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When they arrived back in Jerusalem, Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out the people buying and selling animals for sacrifices. He knocked over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves, and he stopped everyone from using the Temple as a marketplace. He said to them, “The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be called a house of prayer for all nations,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves.” (Mark 11:15–17 NLT)
To worship is to orient your life around something or someone; it’s to say, “I value this thing or this person above all other considerations in my life, including my life.” To be sure, it’s as difficult to orient our faces toward God through every moment of our lives as it would be to go about our days only ever facing due north; yet as difficult as it would be to live for even a day without turning our heads to the right or the left, keeping Christ at the center of our lives is the easiest way for us to separate the dross from the precious, that which is worthy of our attention and that which is not.
Often there are areas in our lives where we seek to do what is righteous and honoring to God, just like those who were selling animals for sacrifice, but our lives are not oriented rightly so we are instead serving our own ends or acting ritualistically or allowing the letter of the law to overrun the spirit of the law. Practice Romans 12:1 today by being a “living sacrifice” of worship to God. Make a conscious effort to orient your life completely around Christ.
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Worship is not an experience. Worship is an act, and this takes disciplines. We are to worship ‘in spirit and in truth.’ Never mind about the feelings. We are to worship in spite of them.
—Elisabeth Elliot
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