Do you remember the jack-in-the-box toys from your childhood orchildren's childhood? Weren't they great fun! You turn the crank on abrightly colored box while music plays and then ... POP ... out jumpsthe figure. At certain ages, a jack-in-the-box can be hours of fun forboth adults and children!I fear, however, that as we have grown up and "gone to church," we'vetaken our jack-in-the-box mentality with us. We focus our attention onspecial boxes of worship. We attend and see what happens in those boxesto surprise and delight us. Based on what whether we like what happensor not, we go away feeling like we've had a good or bad worshipexperience. Either way, we often feel we've put in our time to fulfillour worship responsibilities, punched out ticket for another week, andcan then pretty much go live our daily lives as we choose.This approach to worship has been sometimes been called the "God in abox" syndrome. While modern westerners didn't invent it, we'veperfected it to an art form! We build elaborate and expensive boxes --calling them auditoriums, sanctuaries, cathedrals, worship centers anda host of pious and important sounding names -- and focus incredibleamounts of attention on what happens in them. We develop a mindset thatsuggests that if we can get our weekend worship event done correctly,we're set for the week and have punched our ticket for heaven. We cango back to our work, recreation, parenting, schooling, and sinningwhile being pretty much okay if we can go get another dose of the"worship thing" again next weekend.Two great dangers have become realized among us with this approach toworship.First, we put way too much pressure on what happens in the worship boxto be breath-taking, earth-moving, and spine-tingling. Rather thanbeing a part of our life of worship, this weekly event becomes our lifeof worship. Rather than being the consummation of a week of dailyworship, it becomes the primary worship experience in our week. Thismeans everything important about our worship depends upon that smallamount of time we are the worship box.Second, this approach to worship helps us secularize andcompartmentalize our lives, so that worship does not intrude into ourworkplace, our schools, our recreation, and even our families. We giveGod his hour at the special box, and then we can do pretty much what welike with the rest of our time. We confine God to the box so we canrule our own lives.God has never wanted us to see our worship as only a little bit of timeon a holy day at a holy box. Worship cannot, and must not, be separatedfrom the daily lives we lead. Simply offering holy words on a holy dayare not God's goal for us. He wants us to be living sacrifices that arefreely offered to him out of thankful hearts touched by his rich mercyand grace. (Romans 12:1-2) While God demands that we worship him withreverence and awe, we must understand that he is not focusing as muchon what happens in our holy box as he is focusing on what happens inour daily lives. (Read Hebrews 12:28-29 and Hebrews 13:15-16 and noticethat everything in between those two passages describes what God isafter in our reverent worship. You will find hospitality to strangers,remembering those in prison, honoring our marriages, handling moneycorrectly, and respecting our spiritual leaders on this list ofreverent worship!)God wants us to move beyond our jack-in-the-box approach to faith andto see that all of our lives -- whatever we do on whatever day we do it-- are part of our worship offered to him. Does this mean what we do onthe Lord's Day is unimportant? Of course not! The Lord's Day should bea time of special fellowship with other believers and worship of theLord. This day of worship should serve as a celebration of our pastweek of daily worship and as an anticipation of the next week of dailyworship. It should be a day to remember the Lord and celebrate hisresurrection from the dead.Approaching each day as our worship to the Lord does not diminish theimportance of the Lord's Day as a day of worship. Instead, itintegrates worship into the rest of our lives and prevents us fromcompartmentalizing our faith, from locking God up in a box on Sunday,and from locking him out of our daily lives.