Worshipping Creation vs. the Creator this Thanksgiving

Does God consider this worship?  In my opinion, absolutely!

Project86 came out of the Church I attended in the 90s (aka. Mission Hills Church in CA).  Independence is still my favorite song of all time...across all bands!  I have an early version of Independence, which was on cassette tape.  The best part of the song (other than that it was during their rapcore phase) was Andrews' word-for-word reading of Romans 1:18-25 (NIV).  Soak this up:

18The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.25They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

 This verse explains what I think is one of the greatest problems with the Church today; namely, the worship of CREATION rather than the CREATOR.  I do it.  You do it.  All Christians who are being honest do this every day that ends in the letter "y."

Here's the typical prayer of the creation worshipping Christian:

Dear Lord, bless me. Bless my Dog. Bless my food. Give me health. Give me money. Give me the girl. Give me a good job. Help me to beat everybody else today in basketball. And bless the food and make it nourishing to our bodies in Jesus Name amen.

It sounds somewhat like an abra-cadabra memorized sound bite.  At least my prayers typically did.  And when my non-believer friends would point it out, I would get embarrassed, feel offended, then totally convicted afterwards...because it was true.  My prayer was nothing than a parroted prayer I'd heard from just about every other Church goer.

By the Grace of God, here's what I've come to realize: The dog, the food, the health, the money, the girl, etc... are all creation.  And when our prayers don't extend beyond the creation we fall short.  The sole purpose of all creation was to point to the creator.  The job, the sports win and the good food serve to stir up our hearts towards worship of the creator who granted them.  But this is not how most of us are praying.  Lets be honest.

If this thanksgiving is like most, the prayers people will say will be for the things God has given them but not of how God has freed them from all the baggage that sin has put on them.  I've noticed that most of us are not thankful for freedom simply because we don't have it.  So, we are left with thanking God for what we have, which is "stuff" (i.e. creation) from him.

When I'm around believers who have been saved and set free from the bondage of shame and guilt, I can't help but notice how different their prayers are.  How radically different those prayers sound.  They're genuine, from the heart and in touch with the condition of their heart.

This thanksgiving my heart was not in the right place.  So, I asked my kids, "who wants to open our dinner worship in prayer?"  My 4 year old raised her hand and prayed this:

Dear Lord, thank you for all this food and for my mommy and my daddy and for my brother and for my sistur (sister).  Lord there is anger in my heart and I don't like it when there is evil in my heart, but when there is evil in my heart you know how to help me.  And Lord, I don't want to eat too much tonight so will you help me not eat too much because I don't want to do that.  Amen.

How awesome is the prayer that humbly and publicly reveals the true condition of the heart.  I'm reminded of Ephesians 5:11 where Paul tells the believers in Ephesus:

Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.

From this day on may our prayers be much more than memorized sound bites that treat God like a genie in a bottle.  Let our prayers be rich with genuine, humble openness that reveals brokenness, a desperate need for the Savior Jesus Christ as well as gratitude towards the one who delivers from the evil we continually step in.