Do I Have a Wii Religion?

I’ve been thinking a lot about our worship to God lately and one idea of that has been on my mind. It’s the “discussion” of have to go to church and get to go to church. I know that the mentality of have to go is that of being forced, there are no other options. But I also think that when we have the mentality of get to go to church can be misleading as well. It sounds to me when we say this it’s like we have an option of whether we go or not and either is ok. I want to challenge you to adopt a new idea about going to worship, or at least new to me. Why don’t we say we WANT to go to church? Is it such a stretch of the imagination that we want to go worship God? We want to go join our voices with our brothers and sisters in praise to our almighty God?
I think part of why we say this is because we fall into having a Wii religion. What I mean by Wii religion is if I go play a game of bowling on the Wii, have I actually bowled? Or did I just go through the motions of bowling? We can do this in our religion where we come and go through the motions but they don’t mean anything. We’ve not worshipped God if we do that. Let me ask you a few questions that I’ve had to ask myself about my religion:

Where was your mind truly at when you took the Lord’s Supper last Sunday?
1 Cor 11:24-26

When you sang did you enjoy the tune of the song or did you think about the words you were singing as teaching your fellow worshippers? Eph 5:19

During the Bible reading and sermon did you think about what you were going to do that afternoon or for lunch? Or was you thinking about how what God wants you to get out of that Scripture?

When did your spiritual thinking stop? At the last Amen? Did it ever start? Did you let it flow into your life in your daily routine?

I want you to stop and think are we living the life God wants us to live? Or are we treating our religion as a Wii, where we go through the motions but don’t commit ourselves to God. I want you to think about one verse in closing. When Jesus was asked what is the greatest command in all the Law. Did you know his answer was about our worship? The offering of praise that God desires most is that of a life that lives for him. Notice the account between Jesus and the Questioner in Mark 12:28-34. (NIV)

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"

"The most important one” answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."

"Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and
there is no other but him. love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."

When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.