Matt Redman - Your Grace Finds MeSampel

“Everybody’s singing a song inside –
Bowing down low with a sacrifice.”

Everybody is a worshipper. There’s no escaping it – that’s just the way we were made. We were designed to worship – and more specifically, we were designed to worship the one true God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But that’s where things can get off course – for so often we see that instead of worshipping Him, people begin to worship anything… and everything. As the theologian N.T. Wright observes:

“Only humans it seems have the capacity to live as something other than what they are (God reflectors, image bearers). Trees behave as trees; rocks as rocks; the sea is and does what the sea is and does.” (NT Wright, The Case for the Psalms)

Here’s the interesting thing - lots of things that are worshipped are not in and of themselves ‘bad’ things. In fact, when kept in their right and proper place, many of the things people might bow their lives to (career, money, sport, relationships) are essentially good things. The problem starts when we elevate them to the number one spot, where only God Himself should be, and we start to arrange the whole of our lives around them.

Revelation 5:11 describes millions of angels encircling the throne of God. And they are not the only ones doing so - for everything in that place revolves around the centerpiece of His Holy throne. Here upon the earth, our lives are designed to do the same. We were made to revolve around Jesus. We were brought into being to adore and applaud Him – and nothing and no one else can ever be a satisfactory substitute. To worship another can only end in disaster. As CS Lewis told us, eventually and inevitably, “idols break the hearts of their worshippers.”

“One name alone I am living for;
One name my heart and my soul adore.
Be the first and the last,
Be the song that I sing,
Jesus be my everything.”