Micah 6:8

Worship

You must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.Deut 12:31

This is interesting instruction that Moses gave to the Israelites just before they were to head into the promised land. The promised land was full of people that worshipped all sorts of different idols and God knew that these idols would be appealing to them. Not only were the Israelites instructed not to worship their idols but they were also instructed to not try to worship the Lord in the ways in which the pagans worshipped their idols. God was picky. He had certain ways in which he thought that he should be honoured.

While we are under a different covenant we can still know from this verse and similar verses that God has expectations about how he is to be worshipped. We need to be careful not to look at the world around us and see how they are living and then try to do their things in a worshipful sort of way. Seeking the things of this world with thanksgiving to God in our hearts is not the same as giving up our worldly pleasures for the sake of his kingdom. One is acceptable worship of God and the other is not. Watching movies with lusty scenes with the pretence of being in the world is not the same as being without a hint of sexual immorality. God has standards for our worship and it requires substantial life change and sacrifice. Christians can not just change their attitude by which they do things and expect their worship to be pleasing to God. The actual things that you do must be different then the things that non-Christians do. We can not imitate the world in our worship of God. We must turn to the Bible and see how God would have us worship and honour him.

Ha ha

ht: Persecuted Church Weblog

Updates and Frugality

Sorry that I haven't been blogging too much lately. We're getting ready to move out of town and so I haven't had the mental space to think of things that would be interesting for strangers to read. There seem to be so many blogs out there where people write about their cats or their new favourite nail polish colour. I've really tried to make my blog about important topics like world poverty and justice.

While my site is slow you might be interested in an interesting dialogue going on over at Challies.com. They're discussing the Christian responsibility of stewardship in relation to frugality. I've put my two cents in as well. While you're on that topic if you haven't already done so please check out Radical Frugality. It's a site that I put together in order to teach Christians how they can be better stewards of their money in order to have more money to give to those in need.