What Are You “Really” Worshipping

What kind of worshipper are you? Here’s what you worship - what you fear losing the most. What do you most fear losing?

Not the answer you’d give in a room full of people who might be watching. The real answer. The one that keeps you up at night. The one that, if it disappeared tomorrow, would genuinely wreck you.

Because your real object of worship is rarely on your lips. It’s written on your calendar. It shows up in your bank statements. It’s revealed in that sick knot in your stomach when you think about losing it.

What you worship is what you’ve organized your life around, what you sacrifice for, what you protect, what you can’t imagine living without.

That’s your functional altar.

And most of us have never stopped to honestly look at what’s on it.

Three questions will tell you everything. What do you most fear losing? What do you organize your life around? And where does your sacrifice actually go - your time, your energy, your money?

Answer those honestly, and you’ll know what you worship. Not what you claim to worship. What you actually worship.

I’ve had seasons of my life where, if someone had watched my behavior for thirty days straight and then asked, “What does this guy worship?” I know the answer would not have been Jesus.

I’ve done things that caused people to look at me and ask, “Who are you? How did you become that?”

And looking back, I can trace it every time. My behavior was downstream of my belief system. What I was worshipping produced what I was doing. That’s not just my story. That’s a principle.

There’s a passage in Deuteronomy where God is warning the Israelites before they enter the Promised Land. He tells them not to worship Him the way the surrounding nations worshipped their gods, because those nations burned their children alive as sacrifices.

And the honest question is: how does a human being get there?

Here’s how. The Canaanite gods were gods of prosperity and harvest. The belief system said the greater the sacrifice, the greater the blessing. So worship escalated, from grain, to animals, to the most precious thing a parent had.

Their behavior followed their belief system all the way to a place of absolute horror. Before you say “I would never” - ask yourself whether you’ve sacrificed something precious, chasing an altar of achievement, status, comfort or the fear of losing it - whatever that it.

I’m not throwing stones. I’m asking the question this passage forces me to ask myself.

We live. Then we die. Then we are judged. That’s the sequence, and the writer of Hebrews doesn’t soften it.

Nobody takes anything with them,not their money, not their status, not their comfort, not even the relationship they would’ve called the most important thing in their life.

You don’t take your spouse. You don’t take your children. Your body is dying a little every day, and the day is coming for all of us. ]\

So the question that matters most isn’t what you’ve accumulated. It’s what you’ve been worshipping, and whether it will still mean anything on the other side of your last breath.

So what should we organize our lives around?

It always comes back to God. To Jesus Christ, who lived the life we couldn’t live and died the death we deserved, so that the judgment we fear could become the homecoming we were made for.

To the Holy Spirit, not as a concept, but as the living presence inside everyone who has surrendered to Christ as Lord. Not just Savior. Lord.

There’s a difference, and it matters more than most people realize. To forgiving, which breaks chains off “you”. To serving, and somehow, the more you give, the more full you feel, not empty.

To people, who are permanent. To God’s Word, which is permanent. To Christ, who is permanent. Everything else? Temporary.

If you’ve never truly surrendered your life to Jesus Christ, not just intellectually accepted Him, but handed Him the keys, today is the day to do that.

The Gospel is this: you were born bent toward your own altar, and that bent separates you from a holy God. Jesus crossed that gap. He absorbed the judgment your sin deserved, and He walked out of a tomb to prove death doesn’t get the last word.

He is offering you and me a resurrected life, one organized around something that cannot rust, cannot be taken, and does not end when your heart stops.

All He asks is that you turn from your altar and turn to Him. So, I want to close the way I opened: What are you worshipping today?

GOD, wow, we bust our tails chasing things you would never look at. We want things you know are bad for us. We sacrifice so much for such temporary things. It’s like renovating a hotel room we are checking out of - why? Why do we - why do I do this? Help me get it in balance. Give me please - the eternal vision you want me to have. Help me live in the present, but know and remember it’s all temporary. Help me live like I’m dying - because I am. This body, my stuff, everything will be left behind. Help live like I actually believe this. IJNIP amen ♥️