THEM> (part three)
We all are all worshippers. Every single one of us. We all worship something. We all have something we center our lives around. That could be God, that could be our favorite bands, that could be lust, that could be our best friends, that could be our material belongings, and that could even be ourselves. What we worship could be absolutely anything because what we worship, or who we worship, is our choice. It’s a choice that is imperative to our quality of life.
In other words, we all have an altar in our life that we sacrifice on.
Romans 12:1 says this,
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God–this is your true and proper worship.
Wait, but don’t sacrifices have to, you know, die?
Well, yes, they do. So if we are to be living sacrifices, we must die. But what I’m referring to is not the type of death you’re thinking of. To become a living sacrifice, we need to give ourselves to God so that we can live through him, so that he can make us new, and so he can be alive in us. This is how God calls us to worship. To live, and then die, so that he can make us new.
So we’re all worshipping something. But why? Why do we worship? We worship to fill ourselves up with something. We worship so that we can live for something. We worship to fill that hole in our hearts with something. But I’ve got news. That hole is a God-sized hole, and we can run around worshipping everything on this earth, including ourselves, before we ever come to that realization. We can choose to spend our whole lives ignoring this hole. But the only thing that is going to fill us up, and truly give us life, is God. Not religion, not ourselves, but God.
If you spend your life seeking God, if you spend your life worshipping him as a living sacrifice, when you die, you will get him! It will be Heaven! It will be pure bliss! Your deepest longings will be fulfilled, and you will spend eternity with your Father in a place that does not know pain, but love. It will be perfect.
On the other hand, if you spend your whole life seeking yourself, and worshiping yourself, when your die, you will get yourself. You will be by yourself. It will be Hell. It will be your worst nightmare.
God doesn’t send people to Hell. People send themselves. Actually, Hell is one of the best arguments for God’s love.
If you don’t want to spend eternity with God, he won’t make you. He loves us so much, he doesn’t make us love him. He doesn’t force us to seek him and he doesn’t manipulate us to follow him. However, if we choose to conform to the ways of this world and worship ourselves, it will be Hell, but it doesn’t have to be. It doesn’t have to be Hell.
If you give yourself to God, you will save yourself.
If you hold on to yourself, you will burn with it.
God’s love is eternal. It is so abundant we can only begin to comprehend it. It is a love that consumes. It is a love that changes everything, but only if we chose to let it in.
“Who ever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”
Matthew 10:39
Ellie Proctor 