So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.

Romans 12:1

Seriously I think that verse kicks my butt every time.  Anyone else struggle with living their whole life as a worship?  Maybe it’s just me.  Sometimes I will do great.  But, let’s be honest.  A major part of my life is lived for me.  Painful truth.  He wants more from me than just my Sunday mornings.  More than just my Bible reading times.  More than my prayers.  More than my pre-deathdefiance promises.  He wants (and deserves) it all.  Every single ordinary thing.

You know that one song that you just love?  The one that when you hear it makes you feel like you are just so close to God?  Sometimes it’s just so easy to worship Him!  But what about that one song that you just can’t stand.  Yeah, it’s about God and Jesus and stuff, the words are real spiritual, but you just can’t worship to it.  Sometimes it’s just difficult.  The feelings aren’t there and it would just be forced, right?

So many times we spend our days just living our lives.  We just go about our normal lives and wait until Sunday provides (or doesn’t provide) that perfect opportunity for us to be able to worship God.  I know, I hear you.  The chorus after the bridge of that song is so powerful that you can’t help but worship!  That’s good but we are still leaving out a major chunk of our lives.  Paul tries to make us understand in Romans.

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.

Romans 12:1

We are told to live our everyday lives for God.  That is worship.  Not just our sing church songs-pass the offering plate-listen to a sermon-everyweek Sunday.  Worship is far more than just the time that your bulletin has listed under the “Worship” category.  Well, maybe that’s all it is for you, but it should be our lives.  We have to make the choice to worship God in all we do.  When we only worship because it feels right, we are aren’t following the Biblical instruction we are given in Romans.

Worshipping is an attitude.  It’s not based on feelings.  If our feelings were the key ingredient then there would be nothing wrong with not worshipping God when we don’t feel like it.  But according to Romans, even when we don’t feel like it we should be worshipping.  We shouldn’t worship just to our favorite song.  It’s great if a song makes you feel closer to God or gets your emotions going because of who He is or what He has done, but if that’s all our worship is, then it is shallow and not truly honoring Him.

This week I’m gonna try to worship God with my whole life and not just the convenient, mountain top, camp high or planned “worship” times.  When Sunday rolls around and your church plays that song that just aren’t feeling, remember that worship is more than a feeling.  It is a choice.  Choose to worship God for who He is and not for how you feel.

How often do you find yourself living knowing that God is real and out there but as if He is just the Man Upstairs.  He is out there but you shouldn’t bother Him with your problems.  Life sucks.  Hard times have hit.  Stress is piling up.  Worries are keeping you awake at night.  Too bad God is out there but doesn’t really concern Himself with the small stuff.

I know I live like this too often.  I forget that God is there for all my issues.  The relationship He wants from me is a personal one and not just knowledge based.  If I don’t go to Him with the small things in my life am I really trusting Him with everything?  Nope.  He wants me to trust Him with everything.  Through Jesus He made our problems personal to make it all right.

God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all.

Romans 8:3

I don’t like living like God is just up there for big things.  I don’t like living like He isn’t always a personal God.  I gotta remember that He wants to hear my small stuff.  He wants me to trust Him with all my life.

Remember He wants all of you, too.  He is your personal God as well.  Let Him be.

So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:

They kill us in cold blood because they hate you. 
We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one. None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow,

high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.

Romans 8:31-39

Sometimes we just need this reminder.  Life gets hard.  It gets painful.  You seem surrounded by enemies trying to hunt you down.  BUT it is in those times that God shows up and shows us His power again.  He shows us His love.  His grace.  His truth.  I love that.  None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us.  I’m absolutely convinced that NOTHING can get between us and God’s love.

So I’m told patience is a virtue.  It’s an easy thing to tell someone, “well you just need to be patient.”  I have always thought of myself as a pretty patient person when it comes to life issues (exluding morons on the road that can’t drive or people that are waiting in line just like you when you are asking the subway sandwich maker what comes on a sandwich or idiots that feel like they have to beat you to a parking spot when you are actually leaving and not parking…these people I have no patience for).  But sometimes waiting on the Lord is hard.  As my wife and I have dealt with several difficult situations over the past year or so, we have to continue hanging on to verses like Romans 5:3-4.  In the end, I think we always have to know that our God has so much more planned for us than we can ever imagine.  Anything we can come up with, He can easily blow out of the water.  I like that.