Heart of Worship Pt. 1 // An Eccentric Life

Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast.

Church at the Lookout is in all of Colorado Jesus hiding in his presence.

Growing in his family and living on his mission to transform the world with all inspiring love.

Visit us alive at the lookout.

How are we doing?

How are we doing this morning?

Alright?

Labor Day weekend, which means what?

Which means you guys are the real Christians.

Turn to the person next to you and say, I can tell you're a real Christian.

We get to boast that we're so much more spiritual than all of our friends who are camping in the mountains, hiking, whatever.

No, I I'm joking.

I uh it is a joy though to be able to gather with you this weekend.

And and uh before we jump in, I want to kind of uh fire up one thing that we start had started earlier this year.

We let it uh break for the summer.

Um but if if you came in or if you've been apart for the last few months, you notice we have a wall in the back with a bunch of wooden balls, and and uh it has the the phrase so loved.

And uh, since the beginning of the year, we've just really felt like as a church, you know, uh the the need and the desire to want to challenge ourselves to find moments of love and action.

Some of you guys have still been submitting moments of love and action either on one of these cards or you've been texting these in.

We'll have a number on the screen, you can text these in.

But the reason we do this is not to brag or to boast, but to share testimonies of all of us actually are we we get to leave this place and we get to interact with the people that God loves.

I'm just gonna read a few of these stories, okay?

Uh, somebody wrote this uh a woman was wandering around in the store just saying out loud, I don't know what to do.

I don't know what to do.

I stopped her and said, What's going on?

She said that she got kicked out of her housing and I asked if I could pray, and she said, God, um uh uh God is mad at me and uh uh she said, God is mad at me and I've gone too far.

Now I'm getting what I deserve.

I was able to tell her that he sees her and knows her and loves her no matter what.

I said, Whatever she's done, she's not, it's not enough to separate for her from his love.

And we were able to pray together, and she heard that God will not lose her.

That's or that God, God still loves her.

Come on.

In the store, here's another one.

I prayed for a coworker who had confided me that they were overwhelmed by work and home issues.

They agreed to let me pray, even though it was unfamiliar to them.

How many of you guys know that even if you don't uh you don't see the fruit of a prayer in the moment, it's just good if you're with with somebody at work or wherever you're at to say, can we stop and pray?

It was unfamiliar, but this person stepped out in faith.

Let's give it up.

Come on.

Um, last one here, this one's kind of fun.

At a church camp, not this church camp, but at a church camp I I was at this past week, uh I was reaching people through disability ministry.

And Jesus moved uh, and two campers gave their life to God and got baptized in the swimming pool.

So that's awesome.

So look for the moments, look for the ones that God is sending you to to love, to bring in the trash cans, to bake a pie, to whatever that you're called to do.

And as we share these things, what it does is it creates faith that all of us get to love with Jesus on mission.

Amen?

All right, we are gonna jump into the word this morning.

Let's just quiet our hearts today, if just with me across the room.

Just close your eyes, take a deep breath.

Feel your feet on the floor.

Become aware of Jesus with us.

Jesus, this morning we remind ourselves that you're with us.

We say we love you, God.

And as we talk about worship today, as we open your word, I thank you that you are faithful to meet each of us where we're at.

And if anybody is in this room, even right now, that just feels far from God, I thank you that in the next few minutes they will see how close you really are.

We thank you that nothing can separate us from your love.

And so this morning we yield to you, we surrender to you, and we say, You are worthy of our worship, our praise this morning.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

So here's what we're gonna do starting today for the next several weeks.

We're gonna be turning our attention collectively to the topic and the practice of worship, which is not unfamiliar to us at the lookout, right?

This word worship is actually this old English word um that that's literally worth ship.

Worth ship.

It's the act of showing honor, reverence to something or someone of great value.

Now, in our language, in our stream, we tend to refer to worship as the singing part of our gatherings, right?

We talk about worship as that's what we do when we sing, and and uh and it certainly is.

Uh, but from a biblical perspective, a a large, a larger biblical perspective, worship is much more than the communal singing.

It definitely includes the communal singing, uh, but it's much more than that.

Here's what Paul says in Romans chapter 1.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

This is in the New Testament, and Paul's writing about worship.

He says, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the view, by the by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship, which is your spiritual worship.

So to present your bodies, to take your full bodies, your lives, and offer them to God, that is going to be your worship.

Now, that word bodies is this word soma, which actually means not just your body, it means the whole of your being.

So when Paul is saying, present the present your body, saying, present everything that you are, everything that you will be and you will become, every component of your body, soul, spirit, present it to him as your uh in view of his mercy, present it to him because this is your spiritual worship.

Worship is the our entire life presented to God in every way that we possibly can.

Who's with me this morning?

And so this topic of worship is one that every now and then we need to redirect our attention to because this affects the very lives that we live, every part of our lives.

Now, when you have your Bible and you open your Bible and you turn pretty much to the center of the Bible, what you're gonna do is you're gonna stumble into a collection of psalms, about 150 psalms right at the dead center of the Bible.

Now, many of you guys know about 75 of those psalms are written by a man whose name was what?

David.

A man whose name was David, and he and he's quite a significant character in the scriptures.

And uh and David composed about 75 of these Psalms, and and we know that through we know through David's Psalm that he knows a thing or two about surrendering his whole life to Yahweh, finding every part of his life.

And and and what we know from David and his Psalms that he didn't leave anything out, right?

When you read through the Psalms, he he leaves a shocking amount of material in his songs, all right?

So we got the ones that we'll sing in church.

So we'll we'll get the Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, he makes me lie down by green pastures, and and we love singing that in church, but but nobody's singing Psalm 3, God, kick in the teeth of my enemies, all right?

I'm still waiting for that one, by the way.

I just want to see what your faces look like when we song number three, God, thank you, God, just kick in the teeth of my enemies.

Thank you, we praise you, God.

Just would you just obliterate them in Jesus' name?

But you so but David, he didn't have this dualistic, he didn't have this thing of here's the spiritual things, here's the things that we can talk about in God's presence, and then here's all of the other parts of life that we're just kind of hoping that just sort out.

David had a worldview that everything belongs in God's presence.

That every every part of my life actually matters to God, every circumstance and situation.

And so he sings he thinks he sings about everything.

He sings about the nation of Israel, he sings about the globe, he sings about every possible emotion you can think of, and many times it's all in the same song.

And it seems a little schizophrenic, right?

Which make which should help some of us feel a little bit better about our own lives, you know, because you actually think about what you're thinking about when you're singing.

And it's amazing our thought process during a worship set.

We're thinking, you know, it maybe for like one song we're really tuned in.

The rest of it, we're thinking about all kinds of things that are happening in our actual lives.

And that's very normal.

It's natural, it's part of worship.

We're bringing our whole lives before God because he's the center of everything.

And this is what made David what the Bible would call a man after God's own heart.

He was a man after God's heart.

Because he said, Whatever it is, I'm after it.

And so today I want to I want to read uh a passage.

Actually, it's a pretty lengthy section of David's life, and this is a little bit later on when David would become king, and this is his first moments as a king.

And we're gonna read about this scene when he he finally becomes king, and as any new leader does, he has a series of important decisions and reforms to make, and at the center of it all was worship.

All right, you guys with me this morning?

All right.

Are you guys with me this morning?

Okay, cool.

So we're gonna start in 1 Chronicles chapter 13.

1 Chronicles 13 · chapter mention

I'm gonna jump to a few passages.

This is you can actually go home and read this whole section, uh, chapters 13 through 16.

I'm just gonna read a few uh a few selections here to get a get a feel for what's happening.

It's a little bit longer, so hang with me this morning.

This is 1 Chronicles 13, starting in verse 1.

David consulted with the commanders of thousands and of hundreds, with every leader, and David said to all the assembly of Israel, If it seems good to you and from the Lord our God, let us send abroad to our brothers who remain in all the lands of Israel, as well as to the priests and Levites in the cities that have pasture lands, that they may be gathered to us.

Then let us bring again the ark of God to us, for we did not seek it in the days of Saul.

All the assembly agreed to do so, for the thing was right in the eyes of all the people.

So David and the elders of Israel and the commanders of thousands went to bring up the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord from the house of Obed-Edom with rejoicing, and because God helped the Levites who were carrying the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, they sacrificed seven bulls and seven rams.

David was clothed with the robe of fine linen, and also were all the Levites who were carrying the ark, and the singers, and Cananiah, the leader of the music of the singers, and David were a linen ephod.

So all Israel brought up the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord with shouting, to the sound of the horn, trumpets, and cymbals, and made loud music on harps and lyres.

And as the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord came to the city of David, Michael, the daughter of Saul, looked out of the window and saw King David dancing and celebrating, and she despised him in her heart.

CHAPTER sixteen And they brought in the ark of God and set it inside the tent that David had pitched for it, and they offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before God.

And when David had finished offering the burnt offerings and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord, and distributed to all Israel, both men and women, to each a loaf of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins.

I will insert here.

I like other types of cake, not cakes of raisins.

So don't get me a cake of raisins for my birthday.

But he gave them a cake of raisins.

Verse 4.

Then he appointed some of the Levites as ministers before the ark of the Lord to invoke, to thank, and to praise the Lord, the God of Israel.

Asaph was the chief, and second to him were Zachariah, Jael, Shemermoth, Jehiel, Medeth, Eliad, Benaniah, Obedidim, Jael, who were to play the harps and lyres.

Asaph was to sound the cymbals, and Benaniah and Jehaziel, the priests, were to blow trumpets before the Lord or before the Ark of the Covenant of God.

Then on that day, David first appointed that thanksgiving be sung to the Lord by Asaph and his brothers.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

So this is where we come into this story of David becoming a king for the first time.

And as his first act, what he does is he consults with his leaders and he makes really two important decisions.

First, call an assembly.

Let's bring in the people that have been scattered, bring the Levites back into the city.

But then, secondly, we got to go find that ark, the ark, and we got to bring it back into the center of Jerusalem.

And so they start to do that.

Um, they start to do that together.

Now, I'm gonna spare you some details for the sake of this particular sermon.

It doesn't always all go perfectly well, okay?

They went to go get the ark, they make some missteps because they carry it not on their shoulders as was prescribed in the law, but they carried it on a cart, a brand new technology called a cart.

And uh and it was awesome, except one of the guys ended up reaching out to touch the cart.

He encountered the holiness of God, he lost his life.

Anyways, what happened was they finally figured out how to honor God and bring his presence back into the center of the city, and and all of this really was a foreshadowing.

It was a foreshadowing.

Before Jesus came, the Ark of the Covenant, many of you guys know the Ark of the Covenant was the manifest presence of God on earth, and it was this the intermediate way for God to be with his people and at the center of his people, and that was the heartbeat of God from age from the beginning all the way to the end, that the heart of God was always to be at the center of his people, to be to dwell with man, to dwell in us as close as he possibly could get, to make his dwelling among us.

And and yet we read in the scripture that this ark that had been given to them to be at the center of the people had been forsaken, it had been forgotten, it had been pushed out.

Nobody knows when or how in the previous generation.

So, how did that happen?

How was the very ark that was given to the people of God to make them distinct among the nations and to mark them with his presence?

How had that been so pushed into the periphery of their existence?

Well, it says that this happened in the time of Saul, and maybe even before the time of Saul.

So if you backtrack, and this is just a little more context in history here, if you backtrack the sons of Eli, Hopni and Phineas, they had actually lost the ark.

It was them who had brought the ark into battle against the Philistines, assuming that the presence with them would guarantee the victory, but they were, they had been disobedient in the eyes of God.

And so the ark was actually captured by the Philistines.

It was no longer at the center of the nation of Israel, it was somewhere else, and they didn't even know where at this point in time.

And so when Saul, who was David's predecessor, became king, he was anointed as king, he did not prioritize the return of the ark to the center of the people.

What had happened was Saul became king, anointed by God, blessed, and Saul's posture was awesome, I've got it from here.

Here's where we're gonna go.

Never once did he think we need to get the Ark of God's presence back into us as the center of the city.

Saul had grown in power, popularity, favor.

He started to believe his own press.

He started to do what was right in his own eyes, to serve God, to try to even do what he thought God would want to do, but on his own terms without actually fully submitting to the will and the purposes of God.

And in doing so, he stopped fully obeying God.

The center for Saul, the center of his life and his leadership became his own name, legacy, fame, achievements.

And even though God was close, he was not in the center.

Do you guys hear this?

This is this is an important thing to see the difference between Saul and David.

David's life matters in contrast with Saul's life.

Saul came in and was blessed by God, and for him that was enough.

He didn't see it as necessary to make a habit of keeping God at the center.

How easy is it?

How easy is it for all of us to have an encounter and have an encounter with God, have an up-close and personal visitation with God Himself.

Even anointed, even blessed by Him into the work that we're called to do.

And then at some point on the journey say, Awesome God, I've got it from here.

I know exactly what we're gonna do.

That's what Paul, that's what Saul did.

And it all came to a head in one particular scene.

And I'm not gonna I'll just paraphrase this.

You can go read this.

This is in 1 Samuel chapter 15.

1 Samuel 15 · chapter mention

What happened was God had given instructions for Saul and the nation of Israel to go and overtake the Amalekites and actually destroy them fully.

And there's a lot more there that could be said there, but but part of the instructions was to not spare a single life and not even any livestocker animals.

And so what happened was Saul decided, or I'm sorry, yeah, Saul decided that he would preserve some of these animals, he would not follow through completely and obey God completely.

And so he they they attacked the Amalekites and they almost followed the instructions of God.

But what happened was they preserved some of the animals, and they didn't see this as an issue because they thought, oh, here's some animals that we can sacrifice to God.

And so Samuel the prophet, if you're familiar with Samuel, he's like the Gandalf in the story, right?

And he comes through and he comes up to Saul and he's like, What do I hear sheep in the background?

Do I hear the what am I hearing off in the distance?

And Saul's like, Oh, it's great.

We have all these animals that we spared to offer sacrifices to God.

And Samuel's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

That is not what he told you to do.

He told you, he told you to consume everything.

And Saul's like, well, I did.

I did, I did exactly what he did.

And Samuel's like, no, you did not.

You did not obey him.

And he he's he ends with like this really haunting phrase.

Don't you know that the Lord desires obedience, not sacrifice?

You think that you can just do more of one thing in your life, and that's gonna be pleasing to the heart of God?

That's not what he's looking for.

He's looking for obedience from you.

And here's here's what he said to Saul.

He said, He said, You when you were little in your own eyes, you were anointed as king.

He said, When you were anointed as king, it was a time when you were little in your own eyes, basically meaning what?

Now you have become so inflated and so larger than life in your own eyes, and you don't even see that that's not what the heart of God is attracted to.

You've become much meaning what you have become the your own center of gravity in your own life.

God is no longer at the center, you are at the center.

What was at the center for Paul was fame and achievement, and what we'd what we'd hear in in the first Samuel text, the fear of man, he did what the people wanted, not what God wanted.

But his center was completely replaced.

Saul had forsaken God at the center.

Are you guys with me?

So for you history buffs, you may have heard, you may have heard the story.

Um Nicholas Copernicus in 1543 is a scientist, and he published, um he published De Revolutionibus Orbium Colestium, which means on the revolutions of the heavenly spheres.

And in this uh in this writing, he basically proposed something revolutionary at the time in the 1500s that the sun, not the earth, was at the center of the universe.

Uh that the earth rotates daily on an axis and it orbits the sun annually.

And it looks a little bit like this, right?

This was the working picture of the world.

The earth is clearly at the center because everything is revolving around.

And so at first, when he proposed this alongside Galileo, it was considered a mathematical hypothesis.

It seemed like useful, but kind of more in the realm of theory, not necessarily reality.

A lot of the church leaders, even though these guys were Christians, a lot of the church leaders, there was openness initially, but they ran into some issues with how people were trying to line this up because there's these scriptures like Psalm 104, verse 5, the Lord sets the earth on its foundations, it can never be moved.

Psalms 104:5

Right?

And then in Joshua 10 talks about the sun standing still, right?

It's the sun standing still.

And so as they were proposing, like, no, like we don't think that this is how the universe actually works.

It was seen as completely heretical.

Like it took probably another hundred years for them to have any merit to what they were proposing.

So, in other words, Copernicus was the one who shows up into the center of power and says, Hey guys, we have the wrong thing at the center.

And when the wrong thing is at the center, everything goes out of whack.

This is why all of our math is not working.

Nothing is aligning because we have the wrong thing at the center.

We have the wrong thing at the center.

So Saul had, in the same way, lost the center.

What should have been the center was the word of the Lord, the presence of the Lord.

And yet what happened was the crowd came into the center.

Legacy came into the center, achievement came into the center, and everything was going out of whack.

How easy is it for us to lose our center in our lives?

Come on, you know.

You know.

And even for those of us who follow Jesus, right?

Even as Christians, it's so easy to lose our center.

How many of you are tired of hearing about Christian leaders who have lost their center?

Globally, men and women of God who, for some reason along the way, start to believe their own press, start to believe in their own name and fame, and start to do things in their own way, and things start to slip, things start to slide, things start to be brushed under the rug.

Why?

Because they're the basic things no longer matter.

They have enough momentum to carry God themselves.

And I don't say that as a they, as a rebuke.

This is something for me, this is something for all of us.

None of us are that far from losing our center.

I don't care how long you've been following God.

None of us are that far from losing our center.

The gravitational pull, we cannot underestimate the gravitational pull of success, of careerism, of the fear that operates so deeply in our life, as the as our desire for public approval.

Do you guys know how how seducing these forces are in our lives?

The gravitational pull all around us.

And we can settle for the illusion that God is near and yet walk in the reality that he's actually lost his place at the center of not just our Sunday morning life, but every single part of our life.

We can settle for yesterday's reality, our lived experience yesterday, without repositioning ourselves for today to say, God, I want you at the center.

See, for David, he knew that the heart of worship, this was the key to everything, the heart of worship, was organizing his entire life around the reality of the presence of the love of God.

It was the key not only to unlock blessing for the nation, but David believed this is the key for the whole.

And so this is why David, when he brings the ark and he says, this is what we're gonna do.

We're gonna go bring it back to Jerusalem.

It says we can't, we we we get the picture that he has a dance party on the way.

Do you guys catch that?

He has a dance party, not everybody likes it, right?

He's got some dad moves.

Who knows?

I mean, if I don't know if it was me, if people were like, you need to stop that right now.

That does that brings no glory to God.

It's like anti-worship.

Um David, it's like, he's like, let's get the ark back.

And he does, and he's just, he is so, he is, he is so given to this idea that we gotta get back in the center that he dances before the Lord.

And some of the passages say he's he's essentially naked, almost exposing himself.

His wife Michael says, Oh my gosh, whatever this scene right here is not working.

And he says, Listen, you know, you think this is bad?

He's like, I'll get even more undignified than this.

I uh I'm gonna go even harder.

This thing is gonna slap.

Like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna bring it.

And you haven't seen anything.

And so David has this kind of like he brings this madman kind of vibe to his worship.

It seems a little eccentric, and that word is probably the best word to use because the word eccentric actually means to live off-center.

How important is that our worship is actually eccentric, that when we worship and we organize our life around God, it should look a little eccentric because we're living our lives off-center, that God is in the center and we are not.

We are not the center of the universe, we're not the center of our story, which is why when we gather for communal worship, even and we sing and we sing, God, this is who you are.

Do you know how healing and how good that is for your brain and your heart and your soul to even gather once a week and say, I am not God.

Everything else in my life wants to tell me that I am the master of my own destiny.

And yet when we come and we gather and we sing songs to just remind us, no, no, there is one who has his own gravitational pull and orbit, and that person is not me.

And so that means that today I can actually rest a little bit from having to carry the weight of the world.

How many of you guys know you were not designed, you were not designed to be worshipped?

I know you're awesome, but you were not designed to be worshipped.

You can't handle the pressure, the weight of receiving adoration and praise.

Only he can handle that.

And so we get to organize our life around giving him the praise that he deserves.

And this is what David does.

He's like, I'm gonna get the ark back in.

And not only that, I'm gonna bankroll it myself, and I'm gonna hire musicians and artists and singers, and we're gonna start a non-stop party.

We're gonna sit, we're gonna start, we're gonna create an environment where we can organize the entire life of the nation around God at center.

Because he's worthy of being at center, and we're gonna declare his deeds among the people.

And so he knew that if we get God back at the center, everything is going to reorder around that.

The government, education, justice, everything starts to flow from that.

Because when we're filled, when when we when we bring God our full hearts, he entrusts us with his heart.

Let me say that again.

When we live a life and we bring God our full heart, what happens?

He entrusts us with his heart.

Which is why worship is at the center of living missional lives.

You cannot separate the two.

If you want to live for the sake of others, you better organize your life around something that is unshakable, where you have something to overflow into the very world in which you live.

Come on, somebody talk to me.

So the organizing principle of life is the presence of God, it's the center of our life.

And that this is just more of a side note.

It's a it makes it really funny when we have commentary after church, and certainly this is gonna happen today, and it happens every time, and we check it.

Hey, what'd you think about worship today?

And you know, um, oh man, I thought we're I got so much out of worship today.

You know, worship is so good, and it's like, who cares what you think about the worship?

What does he think about the worship?

Like, what does God think about the worship?

You're not why would your opinion about worship ever matter?

You're not the one being worshiped.

The question we should ask after church is, was God honored by what we brought him today?

That's the question we should be asking.

If the organizational principle is him at the center, then we always have to ask, what can we do differently to bring him more glory and to worship him?

It's always funny when we get like, oh, I'm actually I'm not gonna go into that.

I could get super passive aggressive.

I'm not gonna do that because I'm mature.

And I'm learning.

All of our lives, here's the thing this morning, guys, here's here's what to remember.

All of our lives, our lives are organized around something.

You have values.

There is something at the center of every life.

That's the thing with worship, it's it's never a matter of do you worship or not.

It's what or who do you worship.

This is for every human life.

Every human life is bringing value and organizing around something or someone, assigning worth to ideas or values.

So it's not if, but what is it?

And so and so there's times where we, like David, have to kind of take an inventory and just evaluate.

I'm like, okay, I don't want to just be on coast here.

I don't want to just go with the flow.

Sometimes we just need to re-evaluate the different parts of our life and say, when was the last time I just checked in with God and said, God, are you at the center of every part of my life?

And some of you are like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, yeah, God's at the center, of course.

That's like Christianity 101.

But is it?

Because Saul thought that too.

Saul's like, I'm blessed, man.

I'm good, I'm the guy, I'm the man for the job, I'm the first king.

Nobody else was the first king, I'm the first king.

I know what I know what God wants, I'll know what I'll do.

So we can get stuck in assumptions and we can get stuck in this is what worked in the past and this is what's going to work moving forward.

But from David, we see, no, no, no.

We need to check in with him and say, God, I want to issue a fresh set of invitations into maybe parts of my life that have moved on without you.

This is the heart of worship.

It's not about how loud you sing, how exuberant we are.

Those things are awesome.

But the heart of it is the heart of David saying, let's clear out the clutter and let's organize our life back around the maker of heaven and earth.

Okay.

So I'm gonna, here's what I want to do.

The worship team is gonna come up.

And I I want to just for today have a time of reflection.

Here's what I'll ask you to do in your chairs.

I'm gonna ask some some questions over around different parts of life.

And my invitation to you is just wherever you're at, just to kind of sit back in your chair, close your eyes.

And this will be a time to evaluate.

Now I'm gonna ask some questions, and then for some of you, the temptation is to immediately start judging yourself.

I'm like, oh man, I am so off in that area of my life.

I'm just gonna ask you to not do that.

So there might be a shame thing that comes in, but just don't do that, okay?

The invitation here is just to say, hey God, here's a few different areas of my life.

And I want to reinvite you and just understand maybe how I can best honor you in these areas, okay.

And if you are, just become aware of that.

I just want you to check in with yourself.

Have I invited God into this decision?

Have I asked him what he thinks or what he wants or even how to go about it?

Have I given him permission to rearrange my thoughts and my feelings and my actions?

I want you to think about your work.

Who is at the center of your work?

All of us have been given to work.

It's part of our God-given call to labor, to cultivate the earth, to faithfully labor in a way that brings his rule and his reign and everything that we touch, everything is sacred to God, including our work.

But I just want to ask you this question: Do you see your work as holy unto the Lord or simply a part of the grind?

When you get up tomorrow morning, do you see yourself going to a holy and sacred act?

Or this is simply what I do to make cash and pay bills.

Let me just ask you, what if before you started work tomorrow, what if you took a moment and you started your day consecrating it to the Lord?

And what I mean by consecrate is you become aware of all of the conversations, the emails, the text messages, the work of your hands, the work of your mind.

And you imagine doing it in the presence of God, and you offered it to Him and said, God, would you order my work today to bring you glory?

Now on this one, I've been the last several weeks been more diligent to do this even before I start.

I I'm tempted to say, God, I'm doing all of these good things for you.

I'm a pastor, I'm doing ministry, right?

But I've I've been pausing before I even start a day and say, God, here's what I think is gonna happen today.

But I want to invite you into this, that the work of my hands would be blessed, and that you would reorder my day around how you want me to bring life into the work you've called me to do.

Just imagine what that could be like if you consecrated your work to the Lord.

Let's change categories for a second.

What about your finances?

When you check your bank accounts, your investments?

How quick are you to invite God into that with you?

How quick are you to become very afraid when you see dwindling numbers?

How quick are you to offer gratitude when you see provision?

When you think about the finances and provision in your life, when's the last time you said, God, I want to order all of this around your desires?

Would you help me to do that?

Are you honored in the way that I spend or save or invest?

And if not, would you show me what needs to be redirected?

That's part of consecrating even our finances, our provision back to the Lord, saying, This is, I am not the owner, I am the steward.

You are the one, you are the provider, and I'm the one who is just a servant.

I'm a steward of what you've given to me.

Would you show me how to become the center of that?

Here's a fun one.

Just think about your recreation or your vacations or your play.

Is God the center of your play?

See, in our culture, we tend to vacate.

We work, work, work, work, work, and then we vacate.

Let's just take me to an empty void.

I get to think about nothing for seven days.

Well, that's not really a biblical principle.

Because God wants to be a part of our play as well and our recreation.

When's the last time you've invited God into your rest and your leisure as an act of worship?

And say, God, would you show me what I've missed?

Would you speak again to my heart?

And would you restore me in a way that a beach can't restore me?

Maybe consecrate your play back to God so that it's not empty, but it's full, full of his presence.

Think about your relationships, your families, the God, the center of your home.

And this is one where maybe it hits closest to home.

As you think about the conversations or attitudes or postures, I'm thinking about my own.

I'm like, oh God, we need your grace and mercy here.

But what if God became the center of our homes and we consecrated ourselves back to Him and even the very homes?

There's this really beautiful passage of when the Ark of God was on the way back to Jerusalem that parked for a bit of time in the house of Obed Edom.

And it said, within that time, his whole household was blessed.

See, when the presence of God comes into our home, it blesses our relationships, it blesses intimacy, it blesses friendship.

Because our lives are rightly ordered around him.

So as I mentioned those several different areas of life, decisions, work, finances, vacations, households, maybe there's one area that sticks out to you.

I know it's hard to kind of walk away from a sermon and think about all of those things all at once.

I just want you to think, just wherever you're at right now, maybe there's one area, maybe it's your finances.

And you're like, God, I just I just want to know that they're, whether I have a lot or a little, that they're consecrated to you.

Maybe it's your work, maybe you hate your job, or you're waiting on God for a new job, or you're just you're just you feel stuck.

What would it look like to consecrate the work that you do have back to Him?

And to say, God, I just want to, I just want to bring this back to him, I want to bring you back to the center of this area of my life.

So just maybe think about the one place, the one area in your life out of all those things.

And when you have that, I just want you, us together, to just pray a simple prayer of invitation.

That's really what this is.

It's a prayer of invitation.

So when David brought the ark back into the city of God, it was just, it it just he just invited God back into the let's go find the ark, let's invite God back to the center.

It just really starts there.

God, I want to invite you back.

So just wherever you're at right now.

And if that's your prayer, if your earnest desire is like, God, I've tried to do this on my own and my own good ideas, but I want you to be the center again.

Maybe an area where God is asking for obedience and you're giving him more of something else, but not actually obedience.

He's asking you to give up a certain habit or a part of something he's been telling you for a while, and you're like, no.

I'm just gonna go read my Bible more.

He's like, I didn't ask you to read your Bible more.

I asked you to give up that part of my life.

And you've been running for that.

If that's it, I just pray a simple prayer of invitation today.

Just give you a second to say, God, I invite you in.

I invite you in.

I want you to be the center.

Help me see where I've settled and where what I've avoided.

And help me see where you're intending to bring the blessing in this part of my life.

The good news is this Jesus wants to be the center because he wants us to be close.

He wants to be so close.

He loves you.

He loves us.

So the heart here this morning is about what God deserves and giving him what he's worth, but it's also his desire to come near because he loves you.

And he loves every part of your life.

And he wants to be at the center because he wants to bring you his thoughts and his desires.

And he wants to show you what's possible when he's at the center.

Amen.

Let's just sing this one more time.

Worthy is your name.

Let's stand together.

And this morning, as we have a we prayed a prayer of invitation.

Now let's just take a moment and sing of God's worth together before we get out of here.

So let's do this.

You're worthy, God.

You're worthy of our best, our highest.

And we thank you that we can entrust ourselves to you, God.

We thank you that you're good, that your mercy and goodness follow us all the days of our life.

And we thank you, God, what a joy it is to give ourselves to you and surrender ourselves to you.

And I just pray, even now, this morning, as we ask these questions, as we as we shore up, God, areas of our life that have been a little off centered.

God, I thank you that you want to show us what it looks like to align with you.

And I just pray, God, as we journey through this series on worship, as we call ourselves back to the heart of worship, Lord God, we thank you that our lives will be holy and acceptable to you.

We want to give everything to you, Jesus.

We bless you.

Come on, somebody bless the name of the Lord Jesus this morning.

We bless you, God.

We bless you, God.

So this morning, here's what we'll do.

Our prayer and ministry team is gonna be up front, um, probably a couple on each side.

Maybe some of you, you've never actually made God the center of your life here.

That's just a new thing to you.

You're like, I I it's not just one part of my life.

I've never actually like I've always been the master of my own life.

Listen, I'm telling you, give yourself to Jesus, give your heart to Jesus and see what happens.

And I want to invite you, if that's a prayer that you want to pray to after the service, come up forward.

Just receive prayer from one of our team.

We'd love to pray with you what that what that looks like to make God the center of our the center of our being.

There's nothing like it.

Uh, some of you though, maybe you're just here and you need an extra dose of prayer in another part of your life.

I just want to invite you to come forward as well, whether it's prayer for healing or prayer for any certain part of your life that you're like, I just need to hear from God.

We don't we want to be with you in that so you can come forward as we end, okay?

And I want to pray one blessing over you before we officially leave.

And so just around the room, just put your hands out in front of you.

I want to bless you in your coming and your going.

The all of it is worship unto God.

So may the Lord bless you and keep you.

May He make His face to shine upon you.

May He be gracious to you, lift His countenance upon you, and give you rest.

Amen.

Amen.

Come on, thank you, Jesus.

Alright, go in peace.

Love you guys.

We love you.

Have an awesome Labor Day weekend.