Celebrate!

Celebrate!

Isaiah 6:1-8

We all do it. Every day, all day long, everywhere you go, you do it. I do it, your parents did it and their parents did it as well. Whether you consider yourself that kind of person or not, you still do it. What is it? Worship. We cannot help but worship…..something. It’s what you and I were made to do. Should a person choose not to give God the worship of their life, you’ll still worship something. In it’s simplest terms, worship is our response to what we value most. That’s why worship is something that we all do and what we’re about each and every day. Worship is about the thing you put first in your life. It might be a relationship, a dream, friends, status, stuff, a position, or a pleasure of some sort. What you worship is the thing which matters most to you and as a result, it determines your actions and becomes a driving force in all you do. Don’t know what you worship? Follow the trail of your time, your affection, your passion, your energy, your money and your loyalty. At the end is a throne and on that throne is what matters most to you.

We all worship something because God created us for worship. Specifically, we were created to worship God. It’s one reason our first strategy in “Connecting diverse communities to a lifestyle devoted to Jesus” is worship because we were meant to worship God.

But what is true worship? First, true worship is something that happens in the midst of life. Isaiah begins with an interesting statement. “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.” It’s like saying, “In the year that Kennedy was assassinated, I worshipped God.” That’s like saying, In the year of the sniper in New Orleans, I worshipped God. In the year of Hurricane Katrina, I worshipped God. In the year that I was married, in the year that my children were born, in the year my dad died, in the middle of life, in the midst of experiences good and bad, I worshiped the Lord. Worship in the sanctuary can never be separated from what is happening out there. Why do we worship God? It is not to escape life out there, it is to deal with life out there. If you want your worship inside the Sanctuary to be true worship, then you bring in with you all of the baggage of what is happening out in the world. The Psalmist wrote, (Ps 86:6-7), “Hear my prayer, O Lord; listen to my cry for mercy. In the day of my trouble I will call to you, for you will answer me.” It is a natural part of worship to bring with you the concerns of your life. We gather here and we bring in our fears, our worries, and our concerns and we lift them up in prayer seeking God’s comfort and guidance. Why do we worship God? Because our lives are so full of concerns and issues that we have to have some place to take them and share them with someone who is greater than us and our problems.

Second, worship gets your focus on God. Here’s the mistake many of us make when it comes to worship. We assume that worship focuses on us. How many of you have heard people say they just aren’t being fed in worship in their church. Too often we think that worship is about us and our needs. But worship by it’s very definition is worth-ship, coming to show God he is worthy of our thanks and praise. Worship has never been about us, it’s about God! But I never, ever hear people say anything about whether or not God is being blessed in the worship service. I never hear anyone concerned about whether or not GOD is enjoying worship. Why do we worship? Many people worship so that they can get something out of the experience, when we ought to worship primarily so that God gets something out of it. And until God gets something out of our worship, we never will. Until God is blessed by our worship, we won’t be blessed. Until God is fed by our sacrifice of worship, we will never be fed. Worship is about God. What is most important is that God enjoy the worship experience. We are here to worship HIM. We are here to bless HIM. True worship always focuses on God.

The problem is that too many of us are taught and conditioned by our culture to focus on ourselves. Worship seeks to focus our attention and ourselves on God. There are too many things which seek to garner our attention and gain our affection in this world. That’s why we need time each week to re-focus on God. It enables us to re-center and refocus ourselves on the One whom we were created to worship. Worship focuses us on God in our lives by expressing thanksgiving for the blessings we enjoy. We need to express our gratitude because if we don’t then we’ll begin to take it for granted. When good things happen to us we need to be thankful to the one who gives us the good things and when bad things happen we need to come to Him and acknowledge that He is big enough to take care of our problems, rather than trying to solve it ourselves.