From the Inside Out // Worship as a Way of Life, Part 5

Believe it or not, God has this edgy, amazing plan to change us on the inside through His love and mercy and grace ... and then for that to work its way to the outside – in what we say and do. That’s the plan.

I love meeting people where what I see is what I get. The person that I see on the outside is the person who they are on the inside even, you know, if they're a bit abrasive on the outside at least you know what you're getting. It's the people who pretend to be one thing to your face and then they go around behind your back and tell other people what they really think, they're the ones I feel really uncomfortable with.

There’s a certain hypocrisy about being one thing on the outside and another thing entirely on the inside and you know something I think it's the same with our spirituality too. Telling God one thing in our hearts and then doing another thing with our hands, well it just doesn't sit well. Jesus was only really tough on two things, a lack of faith and religious hypocrisy and you know something, fair enough too.

We're talking this week about the fact that what's happening on the outside needs to match what’s happening on the inside. You know if we are living one thing in our hearts and another thing out there in public where people can see us, it just doesn't work, you know there’s a disconnect, a mismatch and we can't live that out forever.

If inside we worship God in our hearts, "God I lay down my life for you, I bow down, I delight in you, I love you, I worship you", but then on the outside we don't live that out, well this incongruity, this mis-match, it's called hypocrisy. What you see is not what you get.

Over this week we've seen that worship begins in the heart, it's like a man and a woman falling in love and marrying and they go through ups and downs and there are good days and bad days but you know something, in my heart my wife Jacqui is always there, I love her no matter what today brings and it's the same in our relationship with God, worship begins in the heart.

We saw the other day the story of Mary and Martha where Jesus came to their house and Martha was so busy racing around doing stuff she missed out on what Jesus was saying and doing, whereas Mary, her sister, just sat at His feet and listened and soaked it all in and worshipped Him.

We can just run around doing stuff and doing stuff and doing stuff for God but you know if we keep doing that we end up dry and its hard work and we lose heart for the Lord.

But the reverse is also true. I mean, people go to Church on Sunday and they worship God and they sing all those wonderful songs but then, if that's all we do, if we never actually get out and serve God, well that's not going to work either or if we go and tear someone’s head off at work on Monday morning.

You see this incongruity between what's happening on the inside and what we do on the outside? Its adulterous, it's professing one thing and doing another and eventually we have to resolve this conflict, eventually we have to say, "well which one is it going to be? Is it going to be what I want to do in my heart and what I'm saying to God there or is it going to be how I'm living my life? I ultimately have to resolve this."

So either we bring our lives into line with what's happening in our hearts or we abandon what’s been going on in our hearts, in worshipping God and we go with the desires of the flesh. It's as simple as that; it's one or the other.

The apostle Paul knew that and he wrote it really well in Romans, chapter 12, verse 1. This is what he says:

Therefore, I urge you brothers and sisters because of God’s mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifices holy and pleasing to God. This is your act of spiritual worship.

Now let’s just unpack that for a minute or two. He begins with therefore and therefore always points back to something else and in this case he's pointing back to the first 11 chapters of the Book of Romans which is all about God’s goodness in coming to rescue us through Jesus Christ.

You know if you are ever in any doubt that you can be forgiven by God and that God loves you and that God wants to change your life, if you ever doubt that, do me a favour, pick up a Bible and read the first 11 chapters of the Book of Romans and that's the stuff that causes our heart to get on fire for God, that's the stuff that causes us to worship Him, it's the heart stuff.

So Paul’s saying here because of what He's done in your heart, because of that mercy that you've received deep in your heart, because of that, offer your bodies as living sacrifices. Here Paul is saying because of what's happened in your heart, translate that into action.

Now living sacrifices, well what a gruesome picture, I mean it's definitely not a good marketing spin, these people used to sacrifice animals on altars. These people used to watch the Romans crucify men and women but they knew what sacrifice was all about.

And you know when we decide to follow Jesus, it's a sacrifice. There are things we have to let go, there are things that we know are stupid and wrong and bad and not good for us and it can be so hard letting them go but because of what's happened in your heart - let them go. Live your life as a sacrifice to Him.

Now get the next bit, I love this, "... because this is your spiritual act of worship". During this week we've been looking at the fact that there are two sorts of worship talked about in the New Testament. One is about bowing down, it's the sort of worship that people do on Sundays, you know, the Greek word is "prokduneo", it means to prostrate yourself to bow down but that's not the word that's used here.

The word that's used here is "latreuo". In some translations it will come up not as worship but as service and"latreuo" is the word from which we get the English word lateral which means outwards and the concept is, worship through what we do.

Worship and service come together here, two concepts in the one word. This is where the rubber hits the road, the "proskuneo", the prostrating worship is the worship of the heart, the "latreuo" worship, the lateral worship, the doing worship.

The living worship is when I treat someone kindly and gently that really deserves to have their head ripped off today for what they just did to me. Paul's saying that's spiritual worship. When I deal honestly and fairly with someone that I could have ripped off, that's spiritual worship.

Paul is talking here about bringing our lives into line with our hearts, dying to all those things that we'd rather do that we know aren't from God, sacrificing and it's hard and it's tough and the road to follow Jesus always is.

It's dying to self and living to Christ. This, Paul’s says, is worship, not just off on some separate Sunday morning sacred zone, worshipping God with our hearts and our lives, clean hands and pure hearts.

What begins in our hearts as worshipping God is meant to work its way out into our lives in what we say and what we do and how we live. A life that worships God is a beautiful thing, it's not proud or arrogant, it's humble yet strong, it's gentle yet confident. Almost a contradiction but it is such a beautiful thing to meet someone who just shines the nature of God from their very lives.

When we worship God with our hearts and our hands it changes us to look more and more like Jesus. I want to encourage you today to think and pray about this whole worship thing. Worship has to begin in the heart, bowing down,"proskuneo" type worship and it needs to be reflected in what we do with our hands and that's hard, it's going to cost us.

Bowing down and letting it work its way out through our lives is what worship is meant to be so that people can taste the sweet fruit of our worship. Worship is not just about singing songs; worship is a way of life.