Choosing Wisely

"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
--Matthew 6:21

"In Christian worship we are called together each week with brothers and sisters in Christ to spend time focusing on who God is, remembering who we are and being empowered to go out into a broken world with a word of grace.  Worship is not to be an ivory-tower experience that has nothing to do with reality.  True worship is meant to remind us of God's reality, which contradicts the messages the world around us is giving.

"For many of us the collection of the offering during a corporate worship service is a time to relax, maybe to listen to the choir or a soloist.  In reality the collection of the offering is a symbol of our giving to God our entire being - all that we are and all that we have.  This isn't a time where we tip God for the good week we just had or where we help pay the minister's salary.  While we may offer only a percentage of what we have been given, it is meant to be the down payment on the wholesale turning of everything, including our very lives, over to God.

"We are then invited to go into the week with the attitude that God is Lord of everything, and that everything we do and every purchase we make is to be in line with his heart's desire.  We cannot have the attitude that now that church is over, we can get back to our own business.  If we truly worshipped, we will be seeking to be about God's business moment by moment, in all of our tasks."
--Valerie Hess, "Spiritual Disciplines Devotional"

Thoughts?