Building a Great Life I, A Life of Worship

I'm going to invite you to turn to Romans 12. I think I'll go on record as I begin this message just to say I know we're going to go over a few minutes today because we just had a few extra things to say prior to beginning, but I believe that what we want to encounter today is very important and it will be very helpful to you if we can attend to this word for the next thirty minutes or so. Romans 12, as you're receiving your outline, let's just read the text from the overhead. This is from the NIV, Romans 12, 1 and 2. As usual, let's declare God's word together, shall we? 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. Would you read that last phrase again? This is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, and then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will. Thanksgiving provides us an opportunity to really examine life. I trust that all of us took just a few moments during the holiday to really contemplate the goodness of God in our lives. Carol was preparing her part of the Thanksgiving dinner at home and making some other arrangements, and on the television in the kitchen was a well-known TV media personality type that was describing how to perfectly carve a turkey after you had perfectly cooked it in this extraordinarily expensive some kind of grill. I won't mention the person's name, but she finished her whole presentation by saying something general like, ìDon't forget that in the end, when you serve your turkey, to reflectively consider on how lucky you have been to have all these nice things and family and so on.î I thought to myself, ìSorry, Martha, that's a little too experiential for me.î Did I get that right? It's Jesus who said, ìI've come that they might have life.î Young people, listen, you can look for life in lots of places, but there's only one human being who walked the face of the earth and said, ìYou come to me and I'm going to show you how to find life.î The Message Translation said, ìI've come that you might have life in all its fullness.î Jesus is the source of life, but how do we go about building it? That's what this series is going to be about. I'm going to give you the first installment today, and then as we go through the month of December, we're going to look at six characteristics of a great life. Several of these are going to be things you wouldn't have expected. I would be willing to say that this first characteristic is one that would not be on a list of the top six that you would tend to put down that would constitute a great life, because it's worship. For most of us, worship isn't the first thing we think about when we're talking about building a great life. In fact, if you're like me, worship was something that I sort of did back when, because that's what you did at 11 o'clock in the morning on Sundays. How many of you grew up with a compartmentalized idea of worship? Worship is something you went to, something you did in church. I don't fault you for that. That's just part of our culture, and many of us, it was the way we were brought up. Unfortunately, friends, this puts a distortion on our lives. This puts us in a very difficult situation where we are suddenly challenged to think about worship in a whole different paradigm than one we've grown up or been exposed to. If we're going to build a great life, we've got to see that this is going to take a radical change. This is not going to happen by simply just adjusting a couple of things. How many of you are partway into your life and you kind of wish you could start over again? I get one health-related magazine, and on the cover of it in the month of November was this little blue sort of gold medal coupon thing that said, inside, win a whole new life. That's the mother of all contests, isn't it? You win a house or a car or a boat or a trip, but a whole new life. So I flipped hurriedly to page 52 to see what could I do in a whole new life. Well, of course it was talking about a makeover, for whatever reason. Life takes a lot more than that. There's not quick fixes to building a great life. I was in the car wash a few months ago and saw this little air freshener thing, and the scent is called new car. So I went out and sprayed this in my son's 1985 Honda Accord. He said, Dad, it smells like the same old rust bucket that I bought and it doesn't work. Why? Because nothing quick and easy can change something and make it new without a total transformation. Externals, in other words, don't work. It's got to be an internal thing. Building a great life takes some serious steps. I want you to look at this first one of worship with me, understanding that if you're going to really find meaning to life, letter A, worship is where you begin. Let me just share with you. I have discovered three things, and this is a great conversation starter, by the way, with people who don't know Christ. Three things that are indispensable to finding meaning in your life. This isn't on your outline, but jot it down in the right hand corner. The first one is wonder. Unless you have a sense of awe or wonder in your life, you'll never fully find the meaning of life. It appeals to the heart that says there's something bigger than me. The second thing that you have to have to find meaning is truth. That appeals to the conscience of every person that knows that there is a right and wrong, there's an absolute, even though you may deny it for a season, you know it's there. And the third thing is love. Love, not the emotional gushy love that you watch on the movie screen, but the love of choice that says, I will give up my desires and my needs for the sake of someone else. Those three things, friends, they weave together the meaning of life. And I've been around some people, and so have you, and you've read of people, perhaps, that have obtained the pinnacle of achievement in their field. They've risen to the top of the heap in athletics, or in business, or in politics, or, you know, in whatever pursuit. And they've gotten to the top, and they've found that the loneliest moment in their life was when they were at the very top, and it didn't satisfy them. Because, you see, it didn't have in it those three ingredients of wonder, and truth, and love. That's where the meaning of life abides. And that's, interestingly, listen, those three strands are what worship is about. Worship is about wonder. How great thou art! Worship is about truth. It's about the absolute nature of God and his revelation to us. And worship is about love. It's about the choice to give expression of our heart's cry to God. It may be, listen, it may be that many of you are like me. At one point in my life, I was a believer in Christ. I knew that I was saved. I knew that I had a relationship with God. I had received Christ, whatever way you want to describe it. I knew I was a Christian, but I was not a worshiper. And this is becoming increasingly prevalent in our culture. And I'm discovering that more and more people that I encounter come to a point of a decision to receive Christ, but have no clue as to what God then expects of them. Anne Murchison, who was the wife of Clint Murchison, former owner of the Dallas Cowboys, wrote a wonderful book. I think it's out of print now. It's called Praise and Worship on Earth as it is in Heaven. She writes this. She says, faith is now exercised without a jar to the moral life, and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego. In other words, the ego with which we're born. Christ may be received without creating any special love for him in the soul of the receiver. The man is saved, but he's not hungry nor thirsty for God. In fact, he's specifically taught to be satisfied and encouraged to be contented with little. And as I watch in circles that I travel in, and I'm sure you do too, I see lots and lots of people who have received Christ, but have no clue about worship. And I'm going to say something rather radical, and you might want to listen carefully to see if you agree with me. But I want to say something that's very important. If you've not learned to worship God, and you're sure that you're a Christian today. Now, if you're not sure you're a Christian, that's a different issue. But if you're sure you're a Christian, it's probably true that you found the Christian life, the walk, to be wearisome at best, and disappointing at worst. Now, you may not have told anyone that, but when you lay your head in the pillow and you know you're a Christian, and it's a wearisome, burdensome thing, and even a little disappointing. Friends, I want to submit to you, the key that you're missing is a vital worship life with Christ. And the reason I know that is I walked in those shoes. And I want to ask all of us today to look honestly at your heart. Where are you in your worship life? I know one thing for sure. Jesus said that the Father seeks those. He's looking today throughout this auditorium for those who will worship Him in spirit, that is sincerely, and in truth, that is according to His Word. Worship is what God has intended, what He's looking for. And it isn't always easy. You know, if I were to ask some of you, hey, let's go work out today. Some of you haven't worked out in months or maybe even years. What would you feel like after a two-hour workout in the gym today? You'd be mad at me, wouldn't you? You'd say, what are you doing? You're subjecting my body to this torment. You'd be sore. The next day you'd be really mad. But over a few weeks, you'd begin to say, you know, this is starting to feel good. I've got a little more stamina, a little more energy. The discipline of getting before God in the spirit of worship is much like that. It goes against the human nature. But once you break through that threshold, you begin to realize that there's a vitality, a vigorousness about your walk that's been missing. And so I want to just sort of issue here this morning what I'm going to call an Advent Challenge. This is the first Sunday of the four Sundays prior to Christmas, Advent Sunday. And I'm going to challenge you, I'm going to call it the Advent Challenge, for the next four Sundays, the next four weeks actually, to ask God, to make room to have Christ birthed in your heart on a regular basis, on a daily basis, that the passion for Christ would be birthed in your heart this Christmas season. That by Christmas Sunday morning, Thursday the 25th, you could say, Lord Jesus, I'm presenting myself to you renewed in my spirit. Now how many of you know that would be a gift that would be pleasing to God? Oftentimes we wonder what we're going to get this person or that person. Have you wondered what could you give the Lord this Christmas? I want to submit to you a renewed and passionate heart for Him. And I want to give you just a little bit of insight into my own walk right now. And I want to share just a bit of a confession with you. This is something that I've discovered, that once you've entered into this, it doesn't mean you keep walking in it. You know, I was brought to my knees this week as I was in preparation, particularly on Friday. Nobody was here in the building. The staff had the day off. We had our men's study in the morning. And then I just went and I had all day to just be preparing. And the farther I got into this material, the more I realized something, Church. And I don't say this except to maybe encourage you that you're not alone if you struggle. That as I looked through this material and studied the scriptures I'm going to show you and looked through some of the resources that I have, I realized something. I realized that over the last couple of years my passion for worship has begun to drift. And God brought great conviction and a little remorse in my spirit about that. Some of that passion had been cooled by the steady rain of responsibilities and the demands of life that all of us are familiar with. And I listened to a tape that I did four years ago on this subject, four years ago. It's really scary when you listen to your own tapes, by the way. And I said something there that I want to affirm today, that I would desire that my passion for Christ, not for ministry, but for Christ, for His presence would grow in the latter years of my life. That it wouldn't wane. That it wouldn't just sort of get put on the side burner. But that it would grow. And I could say with Paul the Apostle, I forget what lies behind and all the glory of it. And there's been glorious moments. And I press on to what lies ahead to the mark of the high calling that I have in Christ Jesus. How many of you want to go that direction? It does us no good to look back. I don't care how glorious it was. Let's look forward together. And so I ask you to check your heart. And if you could say honestly, you're more passionate this Thanksgiving than you were last, then praise God for your faithfulness. But if you'd have to say, you know what, I'm kind of on a plateau here. I'm not even sure I'm tracking with you. Then could I ask you to consider taking a radical step. Take the Advent challenge. Give God the next 25 days to renew your passion. Here's four characteristics, four characteristics of presenting yourself as a living sacrifice according to Romans 12.2. And if you're taking notes, let me just jump down here to Roman Numeral 1. The first thing to be a worshiper is to have a pure motive, purity of motive. If you come to God for what you're going to get, friends, it isn't long before you get very little, if nothing at all. The beginning point of making a move toward establishing a worship life is a revelation of who God is. I want you to turn, if you have your Bible, to Psalm 63, and if not, again, Donna's going to help us by putting it on the overhead. Here's David, King David, who I believe is the model worshiper in the Bible. God said, here's a man after my own heart. Here's what David wrote in Psalm 63, verses 1-5. And again, let's read it together, shall we? O God, you are my God. Earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My body longs for you. In a dry and weary land where there is no water, I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods. With singing lips, my mouth will praise you. You see, the very first point to establish is that you're coming to God just for Him. O God, you are my God. He's Lord of everything. Friends, on Thanksgiving evening, many of you were here, and the conclusion of that service, we had the banners that proceeded up here and stood on the platform, and then behind them the folks with the flags that were opened up, and the choir and the orchestra, and then spontaneously, not on cue, but spontaneously, the whole congregation stood to its feet and we applauded and rejoiced. And we all experienced a moment of declaration, a declaring of the Lordship of Christ over all the earth. And when that final banner came up, and we saw Jesus as portrayed in Revelation, you know, with the seven lampstands and so, I mean, it's a powerful thing. And we all believe down in our soul that that's going to be the final disposition of things. But what God is looking for is people, not in the moments of glory when we're all together, but in the moments of quiet, solitary stillness before God that you can say, God, you are my God. And the first thing that we need to do, the first thing is to get along with God and just say to Him, God, you are my God. I am here for you. There's no one in the world like you, Lord. And a friend, you can't say that and you're not sure that that's true, then you need to do some real soul searching. You know, when Thomas, who had the doubts about, is this Christ really the one? He said, he went up to Jesus and he put his finger in Jesus' hand, remember that? And he looked up at him and what was his response? He said, oh, my Lord and my God. When Peter was trying to pull in that huge catch of fish in Luke 5, so great that the boat began to sink, he looked at what Christ had done as a miracle and he turned to Jesus and he said what? He said, depart from me, Lord, for I'm a sinful man. You see, when you encounter the living God, you cannot be the same. Something in you says, there's no one like you. Oh, God, you are my God. Earnestly, I will seek you. Pure worship is best done alone because, friends, you can't show off in the prayer closet. Here in the sanctuary, you know, you might think people are looking at you and hey, look at him, he seems to really be into it. He must really be a good Christian. When you're in the prayer closet, there's no showing off. And I want to say something, whatever you do in the corporate gathering, you should be doing much more intensely when you're on your own. If you're here lifting your hands and worshiping but you go in your prayer closet and you're just kind of sitting there, God doesn't buy it. It's integrity of heart. So first of all, purity of motive. Second is sacrifice. Sacrifice. They did a little word study and that first verse where it says, earnestly in the NIV, if you have a King James, I believe it says, early will I seek you. Early will I seek you. That is the correct Hebrew translation. Early will I seek you. In Psalm 57 verse 8, David said, I'm going to awaken the dawn. I want you all just to collectively groan with me right now, alright? Oh God, I mean, why can't I do my, why can't I meet you at like 5 in the afternoon? I mean, what is it about this? Pastor, you don't understand, I am not a morning person. If you think I'm going to get up and enjoy God early in the morning, you've got another thought? Well, again, can I just focus you on the next 25 days? Can I issue a challenge to go against the grain of your nature perhaps? I don't know what it is about the bed. What is it about the bed? I mean, it's almost like supernatural how that thing will just like, does your bed curl in on you? You go to get out and you just can't move. Or you hit that little button that gives you an extra 10 minutes and somehow it just keeps going and all of a sudden that 30 minutes you were going to give to God has gone up, especially in these dark mornings like this. Friends, I just want to say, there's reasons why the Bible asks you to do things that are against your nature. And it has to do with this word, letter B, the word sacrilege. What is sacrilege? Let me tell you first of all what a sacrilege is. I'm going to use a story. This happened to me years ago. I had taken a group of young people on a long mission trip out west. We went to an Indian reservation. We spent 10 days in blistering heat in southern Arizona fixing up this reservation and then made some other stops along the way. We were headed back home. We stopped in Indianapolis and along the way to save money we called churches way in advance, of course, and they agreed to have us stay there for the night. Well, I had 41 kids and 6 counselors. I was the oldest one. I think I was 27 or 28 years old at that point. At that juncture, 21 days into the trip, the kids were exhausted but they were also pumped up about coming home. We showed up at this Methodist church somewhere in Indianapolis. It was a standard sort of city kind of church. They had a basement and a sanctuary upstairs. They put us down in the basement, which was fine. We rolled out our sleeping bags. But that night the kids were just pumped up. They wanted something to happen. I don't know how it got going, but they got some water balloons and then they got some shaving cream. All of a sudden stuff started flying. One guy figured out a way to take this talcum powder and put his hair dryer behind it. He'd go around like this and squirt it up. I'm not exaggerating. In about 10 or 15 minutes, this entire basement of this Methodist church is covered with powder and shaving cream and water and gunk. I'm forgetting the worst stuff. Of course, some of it got trudged upstairs. Some kids tried to do a raid by going around the sanctuary and coming down the back. In the end, we cleaned it all up. The next morning, the custodian arrives. Seven in the morning. The kids are still sleeping. I'm up. He was a rather proper gentleman in his late fifties. He came and looked at me. I'll never forget it. He said, Young man, this is a custodian. He said, This is a sacrilege. I had to think about what does he mean. He was probably right. Here's what G. Campbell Morgan said a sacrilege is. First of all, a sacrilege is taking something that belongs to God and using it profanely. If I were to take the communion elements and pour them on the ground, you'd say, Well, that's a sacrilege. We've taken the house of worship and we just made a mess of it. That was a sacrilege. But Campbell Morgan also goes on to help us and say, But the other part of the definition that most of us don't know is a sacrilege is taking something and giving it to God when it means absolutely nothing to you. In other words, friends, as David said in 2 Samuel 24, 24, I will not give the Lord my God a sacrifice that costs me nothing. And God sometimes requires of you different things that go against your nature. Maybe it's getting up early. Maybe it's expressing yourself. Maybe it's somehow pushing the boundaries of your comfort so that it would be for you a sacrifice. Turn to your neighbor right now and tell him, I need to learn to sacrifice. Go ahead. Tell your neighbor that. Tell him. Tell your neighbor, I need to learn to sacrifice because I don't want to be guilty of a sacrilege before God. You say, Well, does it count if you get up late and meet with God? Well, yes, it does. But I've got to say, friends, that if you're to be a worshiper, it will probably not be comfortable. It will probably stretch you. Number three is emotion. Now notice I don't say emotionalism, but David writes in Psalm 63, My lips will praise thee. I'm going to give expression. And it's clear that David was very earnest about this. He says that my soul thirsts for you and my body longs for you in a dry and weary land. What's it like when you get hungry? What do you do when you're really hungry? Come on. When you're really hungry? No, don't you? Yeah, you eat. But what do you mean? You make. I watched my family circling around the hors d'oeuvre trail. It was Thanksgiving, before the main course came out. And they were hungry because we didn't give them lunch. And there's this drive, right? You've got to eat because this thing's driving at you. Anyone here ever been really thirsty? I mean, like you hadn't had water for a while. Maybe you were camping or whatever. I mean, it's huge. It just drives you on the inside. Charles Spurgeon, writing about this particular passage, said this, Thirst is an insatiable longing after that which is one of the most essential supports of life. There's no reasoning with it. In other words, you can't tell yourself, I'm not going to be thirsty. There's no forgetting it. There's no despising it. There's no overcoming it by stoical indifference. Thirst will be heard. The whole man must yield to its power. So it is with that divine desire which the grace of God creates in regenerate man. Only God himself can satisfy the craving of a soul really aroused by the Holy Spirit. David said, God, that's how I come after you. I'm thirsty for you. And that kind of a thirst, friends, needs an expression. It needs to be spoken. So many people believe that worship can just be the way you want it to be. And I'm here to tell you, I believe that David gave us scriptural patterns for worship. One of them is to express yourself. How many of you would be married today if you never told or showed your spouse that you loved them? Well, some people say, well, that's the kind of marriage I'm in. Let me tell you, that's a marriage that's in trouble. And we cannot have a relationship with the living God unless we can show and tell him that we love him. And I know these are difficult things for some of us who feel like, well, you know, I'm just not wired that way. I'm not a, quote, emotional person. Would you just look with me at four ways you can express your feelings to God that I think any of us could do? Number one, just read the psalm to him. Tomorrow, as you spend that moment, whatever it is, an hour, a half hour, 15 minutes of time with God, read a psalm out loud. It could be the beginning point of a fresh expression. Start with Psalm 1 or use the Bible outline in your North Way Notes. Read it out loud. The key is out loud. Second, speak your thanksgiving in praise. Don't just think it, but speak it. Lord, I praise you today for my family, my wife, my job, my friends, whatever it might be. I praise you for your provision. I praise you for who you are. A third way that I've discovered that helps people is to just affirm the nature, the character of God by using the covenant names that we've established over the years here at North Way. I believe we have copies out in the visitor center. If not, I'll make sure they're put out there after this service. The names of God, I won't go through them all, but look at them up here. Look at them. These are eight names that God gave us in scripture that talk about his covenants to us. He's our peace. He's our presence. He's our joy. We can spend easily 10 minutes just praising God using these names. I have a tape in the tape library if you'd like to learn how to do that in a more detailed way. Number four, I've discovered that worship, and David says through this, David says, sing to the Lord. How many of you find it awkward to sing by yourself? Thank you for your honesty. It's not always easy. I had one gentleman come up to me after the first service and say, you know, the only place I can sing is in the car on the way to work because I can keep the windows up and no one can hear me. That's great. But I've found that with all the tools that are out there, all the CDs and all the different music, it's easy to sing along with someone and enter into praise and worship. But here's something I didn't think of until this morning because I saw it on the outline. Even if you can't speak, even if you can't sing, you can all write. And writing, just writing your heart's expression to God is an expression to him that you'll find will be pleasing to the Lord and it'll stretch you. Get a little notepad and just write this day, Lord, hear my prayer as I come to you to worship you this morning. Write it out as an expression. My lips will praise thee, David says. So may God's same spirit grant us power and grace to do that. Are there times when silence is appropriate? Absolutely. But friends, I think our problem tends to be more the opposite of that. We don't know how to express. And finally, number four, reverence. David says, I will lift up my hands and do thy name. What is lifting of hands all about? Some of you have come into this church and you saw some people earlier lifting up your hands and said, well, is that weird or what? Well, it's only weird if you take a great portion of scripture and throw it out. In the Old and New Testament alike, the Bible tells us one way to give expression to God is to lift our hands because it's the universal sign of what? Surrender. It's basically saying by a bodily posture that there's no one greater in all the world than you, Lord. I surrender to you. I will lift up my hands unto your name. You know, somewhere in the last few years, this whole idea of the reverence of God has kind of gotten a little distorted. Early in the charismatic movement, there was abundant reverence to God being given. Early on as the spirit moved in churches in the 60s and early 70s and so, many people would find themselves renewed and humbled by God's presence. But lately, maybe the last five years, I've noticed a casualness about worship. Maybe it's the glut of things that are out there. Maybe it's the way the media over-portrays it. I don't know. But sometimes, I believe that we've become too familiar with God. That's why I'm grateful for some of the things that have come along that remind us what worship is all about. I want to close with this quote from the founder of Promise Keepers. Look up here in the overhead. Here's what he wrote about worship. He said, True worship is not just an emotional experience. It reaches to the very depths of our souls and touches every aspect of our being. While it can generate powerful feelings, it can also enlighten our minds, expand our perspective and understanding of God. It can convict us of sin and lead us to repent. It can confirm a scripture or specific word the Lord may have spoken to us and encourage us to obey. It can change our hearts and inspire us to reach for new heights of holiness. Such is the power of sincere praise and adoration of our Heavenly Father. And that's just what it does for us. The truly miraculous thing about worship is that in some mysterious way, it also has the power to move the heart of Almighty God. Friends, may we never lose sight that worship is bringing the transcendent, sovereign presence of God right into the very place that you occupy. That's what it does. And it changes us. Lifting of our hands, and if you have to lock the doors and close the blinds so no one sees you, fine, start there. But may I encourage you to begin to express your reverence to God as the Bible would encourage. So that's it. Purity of motive, the sacrifice of something that costs you to give to God, the expression of your love in a specific way, and the reverence that comes by declaring your surrender to God. This one thing I know, the Lord is seeking those who will worship in spirit and truth. And two things that you can expect. Number one, you can expect resistance. Last thing in your outline. Hey, tomorrow many of you will get up and say, you know what, this is Advent, I'm going to give the Lord some time. But Tuesday morning, hmm, I'm still tired from Monday, I can't do it again, Lord. But I want to encourage you, give God these next three and a half weeks. Just give him some time. And second, you can expect reward. There's something that's going to happen in our hearts as we grow as a worshipping people. You're going to find God will meet you. David writes it this way, he said, my soul will be satisfied with the richest of foods. Aren't you glad he didn't say my soul will be satisfied with health food? What was the richest food that you had for Thanksgiving? Was it some wonderful cheesecake at the end of dinner? David said, your soul is going to feel that kind of satisfaction because God is going to meet you. And so I want to ask you today, would you join with me in taking a radical step and saying, Lord, I want to be a worshipper. Let's stand together. And let's ask the Lord Jesus by his spirit right now to meet us as worshippers this morning.