What’s your preference?

A dad who tells you how important you are or a dad who actually shows up for the important stuff in your life?

Friends who keep reminding you how “tight” you are or friends who are there when you need them most, never stabbing you in the back?

A “Significant other” who makes you really cool homemade cards telling you you’re the best thing that has ever happened to them or one who respects you, keeps your trust, and doesn’t cheat on you?

Do you want someone in your life who tells you how special you are or someone who shows you?

If you’re like me, the answer is both.... I want words and actions.

God is no different, the worship God is after is a both kind of worship.

We see this in the two primary words that are used for worship in the New Testament.

John 4:24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

“Worship” attitude of honor and reverence. It literally means “To bow before” or “to kiss the hand of the king”’.

Romans 12:1-2

“Worship” in verse 1 means “to serve”

In this verse, our spiritual act of service.

Paul is saying if you’ve experienced God’s mercy, if you’ve seen the cross...then offer all of who you are to God in response to all that He has done.

In God’s economy:

worship = serving

worship = life

What God has revealed to us about Himself is beyond our words of gratitude.

What He has done on our behalf makes it impossible for us to repay Him.

What we can do in return? Give Him everything we have through a life of service to Him and to those around us.

Matthew 15:8 “ ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;

Where is your heart?

God isn’t honored by words alone.

God is moved by words that are authenticated by actions.

God knows how easy it is for us to say one thing and do another.

How can we offer less?

How do we respond to the cross of Christ?

The only response to His mercy and grace is our everything.

Somewhere in our modern culture we’ve become confused, thinking that worship and songs are the same thing.

Worship ≠ only singing songs

Singing songs alone is not enough.

The cross demands more.

Grace requires that we bring ourselves, laying our lives before this merciful God.

This wholehearted, full-on, life encompassing response to God’s amazing grace is the “reasonable” thing to do.

Romans 12:1 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. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.

Worship is life.