All of Life as Worship (Romans 12:1, Colossians 3:23-24)
[Read Romans 12:1]
There has been one comment that has repeatedly come up throughout my time in ministry. People will come up to me frustrated, down-cast, saying, “What am I doing for the kingdom?” They feel defeated because they spend their entire day in a cubicle, sitting at a desk. Or they spend their entire day working in front of a hydraulic press. Or they spend their entire day working with cattle or working in the fields. They are defeated because they don’t have much opportunity to interact with other people and share the gospel with them. They feel defeated because they don’t feel like they are doing anything to further the kingdom of God. So, they go to work each day and simply “punch the clock” or “work for the weekend” or “working for retirement,” spending their days laboring without any meaning or purpose.
Yet, this isn’t the proper way to view our work, nor is it a proper way to view the kingdom of God. Your work is furthering the kingdom of God. Your work is worship! We’ve mistakenly accepted an idea that there are aspects of our lives that are “secular” and aspects of our lives that are “sacred.” We have separated things out so that we have our “regular lives” and then we have our “Christian lives.” Yet, God has not separated these two things. Jesus wants all of you—every aspect of your life. That means that every aspect of your life has been set apart to worship God—every aspect. Your work should be worship. Your leisure should be worship. Raising your kids should be worship. Eating your meals should be worship. All of life—from the ups and downs, to the mundane—is to be worship.
This is what Paul is getting at in our passage this morning. Our passage is short and sweet, but packed with meaning. Paul writes, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.” (Romans 12:1, NIV).
Right away, I want you to notice the last phrase of this verse: “…this is your spiritual act of worship.” (Romans 12:1, NIV). This lets us know that we are being taught how to worship. Not only are we being taught how to worship, but we are being taught how to worship rightly. Remember what Jesus taught us last week about worship? True worshipers will worship him in spirit and in truth. Now, we have Paul making the same connection saying, “This is your spiritual worship.” This is your true worship of God.
So, what is our true, spiritual worship of God? “…to offer your bodies as living sacrifices…” (Romans 12:1, NIV). This is what it looks like to truly worship our Triune God. This is what it looks like to worship Him in spirit and in truth. We are to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God. Calvin helps us understand this further by saying, “By ‘bodies’ he means not only our bones and our skin, but the whole mass of which we are composed; and he adopted this word, that he might more fully designate all that we are: for the members of the body are the instruments by which we execute our purposes” (452). So, when we are told to worship God by offering our bodies as a living sacrifice, we are being told to offer everything to God as a sacrifice. Not just some things to God, but everything.
In the wording, “living sacrifice,” there is a continual nature to this offering. It’s not something we do only once, but something that we are doing over and over and over again—continually laying our lives down as a sacrifice to God. We have to do it over and over again because we are always tempted to take our lives into our own hands. So, when we find ourselves wrestling with this temptation, we must resist, and lay our lives down as an offering once more. This will be a battle until the day we die.
This is what it looks like to worship God in all of our life. I’m not sure if any of you remember the definition I have you for worship last week, so I’m going to say it again (I’ll be saying it over and over again throughout this series. Hopefully we will all remember it by the end). Worship is the response of adoration, submission, trust, and joy to who God is and what He has done. Do you see how this connects with our passage from today? To continually lay our lives down as an offering, is to be continually submitting ourselves to God. To continually lay our lives down as an offering is to be continually trusting God with our lives. To rightly lay our lives down as an offering we must do it with a heart of joy and in praise of the God who is worthy enough for us to lay our lives at His feet. This is what it means to worship God in all of life.
I want to get very practical for a while here. I want to take some time to help us understand HOW we can worship God in three different aspects of our lives: our work, our leisure, and the mundane. I want to look at each of these aspects of our lives through our definition of worship.
Let’s begin by looking at our work. How can we show adoration to God through our work? As we carry out our work in the world, we should be thanking God for the gifts and abilities He has given us. We should be praising God for giving us bodies that work and minds that think. We should be thanking God that he has given us the ability to work on cars, to clean buildings, to run a hydraulic press, to make and serve food, etc. We have these abilities because God has given them to us. We can also thank God for providing us with employment and meeting our financial needs. We can praise God for taking care of us. We can praise God for the opportunity to serve other people through our employment. We can praise God for the opportunity to be productive in society, to help make the world a better place through the work you do.
In Colossians it says, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” (Colossians 3:23–24, NIV). This is also a way to show adoration to God through our work. We show adoration to God when acknowledge Him as our ultimate boss—when we work to please Him and not man. We show adoration to God when we work so that His name would be glorified and praised and not our own. We show adoration to God when we work “heartily”—diligently and faithfully and joyfully.
Yet, as our definition states, worship is more than simply adoration—it also includes submission. That means we worship God in our work when we obey His laws over man’s law. We worship God in our work when we refuse to cheat and steal and scratch and claw our way to the top. We worship God in our work when we accept the job God has given us—submitting our own desires to His provision and being satisfied.
Worship also includes the idea of trust. We worship God in our work when we trust that this job was given by God. We worship God in our work when we trust that God will provide for our needs through this job. We worship God in our work by trusting that God will provide another job if we lose this one. We worship God in our work by trusting Him to give us the wisdom and strength to do the work He has called us to do.
Joy is also an aspect of worship. So, we worship God in our work by joyfully and heartily doing the job he has given us. We worship God when we joyfully submit to His will while we work and when we joyfully trust Him while we work. You see, true adoration, submission, and trust must result in joy. How can we not be joyful in our work when we are constantly adoring, submitting, and trusting in our God? It is also important to look at this from a different direction. What if you are not finding joy in your work? It would be a good idea to examine whether you are adoring God in your work, whether you are submitting to God in your work, and whether you are trusting God in your work. If you are not finding joy in your work, there is a high likelihood that you are missing one of those areas.
These same categories apply to our leisure. How do we worship God while on the golf course? How do we worship God while playing hockey? How do we worship God while watching the Packers or the Brewers? How do we worship God by walking in the woods? How do we worship God by traveling throughout the country? We do it through adoration, submission, trust, and joy. We adore God for the world he created. We adore God for creating people with many talents and gifts and creativity. We adore God for the ability that he has given us to talk and run and swing a club. We submit to God by doing these things in ways that honor him and not in the way the world does them. Like I tell my girls all the time, “We play hockey like Christians. We play hockey to bring glory to God and not to ourselves.” The same applies to any leisurely activity we participate in. We trust God to protect us and walk with us as we are in the woods or on the golf course. We also worship God by enjoying these good gifts He has given us. God is worshiped when we find joy in His gift of creation or in his gift of sports or in his gift of creativity.
We not only worship God in our work and in our leisure, but we also worship God in the mundane aspects of life. A passage that points this out says, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” (1 Corinthians 10:31, NIV). So, we are called to worship God when we eat and drink. We worship God in eating and drinking by thanking Him for providing nourishment for us and for creating a world with such a variety of flavors. We worship God in eating and drinking by submitting to him and eating and drinking in moderation and not falling into gluttony. We worship God in our eating and drinking by trusting Him to provide our meals for us—and to provide the next one. We also worship God in our eating and drinking by enjoying the food He provides. We worship God by savoring every bite of a good steak—fully enjoying it and fully thanking God for providing.
These things apply to all of the mundane aspects of our lives—not just eating and drinking. This applies to doing dishes, folding clothes, mowing the lawn, commuting to work, taking out the garbage, fixing your car, shoveling snow, etc. Each of these mundane aspects of our lives should be worship to God. Each of these mundane aspects of our lives should be a living sacrifice to God—a response of adoration, submission, trust, and joy to who God is and what He has done.
Yet, Paul also reminds us of something important. In this passage he says, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” (Romans 12:1, ESV). The fact that all of life is worship flows from the mercy of God. We are to present our lives as a living sacrifice BY the mercies of God. That means we are completely unable to do this apart from the mercy of God. We CANNOT worship God in all of our live apart from the work of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. That means, we must continually look to Christ and the look to the Spirit for help as we live each day, allowing the mercies of God to stir our hearts and empower our bodies to worshipfully live each day. Then, in turn, as we notice Christ and the Spirit empowering us to worship, we will turn to them in adoration, submission, trust, and joy—we will worship more. It is a cyclical pattern of worship stirring up more worship which stirs up more worship. It’s beautiful.
Again, this is the center of our congregation. I said last week that we are to be a worshiping church—that’s our primary purpose and primary identity. That worship is to be carried out in every aspect of our lives, every day of our lives. We are to be a people who are always adoring, always submitting, always trusting, always joyful in the Lord. Can you imagine the amazing freedom that would bring into your life? Can you imagine the amazing purpose that would bring to your life? Can you imagine the depth of purpose that would bring to your work? When we live lives of worship every aspect of our lives has meaning and purpose.
Can you also begin to imagine the impact this would have on your workplace and on the community of Beaver Dam? We are surrounded by people created to worship, but who are not worshiping. We are surrounded by people who are living in a fog of meaninglessness—simply punching a clock and hoping to make it to the next paycheck. Can you imagine if they can begin to see purpose and meaning in their work? Can you imagine if they began to truly lay down their lives as a living sacrifice—if they began to truly worship in the workplace?
This is what it looks like to worship God in every aspect of our lives. This is what it looks like for God’s kingdom to come.