The Only Option

January 30

“Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment.’” Matthew 22:37-38.

This command very clearly delineates our devotion to God. It includes the fear, service, obedience, and worship of our great God and King who is our Creator, our Comforter, our Healer, our Teacher, our Guide, our Paraclete, our Savior.

The dictionary definition of worship says it involves intense admiration, adoration, honor, and devotion to someone or something. Practically, worship is our reasonable response to our God. Worship is an act that is much more than our reasonable response to the One who made Heaven and Earth and who holds everything that exists in the hollow of His hand; it is our just due.

When we neglect to worship our God and King, we are withholding from Him something that is far more than a perfunctory act of obeisance, we are refraining from paying a debt of gratitude and homage to Him that is required of all men!

Indeed, we are told by Paul in Romans 14:11, “As I live, saith the Lord, every knee in Heaven and in Earth and under the earth shall bow, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”

Every knee…every tongue…That is an all-inclusive declaration of the pervasive nature that the worship of Christ shall be. It does not state that only the knee of believers shall bow to or that only the tongue of the faithful shall confess His Lordship. No! Every knee shall bow! Every tongue shall confess!

The scoffer who mocks the faithful as they trod to church each Sunday with their Bible under their arm shall bow and confess! The unrepentant criminal who languishes in a prison cell shall bow and confess! The terrorist who makes himself into a living bomb to destroy believers as they stand against a diabolical mindset that presumes God to be a hater instead of a lover of men who do not espouse their belief system shall bow and confess!

Everyone who is ever born shall be among those who worship Jesus, who acknowledge Him as God and Savior of all men, who bow their knee and yield their tongue to the praise and honor of His holy, mighty, matchless name!

The only option any man has, the only choice any man can make is this…will he bow and confess today while he has life and breath? Or will he bow and confess on that great Day of Judgment when all men’s works shall be tried by fire? (See I Corinthians 3:13.)

As you, dear reader, contemplate your options, be mindful of Paul’s admonition in II Corinthians 6:2, “Behold now is the accepted time, behold today is the day of salvation."