You might think what you do “in church” is more spiritual and that everything else gets in the way of God’s work. But every action is an act of worship. Can everything you do be worship and service to God? Explore!
Read Colossians 3:1–25
‘And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.’ (v17)
It can be easy to compartmentalise our lives into the ‘sacred’ and the ‘secular’.
Perhaps the things we do ‘in church’ or that have an obvious link to faith, we consider to be more spiritual or sacred, with everything else considered to be a distraction from God’s work – perhaps our job or family commitments.
The Hebraic mindset sought to see God at work in the everyday.
Such thinking can cause resentments, bitterness and arguments, perhaps thinking these ‘secular’ things are drawing us away from serving God.
This sort of thinking is a legacy of Greek influence on the early Church that tended to separate the material and the spiritual world, as opposed to a Hebraic mindset that sought to see God at work in the everyday.
Likewise today, our mindset is strongly influenced by the culture we grew up and now live in – fish rarely question the water they swim in!
Yet to the Colossian church, Paul’s exhortation is for them to consider everything they do as ‘sacred’, stating, ‘whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus’ (v17a).
Our mindset is strongly influenced by the culture we grew up and now live in – fish rarely question the water they swim in!
Paul then goes on in chapter three of Colossians to apply this broadly to the household and the workplace (vv18–25), encouraging them in ‘whatever [they] do, [to] work at it with all [their] heart, as working for the Lord’ (v23).
Such an approach makes everything we do an act of worship and service to God. So, whether we are caring for children or other family members or friends, or working in the office, factory or community, we can do so knowing we are ‘doing it for God’.
A PRAYER TO MAKE:
‘Lord, I give You back this day that You have given me. Whatever I do,
I give it to You in complete service. Amen.’
AN ACTION TO TAKE:
Offer each activity and task of the day to God as an act of worship and service.
SCRIPTURE TO CONSIDER:
Gen. 39:1–6; Deut. 10:12–22; Eph. 6:1–9; Mark 9:30–37
Photo by Avi Richards on Unsplash
