I’m working on the message for this morning @ Spring Arbor Free Methodist Church.  It’s been a strange morning because all the kids have been up with me a good two hours before they normally get up.  My 6AM alarm is evidently set on “entire house” or something.  So I’ve been reading some stuff but also hearing “Daddy, the cat was eating your cereal.”

“Malachi, why didn’t you stop her?”

(empty gaze)

“Next time that happens, will you stop her from eating my cereal?”

(contemplation)

“Sure, Daddy!”

I’m working from Romans 12:1-2, where the Apostle Paul tells us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing.  “This”, he says, “is your spiritual act of worship.”  He then goes on to tell us not to be conformed to the pattern of this world but rather to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, which leads to our knowledge of the will of the Father.

This section of Scripture has some great stuff in it, like pearls at the bottom of a great ocean — you dive down, get as much as you can hold and bring it to the top, only knowing that there’s about 5,000 or so more trips you could make, filling your boat with pearls until it sank.*

Because I’m a Worship Pastor, a person who finds as their central ministerial concern the Worship of God by God’s people, I tend to like passages like Romans 12:1-2.  After being at camp all week and then wanting to spend Saturday with my family, I haven’t had the prep time I’d usually like for a message.  Ah, sweet panic.  So — here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

1. Worship starts with God, not us.
2. Worship always costs us something.
3. Worship lifts God high and humbles us.
4. Worship of the one True God stands in opposition to the worship pattern of the world.
5. Worship brings about transformation, which shapes us for God’s continued glory
6. Worship of God is exactly what we’re wired to do, yet we resist entire sacrifice because of the fall.
7. Worship is something we do corporately 1 hour per week and individually 167 hours per week.

I’ve sent the kids back to bed.  Zachary is fighting sleep like a ninja sleep fighter.  Malachi is playing cars and parking them in the garage under the pillow.  Lexi is contemplating the finer things in life, like how loud it is when she kicks her bed and giggles.  And Emily, after being up in the night, sleeps through it all (thankfully).  I’m going to go suit up.  I wonder what’s supposed to be said this morning…

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* The irony of a sunken ship full of pearls is that the pearls would end up right where they began — at the bottom of the sea.