Where is the Lamb?

One of the temptations to corporate worship is to stay there.  Like Peter, when God moves in awesome ways through the worship service, we want to pitch a tent and stay there.  I know what you are thinking, "no one wants to stay at church all day."  I know people want to make it to the cafeteria before the line gets too long.  When I say, we want to stay there, I mean we just want to gather weekly for corporate worship and that be the extent of our worship.

But, for worship to be true, there must be sacrifice.  On the way to Mount Moriah, Issac got it right.  He said, "Father (Abraham), I see everything we need to make a sacrifice, but where is the lamb."  Father, we can't worship without a sacrifice.  Now, I do know that Jesus is our sacrifice.  He is the once for all sacrifice that was made that covers all our sins and ushers us into the presence of God.

 Yet, is there not something that I can give.  Paul says yes!  We are to lay our lives down as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1).  For worship to be real, we have to respond to God by saying, Here am I, send me.  For worship to be true, I have to leave the gathering of God's people and go back into the world and to live as a missionary to my workplace, neighborhood, school, and home.   God is calling me to live faithfully  in my world as a witness to the God that I worship.

In many ways we act like sponges in worship.  We wring ourselves out in worship, giving God our glory and praise as well as confessing our sins and our anxieties.  God then fills us with forgiveness and peace and His presence.  We are then called to wring all that God has filled us with out onto a world that needs to hear from their creator. 

So the question is have you really worshipped this week?  Think about it.