Today's Lesson from God to Tessa

Over the last several weeks I have been learning multiple new things every day. New things about me and new things about God and His love and His character. This is a very exciting adventure for me! There was a time in my life when God was a very foreign concept to me. I knew I was saved and I knew a lot of "facts" about God. I could quote to you any number of passages of Scripture - just because I could. While I knew all of these "things" about God I never really "knew" God. I didn't know that my life was about my relationship with Him and what He wants to do through me while He allows me to tarry on this Earth. This is what I have been learning lately.

I've had the opportunity to go back through a lot of old ideas about God and habits toward God and re-evaluate those things in light of Scripture and how He is revealing Himself to me. I recently did a word study through the Bible on the word "worship" and I looked for all kinds of things about worship in the Bible. How was it done? Who did it? Where did they do it? Why did they do it? When did they do it? I learned so much just from looking at the verses that use that one word and from reviewing the common-day dictionary definition of the word. Mostly, though, I learned what worship is NOT!

• Worship is not a Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night event
• Worship is not just the songs that we sing or the music that we play
• Worship is not just getting up early in the morning and reading my Bible and praying
• Worship is not the length of my skirt or the finger-width between my collarbone and shirt collar
• Worship is not a list of "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots"

Worship IS an attitude. Worship IS a mind-set. Worship IS a constant awareness of God. Worship IS doing whatever we do as though we are doing it for Christ Himself.

This was an incredibly humbling, if not humiliating, revelation to me. One of the things that I struggle with most is my job. It is not an uncommon occurrance for me to be yelled at several times a day at work and a few times a week I even get cussed at. Now, I know, somewhere in my brain, that these people are not really angry with ME; they are angry with the system which I will readily agree is broken and in need of a serious time out for re-evaluation and/or overhaul. BUT, I am a sensitive person and it is so easy for me to take personally the things that these people say to me - as if it's my fault and there is something that I need to be doing about it. When this happens my defenses go up and unkind things start to fill my mind (and sometimes flow right on out my mouth). At that moment I am no longer doing what I do for Christ - I'm doing it for myself - to protect myself and it ends up that instead of worshiping and bringing glory to God by my response I do just the opposite.

I have printed out I Corinthians 13 on a piece of paper and it lays on my desk in front of me at work. Christ summarized our lives on Earth into two commandments: 1) Love God with all that you are; and 2) Love your neighbor as yourself. I Corinthians 13, the "Love Chapter" is the absolute best working definition of love that you can find.

• Love is patient
• Love is kind
• Love is not jealous
• Love is not boastful
• Love is not proud
• Love is not rude
• Love does not demand it's own way
• Love is not irritable
• Love does not keep record of being wronged
• Love does not rejoice about injustice
• Love rejoices whenever the truth wins out
• Love never gives up
• Love never loses faith
• Love is always hopeful
• Love endures through every circumstance
• And most importantly - no matter what you do or what you have in this lifetime if you don't have love in your life for God and other people then everything is in vain - is useless.

It is a daily and sometimes minute by minute prayer for God's love to fill me and for Him to show His love for others through me.