Worship

Romans 12 starts with

1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, [which is] your reasonable service. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what [is] that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. [NKJV]

Many translations translate "reasonable service" as being an act of Worship. This line basically says that our physical lives need to be in service and worship of God, and not only this, it is the only logical and reasonable thing to do. Logical because what else does one do when considering God and reasonable because He wishes us to be in intermate relationship with Him. The more involved we are with God, the closer we are to Him and the less likely we are to stumble and even fall away.

So how far back does intentional Worship of our God go? Right back to the beginning; Genesis 4:1-4.

After Adam and Even are driven from Eden, they have Cain and Abel. Cain their eldest was a farmer while Abel was a shepherd. We have no information as to why Cain bought an offering to God but at some point he was prompted to do so. Initially nothing indicates that he had wrong motives in doing so, that is until we see his response to how God view things in light of his Cain's offering. The text seems to indicated that Abel followed Cain's example with a slight difference, he didn't just bring from his flock but rather bought the firstborn of his flock which symbolised his desire to give God of his very best. 

Initially we might wonder why God rejected Cain's act of worship (Genesis 4:5) but as we know, God sees the heart (Jeremiah 17:10, Proverbs 21:2). And Cain's jealousy and anger reflect what God saw. Here we see that worship of God is much more than an act. Without a right heart and attitude it is simply of no value or purpose.

The truly sad part of this event is that Cain did not act on impulse i.e. the murder of his brother (for something that God had done) was premeditated, re-enforcing the truth of the sinfulness of mankind (Jeremiah 17:9) and the fact that we all are living in sin (Romans 3:23). In spite of this however, even though we all have a propensity to sin we also have the ability to make correct choices. This is further supported by the following:,

"6 So the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? 7 "If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire [is] for you, but you should rule over it."" [Gen 4:6-7 NKJV]

What is encouraging about this verse is that God does not reject Abel but rather instructs him on how he should live i.e. on how he could be accepted of God. In fact God appears to always give people an opportunity to get right with Him. Right from Adam, the people of Babel, to the flood, Nineveh, and the list goes on. Yet in spite of this, Abel hardens his heart. Well does Psalm 95 and then again Hebrews 3 warn us to not harden our hearts. The thing is that while God is able to do anything, when it comes to us serving Him, we need to make the 2nd move; second because God makes the first by revealing Himself to us. We need to make the second by responding to Him.

So the "Devil made me do it" excuse does not hold any weight.

Again, what is worship of God? It is giving of something to Him. And so the question is now two-fold, "What am I giving?", and "How am I giving?" Romans 12 adds an extra depth to it all. Offering our bodies means we are giving ourselves to permanently worship God at all times and this includes every part of me (body. mind and soul). In short, worship is a lifestyle and not a a one off event, or even a repeated event. Whatever I am doing, ritual or not needs to be in true worship of my God. By true I mean I need to be dead to self so that I only seek His Glory.

As I meditate on this I get a real sense of how far short I fall short in this area. In so many areas of my life I only give Him a small portion of my life (if any). Having said this, until that last trumpet sounds, we all still have opportunity to regroup, refocus and realign our lives with serving and worshiping our God but to do so we need to be willing to die to self and continually commit our ways to Him while giving Him glory in all things through what we do, think, say and in how we live and what I live for.