Spiritual Disciplines - Worship (2)
July 18, 2021
I have to admit that sometimes I actually listen to my wife! When it comes to Sunday mornings, as a pastor, sometimes it’s hard to worship. There’s lot of distractions. Lots to think about and consider. Is everything all set? How’s the sound? The videos? The slides? What about the temperature? Is FB live working? Am I even ready to preach? Did I forget something or someone? It all builds up until I can’t worship . . . because I’m focused on so many other things.
She reminds me “there’s nothing you can do about any of that?” And she’s right!! After all, if something isn’t working . . . honestly, they don’t want me to touch it. I’ll make it worse. I’m not quite there yet, better I am better than I used to be. So, that’s my weekly excuse.
What’s yours? Do you have something that gets in the way of worship? Was it the kids? Your spouse? A friend? Your job? A crazy week? A bad doctors report? Aches and pains? Maybe it’s depression or loneliness - issues nobody can see. Sometimes, there’s something that gets in the way of our worship.
And that doesn’t even include issues in worship! The music, the message, the temperature, the prayers, you were forgotten, there was a mistake . . . and the list goes on and on.
We’ve been looking at spiritual disciplines for awhile now. Today is the second week of looking at worship as a discipline. If you’re like me, you need to discipline yourself. You can’t just turn it on whenever you feel like it. In reality, you need to be prepared for worship.
Let’s continue to look at what worship is.
Firstly and most importantly, worship is not about us. It is not about what I want or what makes me happy. Worship is about my response to God’s character and presence in my life. In other words, I come here and thank God for who He is.
I look at the characteristics of God . . . LOVE, GRACE, JOY, PEACE, MERCY, PATIENCE, COMPASSION, POWER, PROTECTION and many more what we might call God’s attributes. As I worship I thank God and recognize God’s grace in forgiving my sins, for sending Christ to love me and die for me, I come ready to say thank you to God for His compassion and never ending love, His promise never to abandon me. I come wanting to thank Him for His acts of mercy, for His creativity, for so many different ways I have been blessed because of who God is.
I also recognize how God is present in my life. Even in those moments when I pull away from God, when I become rebellious, I know God is with me. He’s promised to be with us forever. To do that He sent His Holy Spirit, so that when Christ ascended to heaven, the Holy Spirit could be with each one of us, all at the same time. It’s something I cannot explain, I take it on faith, and I thank and praise God for being with me, my family, and you, every nano-second of everyday.
In his book, Celebration of Disciplines, Richard Foster wrote,
"Worship is our response to the overtures of love from the heart of the Father. It is kindled within us only when the Spirit of God touches our human spirit. Our spirit must be ignited by the divine fire . . . When Spirit touches spirit the issue of forms is wholly secondary."
I love that! When God’s Spirit touches our spirit, it leads us into worship. There’s a huge caveat with this, however - - - it means we need to be practicing the disciplines so that we can experience God’s Spirit. That’s really what this entire series has been about.
Because we’ve experienced God’s Spirit, because we’ve experienced and trusted in His presence, we come to worship with a desire to experience His power and presence as we give ourselves to Him in worship.
What Foster says is really important because - - - even though we have our preferences . . . when the Holy Spirit touches your spirit the issue of forms is secondary. That means we worry less about the music and message and the temperature and announcements and all the extraneous stuff and focus on the Spirit of God at work in this place.
In Revelation 5, we read ---
11 Then I (John) looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders.
12 In a loud voice they sang: "Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!"
13 Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: "To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!”
14 The four living creatures said, "Amen," and the elders fell down and worshiped. - Revelation 5:11-14
This is a pretty awesome scene in heaven that excites me. This is how I envision worship. It’s a huge praise fest in heaven. Every creature is praising God. Let me put it this way . . .
If you’re a sports fan, you’re getting ready to go to the game. So, you leave early to fight the traffic. You make sure you have your tickets. You check and double check. You make sure you wear something your favorite jersey or colors to cheer your team on.
Maybe you have your face painted like these two did. You’re really excited as you walk into the stadium. You can feel your heart racing with excitement.
You join thousands of other people you don’t know to do one thing, to cheer on your team. When they stand and yell, you stand and join them. When there’s a bad play, you all groan. When your team scores, you jump up and cheer and high five your neighbors. By the time the game is over, win or lose, you’ve been so totally absorbed in the game that if the world crumbled all around you, you would not have known. Your talking to your neighbors who you don’t even know.
Folks, that’s how worship should be. We should be so totally engrossed in worshiping that if it took longer than usual, we wouldn’t complain, we wouldn’t be worrying about lunch, we wouldn’t be wondering when is this guy ever going to stop talking. None of that would matter.
Instead, we’d be immersed in God, passionately, fully engaged in praising God. And you would be doing it with your whole being - - - with your heart, soul, mind and body. That is how you would show your love of God (Mark 12:30).
The problem comes in that most of us aren’t wired that way for worship. Most of us have been taught to fold our hands, be quiet, don’t make too much noise in worship. I wasn’t in a church growing up, but it was the same in temple.
I actually love it when the kids would be in the first rows and they would be dancing. I love it, because that’s them at worship. I listen and watch a lot of worship. One church has a 3 hours worship, with over an hour of singing - and over an hour of preaching.
We all have different styles, likes and dislikes . . . but we all have one thing in common and that’s Jesus! He’s Lord and Savior!! So we come with that shared experience. That’s our commonality and starting point. That’s what we share.
On Sunday mornings I want us to come here wanting and expecting to meet Jesus. This is a WORSHIP CELEBRATION. My hope is that whether we’re at home or in this building, we come wanting to experience the power and presence of Jesus and we’re willing to give of ourselves as we worship.
However, our society has turned us into a me first society. We think about what’s in it for me, we’re in a society that bases everything on entertainment. If we’re not being entertained, we’re not too happy. Our attention spans have become shorter and shorter. We become easily bored and that often carries over to worship. We get stuck on thinking worship is about us, not God. But that’s backwards thinking
So we walk away on Sunday saying, “I am not getting fed,” yet, that’s not the purpose of worship. I really believe, we’ll all be fed by God when we GIVE ourselves to God in worship. You know that old saying, “it’s better to give than to receive” it’s so true in worship, because when we’ve really given ourselves to God, we walk out of here having received from God, which feeds us, inspires us and compels us to grow and change to become more Christlike.
Yet, the messages we hear all week on television, in magazines, on the radio, on the Internet, reminds us it is about us. The message we hear for 167 hours per week is
satisfy yourself — be served — you come first
So on Sunday mornings, we’re a little tired, maybe we’ve felt like we’ve been beaten up a little and we come here wanting to be satisfied and served. The problem is, we feel like nobody treated us like we were number 1, instead, we were treated like we were at the bottom of the cesspool.
Yet, Psalm 100 tells us,
1 Make a joyful shout to the LORD Come before His presence with singing.
4 Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, And into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.
5 For the LORD is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations. - Psalm 100
But we don’t feel like praising, we just want someone to do something for us.
We come to worship on empty — needing that fill up, but remember that verse from last week. Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:18 ---
18 BE FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT
It’s a command
It’s a continual filling
The Spirit does the filling
Here’s the image I wanted to show you from last week. It’s not that we come on empty, but we’ve been engaging with the Spirit all week and we’re on FULL, not empty and the Spirit continually fills us like this water which is overflowing in the pitcher.
Worship is not a passive event; it is an action oriented event in our lives. We cannot come here and just sit and be a grump. We may try to be a grump or have a sour look on our face, but how is that worship?
One of my professors in seminary, Robert Webber, wrote a number of books, but I believe his most popular book was WORSHIP IS A VERB! Worship is a verb . . . it’s action oriented. Think about what you’re doing right now. Listening!! Listening is an art form. It’s not always easy to listen, it’s work and we become tired, but by listening we are participating - - whether it’s singing, praying, listening - - - we’re engaging our entire being in the act of worship.
We come offering ourselves to God, as we praise Him.
There are so many different styles and varieties of worship, so for me to tell you there is only one specific way to worship would be wrong of me, and would ultimately inhibit some from worshiping as they need to.
Yet, our approach to worship can be similar.
Think about our approach this way, most everything we do in our lives we do using our strength and our wisdom. We do that with our worship life. However, if we could seek to live our daily lives in the Spirit of God, seeking God’s presence, His joy and love in all that we do . . . then, when we go to work, school, go shopping, are at home, or wherever we are, that same attitude should carry over to our time in worshiping God.
We don’t come to be a spectator to a performance, we come to worship God! He is the only spectator, and even He is involved! So do not sit back and watch . . . sing, dance, move, pray. . . be involved. Even go to bed a little earlier, get up a little earlier, so you’re fresh and not rushed in the morning. If you have children, have them choose their clothes, or lay them out Saturday night.
Finally, expect to meet God, because you WILL give yourself to God in worship. Be willing to experience God’s power, let go of your agenda and expectations of others. Come with expectations about you and you alone. If we take care of ourselves and our preparedness to worship, I can only imagine a worship event filled with passion beyond what we could ever, ever imagine. That is cool!
Worship is not meant to be boring and dull, it is meant to be as exciting as a great sporting event, musical, movie or concert. Prepare yourselves for worship, be excited about your Lord, your Savior, your Redeemer, your Forgiver, your Leader. Come prepared and ready to praise and thank God.
I can tell you different ways to read the Bible, different ways to pray, different ways to journal, to meditate, and more, but to give a set plan to worship . . . is impossible. I really believe worship is about what we’ve been doing during the week - - which now prpares us for Sunday mornings.
To accomplish what I’ve been talking about in other Spiritual Disciplines, we begin our day, with a time of private worship. We focus on God’s blessings and praise God for what He has provided us, we consider His many great attributes and dedicate the day to God and continually seek His presence, courage and wisdom throughout the day.
As we move throughout the day, we continue to take little snippets and give thanks and praise to God. Listen to music which moves you into worship during the week, whatever style of worship music it is, listen to it and let the words move you. Sing and jump and shout and dance to the music. Let the rhythm move you toward God.
As the week is coming to a close, start to prepare your heart for corporate worship. Pray and ask God to give you an open heart, soul, mind and body. Pray for an openness to God’s leading as you greet one another, as you participate in worship, because remember worship is a participatory event.
