The What, Why, and How of Worship

This podcast is a ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people know, enjoy, and glorify God.

For more information about Grand Parkway, visit Grandparkway.org.

God, those four words, how great you are, they don't even scratch the surface.

We have such an inability to describe you.

And so we point to the creation that you made.

We point to the Son that you sent.

We point to the eternal life that we have, all because of you and because of how great you are.

So, God, forgive us and excuse us of our smallness, for we misunderstand how big and how great you are.

God, I pray this morning that you would give us an inkling of how worthy you are in our response to that.

Holy Spirit, I pray that you are active this morning in each one of us.

So that not just here in this place, but that you'll carry us out, not with a short-lived energy, but with a white hot fire that burns deep inside of us to make that proclamation how great you are.

Thank you for that.

Thank you for this time.

For it's in your name, Jesus, that we pray these things.

Amen.

Well, good morning.

As most of you know, my name is Wade Burgess.

I'm the executive pastor here, which means I'm in charge of the operations of the church, and from time to time I get the privilege of attempting to preach to you.

So thank you for your patience in that.

And what I wanted to do for just a split second, if I could, before I begin, I wanted just to talk to the Grand Parkway family for a minute.

Over the last two months, some of you know that my wife and I have buried both of our fathers.

And when you all heard the news of each of those events, you responded in true Grand Parkway fashion with prayers and condolences, with warm wishes and love.

And I just wanted to say thank you to each one of you that did so.

That means the world to us, and I wanted to tell you how much we appreciate that.

All right, now back to our script here.

Um I want to warn you this morning that uh today's topic is uh it's kind of big.

It's been something that's been on me for a little while now, and uh, and I felt like, boy, I just can't help but share this particular topic.

But I do worry that God has given me a little bit of a bigger bite than I can chew.

You'll understand that in a second when I mention the word, but um it's weighty and deep and it's got a lot of layers.

I think it's heady and it's got some heart to it, this subject that we're going to touch on today.

I don't know that my points will necessarily get real deep, uh, and I'll try not to give you Bible whiplash here, but we're going to spend some time delving into the Word to see exactly what it says about this idea of worship.

A few months back, I was um, I just kind of picked up a book that I thought, oh yeah, this will be a casual read.

You ever do that and then get surprised?

This is uh by an author, A.

W.

Tozer.

Uh some of you know uh that that is not a casual read.

Um Tozer uh was a pastor and preacher, a writer and thinker.

And uh when he was 17, he heard a street preacher proclaim the gospel.

And from that minute, Tozer decided, I am dedicating my life to the pursuit of a holy God.

And so a lot of his writings are around that.

He passed away in the early 60s, but his books are certainly still applicable.

This one that I was reading is entitled Worship.

And um, what started out as that casual read kind of continued to fester in me, just kind of continued to come up.

About that same time, I'm with my discipleship group, and we're reading through the Bible, and we found ourselves in Exodus, kind of the middle to end of Exodus.

And if you know anything about that, you know that that is where God gives a ton of detail about exactly how he wants his temple to be built, everything from the kind of rings and the colors and the tapestries.

He's given detail to kind of the sacrifices they're gonna make and what they do and how they do it.

He gives so much detail that he tells the priest what to wear right down to their underwear.

No teasing.

He gives them the kind of detail that we would love to have.

In reading worship and in reading Exodus, I wondered, man, all this detail, all this preparation, all this uh talk, if you will, around this subject of worship.

What are we doing related to worship?

And so today I want to give you the what is, why do we do it, and how do we do it regarding worship.

Um, I'll give some uh, like I said, some biblical references that I want you to take away, but then at the end I'll also give you some potential practical application for that.

I'll reference Tozer a few times, but certainly I want to continually point you to the Bible and what God has to say.

And by the way, what we're gonna touch on today is just a mere inkling of what the Bible has to say about worship.

So this is not all-inclusive, but hopefully gives you a little bit of framework and some guardrails around that idea of what, why, and how to worship.

So I want to start with a definition.

Now, if you were to look up the word worship in the Hebrew language, it gives us three kind of words to anchor to.

Here they are.

One, it's to work for, the second is to serve, and the third is to labor for.

Tozer gave a nice summary definition of that by saying this.

It is to be fully captivated, such that every effort is for God in order to serve God.

That idea of laboring for God, serving God, the the how do I work for God is really the idea of worship.

Now, if you ask me, okay, we get the definition.

Now give me some practical, kind of tell me what would that look like in today's life.

Well, I tell you, if you were a student, that's when you go to school, it's being respectful to your teachers, it's being helpful to your classmates, it's not cheating on tests, as obvious as that sounds.

It's being different than anyone else because you are giving every effort in order to serve God and work for him.

If it were at work, I would tell you it's not taking credit when credit's not due.

It's speaking and acting differently than probably those around you.

It's doing things that continually indicate how you feel about God and what you believe he feels about you.

Tozer said this, by the way, he said, a person that doesn't work and worship together, they're just adding wood to the bonfire for when God sets the world on fire.

Some pretty deep words, I think, to the importance of work and worship.

I think worship also comes in the form of marriage and how we do marriage, that idea of dying to self, that idea of every time my spouse calls me at the most inopportune time, and I'm like, what?

It just take five extra minutes to listen.

Why would that even be worship?

Because it's every effort.

You're gonna notice a theme, by the way, around those two words today.

It is every effort for God in order to serve God.

So, if we're not sure maybe what that looks like, okay, I get it, every effort, but really what is every effort?

Let me try to demonstrate to you just a few things that David did for us.

So, King David, you know that he's the writer of Psalms and all kinds of things.

We're gonna look at three or four areas where I think David gives us an indication of every effort.

The first one that he gives us is this idea of groaning.

Sometimes the Bible calls it lamenting, this kind of almost just, oh God, I'm I'm down under this weight, and I gotta get it off of me.

And so David gives us an indication of what that would look like.

God, by the way, is big enough to take on your anger, your joy, your emotion, everything that you have.

And the Bible says, I will worship the Lord in everything in me.

God is capable of handling everything you have.

And so David gives us an idea of what that might look like when we're groaning.

Take a look, if you like, at Psalm 13, or it'll come up on the screen behind me.

This is what it reads How long, O Lord, will you forgive forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, O Lord, my God, give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death.

My enemy will say, I have overcome him, and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

But I trust in your unfailing love.

My heart rejoices in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me.

Just a note the difference between praise and groaning, praise and lamenting, praise is where we take heaven and kind of bring to earth.

It's this idea of God, you are great, you're awesome.

Thank you for loving.

We're kind of taking heaven down to us.

This idea of groaning is doing the opposite.

It's taking earth kind of to heaven.

It's going, God, we're hurting down here.

We need you to.

Does that make sense?

That's the difference between praise and lamenting, but both of them are worship.

Now, worship is also confession.

If you're in your Bibles and you flip a few pages over to Psalm 51, I think this is one of the best confessions ever written.

So Nathan, the one of God's prophets, confronts David and says, David, you've been doing some heinous things.

You took by force Bathsheba as your wife, you killed her husband, you did all these things.

And David recognizes just how deep and dark he's become.

And he writes this confession.

This, too, by the way, is worship.

Psalm 51.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions.

Wash away all my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.

Against you, you only have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.

Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

Surely you desire truth in the inner parts.

You teach me wisdom in the inmost place.

Cleanse me with hyssop and I'll be clean.

Wash me and I'll be whiter than snow.

Let me hear joy and gladness.

Let the bones you have crushed rejoice.

Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.

Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.

Sometimes worship is confession.

By the way, Tozer warns us that the modern Christian and their struggles with having the right relationship with a holy God sometimes comes down to this: that we'll confess our sins, we'll confess what we've done wrong, the act that we've done wrong, but we rarely will recognize the idea of what we are.

David does that.

He says, God, I was a sinner from birth before I was even out of the womb because of that sin nature that I had.

And so I think we would do well as we understand worship, we would understand its confession.

And it's not just a confession of what did I do wrong?

It's a confession of my nature and the separation that we can have between a holy God and a sinful people.

We'll get to the solution of that in just a second.

By the way, worship is also having every sense attuned to God.

What I'm about to read is my absolute favorite passage, I think, in all of the Bible, especially when I read it from the message.

It makes me think of Father's Day.

So every Father's Day, my family takes me to Houston's restaurant.

You know the one I'm talking about?

You familiar with that?

I love that restaurant.

I have forever.

But every time we go for Father's Day, I get the French dip, also called the Prime Rib Sandwich.

Anybody try this thing?

Okay.

Come see me afterwards, I'll give you a gift card.

You can go try it.

This thing has rare prime rib, thinly sliced, on a French roll, and it comes with a large cup of ajus.

I get the French fries and the coleslaw, and then I dip that sandwich in that gravy, and I just eat it up.

And by the way, Houston's is such a nice place, they give you those white linen napkins.

It's got a little buttonhole on it.

You know what that buttonhole is for?

Exactly.

You put it on your shirt, and I do.

I button that rascal right up, and I got that thing, and I'm just.

Every time, every time I go, and I've eaten fifty of those things, I don't know how many my cardiologist will tell me, but I've eaten enough of those that every time I've not missed a chance to worship while I'm doing it.

This is where I get that from.

This comes from Psalm 63, and I read it from the message.

God, you're my God.

I can't get enough of you.

I've worked up such hunger and thirst for God, traveling across dry and weary deserts.

So here I am in the place of worship, eyes open, drinking in your strength and glory.

In your generous love, I'm really living at last.

My lips brim praises like fountains.

I bless you every time I take a breath.

My arms wave like banners of praise to you.

Here it is.

I eat my fill of prime rib and gravy.

I smack my lips.

It's time to shout praises.

If I'm sleepless at midnight, I spend the hours in grateful reflection.

Because you've always stood up for me.

I'm free to run and play.

I hold on to you for dear life, and you hold me steady as a post.

It's every sense attuned to God.

That is worship.

Why?

Because it's every effort is for God.

I told you there'd be a theme there.

If what is worship is everything, then I want us to look at, well, why would I worship?

Well, okay, I get it.

I get the what, but why would I do that?

Let me point to you just two things that I take from the Bible that indicates, I think, why we worship.

The first one comes from Joshua.

So if you're in Psalm, you can flip back to the left toward the uh deeper into the Old Testament there.

It's Joshua chapter 22.

Joshua 22 · chapter mention

Now, let me set this up for you.

It's um that there's two tribes of Israel.

Well, there's several tribes of Israel, there's 12 of them, but a few of them have been sent over to the east side of the Jordan River.

A few of them are on the west bank.

Now, what they're doing, they're all under the control of Joshua.

Moses has passed.

Joshua's in charge of God's people.

And they're doing God's work securing the promised land.

God said, I'm going to give you this land.

Now it's going to be filled with pagans and all these terrible things.

I want you to go in and clean it out, and I want you to take over.

Now, one of the concerns that the people had that were on the West Bank was that God had given them a warning and said, Hey, if you're not careful, these pagans will lure you in.

They will absolutely captivate you with their beliefs and their religion and all this stuff.

Be careful about that.

People on the West Bank were so concerned about it that they hear the Israelites on the East Bank are building an altar.

And they're like, wait a minute, what are they doing building an altar?

We haven't talked about it, we hadn't schemed it out.

God hadn't told us to do it.

I mean, I don't know, they didn't even approach us.

They must be building it to a pagan.

That's what happened.

And so the West Bank sends Phinehas, the high priest, over to confront them.

This is what happens here.

Joshua chapter 22, this is verses 25 through 27.

Joshua 22 · chapter mention

The Lord has made the Jordan a boundary between us and you, you Reubenites and Gadites.

You have no share in the Lord, so your descendants might cause ours to stop fearing the Lord.

That's what Phineas said.

Here's their response.

This is why we said, Let us get ready and build an altar, but not for burnt offerings or sacrifices.

On the contrary, it is to be a witness between us and you and the generations that follow, that we will worship the Lord at his sanctuary with our burnt offerings, sacrifices, and fellowship offerings.

Then in the future your descendants will not be able to say to ours, you have no share in the Lord.

What do I get out of that?

What I get out of that is why worship is for generational knowledge.

These folks are setting up the foundation for generation after generation to understand why to worship.

We worship because we have a right understanding of a holy God.

And part of that right understanding is knowing how he feels about us.

Now, um, I think it goes beyond, by the way, just taking your immediate family to church.

Well, we bring the kids to church and we do that.

So that's generational.

I think this idea of generational knowledge goes even further than just our relatives.

Our relatives know where we go and we talk about church and things like that.

I think that generational knowledge expands all the way out to strangers.

The people that we work with that don't know us, the people that see us on our way to church or on our way to worship, every effort, remember?

Here's what I think that looks like.

So uh a few months ago, I'm with a guy who was one of the best friends of my granddad.

Now, my grandfather passed away, gosh, it's been over 10 years ago, I guess, maybe even longer.

And uh he was telling me a story, one that I didn't know.

He said, Hey, Wade, did you know that your grandfather, every start of the school season, now he grew up in rural uh Arkansas, and so this part may make sense when you think about it in that context.

He said, every start of the school year, he would go to the principal and he'd hand him money.

And he'd say, Now, principal, here's what I want you to do.

Any kid that comes in here doesn't have shoes, anybody that comes in here without school supplies, I want you to take care of that for him.

And by the way, you need more, you come back and see me.

And as he's telling me this story, I'm not surprised.

I knew my grandfather was, you know, very giving and all of that.

Um, but this is the point of this guy telling me as he's saying, I knew your grandfather was on such a fixed income.

I mean, he'd been retired for 20 years.

I knew the last thing he had was extra income to give, but he was willing to give it.

I thought, oh, okay, good story, good example.

I need to live up to that.

And then a couple of weeks ago, or actually last week, I'm at my dad's funeral and their uh pastor is there and he's given a eulogy.

And he says, by the way, one of the things that Gordon would do from time to time is he'd come to me and he'd hand me some money and he'd say, Now, preacher, I don't think this family over here is going to have Christmas without you giving them that.

Don't tell them where it came from, but I want you to make sure you take care of them.

I didn't know that.

And so as I think about this idea of why do we worship, I think about generational knowledge.

And here's what happens with generational knowledge: it produces generational obedience.

So my grandfather is obedient to what he knew he should do.

That passes along to my dad, and that passes along to me.

Not to brag about my generosity, but to say that generational knowledge produces generational obedience, which then produces compounding interest being the blessings of God.

That's what these folks here are doing on the east side of the Jordan.

They're saying, hey, let from now on every generation know that we worship a holy God.

That's why we worship.

The second reason why we worship, I want to point you to 2 Kings, and I told you Bible whiplash, but bear with me.

This is uh 2 Kings chapter 17.

2 Kings 17 · chapter mention

So if you move to the right a little bit from Joshua, uh I think this idea of why do we worship is just simply to be obedient.

Now, some of these words sound like I'm repeating or I'm reading the same sentence.

I'm not.

Hear what God says about this.

This is 2 Kings 17, verses 35 through 39.

2 Kings 17:35–39

When the Lord made a covenant with the Israelites, he commanded them do not worship any other gods or bow down to them, serve them or sacrifice to them.

But the Lord who brought you up out of Egypt with mighty power and outstretched arm, is the one you must worship.

To him you shall bow down, and to him offer sacrifices.

You must always be careful to keep the decrees and ordinances, the laws and commands he wrote for you.

Do not worship other gods.

Do not forget the covenant I have made with you, and do not worship.

Other gods.

Rather, worship the Lord your God.

It is he who will deliver you from the hand of your enemy.

By the way, just a footnote: whatever is not of God is an enemy to us if we are a believer in God.

And whatever's an enemy of God is out to kill us.

The Bible says Satan is out to destroy us.

And I promise you, anything that you are worshiping, anything that gets more attention than God, anything you're making an effort for that's not God first is going to kill you.

So what is worship?

It's every effort for God in order to serve God.

Why do we worship?

Well, it's for generational knowledge, which produces generational obedience.

And for the simple fact of just being obedient to what God calls us to.

So if you're with me on those two points, I want to talk to you about how do we worship.

For this, I want to spend a little bit of time in 1 Chronicles.

So just move a few pages to the right, and you'll see 1 Chronicles chapter 16.

1 Chronicles 16 · chapter mention

Now, this is actually a psalm written by David.

A little odd, I know, to not find it in Psalms, but David writes this as he has made a tent for the Ark of the Covenant.

The Israelites believe that's where the Spirit of God dwelled, and David has given charge to the priests to lead the people in worship.

This is the psalm that David writes in 1 Chronicles 16, verses 12 through 26.

1 Chronicles 16:12–26

Remember the wonders he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he's pronounced.

O descendants of Israel, his servant, O sons of Jacob, his chosen ones, he is the Lord our God, his judgments are in all the earth.

He remembers his covenant forever, the word he commanded for a thousand generations, the covenant he made with Abraham, the oath he swore to Isaac, he confirmed it to Jacob as a decree, to Israel as an everlasting covenant.

To you I will give the land of Canaan as the portion you will inherit.

When they were but a few in number, few indeed, and strangers in it, they wandered from nation to nation.

He allowed no man to oppress them, for their sake he rebuked kings.

Do not touch my anointed ones, do my prophets no harm.

Sing to the Lord all the earth, proclaim his salvation day after day, declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples.

For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise.

He is to be feared above all gods, for all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens.

I want to draw your attention to a few verses, as I think David in this writing gives us some great direction on how to worship.

First, it's recognizing his wonders.

Look at verse 12.

David starts off remember the wonders he has done, his miracles and the judgments he's pronounced.

And then go down to the end, that last verse, for all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens.

It's recognizing God's wonders is how we worship.

That idea of wonders are all around us.

Everything from babies being born every minute, it seems, to creation, to a thousand things we can name.

Related to that is a wonder of God.

Our worship would do well to recognize those.

The second thing I think we get from David here, related to how to worship, is recalling his promises.

Look at verses 15 through 18.

It says, He remembers his covenant forever.

That means he's a promise keeper.

The word he commanded for a thousand generations, the covenant he made with Abraham, and the oath he swore to Isaac, he confirmed it with Jacob to Israel.

He said, I'll give you the land, that promised land that you will inherit.

And by the way, this isn't just a promise to the Jews only and it stopped with them.

In the New Testament, when God opens up his message to the Gentiles, meaning us, that we get to participate in the belief of Jesus, we become heirs to that same covenant that he made a long time ago.

God didn't say this is strictly for them for this time.

What he was saying was this is for a thousand generations, for every person that comes along and believes in me.

I am going to keep this covenant with them.

And I think if you're a believer in Jesus, we all have this kind of taken out of Egypt moment.

Certainly it's a bookmark in the Jewish history book of this freedom from oppression, this freedom from slavery.

I think every one of us that believes in Jesus has that same out of Egypt deliverance moment, and it's freedom from sin.

It's the idea of being released from the bondage of sin.

So every one of us, my point is that we can recall his promises because his promises are to us as much as they were anyone.

That promise of, I'm with you always, uh, the promise that we read in the New Testament that says, hey, if a father, being of a sinful nature, can give good gifts, how much more could the father in heaven bless you?

It's that idea of thinking about, you know, when we first got married, our apartment was small enough that I could touch both walls of the kitchen.

And now we live in a house that's got an island and two refrigerators and all this stuff.

Now, don't hear me say something that I'm not.

A lot of us have a myopic view of what blessings are.

We hear that term, God blessed us, and we think, well, I'm not, I don't have two refrigerators.

God must not be blessing me.

Not at all.

We'd miss it if we're not careful that God's definition of blessings is very wide.

That idea of it's too much month at the end of the paycheck.

Have you ever been there?

We were there a few times early on, and we never missed a meal, a bill, or a tithe.

God is faithful to deliver on his promises.

His promise is to never leave us, to care for us, and to always be with us.

When we're caring for our aging parents or when we're burying them, he is always with us.

So I tell you that to argue that each one of us has a deliverance story of some kind that says, God has delivered me just the way he'd promised he would.

The third point I think that we get from the text here about how to worship, besides recognizing his wonders and recalling his promises, is making known his salvation.

That's how we worship.

Look at verses 23 and 24.

David says, Sing to the Lord all the earth, proclaim his salvation day after day, declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all the people.

What he's talking about is evangelizing.

What he's talking about is sharing with other people how you believe about God and what he believes about you.

That's how we worship, by making known his salvation.

Now, I told you early on that I was going to give some potentially practical advice on worship.

Some of you, upon hearing one of these, may not think it's very practical, but bear with me, okay?

I want to outline for you just, or maybe give some examples, suggestions for how to worship.

So if you're with me on what it is and why we do it, you may still be wondering, yeah, but how exactly do I go about it?

Well, here's one.

This slide is going to provide you with a few names that the Bible gives God.

And some of those will be familiar to you.

You're welcome to take a picture of those or write a few of them down.

It's provider, it's a perfecter, it's king.

Here's what I'd recommend to you.

Every Monday for the next few weeks, I would just pick one of those names.

And every time that you get out of bed in the morning, just recite that name.

Something like, Almighty God, you are bigger than I could ask or imagine you to be.

Or maybe it's, oh God, you're a provider.

You give me breath this morning, you have awakened me, so use me.

So something, whatever it you want it to be.

But I would encourage you, for the next few weeks, just kind of work through those names that the Bible calls God.

That's one way to worship.

Now, here's the potential practical, impractical way.

Uh, it has this great theological title that I've given it.

It's called Alpha Adoration.

And really, it's just the alphabet.

Here's what it looks like.

Um every Friday, I try to take a few minutes at least, and I go through a letter of the alphabet and I try to think of all the words that would describe God starting with that letter.

So, for example, if this Friday were A, I would say, God, you know, things like uh you're available, you're awesome, you're things like that.

If it were uh I, you know, I would say you're indescribable, you're indestructible, you are not indecisive, etc.

Now, X, Y, and Z, a little bit tough, okay?

I I haven't yet come up with a Y except Yahweh, and that's kind of cheating, but um uh I can't get a Z except God thank you for zebras.

Um I don't oh there you go.

Yeah, there you go.

Um thank you for that.

How about X?

Got an X I told the first service I used X-ray once when I needed it, I had a back problem.

Um my point is that as I went through that, you know, I don't know, 15, 17 weeks, 20 weeks, whatever it was of the letters that I could think of words for, that's that much longer that I could pray and read my Bible and hear sermons.

And so when I got back to the A's again, now my thesaurus, if you will, of words that start with A to describe God grew.

And I was thinking more and more words to do that.

It's not it's something simple and silly, but it's a practical way to worship.

Another way is to sing, or maybe just read hymns.

Uh, if we had hymnals, I'd tell you, take one with you and read through those.

You know some.

We sang some great ones this morning.

It's just this idea of proclaiming exactly who God is.

Count your blessings.

Now, by the way, that's a great hymn.

Count your blessings, name them one by one.

That's also a tremendous way to worship.

If you're thinking, well, I don't really know how God's blessed me, I mean, I'm not.

Okay, I can name two or three.

I challenge you to sit down and start counting those up and seeing just how full that list gets.

That's a great way to worship.

So is praying.

And if you're not sure how to pray and you're like, yeah, I'm not a big prayer, I'm not really sure what to say.

I mean, the confession that you read was pretty terrific.

I can't do that.

And the groaning, I get that.

Sometimes it is just, God, I am dumbfounded, and I have nothing to say.

You know what the great thing is about God is that he sees our hearts, he hears our minds, he already knows what you're thinking, what you're feeling, and he's available to that.

That's a great way to worship.

Another way to worship is by giving.

And this is not an advertisement for our new sanctuary, uh, but I when I think about giving, I think a lot more than just tithing.

I think about giving our time and our talent, give to those in need.

And here's the thing about my grandfather and my dad, you and myself and others.

When we give that way, we're not just affecting the person we gave to.

We're not just affecting where the gift will go.

We're affecting those that see it, those that hear about it, and that's worship.

Let me give you a nice summary, and it's really from Paul.

He writes this in Romans chapter 12, and I want to read from the message.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

I think this is a great summation of how do we worship.

So here's what I want you to do, God helping you.

Take your everyday, ordinary life, your sleeping, eating, going to work, walking around life, and place it before God as an offering.

Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him.

Don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.

Instead, fix your attention on God.

You'll be changed from the inside out.

Readily recognize what he wants from you and quickly respond to it.

Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

That's a summation of every effort.

Now, here's what I'm gonna do.

I want to give you two questions to consider.

Then Clyde's gonna come and he's gonna play over you as you consider those.

Gonna give you just a couple of minutes to think about it.

Then I'm gonna pray and we'll be almost done.

Here's the two questions I want you to consider.

Number one, what is your worship preparation?

God spent a lot of time and energy giving the Israelites a lot of direction to preparation.

And so the one thing I think about is what's our preparation related to just coming to church?

By the way, you know worship is much more than just coming to church, but it's one of those.

What is our preparation for that?

Things like, are we getting rest on Saturday night so we're not sleeping on Sunday?

Are we avoiding things on Saturday night that cause pain or difficulty, if you know what I'm saying, for Sunday morning?

And here's the thing: if worship is every effort, we should be watching out what we do on Tuesday nights and Wednesday afternoons and all of that.

We should be thinking every morning when we wake and every night before we go to bed, God, how do I prepare tomorrow to worship?

Not because tomorrow's Sunday, but because every effort requires it.

A holy God has called us his people, and he says, it is better for you to worship me.

Are we taking that as serious as he does?

So, what's your preparation for worship?

The second question I would ask is what are you doing with the spiritual light and awareness God has given you?

Kind of to unpack that, where do you stand with your friendships, your day-to-day life, your uh pleasures, your complexities, all the things that you've got to do?

Where do you stand with that light and awareness?

What are you doing with those two things that God has given you?

The God of the Old Testament is the same God of the New Testament, and He's the same God today.

He has not changed his mind about Him.

And He's not changed His mind about how we ought to respond to Him.

We don't worship to pay back.

We don't say, well, God, you gave me and so tit for tat, quid pro quo, I'm gonna give you.

We don't do that.

We worship because we recognize who God is and what He's done.

And what He's done is He sent His Son Jesus for us to intimately know Him so that we could be forgiven and therefore have a right relationship with that holy God.

And beyond that, we get eternal life as well.

He's available to you, and He's worthy of worship.

Cloud will come in play, and I want you to consider those two questions, and then I'll close us in prayer.

God, you are worthy of worship.

And Lord, we would do well to be reminded what you call of us.

God, I think so many times we want to be in that New Testament, sweet and soft Jesus that's gonna feed us and take care of us and calm the storm.

And we forget about that God of the Old Testament, that God that says, I am an angry and jealous God, and you'd better not mess with me.

You'd better fear me for the right reasons.

But you know what the great thing is about you, God, is that your character also forgives and loves and holds on to us steady as a post.

That's why you're worthy of worship.

Thank you for allowing us the privilege to worship you, even in a broken and sin-natured people.

Because of your design, we get to have a right relationship with you.

Thank you for that.

Thank you for you.

For it's in your son's saving name that I pray these things.

Amen.

Uh, this morning, if you are new to us and you've had a chance to fill out that connection card in the seat back in front of you, you can drop it in one of the wooden boxes, which is also where our people uh worship through giving.

Thanks for being here this morning and your attention.

Stand to your feet, I'll offer a blessing, and then we'll be dismissed.

The God of Abraham, of Isaac, and Jacob, he made a covenant to protect and provide.

He made that same covenant with you because he is your God and he's worthy of worship.

With your mouths, your mind, your lips, your feet, with every effort.

Go out and do that.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

You're dismissed.