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A Fully Devoted Follower Worships Passionately
Becoming A Fully Devoted Follower: #3 of 6 (taken from the Treepost Newletter) | View the Entire Devotional Series
This month we turn our attention to the second attribute of a Fully Devoted Follower of Jesus: they Worship Passionately. In the New Testament Jesus was often challenged by a group of religious leaders known as the Pharisees. The Pharisees were consumed with religious rules aimed at keeping them from sinning. They were well intentioned, but their focus on rules (613 of them!) actually created a barrier to pleasing God, because obeying the rules became more important to them than God himself.
At one point they tried to trap Jesus when a lawyer among them asked (referring to these 613 rules derived from the Torah), “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the Law?” Obviously if Jesus answered with command X, they would counter and say, “well what about commandment Y? Do you disregard that?” They were setting a trap for him so that they could criticize him.
Jesus, being Jesus, answered them in a way that left them unable to respond. He said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” Jesus basically said, let me boil your 613 rules down to two: Love God and Love Others. If you obey these two commands, you’ll obey all 613.
This month we’re going to look at the first command, “Love God”. If you look up a few passages like John 14:15; 1 John 5:2-3; and Galatians 5:16, you’ll quickly see that to love God means to obey Jesus. His love language is obedience! How are you doing at loving Jesus and obeying him?
Another way we could talk of loving Jesus would be to say we worship him. Every person is created by God and designed to be a worshiper. As a result, we are all constantly worshiping. We either worship and love Jesus, or we worship and love something he created. When we worship or value anything before or above Jesus, the bible says we’ve created an idol and have committed idolatry.
An idol is anything we put in a place of high esteem that really only Jesus deserves to have. And whatever we put in that place of greatest worth and importance, whether it’s Jesus or something/someone else, affects us and shapes us. Check out how Darrin Patrick, a pastor in St. Louis, talks about the way worship affects us:
What we put in the place of God captures our imagination and heart, and then we become servants of our object of worship. The word worship actually comes from the Old English phrase “worth shape,” which implies that the object of our worship will necessarily shape us (our worth) in a comprehensive way. Our object of worship will always be the primary influencer of our thoughts, our emotions, our actions, and, of course, our lives. This is why we cannot be both servants of God and also of idols. Ultimately we worship God or we worship idols. As the psalmist declares, “Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false”—that is, to an idol.
So what are some of the idols in your life? Make a list. What do you struggle with valuing above God? Jesus is clear that if you are to love him, to obey him, you must repent—that is turn—from worshiping your idols, and turn to love, obey, and worship Jesus. Take some time this week and make a list of your idols, then spend some time in prayer repenting from them and turning back to Jesus. Until you do, you will never become a Fully Devoted Follower of Jesus who Worships Passionately!
You Are Loved!
Pastor Josh