12/12 Strength for Today

Revelation 22:9

“Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God.”

In the verse above, we see John make a common mistake that many Christians make today. The angel of God had shown John the sights of Heaven. John saw the river of life, the throne of God and the tree of life with all manner of fruits. After seeing all of this, and his life being touched in such a tremendous way, John fell down and began to worship the angel who delivered the message of God to him. Immediately, the angel rebuked John and told him to stand up and stop worshipping him. He told John that the One Whom he should worship is God.

The mistake John made in these verses is that he was worshipping the messenger instead of the One Who sent the message. Because of how his life was changed, he allowed his focus to become obscured and started worshipping the wrong person.

We must be careful that we don't make the same mistake John made and worship the men of God whom God uses to touch our lives. One of the mistakes I see in Christianity is Christians, who have had their lives touched through the messages and counseling of men of God, have set these men up and worshipped them and not God. Now don’t get me wrong, I believe you should be loyal to these men, and you should honor these men, but nobody deserves our worship other than God. We must understand that men of God are only the messengers of God. They are only delivering the message that God gave them to deliver. Now don’t let the magnitude of how the message touched your life cause you to focus your worship on the messenger, and not on the One Who originally gave the message.

Let me remind you, at best, men of God are just men. They are sinners just like you are a sinner. They have things in their lives they must clean up just like you have things in your life you must clean up. They should worship God just like you should worship God.

Though at times I believe we don't mean to get our worship mixed up, it does happen. We must constantly watch ourselves so that we don’t start focusing on the messenger and not on the God Who sent the message. If we allow ourselves to focus on the messenger, then when that messenger starts saying things that God did not say or doing things that God would not want them to do, we will follow them instead of God. This is how false doctrine gets started in the church and in the lives of Christians.

Let's be careful to give honor to the men of God whom God uses, but also let's be careful to keep our focus of worship on God. Let's not allow ourselves to set man up as the object of worship. Only God deserves man's worship. Let's remember that when we set man up as our object of worship that this is nothing more than idolatry. All worship belongs to God, so like the angel told John, remember to only worship God.