Strike Three: The Cost Of Affection

“I’ll give you anything you could possibly want and imagine” – simple statement, sounds like a good deal to anyone who hears it- but when it’s followed up with an “if” you know there’s some kind of catch.

We wrapped up our series “Deal with the Devil” on Wed. night and looked at the last temptation that Jesus was presented with by satan. “I’ll give you all these kingdoms and their glory”……..”if you bow down and worship me”. It’s interesting because we think of worship as the thing we do for ½ hour before we hear a message at church, but worship is a lot more. We took a look and saw that worship is actually whatever we are affectionate about, and we made the statement that the devil wants our worship- not because he’s lonely and needs some love, but because he knows if he can get your worship he can get your affection, if he gets your affection he’s got your attention, and if he’s got your attention he’s got your pursuit.

The Devil doesn’t just show up in our rooms and say “hey, worship me” but he will put things in our path that can side track us and take our attention and focus away from God and what he has for us and we begin to , in one sense worship those things. It’s interesting because scripture says "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” Matt 6:24 Now money I think is a symbol of a lot of different things in our lives- in our culture and generation I think we worship at the altar of greed and consumption, just wanting “stuff”. We need to get to a point in our lives where no matter what’s offered to us if it’s not what God has planned then we need to not give it our focus and our worship- because if we begin to partake and consume in things that aren’t of God it’s sin and we’ll eventually have to pay up.

Let’s make sure our worship is our lifestyle and that we are always seeking God first and everything else second and that we aren’t trying to gain everything and anything because Jesus said “…what good is it for someone to gain the whole world, but lose their soul…” We all need to come to a point in our lives where we ask ourselves two questions- “what good is this?” and “what do I worship?”