the roses, to stop and pause and wonder and think and enjoy God's creation. How many husbands take the time to woo their wives? How many fathers these days take the time to go to their son's football game or their daughters dance concert?
How many people take the time just to slow down and spend some quality time with God? Praying, reading, resting, letting the imagination roam, coming to grips with the wonder that is Jesus Christ. Well, when was the last time you took time to smell the roses?
We're talking today about making worship a way of life. Not just some ritual or a few songs that people sing on Sunday mornings. Worship isn't a ritual; worship isn't some thing that we do with incense and incantation, that's not what it's about.
Worshipping God is about having a relationship. It's something that begins in the heart, a desire to be with Him, a desire to bow down our whole lives to Him, a besottedness where you just want to see God and to experience Him and to hear Him and worship.
Worshipping God through Jesus Christ is about sacrifice. It's always about sacrifice because when we bow down to worship God, we've got to get ourselves off our own little tin pot thrones and I don't know how it was for you but for much of my life I was worshipping me, I was my own little God.
Worship is about sacrifice and there are two aspects. There's what happens in our hearts and then how it's reflected in our lives. We're going to talk about that in a whole bunch more detail over the next few days but it's about connecting our faith with our day to day life realities.
I just want to introduce you today to two women from the Bible, Mary and Martha. If you've got a Bible grab it, you can look at it in Luke, chapter 10, verse 38. Here's the story:
Jesus and His disciples were on their way and He came to a village where there was this woman called Martha and she opened her home to Him. She had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lords feet listening to what He said but Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made, (I mean she was having the Son of God visiting).
And she came to Him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me." "Martha, Martha." The Lord answered, "You're worried and upset about so many things but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better and it won't be taken away from her."
I don't know what your life looks like but mine has more things in it than I have time to get through. Our ministry here at Christianityworks for me is not just about writing and producing radio programs, there's all sorts of things.
There's out seeing radio stations, producing material to go with messages, administration, fund raising, managing staff, lots of things. Not to mention home and the family and Church and friends and rest and relaxation and the danger for me and many other people is that we get so busy with the urgent things we don't have time for the important things.
And the important things that we tend to squeeze out of our schedule are relationships, spending time with people (that's why so many marriages fall apart) and spending time at the feet of Jesus (that's why so many people end up drifting away from God). We delude ourselves, "Well, well, you know, I'm busy out there serving God. That's what God wants from me, that's the most important thing, if I don't do what I'm doing the worlds going to cave in."
Now don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting that we should become spiritual coach potatoes but have a listen to what happens here in this story. Martha is rushing around and cleaning and cooking and doing all that stuff, I mean after all they have guests, the Son of God has arrived on their doorstep.
Her sister Mary is sitting at Jesus feet, listening, her heart being moved, being changed and strengthened and encouraged. She's worshipping Jesus. And Martha goes, "well that's not fair, she should be helping me," and what does Jesus answer, "Well absolutely! Mary, get off your backside, stop being so lazy and go and help." No, that's not where Jesus is coming from at all. He says:
Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about so many things but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what's better and it won't be taken away from her.
One thing! What is that one thing? It's a relationship with Jesus. One thing! To worship the Lord your God. You go to the Ten Commandments what's the first commandment? Just worship God and no-one else. When someone asked Jesus, "What's the most important commandment?"
Love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. This is the first and greatest commandment.
You end up sometimes in life running around in ever decreasing circles just like Martha. I don't know what Martha was cooking that day but I bet you it wasn't kind of a sausage sizzle, I bet she didn't just throw a few snags on the barbeque and get a bread roll and some tomato ketchup.
No, my hunch is she was doing some "bigger than Ben Hur" cordon bleu thing because Jesus, the Son of God had walked through her front door. We complicate things so much, a lot of people don't have other people over because they couldn't be bothered with all the effort of preparing and cooking and stuff. What's wrong with throwing a few sausages on the barbecue?
You see, we make things so complicated and then we end up running around and we're worried and we're upset about so many things and the more we focus on those things and problems, the worse they become and like Martha, we blame Mary, we blame someone else.
We end up buried in a mountain of problems and hurts and issues and exhaustion and uncertainties and insecurities. I wonder whether maybe you relate to some of that, I know I can fall into this trap myself and that's why we're spending some time talking about worship because worship has real impact.
In my life at the moment there are pressures and issues that have to be addressed, all sorts of stuff and it doesn't go away. Walking with Jesus isn't entering into some super spiritual zone where every one of life's problems evaporates.
In the middle of that, this morning, I had some time of prayer. I went through a few of the psalms, songs of praise and worship and I just spent some time at Jesus' feet, thanking Him and praising Him and worshipping Him because, you know amidst the pressures and concerns there are so many good things going on too. We end up focusing on all the bad things and we forget to thank God for the good things. You know, something happens when we spend time doing that, it's better than just running around doing stuff.
We have to do things too but pausing for a time, resting at Jesus' feet, hearing Him speak, adoring Him, telling Him how much we love Him, worshipping Him changes our lives.

Love is something that begins in the heart. So is hatred. In fact, just about everything we say and do on the outside, begins with what's happening on the inside. The same holds true for – worship.
One of the things that we all kind of know is that the great achievements that we have on the outside all start on the inside. Somewhere deep in her heart a little girl dreams of being a great athlete. She nurtures that dream. Every morning she's up at 4.00 am to go to training, day after day, month after month, year after year. It's that thing that's been going on in her heart that sustains her; it drives her to achieve her very best even when the odds are stacked against her.
Everything that happens on the outside, everything we do and say begins on the inside. It has its genesis in our hearts. It's true in every aspect of our lives, work and family and social and spiritual.
The heart is an important place. You know one of the most common things talked about right throughout the Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, over 540 times is the heart. Several times Jesus made the point that who we are on the outside is a reflection of what's going on in our hearts. Matthew, chapter 12, verse 34:
For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.
And again in Matthew, chapter15, verse 18:
But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart and these make us unclean. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man unclean.
You see for me, here's the biggest danger in thinking about worship. "Well, I go to Church most Sundays, we sing songs therefore I worship then I go home." It's kind of like saying, "Well I live in the same house and I sleep in the same bed as my wife" or maybe your husband, "I peck them on the cheek each morning before I go to work. Once a week I make sure I tell them "Love Ya" therefore I love my wife or I love my husband."
See how crazy that is? My wife is not interested in ritual, she wants to know, does my husband love me with all his heart? And secondly, do I see that love reflected in what he says and how he responds to me? That's why Jesus, when He was asked the most important commandments said:
Love the Lord your God with all your HEART, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. This is the first and greatest commandment.
It turns out that worship is something that begins in the heart, it lives there first and foremost but then it's meant to be reflected in our lives. If we just 'do' worship once a week that's a sham. I've been there, I've been standing in a Church on Sunday morning singing the songs with my mind wandering off somewhere else, that's not worshipping God anymore than a quick peck on my wife's cheek is loving her. Worship is something that comes from the heart; King David knew that, listen to what he writes in psalm 24: 
The earth is the Lords and everything in it, the world and all who live in it; for He founded it upon the seas and He established it on the waters. Who may ascend to the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in this holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false.
You see, David is saying here "God is above all and if I want to ascend to the hill of the Lord", what he meant there is going to the temple and worship God, "I need to have clean hands and a pure heart, a heart and a life that declare that I put Jesus first". Again in psalm 27, David writes this:
One thing do I ask of the Lord, this is what I will seek: That I will dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon His beauty and to seek Him in His temple..." "...My heart says of you, seek His face and your face Lord will I seek.
You see, what's going on here for David is that something is happening in his heart. Can I tell you? It's the truth, just quietly between you and me, don't tell anyone else.
I am besotted with my wife, like I adore her, I just worship the ground she walks on, you know I just love her. It's a thing that starts and lives, day after day, in my heart. Some days we're both tired, some days, just quietly I'm grumpy. Some days she's a bit scratchy but the thing in my heart just never goes away and that's how it is for worship for me.
There's something about God in my heart that overwhelms me. Like David, my heart says:
Seek his face and your face Lord, will I seek." "This one thing shall I ask, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.
There's this thing of the heart, a desire, a besottedness, an overwhelming urge just to be with God where He is.
I was recently travelling with the ministry for almost two weeks and the ministry that God has me involved in here at Christianityworks is such a blessing and such a delight and I get to meet so many people but can I tell you? Each time I have to leave my wife it's an incredible sacrifice. You see, I love her; I want to be with her. When we go out together, more often than not, we're wandering down the street or through the shopping mall, hand in hand. It's a closeness, there's a desire, there's a "want to be together".
Sometimes you know I go along to functions, you know a dinner or something like that and I watch other married couples, many of them don't ever sit next to each other at the dinner, you know something; we always do because we're close and that in a sense is what's going on in David's heart for God.
He's saying, "God, I just want to be close to you. I just want to dwell in your house all the days of my life and gaze on your beauty and seek you in your temple. My heart says of you seek His face and your face Lord, I will seek." There it is, there's the heart of worship, a holy desire for God Himself. Not what God can do, not all the blessings, just God Himself. What about you? What does worship mean to you?
You know, I went for a long time and I thought worship was just going along on Sunday morning and singing a few songs and coming home again but if that's how I treated my wife our marriage would fall apart.
If that's how I treat God, if I say, "Worship is just some ritual, some sham, it doesn't matter, there's nothing going on in my heart", how can you expect to have a vital, dynamic, exciting, besotted relationship with God.
Sometimes we get dry and we feel like we've wandered off and we feel like we don't have that desire, we all go there some days, stick with me during this week because we're going to, we're going to get together and look at what it means in our lives to worship God.

It turns out that we all worship something. Success. Money. God – whoever that might be. There's invariably something that dominates the way we feel, think and live.
I'm not much into religion per se, you know the whole structured ritual thing but one of the great spiritual concepts that sometimes gets tagged with religious baggage is this idea of worship.
Well when you hear the word worship, what does it mean to you? People who don't have any particular faith in God might see it as something that religious people might do in Churches or temples, maybe candles and incense or chanting and ritual, something that happens, well over there somewhere, not something that I do.
A Christian might say, "Well, worships what we do on Sunday morning at Church before the sermon. We sing songs, that's our worship time." What about you? What would you say that worship is? My hunch is that the notion of worship from where God sits is so much broader than any narrow view that people might have about it. Not some religious ritual, not just some musical event but something much more.
It is great to be with you again and we're doing a small series this week just talking about worship as being a way of life. You know, when we worship someone or something we put it above all other things. We pay homage to it, in fact it directs our lives.
We will sacrifice other things, even those that are very dear to us for the sake of the thing or the person that we worship. We all worship something you know, I used to worship money and success and recognition. These were the things that made my whole life go round.
My life was centred and ordered around those things, I sacrificed my health, my family, my rest, everything for these things that I worshipped and actually, when I look back, I was really worshipping myself.
We can all look at our lives and ask, "What's at the centre of my life? Who or what do I worship?" We'll know the answer to that question when we look at the sacrifices we make and ask ourselves, really and truly, "Who or what am I making the sacrifices for? What's at the centre of my life? Is it my career? Is it my family? Is it earning more money and having a bigger house?" Honestly ask ourselves, "What is at the centre of my life?" And to figure it out we just have to look at the sacrifices we make and that's who or what we're actually worshipping.
We all have lots of, I guess, elements or rooms in our lives, obviously we need to make some sacrifices sometimes. Being a parent, by definition, is about making sacrifices for our children.
Sometimes, to be sure, we have to make sacrifices for our jobs or careers but day after day, month after month, is there one thing that keeps rising above all of those others in terms of sacrifice? If there is, chances are that's the one that we're worshipping.
The notion that sacrifice is an essential part of worship is not something new. The very first time that the word worship is mentioned in the Bible is the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham was a man that God called out of his comfort zone and Abraham went on a long journey and he was an old man, it took a long time but God promised Abraham that he would have many descendants.
Well Abraham and his wife Sarah were really old and they still didn't have a single child to their name. They never thought that it would happen, that they would have an heir but this was God's promise. And ultimately, after a quarter of a century, when they were really old, God gave them a son called Isaac.
You can imagine, this kid grows up and Abraham and Sarah had been waiting like a lifetime to have this child, they would dote on Isaac, they would just adore him and what God saw was that Abraham was putting Isaac before God Himself and so God went to Abraham and said, "I want you to sacrifice Isaac, you know like on an altar like they sacrifice animals."
What an incredibly painful thing and on that morning when they journeyed out to that place where Abraham felt called to sacrifice his son, Abraham said to his servant, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you." Imagine the tussle that was going on in Abrahams heart, "who is first in my life? Is it God or my son?"
You see, we can think we're worshipping God but then you go and look at your life and you ask some hard questions. How do I spend all of my time, my money, my energy, my passions, my dreams? And like Abraham we might get a real shock, let's read on:
Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed in on his son, Isaac and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on Isaac spoke up and said to his father, "Father?" "Yes my son?" Abraham replied, "The fire and the wood are here" Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" And Abraham answered, "God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering my son." And the two of them went on together.
When they reached the place that God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took a knife to slay his son but the angel of the Lord called to him out of heaven and said, "Abraham! Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. "Do not lay a hand on this boy. Do not do anything to him because now I know that you fear God because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son."
What God was doing here was testing Abraham's heart. Abraham, who do you worship? Who do you put first in your life God or your son? Now we might think this is just a bit extreme but I have to tell you, when I had to stop worshipping myself, you know give up this whole career and wealth and recognition thing, can I tell you? That was not an easy thing to let go of.
When God comes along and finally tugs on our hearts and says, "do you realise you're worshipping something else?" It's almost impossible to admit let alone let go but at the end of this both God and Abraham knew the answer to the question, who do you put first in your life?
The angel of the Lord said to Abraham, 'Now I know that you fear God because you have not withheld from me your only son'.
Can I ask you quietly yet deliberately? Who or what do you worship? When it comes to the crunch, the one thing on this earth that is most important to you, would you be prepared to lay it down for the Lord your God? All our hopes, our dreams, our future, our life, our career – everything!
Is God exalted above all other things in our lives? Because worshipping God is about adopting a God above all position in every part of our lives. Singing songs of worship is great but do we bow our lives down to God before anything or anyone else? In our hearts, do we truly worship God?
Worship is about a whole bunch more than some religious rituals or just singing songs. The crunch question is, do we worship God with our lives?