Serving | Spiritual Practicesਨਮੂਨਾ

“Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.”
– Romans 12:1 (NIV84) –

Worship is about how you live your daily life, and serving is an act of worship.

Let’s dive into Romans 12:1. In the 1984 edition of the NIV, the call to offer ourselves as living sacrifices to God is called our spiritual act of worship. The later edition calls it our true and proper worship. Other translations like the ASV and CEB call it our priestly service, while KJV and LEB call it our reasonable service. NASB calls it our spiritual service of worship, with NLT landing on truly the way to worship him. All of it’s flowing from the original Greek text. See if you can make it out. Offering ourselves as living sacrifices is our logican latreia.

You might see logos or “logical” in logican. “Reasonable.” “Rational.” Or possibly something like “with transcendent intelligence,” which isn’t far off from saying spiritually-minded. It’s reasonable and logical to offer ourselves completely to God because if God gave everything to us, how can we not give him our all in return?

Latreia might be trickier. It’s related to our word “liturgy.” When people see the word “liturgy,” they often think of an order of worship in a church service or some kind of religious rite. It’s used that way today, but the history of the word links it to the idea of serving.

In ancient Greece the word liturgy referred to “public service” or “works of the people,” along the lines of a public duty performed by a citizen. In the Old Testament, it related to the work of priests serving at the altar of God – offering sacrifices and attending to the temple needs on behalf of the people. The New Testament book of Hebrews plays off the melding of temple worship and service, showing us how Jesus is the ultimate priest who worshiped God by serving us, opening up the way for us to joyfully and confidently seek him.

When we worship God, we serve God. But let’s not miss what Romans 12 is saying. When we serve God by offering him ourselves, we worship him. The whole thing invokes the Old Testament worship pattern of people offering sacrifices to God. But now, what we see is that God wants you to offer you!

The worship God wants is a life given in service to him. Anyone can sing a song or recite a prayer. Rightly motivated, God loves these expressions of faith. But God wants more than your song and prayer. He wants you. He wants you to want him. And when we want someone, we give ourselves to them.

So worship God by serving him. Know that your acts of service are far more than just helping people or getting some needed task done – as important as those things are. It is nothing short of praise and worship to the God who loves you. Whenever you serve, take a moment to offer it to God as a gesture of your love to him in return.

Question
Serving God is an act of worship. What are some ways you can start to approach serving as worship?

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