Let me ask you this question, and think about it for a few moments… “Why are you here in this worship service? Why did you get up this early on a Sunday morning, perhaps your only day off from work, and get dressed and come to church?”
Maybe you’re here out of habit. You’re family has come to this church on Sunday morning ever since you were a child and it’s just always been something you’ve done so since it’s Sunday, you’re here.
Perhaps you’re here because you feel pressured to be here. Tony Evans said that growing up he had a drug problem…he was drug to church every Sunday morning, drug to church on Sunday night and maybe that’s you. Maybe it’s your parents, or a spouse that has compelled you to come by either force, threat, or guilt. And instead of fighting it every Sunday you’ve decided to just come to church to avoid problems in your family.
Or maybe you’re here for the fellowship. You’re friends are here and so this is a chance for you to get to catch up on the week’s events, a chance to greet one another with a hug or a hand shake, a chance to have some company for a change.
Maybe you’re here because you’re hurting. It has been a rough week, and things aren’t going as you think they should at work or at home, so you’ve come hoping to hear a solution to your problem and find some sense of hope and healing.
Or maybe you’re just here to be entertained and you’re hoping we’ll sing an older song that will take you back to yesteryear, or that you’ll hear the preacher tell a funny story that you can tell over a cup of coffee tomorrow at work.
If so, I’m glad you’re here and I hope you find what you are looking for. The church should be a part of your regular weekly routine and I do applaud parents who have the courage to make sure their kids are in church on Sunday. And I hope you do find a rich fellowship here because that is one of the things we need as persons, to love and to be loved and I can tell you we have some of the best hugs this side of the Mississippi, and if you are hurting I pray that word is spoken to heal your pain. A word of hope that will inspire you…if that’s you I’m glad you’re here and I hope we can minister to you, but if you are a Christian and that’s your primary reason for being here… then you’re here for the wrong reason..
The primary reason for attending a church service should be to worship God. The psalmist said in Psalms 95:6-7 , “Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker; for He is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.” Worship is more than just singing a few songs, performing a few rituals and enduring a sermon. We come to church to experience the presence of God, to acknowledge His authority in our lives and to worship Him as our Creator.
Yet many people in church have what we call a worship problem. In a Barna research study, they found that among regular church going adults, one third have said that they have never experienced God’s presence. ½ of Church members claimed that they had not experienced God in a worship service in the past year. And sadly, the surveys found that the younger the adult, the more likely they are to state that God is a distant, impersonal reality for them.
Now how is it possible that a God who so
desperately wants to love and to be loved by His creation seems to be on vacation or in a voluntary seclusion? Is it that God doesn’t want to be noticed? I don’t think so. I think there are a number of reasons why people don’t experience God during a worship service. The first is that we don’t know what worship is. We have no clear understanding of what it means to worship God.
Depending on your church background, when you think of worship you may think of a traditional brick church on a Sunday morning, filled with people singing one of the great hymns of the faith Maybe you’ve been to a charismatic or Pentecostal church, and you envision a scene with hands raised, eyes closed, people singing praise choruses, or even something more active – hands clapping, feet moving, shouts of "Hallelujah!" and "Amen!" These are all ways to worship, but they are not worship itself.
So what is exactly is worship? Well, the English word worship means to ascribe the highest worth to. So when we worship we are saying , “God you’re number one in my life. You come before anything and anyone else.” That is what is meant when we say, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart mind soul and strength. Nothing is more important to you than God. When we worship, we take our focus of everything else and place it solely upon God and I guess the best way to put it is this, Worship is when we celebrate God. We give Him the honor the glory, and most importantly we give of ourselves. You see worship is not just a one hour thing, it’s a way of life. Romans 12:1 says, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship.” Our worship on Sunday is a reflection of the worship we do the other 167 hours in the week. So understand that worship is a way of life, and the worship service is the reflection of what we’ve done throughout the week.
Now another reason why many have a hard time worshipping God is because worship is not a top priority in their life. A young man wrote to his girl and said to her in very elaborate language, “I would climb the highest mountain for you, I would swim the widest river for you, I would crawl across the burning sands of the desert for you.” Then he put a P.S. to the letter: “If it doesn’t rain Wednesday night I will be over to see you.” There is a whole lot of worship that is like that today. It will not take very much to keep us away from God, because we don’t consider worship to be an important event in our lives. It’s important but not just at the top of the list.
Several years ago the Toyota plant there nearby to where I grew up in Kentucky had a 65% perfect attendance record. 65% of their workers never missed a day, never called in sick not once. Now why were they so anxious to come to work? The reason was that at the end of the year the plant would hold a drawing and give away 15 new cars and only those with perfect attendance were allowed into the raffle. Now that made coming to work a top priority. I can envision the spouses of the workers pushing their spouse out the door while they half dead, “You go to work you ain’t going to cost me a chance at a new car!”
Now if we gave away a new car to those who came to church every Sunday, how many of you would never miss a Sunday for anything? You know what, you just told me that a car is more important to you than the glory of God. And that tells me you need to rethink your priorities. What if a person came to you and said, “I’ll give you 10 million dollars if you will just agree to never step a foot in a church again.” Think about it, you would never have to worry about bills, you could buy what you wanted and live the good life. Would you be willing to give up your opportunity to come and worship in God’s house? Would you still come let’s say if their was risk involved. In Sudan, or Vietnam, or India, or Guatemala, or Pakistan, or Indonesia, or Turkmenistan, or in dozens of other countries around the world, Christians who come together as a church risk being arrested, fined, deported, tortured; they risk having their homes and property destroyed or confiscated – they risk everything Would you be willing to risk everything for the worship of God?
Now God commands us to be in His house to worship Him, that should be good enough reason, but in addition doesn’t God deserve your praise? Just being who He is should be sufficient, but consider what God has done for you. The bible says that while we were yet still in our sins, Christ died for us. Can you imagine that? The almighty God did that just for you.
Max Lucado defined worship this way, “Worship is a voluntary act of gratitude offered by the saved to the Savior, by the healed to the Healer, and by the delivered to the Deliverer. And if you and I can go days without feeling an urge to say “thank you” to the One who saved, healed, and delivered us, then we’d do well to remember what He did.” And when we look back at the cross, and see the Son of God dying for our sins we stand in awe of the love he has for each and every one of us.
God has done so much for us. So is it to much for God to ask for you to spend one hour on Sunday morning, saying Thank you God. We just sang that song by Fanny Crosby, “To God be the Glory, great things he hath done, so loved He the world that he gave us his Son.” Worship is a privilege we have, the chance to say thank you and to give God glory and praise. It is a privilege to worship the Almighty God.
Worship needs to be a priority in our lives, because scripture demands it, God deserves it, but let me give you another reason…because it gives God pleasure. I’ll tell you one of the biggest thrills of my day, is when I come home in the afternoons, and as soon as the door is opened, my two little girls rush at me screaming, “Daddy you’re home!” and they take turns giving me kisses telling me how much they love me and for the first few moments we just sit there on the floor right in front of the door and love and I tell you no matter how rotten my day had been that makes me smile. Now imagine how God feels when on Sunday morning we gather here to rush at Him and say “We love You God!”
Now I hope that you can see the importance of worship and some of the barriers to worship I want to give you some ways you can make your worship experience more worshipful. The first is this, Come prepared to worship. You prepare for many other things. Football players go through a long game day routine to get ready for the big game. You prepare yourself to go on a date, you get fixed up, put on make up and shave. Hopefully girls put on the make up and guys shave, not vice versa. But the point is you get prepared because something big is about to happen.
Well how do you prepare for worship? What effort do you put into getting ready to come and worship the Lord. Do you get up 15 minutes before the start of church, throw on a shirt that looks like you slept in it, and show up still half asleep? Let me ask you, would we be so lackadaisical with, oh, let’s say, the president? Suppose you were granted a Sunday morning breakfast at the White House? How would you spend Saturday night? Would you get ready? Would you collect your thoughts? Would you think about your questions and requests? Of course you would. Well, should we prepare any less for an encounter with the Holy God?
Let me urge you to come to worship prepared to worship. Pray before you come so you will be ready to pray when you arrive. Sleep before you come so you’ll stay alert when you arrive. Read the Word before you come so your heart will be soft when you worship. Better yet, if you really want to be prepared to worship on Sunday morning, then you need to be synchronizing your heart with the Spirit every day of the week. You need to be praying, and reading, and listening, and worshiping privately every day, Monday through Saturday. And if everyone did that, it would not only transform our worship, it would absolutely transform this church.
Next, come expecting God to speak and come hungry for God and willing to listen. You see this may come as a shock to you, but the responsibility to worship doesn’t fall on the church or even the pastor, it falls on you. And if you don’t get anything out of a service than its not the church’s fault it’s yours. Now the church does have a responsibility to provide an atmosphere of worship, but the ultimate responsibility falls on you. I like to brag on Ed Holyfield because his heart is always ready to worship. A while back we had a revival in Winchester and the speaker we had that night wasn’t very good. In fact I was irritated because I could tell he wasn’t prepared to preach and he stumbled through his notes and wandered aimlessly from point to point for close to 45 minutes, I was to say the least a bit irritated but I could see Ed’s face and it was filled not with disgust but with eagerness. I was eager for the man to sit down, but Ed was eager for God to teach him something.
And we need to have the same attitude about worship, come with a humble teachable heart that is eager to see God and learn from Him. So often we come to church to nit pick! “How did you like that special music, it was to loud for me. Did you like the sermon, the preacher wasn’t at his best this morning. Did you notice the dust on the pews, when’s the last time they were cleaned.” It’s as if the service is a performance and we’re writing a critique for the Monday morning paper. And if that’s your attitude than you won’t get much from it. But if you come with the attitude, “Oh Lord, search my heart. I fall so short. Teach me Lord, let there be something in this service that will cause me to be more deeply committed to you.” Now if that is your spirit, you are going to be ready to be refined and molded into what God intended you to be.
John Gough once told of being in a church service and hearing a hoarse discordant voice behind him singing, Just as I am.” He cringed, he said because the man was the worst singer he had ever heard. There was no melody, no tune, nothing. After three stanzas, the organist mercifully played an interlude. As it was being played, Gough said that he felt a hand on his shoulder and the man with the terrible voice asked him, :Could you tell me the first phrase of the next stanza? I think I could get it if I had the first few words.” John Gough said he looked around into the face of the terrible singer, and he saw that the man was blind. He passed onto him the words to the next stanza of Just as I am which went, “Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind; Sight, riches, healing of mind, yea all I need in Thee I find, O lamb of God, I come! I come!”
John Gough said when the next stanza began, he didn’t hear the discordant notes anymore, he heard a man speaking to God, and God speaking back.
So why did you come here this morning? Was it for the fellowship, was it for a word of hope…those are both good things about our church, but that’s not why we do this. We came to see God and to give Him the glory…and this morning I invite you to come and not only know, but also experience God. He is not distant, He is here with us right now, and if you are ready to humble yourself and come to Him, He wants to be your loving Father.
