Maybe you’ve heard it mentioned that the first time worship is used in the Bible is when God asks Abraham to worship Him by sacrificing His son, Isaac. But I realized that in the same chapter, Genesis 22, we read the first use of the word love in the Bible. God calls Isaac the one Abraham loves.

One Bible study technique is to look to the first time a word is used to find its definition. Here we could see love defined as that which we need to offer as a sacrifice.

And what is worship? An offering of what we love. All that you love gets put on the altar. It all gets put on the altar, given over to God to be put to death.

God sends down His holy fire on the altar and it either gets consumed or consecrated to the Lord’s purposes and given back for His purposes.

We only get one love. What do we love most? What needs to be offered as worship?

Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

Romans 12:1

We love ourselves. We offer ourselves, all of who we are.

Love the Lord your God with ALL your heart, mind, soul, strength.

All of your everything goes to God alone.

We love others with God’s love.

We only can love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19). When we believe and accept His offer of life, He pours into our hearts His Holy Spirit. That’s His Love poured out.

Love isn’t stagnant. It has to move. It’s like light. It doesn’t remain still. We receive love only to pour it back out.

Every blessing gets offered back to God. We don’t fall in love with our blessings. We don’t fall in love with each other or with ourselves. It’s all from God and for God.

We live as living sacrifices. We offer ourselves and everything in our lives up on the altar. We live in the midst of the consuming fire that removes what’s not of Him and consecrates for His purposes. Each day is an offering of all of our everything to God. It’s all from Him and for Him.

And in the offering is praise and thanksgiving, eternal gratitude for all of the everything because it’s all part of His perfect purposes. The joy in receiving the blessing and the joy of offering back the blessing are one and the same because Christ alone is our joy. Our pleasure is His presence and we choose to go up the mountain and worship because we have only one true love, and He’s worthy of our worship.

“What they understood as weakness deserves my every praise.”

That’s a line from the CityAlight song, “His Glory and My Good.” It’s what sparked this article. The line is talking about the cross. Jesus was mocked hanging there. People challenged Him to come down to show His strength and power.

He was displaying His every strength in His weakness on the cross. Think of the strength to choose the cross and to keep choosing it until it was finished.

What strength He had to die for their forgiveness instead of speaking the word and having the mockers struck dead! What strength to submit to His Father and the perfect plan and not looking to Himself, even when feeling abandoned under the weight of the separation of sin.

He trusted His God. He endured in the strength of the Spirit, and so do we.

It takes a lot of strength to remain in weakness, to make the choice of weakness.

There are ways to get out from under a lot of situations. We can get into debt to get the money we need. We can get medicines to relieve a symptom. We can consult an expert, hire a handyman, etc.

We feel like we’ve taken care of something, but we’ve just solved one problem and maybe created more in the process. Debt is certainly a problem. Medicines have side effects and don’t necessarily get to the root. Even if the handyman does a great job, time and money were spent. What were God’s plans with that time and money? Did you consider?

It takes a lot more strength to stay in weakness, in need, in not knowing how and when things will get better. But that’s the true place of rejoicing.

We thank God when we get the “fix” to a problem, even if we made it happen ourselves. But we’ll just lose our thanksgiving when the next problem comes.

The place of “rejoice always” and “give thanks in all circumstances” is knowing our God’s strength in our every weakness. It’s knowing His goodness and absolute perfection in everything. The “fix” isn’t what we want. It’s His perfect will working out perfectly in and through our lives.

Our will isn’t our ease and comfort and things getting back to normal. Our will is God’s will being done. Our desire is to see God glorified and the many come to righteousness. God’s view is from eternity. He’s the one with the plan. Wait on Him. Be of good courage and wait.

Rejoice in the weakness of the “helpless” waiting. We have a God ready to help and mighty to save. Wait in rejoicing and thanksgiving because you aren’t really waiting on something to happen. It’s already happening. He’s already working out His perfect plan.

Praise God!