Who Do You Worship?
"You become what you worship." -Gregory K.Beale
You are what you eat. That is a popular saying, at least in this country, and it's truer than we give the cliche credit for. In High School, I was a dual-sport athlete playing football and basketball. To be clear, I played two sports, I never claimed to be good at two sports. But, that always meant a ton of exercise was all but forced on me for most of my teenage years. I never had to think about calories or carbs, sodium or sugar, I just ate whatever was in front of me. Once I graduated, I went off to college where all of the mandatory practices, and therefore mandatory exercising, were suddenly gone and I could be as sedentary as I pleased. Unfortunately, my eating habits did not change. I kept eating like someone who was exercising 6 days a week and playing a game on the 7th, and like someone who needed thousands of calories a day just to keep up.
Within a little over 2 years after graduation in 2009, at which point I weighed roughly 195 lbs, I was at my all-time heaviest of 287 lbs.
Suddenly, I had a big problem. The first lesson I had to learn was that you are what you eat. I had to learn, quickly, what it meant to take care of myself through my diet and to pay close attention to the food I surrounded myself with.
One of the most convicting theological questions I've ever heard has to be the simplest. In seminary, Professor William Abraham once asked the class, "Who is your God today?" We all shot our hands up in the air to answer this, seemingly, simple question. One by one he called on us and one by one we gave him this same answer, "God is our God!" Dr. Abraham chuckled at each answer and finally responded with, "Prove it." He asked us to show him, with the way we lived, and, most importantly, the ways in which we place God and nothing else on the pedestal of worship day in and day out. He wasn't judging us, he was convicting us to examine who it is we worship on a daily basis.
If you're like me your smartphone has become your world. My schedule, my social media, my Rolodex (Gen Z, this was an ancient contraption that kept hundreds of contact cards together), my bank and passwords, my photo album, and of course my music library. While no one would ever claim to worship their cell phone, that's just silly, if we're honest with ourselves would our actions say otherwise? I don't want to demonize technology, and a smartphone is certainly not our enemy. For someone who struggles with organization like me, it can actually be a Godsend. But, how many aspects of our life kept within the smartphone are, through our actions, bordering on worship?
So often I place the day's agenda and to-do list on a pedestal of worship. It starts off harmless, I have things on the list I need to accomplish and I don't want to get distracted, so I make it a priority. No harm, no foul. But, without realizing it my list of things to accomplish becomes more important than that morning's devotional. Like trying to eat healthily, I get too busy, and suddenly my schedule has taken priority and now I'm swinging by a drive-thru window for dinner instead of cooking the healthy meal I have all the ingredients for at home. Our spiritual life follows the same pattern. We get busy, we prioritize one thing, then another, and suddenly what we need is taking a backseat to what we want, or what is best for us is overruled by what we've made more important.
It was hard adjusting to life after athletics and realizing how out of control my weight had become, and what a huge part my daily routines and habits played. I had to learn what it meant to eat healthy, and what it meant to balance nutrients and fats, sugars, and sodium. More importantly, I had to learn to prioritize my health and set it above hectic schedules and to-do's. My favorite bit of advice; is to never go shopping hungry. Why? Because you will inevitably buy things that you want in that moment of hunger, not things that you need. If I bought and surrounded myself with junk food and snacks in my pantry, I would eat them. I had to go out of my way to make sure I was surrounding myself with what I needed. In the same way, my spiritual life needs this kind of help. I need to surround myself with scripture, sermons, devotionals, prayer journals, podcasts, music, and of course friends and family who put God on the pedestal of worship and encourage me to do the same.
It is time for a close examination of who it is that we worship in our daily lives. We can say we worship God above all, but do our actions and habits confirm that? We can say we worship Him, but are there other things in our lives receiving the majority of our focus and attention? As we approach the new year, let's refocus and recenter our worship where it belongs; solely on the love, grace, and glory of our God!
