Life is Worship

This is the inscription I read on the back window of a car as it merged onto I-85 near Durham the other night. I was driving back from visiting my mother-in-law and all was quiet in the car-so far, so good. I was listening to worship music and enjoying the dark night sky with the sprinkle of starlight...and the occasional deer (on the side of the road--fortunately for them and for me!).

After I read the sign I began to think about it--is my life worship? If I could look down and take a fragment of my day and watch it, would it look like worship? My first thought was from the "Accuser" (of course). "No, your life would not look like worship, but it would look disjointed, chaotic, anxious." That was a pretty accurate synopsis, at least for what my life has felt like lately. My responses to life, especially to my children, are often in anger, impatience, resentment, you name it. I hear myself trying to shame them into obedience, screaming at them, "Stop screaming and be quiet!!" That probably makes A LOT of sense to 3 and 4 year olds.

I was contemplating all of this and feeling like a huge failure because my life is not worshipful--to God anyway. Then the Lord spoke gently to me, "Diane, worship is not an act, but a state of your being." Meaning, I don't have to achieve or even give the act of worship, it is simply lived out by how I choose to live. Now I could choose to worship my flesh (which is the picture that I saw at the beginning), or I could worship God with my life by choosing to surrender to His control and by believing that what He says about me is true. As Romans 12:1 says, "Offer yourselves as living sacrifices (just as you are), holy and pleasing to God (I used to think this meant I had to attain holiness BEFORE I could worship---that's a hopeless thought, but I believe He's saying that offering yourself, as you are, IS holy and pleasing to God because it's recognizing Christ in us and living out of His holiness. That's what He wants from us, giving Him complete reign so that He can live out of us)...THAT is your spiritual act of worship."

So, yes, my life is worship, whether its worship of God as I surrender to His love and sovereignty in my life, or it's worship to my flesh, which only brings disaster and the need for God's grace and mercy. Godly worship, essentially, is a continuous broken heart before God--THAT is my spiritual act of worship--acknowledging the need for Him as my LORD!