Where to Find Real Life

As a freshman in college, I had the opportunity to intern for the youth ministry at a church in South Carolina. I was only there a few months before the youth minister left the church. The church was lucky enough to have the head of the Youth Ministry department at the local Bible college become their interim youth pastor. I was officially getting an on-the-job education from an expert. I assumed he would focus on changing the way the church did youth ministry. I expected games, outreach events, mission trips, youth camps, etc., and we did indeed do some of those things. However, I was surprised to see his focus was directed somewhere else - towards individual discipleship.
 
He met with me almost every week over breakfast or lunch and gave me a space to talk about what God was doing in my life and how I was (or wasn’t) responding. I’ll never forget one particular breakfast where he asked if I would pray for our food. I said I would, then removed my (probably Clemson) hat and prayed. As soon as I finished praying, he asked “Why did you take your hat off?”. I honestly didn’t have an answer. It was just what I had always done. Other people that I respected did it, and so I thought I should do it too. I didn’t have any other reason. That morning, we spent the rest of our time talking about why we do what we do in our relationship with God.
 
This was a small conversation that has stuck with me over the years. His point was not to draw my attention to anything I was doing wrong. It was to get me to consider the “why” behind the actions I do to worship God. Since then, I’ve tried to take a moment to think about why I’m doing whatever it is I’m doing in the name of God. I do this when I’m spending time in Scripture, prayer, communion, fasting, resting, and singing… to name a few.
 
Next time that you worship God by doing something that you’ve always done, take some time to consider His worthiness and double-check that your actions are driven by love. Is it really worship if there is no love behind the actions?
 
I pray that you come and worship with us tomorrow as we hear from God the same message that He told the Israelites in Amos 5, "Seek me and live!"