So recently our church Arise had a day of service. We go out as a church community and serve our community of Fenton, Missouri. We have done this in the past with our sister church Rooftop, and it’s a great time of getting to know people in your church, and helping out the community.
This year we had a couple of projects, one was helping with some garden maintenance at a local middle school and the other was picking up trash at a local shopping area. I was tasked with being the project leader at the middle school, where I facilitated tasks, and of course helped with the various projects too. We were moving rocks, planting flowers, planting herbs, cutting down rails, making benches, all kinds of things. There was a lot to do, and it was awesome seeing us work together and getting things done. We made a difference, and we helped kids have a place to learn, imagine, and be creative. The other half of our church team picked up something like sixteen full bags of trash. That is a lot of trash! (My mouth dropped when I heard the number of bags that they filled in what seems like a fairly clean area.) Again, we made a difference, we helped preserve our community, by keeping it nice and clean! It really was a great day.
One recent Sunday our Worship Pastor (my wife Kelsey) said something that really hit home with me. She was talking about how we are always worshipping God, not just by music or prayer, but also by how we serve, how we interact with people at work, at home, or at the store. These are all opportunities to worship. Everything we do is an opportunity. We could just come to church and just fulfill our official service role. But we have the choice to be servants and worshipers in everything we do.
Now don’t get me wrong: I’m on the worship team and I love helping people worship that way. I love using music as a way to worship, and I’m sure a lot of us do. I spend a lot of days crying in my car listening to Spotify, Joyfm, and Boost just worshiping God, and thanking him for what he has done in me and my family’s lives. (Here comes the but.) But that’s not the only way to worship. Like Kelsey said, we can worship with our whole lives and everything we have.
I stumbled across this article by Cascade Christian Schools when I was thinking about worship through serving. It goes over 1 Peter 4:8-11, and notes that in verse 8, we see that we should love others because love covers sin, that we should love others because Jesus first loved us, and because he died for our sins. The rest of the passage talks about how we should serve others through hospitality, how we should use whatever gifts we have to serve others, and how we can be faithful servants of God’s grace in all its forms. Peter really brings it all home, saying in verse 11, “so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.”
This reminded me of what Paul wrote in Romans 12:1, when he said, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.”
Our true and proper worship can be worshiping with our whole life. So when me and 40 other people go out on a day of service, or when you are getting someone to their seat, or putting away all the parking lot signs, when you’re at work and you are listening to someone’s problem, when you’re offering to pray for someone in need, you are worshipping God through your service! You are sacrificing yourself and putting Him first. That is worship! So lean into that, because you can worship God in this way too. Use those opportunities to think and be mindful of that worship. This is a powerful tool. Worship is an expression of reverence and adoration for God—and we can live that out every day through all we do.