MyLife
As a Worshiper
By Pastor Mark McNees
This message was originally given at Element3 Church in Tallahassee FL. To download this message’s corresponding PowerPoint, audio, and artistic elements for free please visit www.element3.org
Hey, I’m Mark. I’m pastor here and we are starting a new series called My Life: Improving Your Profile. Basically, it’s a series looking at the phenomenon known as MySpace. If you don’t know anything about MySpace, it’s a place where millions and millions of people come and they spend hours and hours, weeks, months and years working on their profile to kind of project an image. What we’re going to be doing is looking at our current profile in life and then looking at God’s vision for our profile in our life and trying to close the gap between the two. So we are going to be engaging in some drama throughout this series and just kind of walking through this as we try to improve our profile. Before we jump into that, let’s pray and we’ll get going.
“Dear God, thank you for today. Thank you for the opportunity to once again lift our voices and just praise you and worship you. I just pray that you open up our hearts and minds today with what you want to communicate to us through your word. We love you Lord. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
(Drama begins)
“I’m so bored. I wish someone would sign on AIM. Well, Tom and Kelly keep bugging me to start a MySpace profile. I guess I could do that, www.myspace.com, sign up. Okay, let’s see. Got my e-mail address and name and password all entered. Upload a picture? What do I have on my computer? Oh man, definitely not that one. Maybe, this one. Yeah, I like it, cute, yet pensive. It says “Hey, I’m likable” without saying “Hey, please like me.” What’s next? About me, well, I’m a fun person whose laid back and hates drama, so don’t try to bring your baggage around here because I don’t have time for it. Good. Who I’d like to meet? Anyone cool, and Britney Spears, yeah. No, that makes me sound like I’m 12. Uh, Brad Pitt? That’s too cliché. Ooh, Carole King. She’s retro-cool, right? What song did she sing again? Whatever, let’s put her in my heroes too.”
(Drama ends)
1 Kings 18:22-29 Then Elijah said to them, “I am the only prophet of the Lord who is left, but Baal has 450 prophets. Now bring two bulls. The prophets of Baal may choose whichever one they wish and cut it into pieces and lay it on the wood of their altar, but without setting fire to it. I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood on the altar, but not set fire to it. Then call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the Lord. The god who answers by setting fire to the wood is the true God!” And all the people agreed. Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “You go first, for there are many of you. Choose one of the bulls, and prepare it and call on the name of your god. But do not set fire to the wood.” So they prepared one of the bulls and placed it on the altar. Then they called on the name of Baal from morning until noontime, shouting, “O Baal, answer us!” But there was no reply of any kind. Then they danced, hobbling around the altar they had made. About noontime Elijah began mocking them. “You’ll have to shout louder,” he scoffed, “for surely he is a god! Perhaps he is daydreaming, or is relieving himself. Or maybe he is away on a trip, or is asleep and needs to be wakened!” So they shouted louder, and following their normal custom, they cut themselves with knives and swords until the blood gushed out. They raved all afternoon until the time of the evening sacrifice, but still there was no sound, no reply, no response.
1 Kings 18:30-37 Then Elijah called to the people, “Come over here!” They all crowded around him as he repaired the altar of the Lord that had been torn down. He took twelve stones, one to represent each of the tribes of Israel, and he used the stones to rebuild the altar in the name of the Lord. Then he dug a trench around the altar large enough to hold about three gallons. He piled wood on the altar, cut the bull into pieces, and laid the pieces on the wood. Then he said, “Fill four large jars with water, and pour the water over the offering and the wood.” After they had done this, he said, “Do the same thing again!” And when they were finished, he said, “Now do it a third time!” So they did as he said, and the water ran around the altar and even filled the trench. At the usual time for offering the evening sacrifice, Elijah the prophet walked up to the altar and prayed, “O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, prove today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant. Prove that I have done all this at your command. O Lord, answer me! Answer me so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God and that you have brought them back to yourself.”
1 Kings 18:38-39 Immediately the fire of the Lord flashed down from heaven and burned up the young bull, the wood, the stones, and the dust. It even licked up all the water in the trench! And when all the people saw it, they fell face down on the ground and cried out, “The Lord—he is God! Yes, the Lord is God!”
Message point #1: Genuine Expectation
So you may be saying to yourself “Self, what does Baal, Elijah, worship, MySpace; how does that all connect and what does it have to do with me”? And, I think that’s a pretty good question. I’m glad you’re here and we will explore and try to figure that out . Now, in the drama, we have Lindsay who is creating her profile and she’s talking about people she’d like to meet and people that she really looks up to and her heroes and things like that. As we look at our profiles of those of us who are followers of Christ, I think this is a really important question of who do we look up to and really specifically, how do we see God and how do we approach him? How do we acknowledge him as our King, our Lord, our Savior, the creator of the universe, the one, true living God. I think this is where Elijah comes in, as we look as this story in 1 Kings and it’s an amazing story. I think we can really look at Elijah’s story and how he approached God and we can really see how we can improve our profile as authentic worshipers. So, as we look at this and we are looking at the story, it was really interesting that you see Elijah’s here. He is the last follower of God. He is the one and it is him against the world. It says that there are 450 prophets of Baal sitting there against Elijah. One thing that’s amazing, if you really think about and if we can get this in our lives and understand this; what Elijah understood was that one plus God is a majority. It didn’t matter to Elijah if there were 450, 4,500 or 45,000. It didn’t matter because whenever God gets a hold of your heart and if you are in step with Him, you are the majority and He is going to show up. Elijah knew this and I think that when we approach God that we need to, like Elijah, expect him to show up. I think if we are really honest with ourselves, a lot of times, we may think He is going to show up or maybe we don’t really think He is going to show up. A lot of times if you just take coming to a Sunday morning worship gathering as just kind of a snapshot of what is meant to be our lives as 24/7 worshipers of God, and you just say when we come here and we are coming for a specific purpose to worship God and experience Him; do we really expect Him to show up? I think if we are really honest with ourselves, a lot of times we just out of habit , just come and we don’t really expect Him to show up. But, Elijah in this point, in this time, he knew, he expected God to show up in a big way. In fact, you can see how much he expected it, because he was talking some serious smack. He was kind of like Babe Ruth here, pointing to the grand stands and saying he was going to hit a home run. Like Babe Ruth said though, it’s not bragging if you can do it. This is kind of what Elijah is doing. He knows he follows the one true God and he is talking some major trash here out on the field. Now, one thing in the bible that makes it so cool is that the bible many times, just describes events. Everything in the bible isn’t prescribed, but we get real snapshots of real people in a point and time, who were doing their best to follow God. Elijah is so confident in front of all these prophets and all these people that God’s going to show up, he began to mock them. “You’ll have to shout louder,” he scoffed. “For surely he is a god, perhaps he is daydreaming, or relieving himself.” That’s funny, that’s good smack. Maybe he’s in the john. I mean that’s what he’s basically saying. He’s going on and he’s saying maybe he’s away on a trip or asleep and he needs to be awakened. I think that one thing that we can learn from Elijah here, is that he expected God to show up in a big way and we need to expect God to show up in a big way.
Jesus said in Matthew 18:20 “For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.” The impact of that statement. As we come together as followers and Jesus says, you know what, expect me to be there, expect me to be in your presence. I think if we expect that and have that in our mindset, that’s going to change a lot of things. It’s going to change how we approach coming as a church family to worship God, if we expect him show up in a big way. Another thing that Elijah did that I think is extremely important for us to learn from is that he had discipline preparation. He was prepared to experience God in a big way. Check out in verse 31, some of the things that he did. “He took 12 stones, one to represent each of the tribes of Israel.” You see, he’s not just piling stones, but he’s preparing intentionally, using 12 stones to prepare to experience God. Then he dug a trench. He also piled wood on an alter. He cut a bull into pieces; which is kind of gross, but still he is preparing. He laid the pieces on the wood. Then he said “Fill four large jars with water and pour the water over the offering and the wood.” You see what he’s doing here? He’s just not rolling out of bed, expecting God to show up. He is doing things, preparing himself and preparing a time and a place where he is expecting God to show up in a big way. Jesus speaks about being prepared for Him in the New Testament. He is specifically talking about his second coming, being prepared for him. But I think that we can apply the principles that Jesus is speaking about in this story that I am about to read that he tells. We can apply these principles of being prepared for him in our daily lives. Especially as we prepare and expect God to show up. If you turn to Matthew 25, starting in verse 1, Jesus tells this story:
Message point #2: Disciplined Preparation
Matthew 25 1-13 “Then the Kingdom of Heaven will be like ten bridesmaids who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. The five who were foolish didn’t take enough olive oil for their lamps, but the other five were wise enough to take along extra oil. When the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and fell asleep.
“At midnight they were roused by the shout, ‘Look, the bridegroom is coming! Come out and meet him!’
“All the bridesmaids got up and prepared their lamps. 8 Then the five foolish ones asked the others, ‘Please give us some of your oil because our lamps are going out.’
“But the others replied, ‘We don’t have enough for all of us. Go to a shop and buy some for yourselves.’
“But while they were gone to buy oil, the bridegroom came. Then those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was locked. Later, when the other five bridesmaids returned, they stood outside, calling, ‘Lord! Lord! Open the door for us!’
“But he called back, ‘Believe me, I don’t know you!’
“So you, too, must keep watch! For you do not know the day or hour of my return.
And again, this is talking about Jesus’ second coming, but it also talks about being prepared. How are you preparing yourself to encounter the one, true God? What is the preparation, what is the oil that is meant to be burning in our lamps? We are expecting Jesus to come. He says that when there are 2 or 3 of us together, to expect him to be here. So, how do we prepare to encounter Him? It always amazes me and I have been doing this for a while. It is interesting. There are some people, that Sunday after Sunday, they come up and they are just blown away. They’re like “wow, God really spoke to me today, through the scripture that was read or through the musical worship.” That through the coffee bar, through the Red Eye, through an encounter I had, I really experienced God today and I was really impacted.” But there are other people that don’t seem ever to be impacted. They come and they go and then you hear phrases like “You know what, I didn’t get anything out of that worship gathering.” I’ve been giving this some thought and this is one of these things that may come across as judgmental and I don’t want it to. I want you guys to kind of go into an arena of just thinking about this. It begs the question, why do some people when there are 2-3 gathered and it really doesn’t matter what’s going on, they experience God in a huge way, while others time and time again don’t experience Him? I think it really comes down to this oil. What is this oil? Are we preparing ourselves? Are we like Elijah, who had the stones, the trenches, the wood and the bull? What are we doing to encounter God that we should be, expecting him to show up? I was thinking, what is this oil that we need to be putting into our lamps so we can experience God and show our light to the world? There are some things that as I’ve talked with people who’ve experienced God in a big way and I’ve looked at my own life and different things. What is the difference? These are some of the things that I came up with. Well, the oil for some of our lives is rest. Do you ever think about that? That being prepared to encounter the one, true living God, you have to be awake for it. So many of us sleep through the encounter. God’s in our midst and we are snoozing. We are so busy as people. We are always rushing around. So seldom do we slow down enough to get our rest and prepare for an encounter. You know, a lot of people make fun of me because on Saturday nights I go to bed with my kids at 8:30. I don’t go to bed at that time any other time in the week. Why do I go to bed at 8:30? Because, you know what, I’m expecting God to show up here every single Sunday. I really believe it and I want to be prepared. I don’t want to sleep through it. I wonder what this place would look like if we started preparing to encounter God the night before or days before to coming in with anticipation that we are going to experience Him. Another thing that I do and I have talked to a lot of other people; they get up early before they come to the worship gathering and they start praying. They pray for people and I do this in my life too. I get up at 5:30 on Sunday mornings and I start praying for people. I start praying for everyone’s hearts, about just getting ready in the morning, for their travels coming. I pray for those who are going to be singing, teaching or speaking and all these kinds of things and conversations that are going to be had here, that they are honoring to Him. What would it look like if we were well rested and we started worshiping God and coming to Him hours before we even set foot in this place. Also, being in the word of God, so often, we think “I can’t hear God”, but you know what? God is very easy to hear. All you have to do is open his word and experience what he wants to say to you. Another thing is connexity. That means connecting people with biblical community. You know what? I think that before the first note is ever played, before the first passage is ever spoken, that we should be engaging in real community. This is something that has been really on my heart. There are people coming here that are lonely and not being greeted and not being loved. We just as a community need to get a lot better at this. To try to start coming earlier and working in a little bit of our time to stay later so we can encounter others. So we can experience God through our conversations and encouragement through our conversations. The bible says that iron sharpens iron. Each one of us hold an amazing amount of power that our words and our touch can give life or we can tear it down. We each need to go outside of our normal circles and start preparing to experience God. Another one that I was thinking about in people who experience God a lot is they take care of themselves. We talked a little bit about this last week. Jesus said that he wants us to worship God, worship Him with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength. If we don’t feel good about ourselves, if we aren’t taking care of ourselves, if we’re not getting our blood moving and eating right, that is going to directly affect how much you experience God because the bible says that our bodies are our temple. We need to be taking care of ourselves and worshipping God with everything we eat, everything we drink and everything that we do. Also, we experience God when we serve others, those that are less fortunate than us than when we serve one another in this context, when we are serving the world in Jesus’ name. And also we experience God when we give. God is a giver and when we give, we are tapping into part of his nature. When we give of our time, when we give of our energy and our talents and when we give of our resources, we get to experience God in a real way. God loved the world so much, that he gave. Time and time again, we hear that God gives. God is a giver. Then, finally, growing. Each and every one of us need to be growing. That is why it is so important that we get involved in these growth groups and that we are taking classes and we are expanding our knowledge and our understanding of who God is. That we are not only just looking at the bible, but that we are out there and we are looking at how God has created the world and expanding our knowledge of who he is and how he works. If we can do all these things, we will be preparing ourselves to experience him in a real way. Then, finally looking at what Elijah did. He had worthy adoration. It says here:
Message point #3: Worthy Adoration
1 Kings 18:38 “Immediately the fire of the Lord flashed down from heaven and burned up the young bull, the wood, the stones, and the dust. It even licked up all the water in the trench!”
You know it’s kind of interesting if you look at these things. If you look at the prophets of Baal and you look at Elijah. That they both had genuine expectation. If the prophets of Baal didn’t expect him to show up, they wouldn’t have danced for hours, cut themselves and done all these things. They expected their god to show up. They also had discipline preparation. The bible tells that they did the things that they normally did. They were preparing themselves. Same as Elijah. But there was one difference. Elijah had a worth adoration. He had correct worship to the one true God, where the prophets of Baal did not. Two out of three to quote a current philosopher doesn’t “Get Er’ done.” You can’t be put into a situation where you are controlled by the or. You can’t have genuine expectation or discipline preparation or worthy adoration, but us as followers of Christ, those of us who worship the true God, we must become masters of the And, and we have to put all 3 together. We must have genuine expectation and discipline preparation and we have to have worthy adoration. We have to have our focus on the one true God. If you look at Romans 1:21-23, Paul writes this:
Romans 1:21-23 “Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles.”
That we have to have God in his rightful place as center, as Lord and King of our lives. We need to put all of these things together if we are going to move into and elevate our profile closer to the vision that God has for our lives. We need to as a community, when we come together, expect Him to show up and as a community, we have to hold each other accountable and encourage one another to be doing the things to prepare us to encounter Him. We always, always, have to keep our eyes focused on our Lord, Jesus Christ. Then, we will experience God and his power in our lives.
Let’s pray. “Dear God, I know that so often we do things and we kind of act the part, but we don’t really expect you to show up. God, I just pray that we can be a place where that’s the expectation. We expect you to show up. We expect you to be amongst us. We expect to see miracles. We expect to see you transforming lives. God, I also just pray that each and every one of us, that we can do the things that we know we should be doing to prepare to encounter you. God, that each and every one of us will start worshiping you long before Sunday, that we will pattern our lives to be awake so we don’t miss you. That we will grow, that we will be in prayer, that we will be in your word, that we will be connecting with one another, that nobody in this place has to navigate community alone. We will take care of ourselves, we will serve and we will tap into your nature by being givers. Then, God, finally, I pray that we will never let anything take your rightful place, that we will keep focused on you. We love you Lord. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
