DINING WITH SINNERS
WITH (prep) function word to indicate manner of action
Sunday Reflections
What a great eveing gathered around Matthew’s Table examining how our worship should always be connected to God’s mission. For far to long, we have been cheating God. Somehow we think if we just keep telling God is great. Or if we show up on Sundays and sing a song or two about how great God is and then listen to a sermon about how great God is that God will be content. Whether your words and your intentions are genuine does not matter. What matters is if your life backs up your words; whether or not you have joined God in his mission in the world. After all, words come easy. Saying and singing about how great God is makes us fell better about ourselves, even when our hearts do not back up the words that are coming from our lips.
God is not honored by words alone. Like any of us, He is moved by words that are authenticated by actions. When it comes to worship it is the total package that matters. Our words mean the most when they are amplified by the way we live our lives when we are faced with various opportunities and temptations and how we serve the community in which God has placed us.
On Sundays you might be singing with all you’ve got, maybe falling on your knees to tell God He is your “all in all.” But the whole time God is thinking, “There seems to be a lot of other things in your life lately that you desire a whole lot more than me.”
In that moment, you are no different form those Amos prophesized about.
Amos 5:21-24 (NASB)21 “I hate, I reject your festivals, Nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies. 22 “Even though you offer up to Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them; And I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings. 23 “Take away from Me the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps. 24 “But let justice roll down like waters And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
God is no fool. He knows what is going on in our hearts. And God knows how easy it is for us to say one thing and do another. That is why the true test of worship is not so much what we say, but how we live; how we respond to God’s mission in the world – with lip service or our lives.
Michael Carpenter
Michael is an urban church planter in the Argenta Arts District of North Little Rock. He and his wife Amanda have been married since 2003 and have two children – Austin and Max. Michael is an entrepreneur, missiologist, and chef.
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