Do We Come to Worship God, Or To Feel Good About Us?

Too many people who come to Church on Sundays  are looking  for the Worship leaders to make them feel good.  They desire that they receive something out of the worship service.  They want the pastor to say things that make them feel good about themselves.  The idea of church is no longer about coming to worship God but is about making oneself feel good, we hope that songs will bring a good feeling to us and we do not even take time to notice the words we sing.  We wage wars inside the church about how to worship forgetting what true worship is all about.  As I was reading one night I came across this thought: “We [Americans] interpret everything through a lens of pragmatism, through a transactional understanding of the world.  Many of us come to church Sunday after Sunday with the expectation of receiving something … But God does not exist to be useful.  God exists to be adored, simply because of who He is. True worship is, at its core, an act of senseless , wasteful, indulgent beauty.” (Skye Jethani)

              How many of us fall into this trap of thinking that we come to church and it is not our responsibility to be prepared to worship?  We come but we are not prepared. We believe that the worship leader should come and be passionate and make us ready to worship.  We serve a God who does not take orders from anyone, who created the universe and sent His son to earth to die on a cross for our sins, so we could be saved and have true life.  Yet we cannot come into His house of worship and be ready to worship Him.  We have the mindset that if we do not like what is happening or we aren’t moved enough it is someone’s fault but not our own.  King David said; “The one thing I ask of the Lord—the thing I seek most—is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, delighting in the Lord’s perfections and meditating in his Temple. Then I will hold my head high, above my enemies who surround me. At his Tabernacle I will offer sacrifices with shouts of joy, singing and praising the Lord with music.”(Ps 4,6)

I want you to think about this when you come to church each Sunday, have you prepared yourself to come and to worship.  Have you like, King David said, today I want to go and seek God, I want to delight in His word, I will sacrifice with shouts of joy, singing and praising the Lord with music.  You see we mistakenly think that church is about us, but it is not about us at all it is all about God, we are called to passionately love God with everything we have and we are to praise His name.  Church is all about God and we must come prepared to worship God.  Think about what Peter tells us, “get rid of all malicious behavior and deceit. Don’t just pretend to be good! Be done with hypocrisy and jealousy and backstabbing. You must crave pure spiritual milk so that you can grow into the fullness of your salvation. Cry out for this nourishment as a baby cries for milk, now that you have had a taste of the Lord’s kindness. Come to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God’s temple. He was rejected by the people, but he is precious to God who chose him.  And now God is building you, as living stones, into his spiritual temple. What’s more, you are God’s holy priests, who offer the spiritual sacrifices that please him because of Jesus Christ.”(1^stPeter 2:1-5)  We are to no longer live as we did before we must live to please and to worship God, we are to do without expecting anything back.  We are to crave God’s word.  We are to come and be passionate in our worship of God.  

Worshiping God Everyday Not Just Once A Week:

We are commanded to love God with all our mind heart and soul, if we are to follow this commandant does it not then mean we must worship God every day?   Realizing that most people think of worship in the corporate sense not in an only one person thing, let us redefine the parameter of worship, shall we?  Let’s  begin to widen worship to our everyday living. Knowing that worship is showing love and respect to God, the question we have to ask is how do we do that in everyday living?  Paul tells us this in Romans 12:1-2, “dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will accept. When you think of what he has done for you, is this too much to ask? Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is.”   As we read what Paul is saying here, we begin to see that being a Christian is more than us feeling good about ourselves.  It becomes a lifestyle of showing respect and love to God by allowing Him to transform our behavior.  We are to give up our own way of thinking and allow God to transform our wants and desires. 

We begin to worship God everyday through our everyday activity in how we treat others.  Are we treating them with same type of love that God has given us, are we working hard for the company we work for.  What type of attitude are we having?  How do we spend our free time,  are we busy doing what the world does or are looking into Gods word and going to prayer?  Many may be saying I don’t understand, are you saying we should be more focused on God then ourselves, should we no longer worry about what we may be missing in order to bring glory God?  Yes, that is what I am saying, we must no longer worry about the things that we want, we must begin to learn how to live for God, to worship Him from our hearts not with our words.  The world tells us do what you please worry about advancing yourself, yet God desires for us to love Him and to advance in Him.  He sent His own son to die on a cross so that we may find freedom from this world and from sin.  Yet so many people instead of truly serving God, desire to remain in the world because they are afraid of what they might miss out on.  Paul told the Philippians, “For I live in eager expectation and hope that I will never do anything that causes me shame, but that I will always be bold for Christ, as I have been in the past, and that my life will always honor Christ, whether I live or I die. For to me, living is for Christ, and dying is even better.  Yet if I live, that means fruitful service for Christ. I really don’t know which is better.  I’m torn between two desires: Sometimes I want to live, and sometimes I long to go and be with Christ. That would be far better for me,  but it is better for you that I live.  I am convinced of this, so I will continue with you so that you will grow and experience the joy of your faith. Then when I return to you, you will have even more reason to boast about what Christ Jesus has done for me.”(1:20-25)

No matter what we are doing we are to live for God, I can’t say it any better than how Francis Chang says it in his book Crazy Love; “To be brutally honest, it doesn’t really matter what place you find yourself in right now. Your part is to bring Him glory—whether eating a sandwich on a lunch break, drinking coffee at 12:04 a.m. so you can stay awake to study, or watching your four-month-old take a nap. The point of your life is to point to Him. Whatever you are doing, God wants to be glorified, because this whole thing is His. It is His movie, His world, His gift.”

Chan, Francis (2010-01-01). Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God (pp. 42-43). David C Cook. Kindle Edition.

Is life Truly About Us being Happy?

I hear people talk about how all they want is to be happy, that life is all about being happy.  I hear it out of the mouths of those who go to church and do not go to church.  Phil Robertson of the Duck Dynasty fame has coined the phrase “happy happy happy”  But is this taught in the bible?  Does God want us to just be happy?  As I was studying this afternoon I ran across what Paul wrote to the Philippians, “for I live in eager expectation and hope that I will never do anything that causes me shame, but that I will always be bold for Christ, as I have been in the past, and that my life will always honor Christ, whether I live or I die.  For to me, living is for Christ, and dying is even better.  Yet if I live, that means fruitful service for Christ. I really don’t know which is better.  I’m torn between two desires: Sometimes I want to live, and sometimes I long to go and be with Christ. That would be far better for me, ²⁴ but it is better for you that I live. I am convinced of this, so I will continue with you so that you will grow and experience the joy of your faith. Then when I return to you, you will have even more reason to boast about what Christ Jesus has done for me” (1:20-26)  Let us stop and think about when this was written Paul was in Rome under house arrest not allowed to go where he wanted.  Yet he says “I will always be bold for Christ.”  This life I live is not about me but about Christ, not about whether I am happy but I’m I living for Christ.

          If we are living for Christ then we are attaining joy, something so much better than happiness, we are going to have the eternal joy that comes from knowing God.  The Psalmist wrote “For I envied the proud when I saw them prosper despite their wickedness….Was it for nothing that I kept my heart pure  and kept myself from doing wrong? … When I thought how to understand this,  It was  too painful for me— Until I went into the sanctuary of God”(Ps 73:3, 13, 16-17) I like how Francis Chan explains this piece of scripture.  “It is easy to become disillusioned with the circumstances of our lives compared to others’. But in the presence of God, He gives us a deeper peace and joy that transcends it all.”  What God desires for us is that we be happy but that we find the joy in life that only he can provide us.

         Chan, Francis (2010-01-01). Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God (p. 42). David C Cook. Kindle Edition.

Truly Worshiping God

I decided to do the next few weeks on worship. I began to pray and God brought me down a path that I would not have suspected.  I, like many people, thought of worship as something we do during certain times of the day, and on Sunday mornings.  As I began this study I looked up the meaning of worship Merriam-Webster tells us that worship is, “the act of showing respect and love for a god especially by praying with other people who believe in the same god.”  I hope you took note of the first part of the definition it tells us that worship starts by showing “respect and love.”  We cannot worship God if we do not love God or respect God.  God tells the people of Israel this in Deuteronomy 6:14-19; “You must not worship any of the gods of neighboring nations, for the Lord your God, who lives among you, is a jealous God. His anger will flare up against you and wipe you from the face of the earth. Do not test the Lord your God as you did when you complained at Massah. You must diligently obey the commands of the Lord your God—all the stipulations and laws he has given you.  Do what is right and good in the Lord’s sight, so all will go well with you. Then you will enter and occupy the good land that the Lord solemnly promised to give your ancestors.  You will drive out all the enemies living in your land, just as the Lord said you would.”

 Do you see what God is telling His people? You cannot go after other gods, or things, you must love me first, follow the commandments I have given you.  How many times do we put other things before God, how many times do we say I love the things of this world more than I do God.  We want to come to church and say I’m going to worship God today and honor God today, but in our hearts we really do not.  We decide  that during the other six days of the week we are not going to show respect to God, in how we speak, in what we think, or what we watch.  Instead of bringing Glory to God we decide to bring glory to ourselves.  What if I told you that the life you live is not about you at all?  What if I told you that the life we live is to be all about God?  Does that scare you a little bit, are you worried about what you might miss out on?  It shouldn’t scare us at all.  God is a loving God, He sent His Son to earth to die on a cross for our sins, so we may be saved from our sins.  We must Allow God’s Holy Spirit to enter into us and begin to change the way we think, the way act and respond to the things of the world.  We must allow God to circumcise our hearts. It is through the process of circumcision of the heart that our hearts are cleansed and we begin to truly focus on God.  We read in the old the new testament of this:

Deuteronomy 30:6  “Moreover, the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live”

Romans 2:28-28 “For you are not a true Jew just because you were born of Jewish parents or because you have gone through the Jewish ceremony of circumcision. No, a true Jew is one whose heart is right with God. And true circumcision is not a cutting of the body but a change of heart produced by God’s Spirit. Whoever has that kind of change seeks praise from God, not from people.”

Philippines 3:3 “For we who worship God in the Spirit^* are the only ones who are truly circumcised. We put no confidence in human effort. Instead, we boast about what Christ Jesus has done for us.” 

Listening While Praying:

Romans 8:26-30 says “And the Holy Spirit helps us in our distress.  For we don’t even know what we should pray for, nor how we should pray. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.  And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.  And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.  For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn, with many brothers and sisters.  And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And he gave them right standing with himself, and he promised them his glory”  What is Paul telling us here is some wonderful truths about God.  One, He knows us better than we know ourselves and His spirit helps us and guides us in prayer.  This also tells us that we need to be listening to God when we pray, what is God trying to tell when we pray? 

You may be saying what do you mean we should be listening, is God going to speak to us in an audible voice.  No that is not what I mean at all.  But I believe many of us may not go into our prayer time ready to really have a two sided conversation with God.  Let us stop for just a second and look at how we get ready for our Sunday morning service.  We come to sanctuary, we get seated and we listen to the opening song, then pray, then we sing more.  Then the pastor gets up and speaks.  Why do we do this?  We Do it to prepare our hearts and minds to hear God speaking to us through His word, through what He has told the pastor to speak on that day.  Many of us may read our bible then pray then get up and leave.  What if we really prepared to come to God and have true communion with Him. Maybe listen to some worship music, quite our hearts, read His word, write down those things that God brings to our mind.  Pray to God, then when we are finished be quite for a few minutes  and see what He may have to lay on your heart. Write it down if your journal, read whatever piece of scripture He may lay on your mind, leave changed. 

What is so great about God is He has given us His spirit to guide and direct us, as we read His word and pray, His spirit guides and directs us. Richard Blackby explains it like this; “when the Holy Spirit reveals a truth to you in prayer, He is present and actively working in your life. This kind of prayer is a divine encounter. Here's what happens as you seek God's will in prayer: God takes the initiative by causing you to want to pray. The Holy Spirit, through the Word of God, reveals God's will to you. You pray in agreement with the will of God. You adjust your thinking and attitudes to God's truth. You look and listen for confirmation or further direction from the Bible, circumstances, and the church (other believers). You obey. God works in and through you to accomplish His purposes. You experience Him as the Spirit revealed when you prayed. Praying and reading your Bible are inextricably connected. The Spirit of God often uses the Word of God when you pray. When I pray about something, Scripture often comes to mind, and I immediately open my Bible to the passage I believe the Spirit of God brought to my attention.”

Blackaby, Richard (2008-09-01). Experiencing God (pp. 160-161). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.