Get the Whole Pie

As I am sitting here writing this, I am hearing birds chirping outside the window. Things like that just bless me beyond belief. What a creative, beautiful God we serve!

And speaking of serving, that is what I wanted to write about today. Many times I forget that worship is such a bigger piece of pie than I realize- it should be the whole pie. Worship is anything we do as an act of surrender for God.

(Side note: We used to ask my dad which piece of pie he wanted and he would look at us confused and say, "Piece?" as if there was no sense in making it into pieces. He would take the whole thing, thank you very much. Ugly pie, dad...ugly pie.)

Yesterday I went walking/jogging. This is an act of worship when I do it because my motivation for doing it is to treat my body as a temple and not to abuse it. I want to take care of what God has given me.

This morning I prayed. I gave my time and my focus to God as an act of worship. I did this to communicate with God and to have my mind focused on him today.

When I was done praying, I wanted to go back to sleep. I almost did. Then the words in Proverbs regarding laziness and not sleeping too much came to my head so I got up and said, "God, this is for you." That was an act of worship.

I am taking a break from my other blog, Confessions of a Christian, today. It has become somewhat of a ministry for me. (A "para-blog" if you will.) But I tend to devote too much of my focus to what is going on over there. So today, one act of worship is not visiting that blog.

I told my teens (the ones I minister to) this illustration. I used to eat chips and salsa every night before I went to bed, around 10:30. I love chips and salsa. There is nothing wrong with chips and salsa. But I began to feel convicted for eating so late- it is not good for my body. So at night, I would lie in bed and my body that was so conditioned to the chips and salsa that it would crave and ask me for them. I had to tell my body I was not having chips and salsa out of obedience to God. Eating chips and salsa is not a sin, but for me it was. Not eating them was a form of worship to tell my Maker that he is more important than my desires.

So put down the piece of pie you were trying to give God and pick up the whole pie. God is like my dad in that he doesn't get why you would cut it up into pieces.