Invocation:
God, you who created the eye for seeing, the ear for hearing, and the mind for thinking, be here with us in our worship. Help us through your Spirit to hear your word and discover new and vibrant ways to live in your abundant mercies. Help us Lord to see Your presence at work all around us each and everyday of our lives. In Jesus Christ, we offer this prayer. Amen.
SUNDAY MORNING - (Romans 12: 1)
Amusement parks once staked their livelihood on drawing would-be thrill seekers to their hot new roller coasters. Bigger. Steeper. Faster. These rides had more loops than a corkscrew, wringing your adrenal gland out like a wet sponge.
Not anymore, at least not exclusively. Hair-on-fire rides may create big buzz at theme park gates, but they often leave people feeling nauseous and many carry height restrictions that prevent little junior from riding. Rides creating sick and not-feeling-so-good kids aren’t exactly what Mom and Dad were hoping for after paying $200 to get the family in for a day of amusement.
So, theme parks today are attempting to become more young family-focused. Consider a couple of the newest rides that were released last year.
Hershey Park in Pennsylvania, a place I want to visit someday, unveiled a real thrill-crawl in Reese’s Xtreme Cup Challenge, sponsored by the peanut-butter and chocolate confectioners. This ride-game combination features 8 Xtreme sports competition zones where riders shoot car-mounted laser guns at BMX riders and skydivers to score plenty of peanut-buttery points. During the ride, you’re tempted by the peanut-butter and chocolate smells they pump into the ride’s air ducts? Well don’t worry, Xtreme riders — you all get Reese’s treats when you get off this ride.
Last year King’s Dominion theme park in Virginia released The Italian Job Turbo Coaster — billed as “the wildest ride in the mid-Atlantic.” Do any of you remember the movie “The Italian Job?” It was a pretty good movie featuring some big stars such as Matt Damon and Donald Sutherland, and involved a very technical and complex robbery of an Italian bank. The crooks made their getaway in modified “mini cooper” automobiles. Which led in part I suspect, to the car’s popularity.
At the Italian Job Turbo Coaster, true to its 2003 film namesake, riders board Mini Cooper replicas to roar down stairs and through exploding urban obstacles … at 40 mph. That’s one-third the speed of the fastest roller coasters. My grandmother drove her Buick faster than that!
Readers of www.themeparkinsider.com gave the ride very innocuous reviews: “This is a great coaster for families to ride. I can’t give it a bad review; however, it just wasn’t for me.”
Visit an amusement part today and you’ll discover many scream-inducing wild rides replaced by yawn-inducing mild glides.
But that’s the intention. Speed-loving teens don’t spend as much money at amusement parks as Mom, Dad and 2.2 children do.
Amusement park CEO’s are aware of this fact. Amusement parks aren’t trying to downplay the thrill experience. Rather, they’re increasing accessibility to families and making sure that amusement parks actually amuse those who come.
So why are we talking about thrill rides at the end of the summer? Because … amusement parks aren’t the only venues that are pressured to bend to the demands of their consumers.
The church faces the same cultural tug and the church is just as vulnerable to issues of supply and demand — more than we’d like to think or admit. We all have our tastes and preferences, and while they may work for driving amusement park rides, they don’t figure in true worship of God.
“Oh no — we could never do “X” style of worship! It is too “Y” for the “Z” population in our church.” We all have our X’s, Y’s and Z’s. So now we have traditional and contemporary worship services. For the gap-bridgers we offer the “blended” service.
We offer guitar or organ. You can sit, stand or kneel. We have clap or no-clap.
Ever stop to compare how similar people sound describing worship preferences and Starbucks orders?
“I want an extra hot, blended, two-pump vanilla latte with one Splenda.”
“I want an acoustic guitar-driven, female vocalled, traditional-contemporary blend with one prayer.”
It can easily feel as though we need to design the next worship ride to fit the demands of the demographic.
Now don’t think I’m trying to compare your worship services to the entertainment exploits of an amusement park. But I am suggesting that on Sunday morning worship can have its wilder or milder elements, and people have their preferences.
An amusement park must remember that it must stay amusing in order to stay in business. The church has to revisit what it means to worship and how it can help people learn to worship.
Today’s passage (Rm 12: 1) is important for our understanding of worship. “Living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God…spiritual act of worship”
What does that mean? Let me suggest it means this; it means that coming to church on Sunday morning is not merely a ritual activity, but the involvement of heart, mind and will. This scripture deals with our daily “sacrifice” of time and commitment to God. It deals with the concept of looking for God in all circumstances of everyday life.
An amusement park exists to provide entertainment for people…it’s about satisfying their desires.
God designed His church to provide a place for His people to come and GIVE WORSHIP to God in the form of humility and praise and thanksgiving for all God has done for us throughout the week…. All the “other” times of our daily lives.
Sunday Morning Worship is not about what we get out of it, but about what God gets out of it.
For some of us, this is an extraordinary concept!
Surely the “church, ” that is God’s people, are commanded by God to help and encourage one another, to share with and uphold one another… and this is an act of worship.
But folks consider this… we have been deceived, many of us, and a large majority of our culture by Satan to believe that Sunday morning worship is all about serving our needs!
“But Pastor, I thought Sunday morning at “church” is when and where we get fed, where learn about God where we build our relationship with God……..
No, not it isn’t.
I’ve asked Deanna to read a brief story to you. It is entitled: “Sunset Worship.”
You see, this is worship. It is seeing God all around us, in all things, in all circumstances. Worship, true worship involves two main principles. (1) spending time with God everyday. Spending time in His Word and in prayer. (2), Obedience to what He reveals to us.
Spending time with God feeds our spirit, our souls. It helps us to see God in all things. This is worship. This is where our relationship with God grows. This is where, when and how we grow closer to God; Think of the most special persons in your life. How did you get to know them? How do you maintain a loving relationship with them?
By spending time with them; By being in communication with them. By having them in your heart always, even when not consciously thinks about them, you carry them in your heart. God desires this relationship and more with each of us.
Spending time with God bring us into His presence. He is always there for us, but we must do our part to come into His presence. This is our time in His Word and prayer time with Him. Here we build and strengthen and grow in our relationship with God. It is here we are fed and here we are equipped to do the work of God. It is here God opens our eyes.
As we grow closer to our Father, we find ourselves growing in our obedience because of our love for Him
This is how we grow our relationship with our Father. This is the worship of God. Worship is our time with God all week long and on Sunday morning; we bring our worship of God together in glorious culmination as a body united in Christ and once again, lift it to an Almighty God!
We should not gather for worship on Sunday morning. Instead we should be coming together to bring our worship of God from a week’s worth of continuous worship and prayer.
Worship is our time with God everyday and the circumstances He places us in and our “Life with God!” Our work, our volunteering, our everyday occurrences are the frontier where God need us to work. And in being obedient to His call as we come upon His work every moment is what we lift to Him in worship every moment.
Worship is being aware of God in all circumstances, looking for God’s presence all around us every minute of every day.
Look in your Bible and check out worship. Whenever the people came together to worship God, it was not to be fed or to build a relationship with God, it was to give praise and thanks for God’s presence in their lives and following the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our Lord, for His sacrifice assuring us of eternal salvation. Praise God!
Sunday morning isn’t about us; it’s about God.
When you walk through the doors of this church building, this Holy temple of worship, you need to know that God looks directly into your heart. Are you coming with an agenda? Are you coming with judgment? Or are you coming to praise God because you have seen Him all week long all around you?
Listen to God’s Word about this Holy place we are this moment… from Hebrews 12: 18-24
We have not come to a place of fear and trembling, “22 But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, 23 to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, 24 to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Oh, praise God for giving us this place to come and give Him thanks!
What a wonderful concept. What a joyful thought. To look for God everywhere at all times. The more we seek to see God, the more He will reveal Himself to us. The more we become aware of His presence, His caring, His peace that surpasses all our understanding. That even in the hardest of times, we are aware of His presence and His work, even when a planned trip to Atlanta doesn’t go according to our plans… we can see God in the Blessings of a new and wonderful experience.
This week, from this very moment, let us commit to looking to see where God is working everywhere around us. Think about this, think about what “church” might look like if our whole reason to come together on Sunday morning was to share with one another how we saw God at work all week long; In our lives, in the lives of others, in the joyous circumstances, in the hard times.
We come to church, we share how God has been in our lives and we sing and give praise and thanks to God for all He has revealed to us and for His Son, His Son, His only Son that He loves so dearly, that He loves us enough to send His Son to suffer beyond our human comprehension so that we can enter into this personal relationship, this intimate relationship with God.
Yeah, that’s what God designed Sunday morning to be…. For God to enjoy us, His children giving Him praise, adoration and thanksgiving because He has revealed His presence to us more and more allowing us to see what He has done for us and for all who would come to Him through Jesus Christ each and every moment we are on this earth.
What a wonderful plan God… to have our only “agenda” Sunday morning to be giving you praise and glory for a week filled with true and Godly worship of you!
