FROM: Banbury, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
ABOUT ME: Living the highs and lows of life in the adventurous pursuit of God Himself and of who I'm meant to be as the Bride of Christ.
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Monday, November 10, 2008,5:46 p.m.
WE BECOME LIKE WHAT WE WORSHIP
Jeremiah 2:5
“They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves.”
We don’t become like what we worship just by saying “Praise You” or stating without mouths that we worship it. We don’t just follow it because we “should” or because it’s there and it seems the best of a collection of options. It’s deeper than this. If we truly worship something – anything – we think about it almost all the time, we read about it, we want to know more about it, perhaps we want to have more of it, if it is tangible. We worship it – it consumes our time, our thoughts, and our passion.
In one dictionary, to worship is defined as “to love unquestioningly and uncritically or to excess.” Perhaps to go deeper in our worship of God, we need to first understand better what defines worship itself, and then examine our lives to see if our worship of God is meeting those standards.
We know that worship may be lived out in a multitude of ways and actions – singing, dancing, service, mission, etc. But at the core of each of those things, is our worship of God unquestioning? Is it uncritical? Is it to an excess? Does the very idea of God consume all our thoughts, time and passion? These are not questions intended to create guilt or shame; they are only intended to shed light on our own understanding of the concept of worship itself, to see if we indeed understand what it is we profess to give to God.
In one dictionary, to worship is defined as “to love unquestioningly and uncritically or to excess.” Perhaps to go deeper in our worship of God, we need to first understand better what defines worship itself, and then examine our lives to see if our worship of God is meeting those standards.
We know that worship may be lived out in a multitude of ways and actions – singing, dancing, service, mission, etc. But at the core of each of those things, is our worship of God unquestioning? Is it uncritical? Is it to an excess? Does the very idea of God consume all our thoughts, time and passion? These are not questions intended to create guilt or shame; they are only intended to shed light on our own understanding of the concept of worship itself, to see if we indeed understand what it is we profess to give to God.
This is the kind of worship that God is seeking and of which He is truly worthy. As we are consumed by His face, His presence, His words – everything about Him – we will want to be like Him. If we really worship – are consumed by – the idea of money, for example, we ourselves will want to have a lot of money. We believe in it, we are passionate about it. And we will become like it – greedy, lustful after anything to do with wealth or the power of money. If we really worship God – are consumed by everything about Him – we ourselves will want to be like Him and everything that He is. We believe in Him absolutely and want to conform our lives and everything around us to be like Him. We will become like Him.
We will become like what we worship.
