Just a routine?

Amos 4:4-6 Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three years.  Burn leavened bread as a thank offering and brag about your freewill offerings – boast about them, you Israelites, for this is what you love to do.

Sarcastic would be the word I would use to describe what God is saying here through the prophet Amos!  The Israelites were following all the law as it had been ordained through Moses, yet the rest of their lives showed that it was just surface worship, just following a routine, not worship and obedience from the heart.  God knew their hearts, and He could see their insincerity.  In the rest of this chapter it is evident that they did not turn to, or return to, true faith no matter what God sent their way to try to get them to turn back to Him.  It is so easy to fall into that pattern of useless and unfocused religious activity.  May God be pleased to keep me from that.  I want to have a vibrant, living worship that makes a difference to me and a sincerely faith that affects those around me.