How to CHURCH // Called to Prayer & Worship

Welcome to the Movement Church Podcast. We want you to know that God is

for you, and so are we. You're about to hear a sermon from

one of our weekend services in Palmer Lake, Colorado. We pray that your

faith is provoked, your mind is renewed, and your heart is awakened as

you engage the Word of God. Stay tuned after the message for ways to

get connected with us. God bless you. Thanks for tuning in. All

right, Okay, good morning everybody. So we are finishing the how to

Church Sermons series. How many of you are excited to move on from the

how to Church series? That's yeah, that's that wasn't the right answer that.

I appreciate your honesty. We can be real in this church. It's

okay, Martha, I appreciate that. So you guys feel like you got

this thing licked. You got to figure out, you know, how to

be a church. We got this thing totally figured out, right, everybody

good? No, okay, still working on it. We've been working in

this series. If you're just joining us, We've been working in this series

on how to reclaim the high ground of this weighty word church because for a

lot of people, the word church cannotes all kinds of positive emotions like identity

and purpose and mission, and for other people, it connotes all kinds of

negative emotions like rejection and loss of agency in a sense of I don't belong

here. There's a weight to this word. And so we've been trying,

since we're pretty new as a church, we've been trying to define what we

mean when we say the word church and what it is that we do.

We're trying to use the word church as a verb. So we've been talking

about our identity, our boundaries, our disciplines, and our practices together and

they matter a great deal to God. And the words I want you to

pay attention to on this particular side is the word hour and together. Because

again, this isn't a series about how to Christian. This isn't a series

about how each of us individually reconciles our faith in Jesus. It's about how

we collectively live out our faith in Jesus together. There's a very famous verse

in Second Chronicles that says this. It says, if my people who are

called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face, and turn

from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will

forgive their sin, and I will heal their land. Notice that when the

land was sick, when the sin was great, one person couldn't change anything.

It took a collective group of people. If my people plural, if

all of us together will do this. There's one major takeaway that I would

want for you to remember for the rest of your life about this particular series.

It's this idea here that we are God's Plan A, and he doesn't

have a plan B, his Plan A to do what his Plan A to

advance the Kingdom of God. Now here's what I want you to notice.

You are not God's Plan A. You on your own are not God's Plan

A. We together are God's Plan A. And so the underlying truth behind

this series is something that is a little cliche, but I think it's incredibly

true, and it's this that we are better together. We're better together.

Do you believe that? Do you guys believe that we're better together? You

really believe that? Tell the person next to you life is better with you.

Come on, tell him life is better with you. The other person

that you didn't want to talk to, you can tell him I'll give you

a shot. Just tell him, I'll give you a shot. We'll try

to do this thing together. We are better together. But you know what

else, we're also a little slower together. I don't know if you've noticed

that, but if you ever tried to walk in a crowd with a crowd

of people, if you were just on your own, you could get there

faster. Right, we're a little slower together. This is like the difference

between a vacation and a family trip, right, you know the difference.

Disney World is a family trip, It's not a vacation. Okay, we're

at war against Disney, and we will win. Is a family trip?

A vacation is like Dana and I are celebrating our twenty fifth anniversary this summer.

That's right, bless her, she's amazing. So we're going to Hawaii

together and know the kids are not coming because it's a vacation and not a

family trip. Right, But we're a little slower together. And I have

a sign in my office at home that I had made for me. It's

from an African proverb and it says this. It says, if you want

to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far go

together. That's the idea of being better together. We are better together,

but we also experience a little more pain together than we would on our own.

We have a little harder time, it's a little harder to get things

done together than it is on our own. But I want you to think

of it this way. Some things are really good on their own, and

some things when they're joined with just one other item, they become much better.

For example, oreos and milk much better together in my opinion, unless

you're lactose intolerant, and I can't help you. Peanut butter and jelly,

right, Elvis, they say died with a peanut butter, jelly, and

banana sandwich in his hand when he died. I think that was one element

too many. I think that's probably what cost him. But then I like

mac and I like cheese, but I love mac and cheese together right.

And at our house, I love Tuesdays and tacos. Every week I cook

tacos taco Tuesday. That's that's what we do. And so Tuesdays and Taco's

last night. The Los Angeles Lakers found out that there are two things that

are better together, and that is Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray come on.

In the spirit of the Nuggets, we say amen. And I can tell

you I don't know if you ever heard of this band, but there's a

band that's much better together than a part in That band is called Fike and

Dana. I don't know if you know that band. They're very fun band,

and I promise you they are much better together than they are either of

us separate, although I think Dana could be solow and you guys would all

love it. There's a reason we don't have feast with the fight. There's

a reason we don't do that because if you've ever had feasts with the fights,

you know that she was the best part of that whole experience. Right.

We are some things that are just better together. And for the church,

there are two practices that we're called to that are wonderful on their own,

but they're better together. They're better together. These are beneficial, meaningful,

very important values. Now I just want to I want to pick a

bone with some of you people by the way, yesterday, as I always

do on Saturdays. If you're on my text chain, you got the text

yesterday that said we are going to cover one more thing. What do you

think it is? Do you know how many people responded to me yesterday?

Two? Two people responded to me yesterday. Okay, come on, tes

task, let's come on. When I asked you a question over text,

I'm looking for sermon fodder. I need you for this. Okay, So

none of you answered, So I'll just tell you what the answer is.

These are two items that we are called to individually, but they're better when

we do them together. And these are those prayer and worship. The last

thing that we're going to talk about in this is How to Church series is

that we are called to pray and to worship keyword together together. Prayer is

a very very powerful thing. It's a very important part of the Christian experience.

Prayer is our lifeline. It's our communication line with the Lord. We

have some amazing prayer warriors in our church. Some of you are in the

room now. Steve White leads over our prayer ministry, and I'll just put

in a plug for the prayer team since I have the mic. If you

are a man and you like to pray, Steve needs you on his team.

Because Steve is surrounded by how many five six women? Is that right,

that love to pray, and Steve's like the only man in the room

and we need to kind of counterbalance a little bit of that estrogen. Okay,

so we need some men who will join Steve's prayer team and pray with

him. He said, Amen, that's right. That's the loudest you've ever

said, Amen, Steve. That was amazing. Prayer is powerful and meaningful,

But for a lot of people, I think prayer can be confusing.

What is prayer? Is it that if whatever I ask the Lord to do,

he is going to do for me? Well what if he doesn't?

What if I ask him to do something for me and he doesn't. Prayer

is when an individual honors and esteem's God. It's when an individual canfesses their

sin and turns their heart towards God's face. We call upon the Lord and

we request his help. I preached a sermon a few years back called what

Prayer Isn't? And I'm going to post it later today as kind of a

flashback sermon, So go check that out, what prayer Isn't? And I

think that's really powerful. But prayer very simply in a simplest form. It's

just a conversation between a human being and a holy God. By the way,

prayer is not supposed to be a monologue. Prayer is not supposed to

be me saying all the things to God and then hanging up. Prayer is

supposed to be an interaction where we commune with God and He communes with us.

And part of communing is communicating, and so the Lord communes with us.

Prayer is amazing because of what Jesus did for us on the cross,

when he took on our sin. He took all of our sin, all

of the blame, all of the shame. Because of what he did for

us, he is now in heaven. The Bible says that he is seated

in heaven and he is our high priest. So we pray to Jesus.

He speaks those prayers to God for us. That's what he's doing all the

time. Jesus is up there making sure that God hears our request. But

that's not all it is. It's not just an individual lifeline. In fact,

the New Testament writers, when they wrote about prayer, it was almost

always plural. Look at this. In Hebrews, it says, let us

then, with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may

receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. See, we're

Americans, and Americans are Western thinkers. Western thinkers tend to individualize everything.

Everything is about me, my dream, my hope, my purpose, me.

Everything is very me central and Western thinking, Eastern thinking, where we

get the Bible from, is very plural, very communal. I can't really

define myself apart from my community. That's the way that they thought. And

so here's the point. Your prayers were never intended to be divorced from your

community. Your prayers are intended to be voiced amongst your people. Everyone should

know what's going on with you. Everyone should know how to pray with and

for you. That's the idea. There's all kinds of teaching, and we've

covered some of this in the How to Church series about the Body of Christ.

The idea that each of us plays a part. None of us would

ever imagine seeing like a spleen on its own, or a big toe,

even if it had a smiley face on it. None of us would imagine

seeing one of those things on its own. It's got to be connected,

and so should our prayer life. Our prayers should be connected. Jesus had

a lot to say about this. When the religious leaders of his day confronted

him and asked him this question, what is the most important commandment? Jesus

could have just said the most important thing to do is to love God,

but that's not what he said. Look at this. He says, love

the Lord, your God, individual, with all your heart, with all

your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. But the

second one is this, love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commitment

greater than these. He was asked an individual question, and he gave a

plural answer. Do you see that? When the disciples noticed that Jesus would

often tuck himself away and go spend time with the Father, they realized,

we don't know how to do what you're doing, so they asked him.

They said, teach us how to pray. Do you remember Jesus answer when

they said teach us how to pray? Of course you do, because many

people have memorized his answer. It's the Lord's prayer, right, he said,

pray like this? And how does he start it? Our father?

Why didn't he start it, my father? Because your prayers were never supposed

to be divorced from your community, He says, our father, individual question,

plural answer. And then he went on to say, by the way,

here's why it's so powerful that you pray together, Because when two or

three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. The presence

of God is here with us when we can join in union in the name

of Jesus. When Jesus cleared the temple with that bullwhip, he ransacked the

temple. What did he say about the Lord's house? He said, my

father's house will be a house of prayer, but you've made it into a

din of robbers. In fact, the longest prayer that Jesus ever prayed is

in John chapter seventeen. It's like pages long in your Bible if you've ever

read it. And it's a prayer all about unity, all about togetherness,

all about the idea that we would be joined together. In fact, Jesus

didn't just pray for his decide poles to stay connected. He prayed for the

movement Church. Did you know that Jesus in John chapter seventeen prayed for the

movement Church. That what it says here, this is John seventeen, verse

twenty. It says, I do not ask for these only. I'm not

asking only for these twelve knuckleheads, but also for those who will believe in

me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you

Father are in me and I in you, that they also may be in

us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. So

you can kind of see this individual in the collective. You were never meant

to be a little big toe living on your own. You were meant to

be connected. The key word to this whole thing is together. We are

called to pray together. I preached a sermon earlier this year called the Divine

Preposition. Do you remember this? The divine Preposition? The idea was that

God's favorite preposition is the word with that He loves to be with you,

with me, and with us, and he loves for us to be with

one another. So how do we practice this idea of praying together at the

Movement Church A couple of ways. We have men's and women's move groups.

In fact, there's a whole group of teenage girls that are getting together.

It's being led by McKenzie Rudder and Hannah and so it's so amazing to see

that these teenagers are coming together, reading the Word together, praying together.

We men get together Monday lunch and then we have another group Wednesday morning,

super early six thirty am. And a big part of that process is that

after we've talked through the Word, we split up and we pray with each

other and we pray for real with each other. It's powerful and ideally,

if you're in a growth group, ideally you're praying with and for one another.

That's the idea that we're in community together. I just want to give

one quick little plug for our prayer line. If you don't know this,

this phone number totally free. You can text this number seven one nine eight

hundred seven seven two nine or pray seven one nine eight hundred pray. It's

clever, isn't it. And you can text that number and you can be

as anonymous as you want to be. We won't know who you are unless

you tell us. But tell us, tell us who you are, tell

us what's going on with you. Let our people, our prayer team would

love to pray so much more than they're praying. They would love to have

so much more to pray for. Even if you think it's small and petty

and ridiculous, you're like, I got this meeting today at ten am and

it's kind of stressing me out. Nobody really cares about that. No,

no, no, we care. We want to pray for you. And

really, what Steve's working hard to do is to figure out a way to

make it more incorporative so that he can speak back to you the prayers that

his team is actually praying for you. So come on, take advantage of

this thing. We're only getting four and five of these texts, like a

week. I'd love to see thirty and four need in fifty text a day

of you saying here's what's going on with me because our team would love to

pray for you. Can I hear an amen? Today? All right?

Take advantage of that. Okay, So we're called to pray together, and

we're called to worship together. We're called to worship together, and we're gonna

talk about worship for a little bit. Worship is obviously a crucial element of

the Christian faith. It's massively important. It's something that each of us must

practice on our own. You need to be worshiping Monday through Saturday. Do

you know that you don't need to just wait till Sunday morning, three songs.

I hope I like the songs right. You don't need to just wait

till Sunday morning to worship. You need individually to be worshiping the Lord.

Because in prayer we tend to gravitate towards our needs and our fears and our

hopes and our requests. But in worship, what we do is we give

our and our attention, our devotion to the Lord. We take our minds

off of us and we put our attention on to God. And that is

something I promise you that you need to do and that we need to do

together. Louis Iaglio said this. He said, if the finished work of

Jesus was intended to put our flesh to death, then the practice of worship

both feeds our faith and starves our selfishness. The practice of worship feeds our

faith and starves our selfishness. I love that. I know you guys know

that I'm somewhat of an expert when it comes to worship. I know that

that's what you think. Probably I was a worship pastor for twenty two years.

I stood on a stage excited or what I did this morning, and

I looked out at face it I don't know why you came. Like your

face is giving nothing. Your face is telling me I was told to be

here, and I really don't want to. Like I mean, it's like

it's hard as a worship leader to look out at some of the faces in

the room. And it's why most worship leaders close their eyes throughout the entire

worship set because they don't want to look at you not participating. Okay,

but I'm somewhat of a worship exdeed to worship time. But I'll tell you

that on the stage, not just to worship in the crowd, but to

worship on my own. I start every day with a little worship playlist that

I listen to for about thirty forty five minutes before I do anything else.

I just want to get my attention on Jesus every day. I want to

be reminded of who I am and of whose I am. And that's really

a phrase. Look at this phrase and just think about this phrase for a

moment. That God commands us to worship him. Have you ever thought about

that? That God commands his people to worship him? Now, what if

I did that? If I commanded you to worship me. How would you

feel about me? Right, you'd be like, I'm out. What if

you commanded your spouse to worship you? Right? That's right? Good luck

with that is the right answer. That's right. Jesus commands God commands us

to worship him. Let's talk about that. First of all, let me

show you where. I'll give you a few instances and exodus. It says

this, you must worship no other gods. For the Lord, whose very

name is jealous, is a god who is jealous about his relationship with you.

Important concept that God is not jealous of you. He's jealous for you.

He wants time with you, concentrated time with you. The psalms are

great resources for this. The psalmist says, Come, let us sing to

the Lord. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let

us come to him with thanksgiving. Let us sing psalms of praise to him.

For the Lord is a great God, a great king above all gods.

He holds in his hands the depths of the earth and the mightiest mountains.

The sea belongs to him, for he made it. His hands formed

the dry land too. So come, let us worship and bow down,

Let us kneel before the Lord, our God, our Maker. I love

how direct this is. In First Chronicles, it just says, give to

the Lord the glory he deserves. Bring your offering, and come into his

presence. Worship the Lord in all his holy splendor. We are commanded to

worship God? Why why are we commanded to worship God? Why does he

want us to worship him? Why would I want you to worship me?

First of all, I don't, honestly I don't. But why does God

want for us to worship him? Does he need our worship? Is God

insecure? Is he unstable? Is he thirsty? Is he desirous of praise?

Can't exist without it? Listen to what the apostle Paul says about our

God. This is powerful. This is In Acts chapter seventeen, he says

that he is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since

he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn't live in man made temples,

and human hands can't serve his needs, for he has no needs.

He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need.

You've probably heard me say before that God doesn't need anything from you. But

that he only wants good for you. Right, he doesn't need anything from

you, He only wants good for you. There, it is right there.

He has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything.

He satisfies every need. So, no, God doesn't need our worship,

but we need to worship him. Has a huge part of our souls that

are desperate for the worst of the One True God. It's how we're made,

it's how we're designed. There's a part of us that's constantly looking for

worship, all constantly looking for an object of affection. Because every one of

us is a worshiper, Every single one of us in the room is a

worshiper. We give our adoration, our affection, our attention, our praise

to something that we value. Every one of us does that, whether it

be you know, our favorite sports team or our favorite reality TV stars the

games are big stars in Waco, Texas, or you know this week,

how many Swifties do we have in the house? Any Swifties here? Nobody

will admit to being a swiftyet. I know that there are some Swifties,

but maybe we have some secret closet Swifties. This is a big week for

you. You got a new Taylor Swift record. Taylor Swift fans worship Taylor

Swift. Sorry to say it, the Swifties are all in on who she

is. Maybe it's a nature maybe you just love being in nature, or

maybe you really love your tragger grill and you just stand there and worship over

that slow cooked meat. You just worship it. Everybody you talk to you

can't wait to tell them about your tragger grill and tell him everything you know

about it. Right, every one of us is a worshiper. We can't

help it. We're looking for something to uplift, something to uphold. We're

looking for something to champion, something to celebrate, something to give our hearts

too. It's how we're designed, it's how we're built. And God is

watching us. He sees where we put our affection, he sees where we

put our attention, and he knows something that we don't know, and that

is that every single substitute for the real thing, every single substitute for the

living God, will eventually fail us and let us down and break our hearts.

Even that trigger grin is going to fail you one day, that thing

that you've given all of your attention and affection to it's going to fail you.

God knows it. He knows it. He also knows that he never

will. That was an Amen moment. Just in case you're wondering, that

was an Amen moment. God commands us to worship him. He commands us

to worship him not for his sake, but for our sake, because we

need to worship the one God who will never let us down. And his

name is Jesus. So I want to just kind of spell out for you,

just in brief. I want to spell out for you kind of the

culture that we're trying to build at the Movement Church, the worship culture that

we're trying to build. And so we're going to call this the ABC's of

a worship culture, the ABC's of a worship culture. So the first thing

that our worship together should look like is it should be authentic. Our worship

must be authentic. What does authentic mean? I mean's genuine, real,

not contrived, honest and biblically sound authentic. One of the things I love

about Phoebe's generation, about Emma's generation, about Hannah's generation, the gen Z

generation has such a huge radar for fake true or false? Is that true

or false? You agree with that emma? Like, if you experience something

that is in any way contrived or artificial, you are out like You're like,

I have no stomach for this, I'm not interested in this at all.

Right, that's exactly like God. God has no interest in inauthentic worship.

He has no interest in dutiful worship. The best definition I've ever heard

of the word worship, I think it's just the clearest and simplest way to

think about it, is this man's response to God's revelation. So when God

says peekaboo and we get a glimpse of him, however, you are sort

of drawn to respond to that, that's worship. That's what it looks like.

Whatever your authentic expression, your authentic response to God's presence is worship.

In fact, John would say this later after he thought about this whole Jesus

thing. He's thinking about love and how much he loved God, how much

he loved Jesus, And he said this, we love because He first loved

us. None of us in this room, no Christian on the face of

the earth ever, just decided whether he loves me or not. I've decided

I'm going to love God. Every one of us decided to love God because

He first loved us. So God acts and we react. That's worship.

In the Book of Isaiah, there's this incredible moment in chapter six where the

prophet Isaiah walks into the throne room of Heaven and he sees God exalted on

a high throne, and the train of his robe fills the temple, and

there's these two six, six winged angels on either side of the throne,

and with two hands they're flying, and with the other two they're covering their

face, other to their feet, and they're just speaking back and forth to

one another. And this is what they say, Holy, Holy, Holy,

is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is filled with his glory.

The other angel hears that, and he says, Holy, Holy,

Holy, is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is filled with His

glory for eternity. They never can get enough of how amazing God is.

Isaiah sees this, he experiences this, and it says in the Book of

Isaiah that his response to that moment is this, whoa not like Keanu reeves

like whoa not? That? Like whoa? Whoa? Unto me. I'm

a man of unclean lips, live in a land of unclean lips. In

the presence of a holy God, Isaiah is immediately aware of his humanity,

of his sinfulness. That's how he responded beautiful. There's a moment in Luke's

gospel where a woman they actually call her a sinful woman. A woman sees

Jesus, experiences him and breaks an alabaster jar of perfume worth what they say,

is about a year's wages. She breaks it and she pours it out

on Jesus's feet, and she begins to wash his feet with her tears.

That's how moved she is by the presence of God. There are some religious

people in the room who are nonplussed about the situation. In fact, they

are judging it. They believe that Jesus is doing the wrong thing, that

accepting this woman's adoration, and so they have these negative thoughts, and Jesus

confronts them about the way they're thinking about this. Look at this. In

verse forty four of Luke seven, it says Jesus turned to the woman and

said, Simon, this is fascinating. He's looking at the woman and he's

speaking to Simon. Can you see that moment? He's looking at her,

but he's speaking to him. He turned to the woman and said to Simon,

look at this woman kneeling here. When I entered your home. You

didn't offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has

washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You didn't greet

me with a kiss, but from the time I first came in, she

has not stopped kissing my feet. You neglected the courtesy of olive oil to

anoint my head, but she has anointed my feet with rare perfume. And

I love this verse. It's Luke seven forty seven, and I love it

at seven forty seven because it's such a huge idea. Listen to this,

I tell you her and they are many. They've been forgiven. So she

has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only

a little love. This is powerful. She gives an authentic response to the

revelation of a holy God. That's what worship is. Worship is man's authentic

response to God's revelation. Sorry, my SERI is like recording everything I'm saying

for some reason, And it's like filling up half my screen. There,

I got rid of it. Okay. Worship is man's authentic response to God's

revelation theory. If you want to learn about worship, I'm happy that you're

listening. God doesn't want us to put on a show for him. God

doesn't want for you to perform your worship. Worship has become kind of a

category of music lately. I don't know if you've noticed that. It's literally

like a genre of music, and people are becoming famous for being really good

at leading worship, for being really good at writing worship songs. I was

a part of that. I still am a part of that industry, and

I still think it's kind of gross. I'll never forget when we were nominated

for a double Award for the song We Believe. Everybody that day kept telling

us because we had won an award a month before. Everybody kept telling us

that we were going to win the award. We were going to win Song

of the Year for We Believe. And so I'm sitting next to Travis Ryan,

the other guy who wrote it with me, and I had made a

plan. My plan was that when we won, I was going to go

up on the stage in front of everyone and say, I want to thank

everyone forgiving us this award because in case you didn't realize it, just want

to make it super clear. And this award does that that of all the

songs that were written this year that brought God glory, our song brought the

most glory to God of all the songs. And so it's a good thing

that your awarded to us for that because I know you guys all tried really

hard, but we did the very best job of giving glory to God.

I keep trying, but this award says that we did the best, you

know. And I wanted to do that really just to kind of like see

if anyone would laugh, to see if it would be great if they would

applaud. I was trying to kind of I wanted to point at the problem

to say, we should not be celebrating people for doing what we're all supposed

to be doing. Right. Lauren Diego won the award. I didn't get

a chance to give the speech, but but think of it this way.

There's a lot of ways for people to eat an Oreo cookie. Did you

know that there are? In fact, I looked it up over one thousand

different ways that you can eat an oreo cookie. For example, you might

be the kind of person with an oreo cookie that you'd like to be a

deconstructionist. This didn't start with Christians, It started with oreos. We deconstruct

the oreo. And maybe you like to lick the icing, supergross. Don't

do that or bite the icing off. You ever seen people do that?

Or just like a Neanderthal, put the whole thing in your mouth with no

milk or anything like. That's just awful, Like you should have done something

with that. This is the right way to eat an oreo cookie. Come

on, somebody, I'm sorry if you're lactose intolerant, that's the way to

eat an oreo cookie, because that's the Christian way because because you're baptizing the

cookie in the milk, that's the proper way that this cookie has been transformed.

And now he wants to make a public declaration by being baptized in the

milk. Right, anyway, eat your oreo cookie however you like. But

did you know that in your Bible there are nine acceptable forms of worship?

Did you know that there are nine biblically acceptable forms of worship? Three with

your body, three with your mouth, and three with your hands. Okay,

so let's see if you can get them. You guys want to guess?

Can we just just throw them out at me? What are some ways

I'll tell if you're right? Dances one, lifting your hands is one.

Yes, shout is good. Singing, kneeling, bowing, yes, clapping,

that's six. What it's like lifting, same thing. Let's see one

more thing you can do with your body that I'm doing right now, standing

in awe. Yeah, let's see which one did you? Did you guys

get dancing? Did someone say dancing? Let's see? Oh? One more

with your hands? We can clap right, yes, now there's one more

with our hands. I'll show you all these here. Here's the body.

Uh. The Bible says, dance before the Lord, stand in awe before

the Lord. You can kneel or bow before the Lord, alive prostrate.

I almost always say prostate, And that's wrong. Don't do that with your

mouth. Uh. Singing, shouting, speaking, and with your hands,

lifting your hands, clapping your hands and playing an instrument is also an acceptable

form of worship in your Bible. Now here's what's cool. You can do

all nine of those. You can do them all right, Now you say,

but fight, I don't play an instrument. I don't play an instrument

at all. Okay, Well, let's talk about that. There are three

categories. I feel like my game show host today. There are three categories

of musical instrumentation. Here's what they are, wind, stringed, and percussive.

That's the three forms of instrumentation that are available to all of us to

play. Now, let's talk about a wind instrument, because I know you're

saying, right, I don't play any of those. Okay, let's talk

about a wind instrument. How does a wind instrument work. It works through

the breath in our lungs, pushing through the instrument and making notes at certain

different frequencies. Right, and what is inside of each and every one of

us, the breath in our lungs. Your voice is a singing instrument.

It is a wind instrument. It doesn't work, in fact, unless you

push air from your belly, through your lungs out your mouth. That's how

it works. When we teach people how to sing, and we do singing

lessons, we often lay them on the floor flat and we put a book

on their belly and we say breathe deep and if the book doesn't go up,

they're not breathing right, Because you want to fill up your belly,

no matter how much of it you have. You want to fill up your

belly with breath and then push from that to get the sound that makes sing.

Your body is a wind instrument. How about strings? A stringed instrument?

Behind your throat right here are two vocal what chords what's another word for

chord? String? Behind your throat are two strings that create vibration. No,

two singers are exactly the same because of the combination of the breath and

their lungs and the vibration of those two strings, those vocal cords. Your

body is a stringed instrument. And what about percussion, Well, every single

one of us knows the song right, so when we put our hands together

and makes the sound, you can do it with me. Come on,

there you go. Your body is a percussive instrument. That's how it works.

You were made to worship God. Your body is an instrument of praise

and it was made to be that way. Somebody praise God for that,

and then incredible and then amazing. You can do all nine of those forms

with your body, with your mouth, with your hands. Now, there

is one other form of worship that many people, as a worship pastor,

that I look out on the stage and see many people claim to be doing.

And here's what it is. People that say, worship the Lord in

my heart. I worship the Lord in my heart. That's why I don't

sing, That's why I don't clap, That's why I don't lift my hands.

I worship the Lord in my heart. Here's the problem. Nowhere in

your Bible does that phrase exist. You will never find worship the Lord in

your heart. You'll find worship the Lord favorite preposition with your heart. In

fact, you'll find worship the Lord with all your heart, all your soul,

all your mind, all your body, all your strength. If you

are doing this thing where this picture corrects me up, where you've got tape

over your mouth because you're not going to sing, you're not going to participate.

What you're doing is you are meditating. And there's nothing wrong with meditation.

Meditation is awesome. I think you should meditate before the Lord, spend

quiet time before the Lord. That's awesome. Just don't do it here while

we're all worshiping together. Let's participate worship together. Can I hearing Amen,

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all

your mind, all your strength. That is powerful. So the first part

of our worship is it must be authentic. The second part is that our

worship must be balanced. It must be balanced. Here's what I mean by

balance. In the West American thinking, we're very linear, we're very this

or that. We're very either or it's how we think about everything black or

white. There's no in between. But in the East, the way they

think is very both. And there are several concepts in the New Testament in

particular that give us this picture. For example, faith and works. The

Bible says that we are saved by grace through faith alone. Right, it's

not about what you do. But then it says that faith without works is

dead. So we need both faith and works. Right, It's not either

or, it's both. End The Bible says that God is a just God,

that any punishment, any discipline he levies out is righteous. It also

says that he's merciful, that he's rich in love, abounding in mercy.

So it's not either or, it's both and and probably as a worship guy,

the most famous, the most important tension for us to manage the most

important both and happens in the Gospel of John where Jesus has a conversation with

what we call the woman at the Well. That's a powerful moment. Jesus

is walking with his guys from Judea to Samaria, actually to Galilee, and

they stop in Samaria. And you know, the idea here is that this

Samaritan woman. All Samaritan people were sort of persona non grata. They weren't

friends, they weren't connected, they didn't commune. They just kind of thought

lowly of the Samaritans. In fact, that parable the good Samaritan was supposed

to be ironic, because in their minds there's no such thing as a good

Samaritan. That's where it came from. So this tension exists in this conversation.

Jesus walks up to this woman at this well and says, hey,

can I have a drink of water? And she is taken aback by this

because she knows immediately that this man is Jewish and they should not be talking.

Look what she says. She says, you're a Jew and I'm a

Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink. Jesus replied,

if you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking

to, you would ask me and I would give you living water. This

woman's like, I didn't ask for any of this, Like what is going

on here? It's a crazy moment. And then you know she takes it

very literally. She takes him asking for a drink of water, and she's

like, okay, wait, so you have living water? Okay, can

I have some of that? She says, Sir, the woman said you

must be a prophet because here's what happened. She asked for the water,

and Jesus says, look, I'm gonna tell you about the water, but

do me a favor. Go get your husband and bring him back here.

And she says, m I don't have a husband. And he says,

that's right. You don't have a husband. You've had several husbands and the

man you're living with now is not your husband. She says in response,

you must be a prophet. I love that. So tell me why is

it that you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place of worship while we

Samaritans claim it's here at Mount Garrizon, where our ancestors worshiped. So I

think that there's something holy about you, there's something other about you. You're

a prophet. So now that I have you here, can I just ask

you this question? Where are we supposed to worship? Where are we supposed

to put our worship? And Jesus rejects the premise of the question altogether.

He says, believe me, dear woman, the time is coming when it

will no longer matter whether you worship the Father on this mountain or in Jerusalem.

You Samaritans know very little about the one you worship, while we Jews

know all about him, for salvation comes through the Jews. Look at this

in verse twenty three. But the time is coming. Indeed, it's here

when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father

is looking for those who will worship him that way, for God is spirit,

so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth. That

is an incredible both, and that we are supposed to worship in spirit and

in truth. So let's sort of interrogate this phrase because I think very often

when we hear the word in spirit, we think we got spirit. Yes

we do, we got spirit? How about you? Right? Like we

think that's what we think that like spirit means like passionate and did I do

that? Okay? Was that all right? I mean I've never been a

cheerleader. How was that? Presley? Was that good? Could have been

better? Though? Yeah, Presley is a cheerleader at Palma Ridge. So

anyway, so it's not about are you worshiping with spirit in this particular case,

it's worshiping in spirits? Say, isn't it about loud or boisterous?

Although if you worship in spirit, you might get loud and you might get

boisterous. But God is spirit, so we must worship him in spirit,

which means that we engage God with our spirit. We're unashamed and unyielding.

We honor God from the deepest and truest parts of our soul, from the

core of what makes you you. You're offering that to the Lord, that

from your spirit you offer all that you are to him. What about the

other side of the equation? In truth? Worship him in truth? It

means that we weigh our words. It means that we're mindful of our integrity,

that we're not going to say things to God that aren't true of ourselves,

and we're not going to say things to God that aren't true of him.

At some point, I'm going to do a sermon series called I never

said that. That's gonna be the whole series. That's what's gonna be called.

I didn't say that things like God won't give you more than you can

handle. I never said that that things like that. Right, we don't

say things about God that aren't true of him, and we don't say things

about ourselves that aren't true of ourselves. So this is why I'm super persnickety

about worship lyrics, like a song that would say all I want is you

God, like I wish that were true of me. I wish it were

true of you. But come on, somebody all want a tesla? I

get it. Like Lord, all I want is You and a tesla.

Let's put that in a song and then we can be honest. Right,

So worship in spirit and in truth. We speak from the deepest and truest

part of our souls. My favorite part about that passage, though, is

what God is looking for. God's not looking for worship. Look at this,

It says the time is coming. Indeed, it's here. When true

worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking

for those who will worship him that way. He's not looking for your worship.

He's looking for you. He's looking for your heart. He's looking for

the people that will worship him the way that he deserves to be worshiped.

He's looking for people who will worship him like that. In fact, he's

looking for his people to worship him like that. I would go so far

as to say that we're not his people unless we worship him like that.

That's what being a part of a church is about. When we come together,

that we full throated and full heartedly give our praise to God, that

we hold nothing back from him. It's not an either or situation. Although

most churches in America, I don't know if you've noticed this, but most

churches in America kind of are one or the other hyper charismatic churches. And

I'm not criticizing. It's just kind of interesting to see. Hyper charismatic churches

tend to be a little problematic in their doctrine, and so because of that,

they're worshiping in spirit, but they're kind of a little fuzzy on truth.

Hyper hyper Presbyterian like super Episcopalitian truth lovers and in that world, even

Anglican in that world worship him in truth. And it matters so much as

profound what we're saying. But when you look out at the audience, there's

no spirit in the room. Most churches kind of pick one of the other

movement church. Let's do both, amen, Let's do both. Let's be

a worshiping group of people that worship the Father in spirit and truth. So

when the Lord is looking for those who will worship him like that who goes,

Oh, I see them. There they are right there at Bear Creek.

I found them. I've been looking for him. There they are.

Look, they're worshiping me in spirit and in truth. That's what it's all

about. Let's do that. The abec's of a worship culture. Worship together

must be authentic, it must be balanced. And here's the last piece.

It must be connected. It must be connected. The whole point of these

worship songs is relationship. The whole point of the time we spend in corporate

worship is that our hearts connect to His, our spirits to his. If

it's just cold, lifeless, dutiful singing, I think God's like, no

thanks. He wants to connect with us. Every person in this room who's

ever been in a long term relationship, especially if it was long distance relationship,

you know that. It's incredible how even miles and states apart, you

can feel connected. Right. And every person who's been married longer than six

months knows that you can live in a house with someone, see them every

day and feel disconnected. Right. So we know inherently, we know the

difference between connected and disconnected. And God wants for our worship to be connected,

not dutiful, not lip service. In fact, there's this there's this

verse in the Book of Amos where God says, I hate all of your

shows. I hate it. I hate it when you just give me this

cold, dutiful world. I'd rather you didn't. I'd rather you didn't.

If you're not going to worship me from a real, honest place, if

we're not going to connect, keep it to yourself. That's how God is,

That's how he feels about our worship. We're supposed to be connecting.

God doesn't need our worship. We need to worship him, right, we

need time with him. He doesn't need time with us. He doesn't need

anything, but he wants it. That's who he is. Jesus talked about

this when he talked about the word abide in John fifteen. He said,

I don't just want to connect with you on Sundays. I don't want to

just connect with you intermittently here and there. I want you to abide in

me. I want you to connect with me. He said this, abide

in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself

unless it abides in the vine, stays remains connected. Neither can you unless

you abide in me. I am the vine. You are the branches.

Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much

fruit. Apart from me, you can do a little bit. Is that

what it says. Apart from me, you can get a lot done.

No, apart from me, you can do nothing. Now, I think

we have a hard time believing that. I think we have a hard time

convincing ourself that that's the truth. I think we have a hard time until

we run into a dead end realizing that that's the truth. Apart from him,

we can do nothing. Don't be apart from him, be connected to

him. Otherwise you're just a toaster sitting on a countertop that's not plugged in.

What good is it. It's just a hunk of metal. But dude,

you plug that toaster in and we're in business. Right. Stay connected

to God. This is why, by the way, we end every one

of our worship services with the forward. If you haven't been here before,

we end our services with a spoken word prayer, and that it's a prayer

with a lot of great prepositions. We ask God to move in us and

through us, and for us and with us, and we say, Lord,

I'm with you. I'm leaving this place. I'm going to go out

those doors, and I'm going to go live on mission for you. Have

you ever thought about the fact that your job, your responsibility. We talked

about this a couple of weeks ago. Your job is to go out into

the world and earn the right to share the gospel by loving people and serving

people really well. So we come here, we get filled up, and

we go when we pour ourselves out, that's what we do. Was it

a hard week when you come in? Was it a good week? Did

you experience resistance from the enemy, did you experience breakthrough? Any answer to

any of those questions is a reason to strike up the band and get our

worship going. Jeremiah should not have to convince you to sing on Sunday mornings.

Jeremiah should not have to stand up here and give you three reasons why

God is good before we sing a song. But very often, and if

we're not living for Him Monday through Saturday, we come into these worship services

and we go I don't know. I mean, it's just songs. I

mean, I don't really even like this song, Like this isn't my favorite

song, and we can just be so withholding of our praise to God.

But man, if you actually took the forward seriously and lived Monday through Saturday

on mission for God, we would not be able to contain your praise.

You'd be here five minutes early, sitting in the front row, ready to

worship with all of your heart. And I'm not hating on you, guys,

I'm not like chastising you. I'm just saying the idea of this whole

gathering is that we leave this place to go and live on mission. It's

this that we gather, we grow, and then we go and then we

repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. That's

the idea, and guess what. We need each other. We need each

other's worship, We need each other's prayers. I am so inspired when you

worship, and I bet you are very inspired when people around you don't care

that they look like a fool and they're just worshiping God. I bet many

times you've seen someone who's just like, dude, I don't care what the

rest of these people do. I'm giving all my praise to God. I

bet you've watched someone like that and said, I wish I was like that.

I wish I wish that I could do that. I wish I wish

that was me. Right, it can be just decide to do it.

Can we all make a commitment to one another today, right here and now

and for the rest of this church's life, never to judge anybody's worship.

Can we decide to do that today and we say that, however the person

next to me worships, it's cool with me? Right? And can we

choose to be inspired by each other instead of going that person's fake, that

person's just trying to get attention. That person is always making a like this

is what we do. We tend to point fingers at people instead of point

are right tension to God. That's what these gatherings are supposed to be.

And by the way your worship, you can't believe how evangelical it is.

Because when someone walks into this room who doesn't know Jesus and they see engineers

and doctors and teachers and moms and dads and ordinary people just choosing in this

room to lift up praise to a holy God, they go, what's everybody

looking at? What's everybody looking at? Right? It'd be like if you

walked into Grand Central Station and everybody in the room we're looking up into the

left. What would you do? You would look up into the left.

In this environment, what they're going to see is the risen Savior is Jesus

Christ. That's what they're going to see. So your worship not only has

a profound effect on the other believers in the room, but a profound effect

on those that don't know Jesus. We are supposed to be worshiping together.

The Bible says that all of us who have had the veil removed, we

once we're blind, but now we see, we can see and reflect the

glory of God. Think about that that people can see the glory of God

on your face when you're looking at him. That is powerful. We are

called to prayer and worship together. So what's God leading you to do next?

And how can we help? Would you send us an email to info

at Movementchurch dot co and tell us how we can pray for you and help

you take the next step in your spiritual journey. If you'd like to contribute

financially to our ministry, text the amount you like to give to the number

eight four three two one, or look us up online at Movementchurch dot c.

You can find the Movement ch on all social media platforms, and we

hope that you'll give us a follow God bless you, and remember God is

for you and so are we.