"So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you." -Romans 12:1-2 MSG
I used to believe that when Paul wrote this, he was, in a way, suggesting we all go join the monastic movement and become monks. After all, how in the world could we be a living sacrifice for Christ when we do such boring, meaningless stuff, surrounded by all the wickedness of the world? I learned quickly that this line of thinking was majorly discounting God's work in us and our lives because it's rooted in the idea that God can only work in the spiritual area of our lives (ex. reading the Word, praying), when in reality, when we are in Christ, we are in Christ. For followers of Jesus, there is no line drawn between "secular" and "spiritual" life, because we walk in His Spirit in all of life. A book I read a while ago, Garden City, that put it this way:
Imagine one of Jesus' disciples walked up to Him and said, "how's your spiritual life going, Jesus?"
Most likely, Jesus would have asked, "what do you mean, spiritual life? Do you mean my life?" Serving His Father was more than a hobby, it was how He lived every day.
The beauty of walking in His Spirit is that it completely changes our everyday, simple, "walking-around life", not just the small portion of our lives we spend doing "Christian stuff".
Because, after all, we are not called to set aside five minutes to God every morning and then continue to live as everyone else lives. Instead, we have to chance to live in the grace of God in every single moment of every single day.
The hum-drum stuff like going to school or work isn't so hum-drum anymore because you are doing it all for the King, with the King, and that means there is a reason for all of this.
Nothing is ever done in vain if it is done for Christ, even if it's something simple and maybe even a little boring.
"So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." -1 Corinthians 10:31
It doesn't get much simpler than eating and drinking, and here Paul is saying it matters. "Fix your attention on God" in all areas this week. Invite Him into your workspace, your conversations, your homework, your eating, your drinking. Abide in Christ not just during your Bible study, but also when you eat lunch or bicycle or bake or run or do whatever it is you do, and He will abide in you, too.
"The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!'" - Matthew 11:19
The Son of Man came praying and healing and preaching and saving too, but He needed a place to do all of that; and a lot of the time, it was around the dinner table.
It's so crazy that the Son of God wasn't known for all this hours down the street at the synagogue (a spiritual place where you would expect to meet God), but instead He was known for His time around a table; an ordinary place where ordinary people gathered. But no doubt Christ's presence would have shifted something in the atmosphere there, because that's what His Spirit does, He works through you in such away that changes things, in big ways and small ways, on massive stages and just at your dinner table. It's not about what you're doing so much as it is about Who is in you, and Who you are doing it for.
"Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me." - Revelation 3:20
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