Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Here's another brief excerpt from Louie Giglio's book, The Air I Breathe.

I want to share it here because I believe what he writes is so valuable, and many of us need to hear what he has to say. The book is powerful in its simplicity. Louie is direct to the point and writes from the heart of a true worshiper. This little book is a must read, definitely.



THAT THING WE DO

You, my friend...are a worshiper!

There, I said it.

Everyday, all day long, in every place, you worship. It's what you do. It's who you are.

...We are all worshipers, created to bring pleasure and honor to the God who made us.

You may not consider yourself a "worshiping" kind of person, but you cannot help but worship...something.

It's what you were made to do.

Should you for some reason choose not to give God what He desires, you'll worship anyway--simply exchanging the Creator for something He has created.


Whatever's Worth Most
Think of it this way. Worship is simply about value. The simplest definition I can give is this: Worship is our response to what we value most.

That's why worship is that thing we all do. It's what we're all about on any given day. Worship is about saying, "This person, this thing, this experience, this whatever is what matters most to me...it's the thing of highest value in my life."

That "thing" might be a relationship.

A dream.

A position.

Status.

Something you own.

A name.

A job.

Some kind of pleasure.

Whatever name you put on it, this "thing" is what you've concluded in your heart is worth most to you. And whatever is worth most to you is--you guessed it--what you worship.

Worship, in essence, is declaring what we value most. As a result, worship fuels our actions, becoming the driving force of all we do.

And we're not just talking about the religious crowd. The Christian. The churchgoer among us.

We're talking about everybody on planet earth. A multitude of souls proclaiming with every breath what is worthy of their affection, their attention, their allegiance. Proclaiming with every step what it is they worship.

Some of us attend the church on the corner, professing to worship the living God above all. Others, who rarely darken the church doors, would say worship isn't a part of their lives because they aren't "religious."

But everybody has an altar. And every altar has a throne.

So how do you know where and what you worship?

It's easy. You simply follow the trail of your time, your affection, your energy, your money, and your allegiance. At the end of that trail you'll find a throne, and whatever, or whomever, is on that throne is what's of highest value to you.

On that throne is what you worship.

Sure, not too many of us walk around saying, "I worship my stuff. I worship my job. I worship this pleasure. I worship her. I worship my body. I worship me!"

But the trail never lies. We may say we value this thing or that thing more than any other, but the volume of our actions speaks louder than our words.

In the end, our worship is more about what we do than what we say.




Louie Giglio is the author of the book The Air I Breath from which the above excerpt is taken. (Originally published in the USA by Multnomah Books a division of Random House, Inc., Colorado Springs, Colorado 80921 USA and in the Philippines by Acts 29 Publishing, Sucat, 1700 Paranaque City.) Louie is the founder of Passion Conferences, a collegiate movement calling people around to world to lives that make much of God. He and his wife, Shelley, live in Atlanta, Georgia.