"Worship the LORD your God, and serve him only."
Matthew 4:10
In this verse we find two verbs - worship and serve.
We should worship God.
Through worshipping God we bow down to Him and make Him receiver of our attention, love, trust and hope. We let go of focusing on ourselves. In worship we give God the attention our flesh normally loves to keep for itself. Our flesh wants to be the center of attention to have power and have others give it honor.
In worship we make God the center of our heart. Love poems are often formulated with words of worship to the loves one. We should reflect over our lives and examine what we whorship. It could be our great deeds, our kids, our job, ourselves, or we could even give our passions to something negative like a sick condition. In worship we dedicate lots of time, thoughts, emotions, desires and love to the object of our worship. It is importatnt to know what or who is the receiver of our worship, because the consequences of that worship show themselves in our lives.
If we take a love interest for instance, in our worship of him or her we makes ourselves dependent on that person and give them power. The person can never give us more than humanly possible. Can this person give us deep peace? Can he/she take care of the need of our soul? Will he/she disappoint us? Do I grow through that person into the person I should be? Only God can be all that and way more. Only God knows what is good and right for us. When we give God our worship, somthing extraordinary happens within us. We will be set free from all that imprisons us. Only with God are we in good care because only God is wholly good.
We shall serve Him only.
Worship leads to serve. What strikes ones attention in this verse is the word "only". We serve many things, such as money, power, prestige, self-glorification, the flesh, other people, institutions, or ideas.
The serving of false gods is never God-pleasing. The consequences of that worship harm us. God calls us to serve Him only, that means to serve His cause, to obey His commandements, to build up His kingdom, to do His will. This includes serving people. But it is a matter of the heart. Whydo I serve other people? Out of selfish reasons, out of dysfunctional reasons, or with the inner desire to glorify God with my service?
The serving of false "gods" harms us and leads into captivity. If we do serve God only with the desire to glorify Him, we bring joy to God's heart. Through His pleasure we receive joy and freedom from those things that the world dictates as important.
His commandment that we read above is not the self-seeking demand of a self-glorifiying God, but a commandment that leads to love and freedom. He gave us that commandement, because He loves us.
Let us worship and serve Him only.
Be blessed,
Sandra
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