Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
Select a thought to read by choosing a collection, the month, and then the day:
“The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they speak not; eyes they have, but they see not. They have ears, but they hear not; neither is their any breath in their mouths. They who make them are like unto them; so is every one who trusts in them.”
Psalm 135:15-18
You are shaped by what you worship. Humbling yourself to something means that you open your heart to an influence. When people of the ancient world bowed before idols, they were bowing before demons and were opening their hearts to their evil influences.
Jesus said that those who would worship the true God must worship Him “in spirit and in truth”. When we bow down to God the Father as He tells us to do, we open our hearts to His righteous influence, and he shapes our spirits to be like Him.
If you worship in the flesh, using dead materials in ceremonies God has not ordained, you become dull in your spirit. In that kind of worship, you are opening your heart to spirits of death. On the other hand, if you worship “in spirit and in truth”, as Jesus said God must be worshiped, you are made more and more alive as you continue to follow the path to which Jesus calls us.
The difference between right and wrong ways of worship is the difference between life and death. Are you still trying to serve the living God with dead earthly materials, such as water, bread, and wine? If so, the longer you persist in that error, the deader to the things of God you will become. But if you “walk in the Spirit”, the light of God’s life will continually in you “shine more and more unto the perfect day.”