Word for the day by Christian Education Forum

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Worship: Celebration of the Faith of the People of God.

Mathews Thomas
St. Peter's MTC, Bhopal, India.

12 On the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.”


How do we express our identity in this world? How do we respond when people ask, who are you? We express by what we do as I am a nurse or doctor, or an engineer or a teacher or a social worker etc. But our identity should not be based on by what we do.Our identity should be based on who we are. Our identity should be that I am a child of God. If we say yes, being a child of God is my identity, then just ponder are we known as people of God? Does the world recognise us as such? If not let's try to do some soul searching with the help of the scriptures.

We have received our identity as a child of God from God. For those who believe God, He gave the right to be a child of God (John 1:12)No matter how lifeless we are, how messed up our life is, God joins us in that living river (Ezekiel 47:8-9).For some time we may keep aside our professional abilities and our capabilities but never can we forget that we are a child of God.

This identity that we received is through faith in the love of God for us.(1John3:1) Shall we just ponder on this faith that gives us the identity of who we are. Faith in God gives us the identity of being the child of God. Faith has a component apart from believing in His name.

Of course faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see and that is how Hebrews chapter 11 starts but as we dig in further in that chapter we find that our forefathers were commended for expressing their faith through actions. Thus we can say that faith is our response to what God has done for us. God showed us the extent of His love by what His son  Jesus did for us on the cross of Calvary. The agony of Jesus at the garden of Gethsemane expresses His love for us.

How do we respond to this love is the expression of our faith. This expression of our faith is not limited to our Sunday worship or cottage prayer meetings. How do we go about in our daily chores of life, how do we react under stressful conditions, do we reflect our faith and form our worship to God? Thus worship is a lifestyle-a celebration of our faith.

Therefore the apostle Paul while writing to Galatians says 'what counts is faith expressed in love'. So as we live in this world let us identify ourselves as a child of God, a people of God and make our daily actions a response to God's love for us.May this mode of lifestyle be our spiritual act of worship a celebration of our faith. Then we will be fruitful (Ezekiel 47:12)

PRAYER

Lord, help us to identify ourselves as Your child in this world and express our faith through acts of kindness and love. Amen.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:
Faith is man's positive response to God's action.

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