Week 3

Quick Review-
Week 1
Worship is doing in response to God.
Week 2
ALL humans worship.
Week 3
There are potentially many god(s) of man (us).

We briefly discussed the trappings of our worship nature. Two things rose out of our conversation.
1. We choose and determine who or what we ultimately worship.
2. We will tend to elevate or allow things, people or ? to worship status.

We then discussed what are, or could be or have been god(s) in our lives. Here is the list submitted by our classmates:

Money (and how we spend it)
Nature
Charisma
"Toys"
Job
Calendar (our scheduled 'obligations')
Appearance (how good we look before others)
Extra Sleep (someone pointed out 'therefore missing this class')
Personal Perfection (ouch...this one boinks me)
Education
NASCAR

The statement that put the nail in all this was posited by one of you:

"Whatever rules my spirit". Thank You Lord!

One of our classmates came up to me after class speaking of portion control, relating diet and eating to our spiritual lives. Together we confirmed that the key to keeping our temple healthy is to control the portions we consume, not letting food, or any of the things or kinds of things listed above rule my spirit and life! Which then raises the interesting question...Do we also apply this to Christ? Meaning, do we only give God a portion of our lives in fear that He will make us out of balance, make us give up some things we love or require too much from us?

You see, how many of us are afraid to fully give Jesus our lives because we think He will expect us to give up the things we love? When, while He may ask us to give up some, what He wants is to let Him be Lord, balancing our portions, placing the things we love in submission to His leading. There is nothing wrong with anything on our list of "gods". The problem is when we let them become gods in our lives.

God will use the money He blesses us with, our charisma, appearance, personal striving for perfection, education, calendar, job, even NASCAR and sleep when fully submitted to His leading.

We looked at scripture and discovered:

Ge 35:4 So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods they had and the rings in their ears, and Jacob buried them under the oak at Shechem.

That while God told Jacob to destroy all the foreign gods, the people gave the to Jacob and he buried them. They were removed, but destroyed? Even so, when they removed the foreign gods, terror fell upon all around them and no one pursued them to destroy the people of Israel.

Then in Exodus 12:12 “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn —both men and animals—and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD.

God demonstrates His jealousy here. Anything taking the place of Him will receive His judgment, and there is no God except God himself.

Finally we finished by discussing complacency:

Definition of complacency
a feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger, defect, or the like; self-satisfaction or smug satisfaction with an existing situation, condition, etc.

Using 2 Corinthians 10:1-5 we discover that one key to battle complacency is to "take every thought and make it obedient to Christ"..

One way to accomplish this is stated in 2 Corinthians 11:1.

11:1 I hope you will put up with a little of my foolishness; but you are already doing that. 2 I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. 3 But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4 For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. 5 But I do not think I am in the least inferior to those “super-apostles.” 6 I may not be a trained speaker, but I do have knowledge. We have made this perfectly clear to you in every way. (NIV)

We must be diligent, not letting ourselves be deceived, led astray or 'put up with' teachings of a false Jesus (a god appearing to look like Christ, close, but not Him).

We must battle complacency with diligent, Holy Spirit directed induction into the Bible! If we are not reading, how can we know God, and elevate Him to be God of our lives?

It is my prayer, and even more so, the prayer of Jesus Himself (have you been paying attention to the weekly sermons?), that He wants us to place Him as Lord of our lives, fulfilling our sacrifice of worship to God. He wants us to live together in unity of His spirit as the sweetness of His presence in and through us on earth.

In the next class we will discuss this act of personal worship. Will you search the scriptures to find acts of personal worship so we can together build a small list of things God's servants have done between they and God alone as personal acts of worship?

Thanks for the many of you, who come to class prepared, and especially to the Holy Spirit, who has clearly spoken in class, our time together has been rich and sweet. Isn't it wonderful to share together at the feet of God? I am trusting Him to see even more of His gracious and power unleashed as we spend some quality time together with Christ!

May He bless your week as you walk in worship, diligent and not complacent.