Is God Really Glorified by My Ordinary Life?
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.
Romans 12:1 (The Message)
Throughout history, we have grown accustomed to segmenting our lives, determining where spiritual matters are appropriate and when the secular must take precedent. Such compartmentalization is common to human thinking, allowing us to segregate actions that are acceptable in one venue from another where they are not. We allow our lives to be scheduled by the places and times certain behaviors are tolerated, even encouraged. God is conveniently placed in His box and my life is what I want of it, when and how I want it. And our priorities have changed little over the past twenty centuries.
Trouble is, life rarely accommodates our plans and we soon spend much time putting out the fires caused by our convenience and ease. In his New Testament writings, Paul spoke from personal experience about moving from having life his way to the much better way…God’s way.
In the 12th chapter of Romans, Paul describes every aspect of each life as an offering to God, not just the portions we or society select. He wisely begins the chapter with the admonition “God helping you”, knowing personally that God equips those He calls. By relying on God’s strength rather than our own, we can focus our “everyday, ordinary” lives on Him rather than ourselves. In this way, we can present ourselves to Him as an appropriate offering.
By “embracing what God does” for us with this type of sacrifice, we fulfill God’s purpose in creating us: worshipping Him. Paul calls this the best thing we can do for our Creator. May we have the courage to seek God’s help to use what we consider run-of-the –mill in our lives to glorify Him!
