Everybody Worships

Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. I'm Sheridan Voisey and I've titled today's reading, Everybody Worships.

I recently visited Athens, Greece. Walking around its ancient agora, the marketplace where philosophers taught and Athenians worshipped, I found altars to Apollo and Zeus, all in the shadow of the Acropolis, where a statue of the goddess Athena once stood. We may not bow to Apollo or Zeus today, but society is no less religious. Everybody worships, novelist David Foster Wallace said, adding this warning, If you worship money and things, then you will never have enough.

Worship your body and beauty, and you will always feel ugly. Worship your intellect, and you will end up feeling stupid. Our secular age has its own gods, and they're not benign. People of Athens, Paul said in Acts chapter 17, while visiting the agora, I see that in every way you are very religious.

The apostle then described the one true God as the creator of all who wants to be known and who has revealed himself through the resurrection of Jesus. Unlike Apollo and Zeus, this god isn't made by human hands. Unlike money, looks or intelligence, worshipping him won't ruin us. Our God is whatever we rely on to give us purpose and security. Thankfully, when every earthly god fails us, the one true God is ready to be found.

Today's scripture reading is from Acts chapter 17, verses 24 to 32. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations that they should inhabit the whole earth.

And he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, we are his offspring. Therefore, since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead. When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered.

But others said, we want to hear you again on this subject. Let's pray together. Father, I am amazed at how religious us humans are, however secular our age supposedly is. Would you forgive us for placing wealth or beauty or politics or anything else as first and primary in our lives? Would you forgive us for the false gods that we have tried to get purpose and security from? We take all of these things off the altar of our hearts right now and we place you there instead. Because only you are worthy of worship. Lord, we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening. I'm Sheridan Voisey and today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread Ministries.