I used to view life as divided into two different parts: the spiritual and the non-spiritual/mundane. The key to success in the Christian life, I thought, was to spend as much time as possible (ideally all time, if that were possible?) doing spiritual things, like reading my Bible, memorizing Scripture, studying, going to church. And I gave it my best effort.
There were times when my family would be watching Jeopardy and I'd be pacing the length of the backyard with a copy of Psalm 119 or the Sermon on the Mount. I wish that was just a bad joke, but it's the truth. I thought God was pleased with my evident holiness. I thought He smiled bigger on me because I was memorizing His Word while they were watching TV.
But there was this problem...I mean, if I'd read two chapters, I knew I could have always read two more. If I'd worked on my memorization for an hour, I could have worked for longer.
It was never enough. I desperately longed to worship God with my whole life, but what I thought that meant was almost impossible. So I cried when no one was watching, and put on my long-faced I've-got-it-all-together-and-I'm-so-holy look when everyone was watching. God felt distant. Up there. Not here. Not with me. I thought His attitude towards me was as changing as the level of my performance.
One day I discovered someone had put words to the struggle I'd experienced for so long - and then went on to share words of life and hope and freedom.
When you're used to wearing a mask, you are comfortable with compartmentalizing life. Mask-wearing good girls put worship in a slivered-up pie chart, dividing our lives into segments of importance. We assign percentages for work, service, prayer, school, exercise, PTA, meal planning, bill paying, dog walking, toilet cleaning, church, and rest (if we're lucky). But the woman who has freely received the abundance of truth from Jesus abides in that truth as her very life. In other words, the lines of the pie chart disappear, and worship covers the full circle. Free women respond with worship in everything. It is a natural outpouring of thankfulness and awareness of love and grace and truth. It isn't mustered up; it flows out.
We breathe in air and breathe out worship. We receive love and extend worship. We embrace children, offering worship. We comfort, we laugh, we mourn, we dance, we read, we dream, we exist - all worship. We pay the bills, we run on the treadmill, we enjoy a good movie, we make dinner, we welcome friends with open arms - worship, all worship. We send money and offer prayer and sit with a lonely neighbor, in Jesus' name. We wait for love, we long for home, we pour out our heart and hopes and fears and longing; we create with words and photos and colors and food, all beautiful acts of worship.
But we don't call it that.
We call those things living. But when the Spirit of the living God lives inside of you, then your living is also your worship. What else would it be? (Emily Freeman, "Grace for the Good Girl")
It shouldn't have been rocket science, I know - that the source of true worship is God's Spirit living in me, not the things I do.
Sometimes it's the simplest of truths that can be the most revolutionary -
Grace means the whole of my living really can be worship.
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