The Joy Of Worship - What Others Get From Your Worship Series

The JOY of Worship - What Others Get from your worship - Ps 96

Gladstone Baptist Church - 20/2/05 pm

Over the next 3 weeks we are beginning a series on "The JOY of Worship." This is the first of 5 series we will be undertaking during the year to unpack our mission statement.

Who knows our Mission Statement?

"Through our WORSHIP, WITNESS and WORKS OF SERVICE, we aim to reach people with the good news of Jesus and lead them to MATURITY in the FAMILY of God"

The five purposes are contained in this mission statement and every couple of months, we will be taking 4 services to unpack one of these purposes a bit more and try to figure out how it works itself out in the life of our church

The first purpose we see in our mission statement is WORSHIP and so this is the topic for us over the next 3 weeks.

We’ve entitled this series "The JOY of Worship" for a specific reason. The word JOY is often used in Christian circles as an Acronym for Jesus, Others & Yourself. Did you know that Jesus or God gets something when we worship? He does. Did you know that Other people get something when we worship? They do. Did you know that we also get something when we worship? You do.

So This is what we are going to be looking at over the next 3 weeks -

Tonight : The JOY of Worship - What Others get from your worship.

Next Sunday Morning : The JOY of Worship - What is Worship?

Sunday 6th March am : The JOY of Worship - What Jesus & God get from your worship.

Sunday 6th March pm : The JOY of Worship - What You get from your worship.

Sounds interesting doesn’t it - I hope that you’ll be able to be with us for all 4 messages and really begin to grasp the importance of worship and what it means to worship JOY-fully.

Pray:

Definition of Worship :

Before we launch into trying to figure out what Others get from your worship, we have to define some terms. Probably the key one is the term worship. What is worship?

Let us start by making a list of the ways we can worship God ...

I’d like to show you a video clip we made during the 40 Days of Purpose in which we asked many of the members of this congregation when they feel closest to God ...

Now just because I walk on the beach, doesn’t mean I am worshipping God, does it. No. So let’s make a list of key ingredients in worship ... What constitutes worship?

We are going to talk a lot more about this next Sunday morning, but for now, what I want you to understand is that worship is far more than just singing.

Rick Warren in our Purpose Driven Life Book defines Worship as Surrender. It is a life surrendered to God. Another definition is this “Worship: taking everything that we have and laying it at God’s feet.” The meaning of the Hebrew word for worship is to BOW DOWN or fall down before someone more worthy. If you are a servant with a life surrendered to someone, you serve them physically. With worship, surrendering to God is a choice we make, so that we serve not just with our bodies physically, we serve with our mind or attitudes. We choose to serve God so our heart’s attitude to God is one of surrender.

Worship can encompass our spiritual, our physical, our social and financial lives. We learnt during the 40 days of purpose that we should ““Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” Mark 12:30. Our love and the expression of this should be all encompassing. There shouldn’t be any boundaries to how we live out our surrendered lives.

Worshipping God is the act of living in surrender. It is a VERB - something we do. Unfortunately we have made it a NOUN. E.g. I attended worship today. No you didn’t. You may have gone to church, but you probably didn’t worship. Worship is not an event so much as an action. You do not go to church to worship, you take your worship to church. Don’t come to church to worship, bring your worship to church.

And how do we do this - You are limited by your imagination. Everything we do in life should be worship, because every part of life should be lived in surrender to God. What we do at home is worship. What we do at work is worship. How we spend our money should be worship. How we spend our free time should be worship. Even the time we spend during the sermon should be worship.