OFFER IT UP

Rom.12:1,2 – Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is,

Where are you going to worship the Lord? Of course we see and worship Him in His glorious role as our Heavenly High Priest, and we also worship Him when He comes down among us in our worship and prayer time. But where and when do you worship Him? Actually, New Testament worship is intended to become a full time experience. Paul said it like this in Heb.13:15 – “Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name. And do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices God is pleased”. If that is true it has to be supernatural. Worship is really the results or the outflow of being filled with the Spirit. Here is how Barclay describes today’s verses.

“Here, we have a most significant thing. True worship is the offering to God of one’s body and all that one does every day with it. Real worship is not the offering to God of a liturgy, however noble, and a ritual, however magnificent. Real worship is the offering of everyday life to him – not something carried out in a church, but something which sees the whole world as the temple of the living God.….We might say: ‘I am going to church to worship God’; but we should also be able to say: ‘I am going to the factory, the shop, the office, the school, the garage, the mine, the shipyard, the field, the cowshed, the garden, to worship God.’”

So that is it, our actions become our worship. I’ll never forget my job at B & C Egg Ranch back in my Bible school days. My work conditions were pretty horrible, non-air conditioned chicken houses and literally knee deep in chicken mess. Worship was not an option, it was a necessity in order to survive. As I sang to the Lord my physical labor became worship. Maybe you aren’t in chicken mess but your circumstances can be pretty bad. In those places and seasons we can become true worshippers.