Do It All In His Name

[00:00:00] Foreign. [00:00:14] Welcome to Friday's edition of the Weekday Podcast. All week long we've walked through this passage in Colossians 3 where we talked about worship without shame. Putting off the old, putting on the new. Letting the word dwell. Now Colossians 3 lands the plane with one sweeping instruction that I believe ties it all together. Here's what it says in Colossians 3:17 Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father. Now whatever you do is what he says. Not the sacred stuff. Not the sermon notes, the prayer time, the worship set. Whatever that email you send tomorrow, the way you talk to your kids tonight, the way you handle the co worker who tests your patience. All of it is done in his name. [00:00:57] And the reminder is that worship was never confined to a room. [00:01:01] We started here, where someone's standing in a surface, arms crossed, feeling too far gone to sing. But by verse 17, Paul has widened the definition of worship until it covers your entire week. It's putting off anger, it's putting on compassion, and letting the word dwell in you actually happens. And then worship stops being an event that you attend. It actually becomes the name you do everything under. That Reframes Monday morning. Your work isn't separate from your worship. Your ordinary conversations are not separate from your worship. When you do them in the name the Lord Jesus, they become an offering, not just a task. And giving thanks changes the doing. Notice the verse doesn't stop with do it in his name. It adds giving thanks through him to God the Father. Thanksgiving is what keeps obedience from turning into obligation. You can do the right thing out of duty, and it still feels resentful the whole time. But when you do it with thanks, like genuinely grateful that you get to represent Jesus in this moment, that same task feels completely different. [00:02:00] So try attaching one quiet thank you to something ordinary you do today, even folding laundry or answering an email. And notice what it does to the attitude towards it. It's powerful. Do it in his name, not your own. Now here's the trap. The passage protects you from doing good things in your own name, for your own reputation, your own sense of being. Enough. That's exhausting. And it's the same shame driven performance that we started the whole series arc with. In the name of Jesus. That phrase means you're not doing it to prove you're worthy. You already know you're chosen, you're deeply loved. You're doing it because it's who you are now, and you're doing it with thanks and not pressure. So this week and beyond, this week, before anything you do, even something small, pause and say, I'm doing this in the name of the Lord Jesus. Watch what that does to how you do it. Your tone, your patience, your motive. This is the whole series in one sentence. You weren't too far gone to worship. You're being made day by day. And now every single thing you do, word or deed, gets to be worship. Not because you're perfect, because you belong to him and you're doing it all in his name. When everything you do is done, is his name, worship stops being an event and it becomes a life.