you are the only one i need
i bow all of me at your feet
i worship you alone

i live in a culture that has a billion things vying for my attention. the latest and greatest everything from phones and cars to abs and butts to boys and status. i can’t keep up with it all. there is a sense of relief and conviction in knowing the only object of my worship should be jesus. relief because i can let the car and the abs and the boys go and cling to the one who my heart was designed to worship. convicted because i know that although jesus should be the only object of my worship, he isn’t. what do you do when you know what not to do, but you do it anyway? even paul had the same dilemma. he writes to the romans,

7:14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

it’s the beginning of january. there are a handful of goals i set for myself to accomplish in the next 365 days a few habits to kick, a few to pick up, and lots of learning along the way. the over-arching goal i have for 2011 is to be satisfied completely with jesus. probably one of the most terrifying but most meaningful and rewarding to date. i know that the cars and the abs and the boys are fleeting. i know that they are incapable of satisfying the part of my heart that has been designed by my creator to be filled with him. however, i still find myself cramming the fleeting objects of my attention in the god shaped void in my life. this brings me back to the struggle, “for what i want to do i do not do, but what i hate i do”. and round and round i go. where do i go from here? paul continues,

8:3 For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

the answer: live according to the spirit. live supernaturally. not in a crystals and clairvoyant kind of way, but in a way that is fruit of god in us. we are no longer bound to the natural tendency to worship the temporal, tangible objects of my attention. when jesus came, he gave the power to live outside of our sinful flesh. john piper puts it this way,

Our spiritual mindset determines our walk. The power of the Holy Spirit to impart life and to change what we value and treasure and desire changes the way we live or walk. From hostility to life to a spiritual mindset to a new walk according to the Spirit.

this isn’t a pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind of job. this is a call on creator of heaven and earth, one who raised from the dead, one who holds all power in his hands, secure my life and enable me to live in a way that reflects your lordship. may the things i value, the objects of my worship, be reflective of such security. here’s to living supernaturally, to being content with who i am in christ, to worshipping the creator, not the fleeting objects of my attention.