Scroll down to view sermons in this series, week by week. If you wish to view or print individual sermons, click Archives to make your selection.
This page was last updated 11/07/08
Week of: October 5, 2008
Title: Worship: Being Connected
Series: Study of Spiritual Formation - Part 12
Scripture: Isaiah 29: 13-14; Matthew 25: 31-46; Ephesians 4:4
The word worship comes from the Saxon word weorthscype, which later became worthship. The Christian meaning of worship is "worthy of You alone."
1. We’ve been exploring aspects of Christian Spirituality. We have been looking at different facets of what it means to be spiritual. Christian spirituality is like a beautiful diamond with many different sides or ways to glorify Christ.
2. Christian spirituality also has various ways of expressing itself in our lives as well the world. For example, faith, hope, love, humility, scripture reading, and prayer just to name a few. Can you name some more expressions in which a person’s spiritual convictions can be made evident?
3. What about worship? I don’t think that you can be a spiritual person unless you learn to express yourself to God in public or private worship.
4. But what is worship? Look at your prayer sheet: “The word worship comes from the Saxon word weorthscype, which later became worthship.”
5. To worship God is to ascribe the proper worth to God, to magnify His worthiness of praise, or to approach and address God is He is worthy. Worship is focusing and responding to God as only He is worthy.
6. But how do you know that you have worshiped God? We sing! We pray! We listen to the sermon! We sleep through the sermon! J Let me tell you something that you might or might not realize. The act of worship without worship is a miserable experience. In fact, you might say that acting like you are worshiping without worshiping is very hypocritical. Why? Because you are pretending to do something that you are not doing.
7. Turn in you Bibles to Isaiah 29: 13: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.”
8. Now does this mean we are going to always be on top of our game in worship, so to speak? No. There are times that we do have a hard time focusing. There are times that we feel out of things. There are times that we may have stayed up too late, gotten too little sleep, or been too worried, or too distracted to worship, but that shouldn’t be our normal pattern of worshiping. If it is… then don’t blame me or the church, or our style of worship—blame yourself. If you never get anything out of worship it is your fault.
9. Now, I am not directing this to folks who are trying to worship. I am not directing this to folks who want to worship. I am just directing this to folks who are not aware why they are attending church, or folks who want to blame someone or something for them not worshiping. Because? I get tired of hearing that miserable excuse coming from Christians both in and out of church.
10. I also think that some people don’t know how to worship. So that begs the question, how do you know if you have or have not worshiped? How you feel, warm fuzzy feelings…etc.?
11. I’ve thought a lot about that this week and think the experience of worshiping or not worshiping is tied together with our ability or inability to be connected.
12. What do I mean by being connected? The Bible has many examples of what I think it is to be connected to God and one another. Jesus said this about men and women in Mark 10 “For the reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” Our scripture in Ephesians 4 is another example of what it means to be connected as the church: “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” Another example is Acts 2: 42-47.
13. As human beings, we are very much isolated persons. No one can get inside your head to know what you think or you feel. We might say we know how you feel about something, but we really don’t. That’s because everyone is different and everyone experiences things in a different way. We are really and truly isolated islands of thought and feelings until we find someone or something that we can latch on to who knows how we think and what we feel.
14. When we have a religious experience we feel connected—with God and one another! As Paul says in Ephesians 4: 6, “one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” Worship is about being aware of the fact that God and we are one, that He is somehow connected to us. In fact, we say “He is in our hearts.”
15. So any time that we become acutely aware of the fact that “God is in our hearts” that “He is connected to us”—we worship.
16. Now there are several things that connect us to God. The first being—prayer. Prayer is more than just requesting things, it is connecting to God. It is listening to God. It is finding oneself in an inner sanctuary that has the presence of God.
17. Two, singing!!! Music is the easiest way that we can experience being connected to anyone. Has anyone ever heard of Romantic music? Why is it used? Because music can be used to create moods and impressions that is favorable to courting.
18. Religious music is also used to bring us closer to God. To help us worship God, by praising Him.
19. Scripture is another way to bring us closer to God. Quickly, Jesus is the incarnated word of God; this is the written word of God. The written word of God is the bridge that connects us to the incarnated word of God. So when you refuse to study the Bible (which 4 of 5 of you do), you burn a bridge that you desperately need to connect you to God.
20. Preaching is yet another way! I believe that I am connecting myself to God, by connecting myself to you. I can tell when you’re interested. I can tell when you’re listening. I can tell because there is the connection between the pew and the pulpit. I dare say this… on the days that you have thought that you come closer to worship than another, that you have worshiped, you’ve paid more attention to me and slept in the pew and daydreamed less than normal. Right? Why? Because God is glorified when there is a connection that is going on and He is the center of focus.
21. Fellowship is another! What do people do when there is a “Sweet Sweet Spirit in this Place?” They hug and greet, cry, laugh, and feel what? CONNECTED!
22. Service is another (Matthew 25: 31ff).
23. President Calvin Coolidge once said: “It is only when men (and women) begin to worship that they begin to grow.”
24. Therefore, don’t let anyone or anything ever run (or ruin) worship for you… It is the most important thing you’ll ever do…..
Week of: October 12, 2008
Title: W.O.R.S.H.I.P. - Part 1
Series: Spiritual Formation - Part 13
Scripture: Romans 12: 1-2
printable handout for sermon
1. I love the story of a man named Nicolas Herman (er-man). He was born in 17th century France, was converted to Christianity at the age of 18, and joined a monastery. He is best known for his little book called “The Practice of the Presence of God,” published under his monastery name, Brother Lawrence.
2. It is reported that, when he was laying on his deathbed rapidly losing his strength, he turned to his friends who had gathered around him and said, “I am not dying. I am just doing what I have been doing for the past forty years, and doing what I expect to be doing for all eternity.”
“What’s that?” they asked.
“I am worshiping the God that I love!!!”
3. Worshiping God is not just something we do at church. Although church is a very important place to worship God, worship is being connected to God by praising Him, no matter where we are and what we are doing that is done according to His will. In fact, as Brother Lawrence once wrote it is possible to practice the presence of God while washing dishes in a monastery, and even when we are experiencing the worst of times.
4. What does it mean to worship God? What does it mean to be connected to God? It is sincere and genuine praise, adoration, and love. It is a bond, between us and God, that goes beyond all other bonds and allows us to put everything else in its proper place.
5. This true worship of God starts when we prepare our hearts for God by deliberately doing things to help the connective aspect of our worshiping God.
6. All good things must start somewhere and, by the grace of God, our worship experience should start here (in church) and spread out into all aspects of our lives.
7. Our worship services should be filling stations that keep us worshiping, or at least in the mindset for worship, all week long.
8. How do we go about actually worshiping or actually getting connected with God? We talked a little about that last Sunday, and today I want to get further into what it means to be connected with God.
9. First off, worshiping God has to start with a hunger or desire for something that this world cannot give us. In each of us, there is a strong itch, that nothing else can scratch, except worshiping God. Our hearts are truly restless until they find their rest in God. Worship is being connected to God, so that our hearts can find its place in God alone. The good news is that most people have this itch; the bad news is that many people don’t find the right spot to scratch, so to speak
.
10. Look at your worksheet for just a moment. About half way down, where it says “To connect with God….” fill in the two blanks with “make space” or “make time.”
11. Spiritually, the worst thing you can ever say to God is “I don’t have enough time for you.” Or, I don’t have enough room in my life for you. What do you think is the big sin of our modern day world? I can tell you that rejection of God is the big sin that separates every generation eternally from God, right?
Is there a more specific big sin that separates our modern day world from God than other generations? Homosexuality? Mass murder? Lying? Adultery? Pride? Greed?
12. How about being too busy? People say all the time I don’t have quality time to be with my family. We don’t even have time to sit down as a family and enjoy our meals. I don’t have time for church work. I don’t have time for worship. I don’t have time to even think about God. I don’t have time for God.
13. However, when you and your family don’t have time for God, guess what happens? Things start falling apart…
14. So what is the answer? Do what we have a very difficult time doing. Simplify!!!! However, when we simplify guess what we normally cut out first? God and church!!!!
15. Worship starts by having a desire to make time and space for God in our lives—even if we have to simplify.
16. Let me give you some ways that you can choose to connect with God by making space with Him.
17. Look at you acrostic for worship. The “W” has two words and it is what you are doing here? “Worship God.” (Talk about being intentional in our worship) I really truly believe that most Christians (if they have given being like Jesus any thought at all) believe that they will wake up one morning, being like Jesus. However, the chances of you or me getting out of bed any given morning of the week and simply, without any special effort of our own, being like Jesus is slim or none. We’ve got to be intention in our spiritual growth if we are ever going to take a step forward in being like Him. How do we do that? Decide you are going to worship every time you get a chance.
18. The next letter is “O”. It means simply “open myself to God.” (four words) Let me give you an example of that, in the way we worship. Are you aware of what people sometimes look like when they sing spiritual songs in church? The words at times don’t always match our expressions on our faces, do they? We might sing “Joy to the World” or “Victory in Jesus” and look like we are joyful or victorious. Do you think that God particularly enjoys “praise songs” and worship songs that are sung with a sour face, and an ungrateful heart?
19. It is not so much what our singing sounds like that is important to God, but it is how we sing it that pleases God. Because in singing it as if we meant it, we are opening up our hearts to God.
20. There is a direct line from a sincere and genuinely happy face (that is happy to be at worship) to a heart that is opened up to God. People who are not happy to be here will not be worshiping God today. I am sorry, you’ve got to want to be at worship before worship takes you.
21. Notice something with me in our scripture today! Paul writes in Romans and he says to the Roman church: …“offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.” Notice that he didn’t say just offer your minds or your hearts to God, as a spiritual act of worship, but your bodies. I wonder why?
22. Two reasons: one, God wants us 100 percent; nothing held back, one hundred percent sold out to Him. But, another reason might be that our body language expresses the intentions of the heart. People that are married read their spouses real well, they know when their spouses are pleased or not pleased with them without ever haven’t too hear a word come from their mouth. Their looks say it all.
23. The story of the Prodigal Son is a wonderful example of expressive body language. Do you remember what the Prodigal son’s father did when he the son returned home to ask his father to take him back? The scripture says: “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kiss him.”
24. Didn’t say a word, did he? I dare say that the son knew he was welcomed back when saw his father’s face, if not before as his father ran toward him with his arms outstretched. His body language said it all!!! In holding your hands out to God, it is way of opening up to God. It is a way of expressing with your body the openness that you have toward God in your heart.
25. To which, you might say: “I can be open to God by keeping my hand in my lap thank you.” To which I would say: “that is wonderful and each to their own, however just make sure that your mind, your heart, and your soul are open to Him, so that you can worship God.
26. You are never going to be connected to God, if you don’t create times and spaces for God in your lives. You are never going to understand what it means to be connected to God, unless you learn to drop your guard and open your heart to Him.
Week of October 19, 2008
Title: W.O.R.S.H.I.P. - Part 2
Series: Spiritual Formation - Part 14
Scripture: Romans 12: 1-2
printable handout for sermon
1. The whole idea, and practice of worshiping God is made possible by God. It is a matter of grace; God’s unmerited favor, which allows us to come to Him.
2. However, in my way of seeing things, God’s grace works through all things—three things in particular for worship.
3. One, we worship God because He made us that way. It is like the words of St. Augustine echoed down though the centuries, “Our hearts are restless until we find our rest in God.” Worshiping God brings peace to hearts because that was what we are created to do. We are made to praise God. If we ignore that then we are ignoring our true self and everything about us gets messed up. Life starts in worshiping our God.
4. Two, worshiping God is not possible without God. The Holy Spirit is the means that we can worship God. Let’s say it this way, “without the Holy Spirit you might know that something is wrong but you’d never be able to understand what exactly is wrong and how to go about fixing it.” Or, let’s illustrate it this way, “you’re lost in the woods on a cloudy evening, you know you are in trouble because everything is pitch dark and there is no way to get your bearings so that you find your way.” That is how it would be without the Holy Spirit calling out to us about God—lost in darkness and no way to find our way home.
5. The Holy Spirit, however, is like it dawning on you that you have a compass in your backpack. You didn’t know you had a backpack, did you? So, you pull out the compass and you think “I am alright, I’ll find my way home with this.” So you follow the compass and you find your home in God, right? Well, which home? Which god? Which spirituality? The true one you say, but even with the Holy Spirit guiding you, how you are going in the right way? What else do you need to go along with a compass to get home? A GPS? A Garmin? J A map!!! Yes, but what’s the map?
6. The Bible is your map, the church through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit teaches you how to read and interrupt the map, and gives you encouragement as you travel home.
7. What if you don’t want to be found? Have you ever known someone who is lost but doesn’t want to be found? Maybe, but by definition usually if you’re lost, you want to be found.
8. If you don’t realize that you’re lost, or won’t admit that you are lost, or you are just are too stubborn to ask for directions (which is a man thing, in more ways than one), then how do you get home? You don’t, until you finally admit that you don’t know your way, and start seeking to find out the true way. You have to want and desire to get home, before you find your way to God. Worship starts with wanting to go home and worship God.
9. There is another aspect to this whole scenario that influences your worshiping God. It influences also your relationship with God and your Christian growth, namely, how bad do you want all these things? How bad do you want spiritual things? I really believe that finding our way in life, especially things that require change in some of the major issues of our lives depends on how bad we want it. Career changes! Marital problems! Sin problems! Addiction problems!
10. When Jesus said that we were supposed to love God, how much did He say we were supposed to love God? He said, “You shall love your Lord God, with all of your heart, soul, and mind.”
11. Worshiping God is a matter of God’s grace, but sometimes that grace depends on two things: how much we really want to encounter God and what we are willing to do to make time and space for it?
12. Do you want to know God in a closer, more glorious, life changing way? If so then what are you doing about it? Let’s look at our acrostic in our handout. Last week we ended our time together by spending a lot of time talking about opening one’s self up to God.
13. Today let’s look at the letter “R.” Relinquish my false self and idols of my heart. God means to have fellowship with His creation. Our concept of God is that He wants to have a deep loving relationship between Him and what He has created. But He is a Holy God and will not have a close fellowship with someone who is comfortable with a false sense of identity, a false purpose, and selfishness that sin creates in our lives.
14. Our Bible tells us, again and again, that God is love, but it also tells us that God is Holy. These two characteristics are the mainstay of the Christian understanding of God.
15. Anyway, the dilemma that God faces is how can He have a relationship with us that is based on true fellowship without compromising who He is? He cannot unless we change. So, He has made a way for us to be changed.
16. Jesus led the way for us to change, and God gave us the means and the power to change. The love and sacrifice that Jesus made blazed a path to the Holy Heart of God that allows us to fellowship with God and be changed in the process. As we move closer to God we begin to lay down our false, sinful, self, and become more and more of what God wants us to become.
17. The next letter is “S.” Share my life with others. Have you ever felt that in helping others you can forget about your own problems? That is a gift that comes from sharing ourselves with others and, in the process, worshiping God (Matthew 25: 34-40).
18. The next letter is “H.” Hear the word of God. Reading your Bible, studying the Bible, hearing preaching, taking Bible classes, memorization, and meditation on God’s word are ways to hear the word of God. It is “getting to know God by getting to know His Bible,” and again in the process opening you heart up to God.
19. The next letter is “I.” Incarnate Christ’s love for the world. This is getting to know God by getting to know things that Christ cares about. It is the passion of Christ for the suffering and the lost. It is the love of the Master Shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep to find that one lost sheep. Not real smart as far as numbers are concerned, but that is the pathway of love and compassion as it concerns itself about suffering and the lost.
20. The final letter is “P.” Pray to God. I cannot stress this enough: “You can never be as close to God as you need to be until you learn to saturate your heart and soul in prayer.” I believe the reason that America’s churches are in such a bad way is that we’ve lost the true passion and practice of prayer.
21. Let me put it this way: How many of us would come to an hour long service that had nothing to it but prayer? Why? Someone might say: Prayer time is boring. I cannot sit still for that long. Prayer is a waste of time. I am an active person, not a praying, passive person.
printable completed acrostic for this sermon
Week of: October 26, 2008
Title: Making Space for God
Series: Study of Spiritual Formation
Scripture: 1 Timothy 4:7; Hebrews 12:14
printable handout for sermon printable handout - completed
1. Worship is about making a connection with God. It is about approaching the Creator of the Universe, our Lord, Master, and God. Someone or something that is so awesome that our minds and hearts cannot even begin to grasp the significance of such a being.
2. What are some of the major characteristics of our understanding of this awesome God? All knowing, all powerful, all present, and loving. In your opinion, what are the two greatest characteristics of this God? Love (God is love) and Holiness. Isaiah 6 says “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory.” We like the part of this that says “God is Love.” In fact, we could not and would not approach God at all if not for the strong belief that God was love. But He is also a Holy loving God. In fact, no other characteristic of God is ever expressed in triplicate like God’s Holiness. In other words, nowhere does it say: “Love, love, love is the Lord God Almighty.”
3. Does such a being want to be approached? Yes because of His love, God does want to be approached! He wants to be worshiped! This is a fundamental tenant of faith.
4. How do we approach such a being? Moses, when he was given the 10 commandments, had to hide in the cleft of the rock as a manifestation of God passed by him. Isaiah says: “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
5. In the history of the Bible and really in the history of the thinking of most religious thought, deity has never been approached as easily as we moderns would like to think.
6. When Moses approached God at the burning bush, he was told to take off his shoes because he was on holy ground. Later on when God gave the 10 commandments, no one was allowed to accompany Moses to Mt. Sinai. When a Priest was helping carry the Arc of Covenant, he touched the Arc to keep it from falling and died, because it was too holy for human hands to touch. In addition, only the High Priest could go into the Holy of holies where God was thought to dwell and then only after personal cleansing. The Old Testament, and the Bible in general, always maintained that human beings needed to have a healthy respect for the holiness of God.
7. Yet the love of God does compel us to seek God’s presence, and God’s love for us does compel Him to seek us out, but how is this gap between a Holy Loving God and sinful worms like us go about being bridged?
8. Look at Hebrews 10:10-25. Jesus is the one who bridges the gap between sinful mankind and a Holy God. Jesus is the one who makes it possible for us “to draw near to God.”
9. Does it take any effort on our part to “draw near to God?” God has made it possible but do we need to do anything to approach God? Hebrews 12:14 expresses it well when he tells us that we must embrace holiness as well. He writes: “Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one misses the grace of God….”
10. How do we miss the grace of God and therefore the closeness of God’s presence? By not embracing the holiness that God has extended to us. It is like God is saying: “Here my children I am giving you my grace and love to help transform your lives and draw near to me, but we say, ‘no thanks I am just fine the way I am.’”
11. What is holiness? The word simply means “different.” As something so different that nothing else compares to it. Holiness that applies to Christians is a difference that sets us apart from the world. Different attitudes, different beliefs, different behaviors, different ways of thinking. We are supposed to be different—in a good and holy sort of way.
12. To be different (in a good sort of way), we must strive to be different (in a good sort of way). In 1 Timothy 4:7, Paul tells young Timothy: “Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value, godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”
13. Some of us, at least, know how to train physically our bodies to lose weight, to tone and build muscle, but do we know how to train our lives for holiness and godliness?
14. How would you go about training yourself for holiness and godliness? How do you go about embracing godliness and holiness so that you can draw closer to God?
15. The Christian church has always had what they called the Spiritual Disciplines. Discipline is not a bad word. It just means to train in the spiritual things as well as in physical training.
16. Let me give you some of the disciplines.
17. Bible Study – to know what the Bible says and how it connects with my life.
18. Breath Prayer – to pray a simple, intimate prayer of heartfelt concern before God.
19. Centering Prayer – to quiet the heart and rest in God alone.
20. Compassion – to become the healing presence of Christ to others.
21. Contemplation – to wake up to the presence of God in all things.
22. Detachment – to nurture the spirit of trust that is attached to God alone.
23. Devotional Reading – to prayerfully encounter and surrender to the Living God through attending to scripture.
24. Humility – to become like Jesus in his willingness to choose the hidden way of love rather than the way of power.
25. Inner-healing Prayer – to assist the emotionally broken and wounded as they seek God for the healing only he can give.
26. Journaling – to be alert to my life through writing and reflecting on God’s presence and activity in, around and through me.
27. Meditation – to more deeply gaze on God in his works and words.
28. Practicing the Presence – to develop a continual openness and awareness of Christ’s presence living in me.
29. Prayer Walking – to align myself, while walking in particular places, with Christ and his intercession for the kingdom to come.
30. Silence – to free myself from distractions of this busy and noisy world so that I can be totally present to the Lord; to open myself to God in the place beyond words.
31. Simplicity – to un-complicate and untangle my life so I can focus on what really matters.
32. Solitude – to leave people behind and enter into time alone with God.
33. Teach-ability – to remain a lifelong learner who is continually open to the fresh wind of the Holy Spirit.
34. Witness – to reveal the life-changing love of Jesus Christ to others.
35. Worship – to honor and adore the Trinity as the supreme treasure of life.
36. These are just some of the ways to help train yourself to be a more godly, holy, and loving person in Jesus Christ. They are not magical fix-me-ups, but training procedures to make space for the presence of God in your life.