Transcription
Uh, words, words are an interesting thing. Uh, so when you, when you were in school, your, your English teacher probably told you, "Hey, if you want to find the definition of a word, look in a dictionary." And, and that's true, right? You can find definitions of words in dictionaries. But I actually think that it's a little more nuanced than that. That a lot of time, uh, the definition of words is found in people. And the reason I believe that is because if, if definitions of words were only found in a dictionary, then words would never change their meaning. But that isn't the case, is it? We, a lot of times, we see that a word used to mean one thing and now it means a different thing. For example, have you noticed the word "literally" sometimes now means figuratively, which is weird because that's like the opposite of what it literally means. Uh, the word "awesome" used to mean like fear-inducing, right? And now it just means, I don't know, kind of cool. Uh, the word "trauma," I used to mean, you know, you witness war atrocities or something. But now the word "trauma" is something that a teenage girl has when she has an awkward interaction with a cute boy, right? And I, believe me, I, I hear the word when I'm driving somebody home from school, somebody, um, I hear this word "trauma" thrown around like, "What happened?" Like, "Well, he looked at me." Like, "Okay, all right, get some, get some therapy for this. This is important."
Uh, yeah, words, words kind of change over time. So, uh, my first college class, very first one. So, freshman year, uh, 9:00 a.m. First time walking into a college class for the f—it was an English class. I got, uh, lost on the way there because I refused to go to the orientation because I thought that was dumb. And if you're an introvert, you understand, like, you didn't want to do more interaction than you had to. Uh, so, I got lost. I ended up late to my first class, which was terrible because the only seats that were left were in the front row, and I had to walk in front. You know, that's the awkward, you know, you're shuffling to get in there. It's so, so dumb. Uh, and my English professor was this woman who was 137 years old, literally. Uh, she, she, uh, she was very old school, and she spent the whole first class really explaining why English was important. And, you know, riveting stuff. Uh, but she ranted a little bit about the way words were used, as older people tend to do, right? Like, "You use words wrong. This is what the word really means. This is how you use it." And she was going through all these different words that we use wrong. And one of them that she got stuck on, it was weird. It's very memorable for me. She said that we mix up, uh, "famous" and "infamous." And she was explaining the difference. And if you don't know, "famous" is, uh, well-known for a positive thing, and then "infamous" is, is well-known for like a negative or an evil thing. So she's, she's ranting about this, really upset, and she tells the story. So, I guess she was a very, like, prestigious professor. I didn't know what I had at the time. She was, she was something else. She was famous, uh, in a lot of different ways. Got some awards for some different things. And she tells this story how she got an award, and this lady was introducing her. And this lady, uh, walked up and was talking about how she's a bit of a grammar Nazi, like she was very particular about some things. And she gets introduced, and this woman introduces her as "infamous." And she, she was all—she's like, "And she should have known that that's not the word she was looking for. She was looking for famous." And I'm like, "That's not the word she was looking for, actually. Really good at grammar, terrible at self-awareness." Um, she didn't, she didn't realize.
Now, I, I'm in a little different place. I don't, I don't, I don't care if you use words differently. Like, I'm cool if you say "literally" and you, you mean figuratively. I'm cool with that, 'cause I know what you mean. Uh, and that's the beautiful part about language, right? That is that we can kind of take words and we can use them in different ways. And I really find it, I find it fascinating. Now, there's two places where that can get us into trouble, though. So, one of them is as we get older, and if you know this, if you're like over 40, uh, the kids start using words in weird ways, and you don't even understand what they're saying. And then if you use a word that you used to use, and they're like, "You can't say that." And you're like, "Wait a minute. I used to use that word all the time, and now it means something else." It's weird, right? It's just a weird situation to be in as you get older. Um, it's other people, not me. And then, uh, the other big place this can cause trouble for us is if we read our Bible. So, if you're reading your Bible and you come across a word and you think it means one thing, like you've, hey, this is the way I used that word, but the person who wrote it, like God inspired the person who wrote it, and they mean that word to, to mean something else, then we're in trouble, right? 'Cause then you read a word, you walk away with with the meaning that you thought, like, "Hey, I, I understood that," and actually God intended something different. That can be really, be a problem for us, right?
So, uh, I think about it like a handle on a suitcase. The word is a handle, right? You, you have the word, and it's attached to a suitcase, and the suitcase is full of meaning. So, you, you have a word, you got this, and then all the meaning goes into the suitcase. And over time, as we know, like sometimes meaning gets taken out, meaning gets put in. Uh, but we have a word, and we have a suitcase. And, and that's how I want to think about it today. So, we're, we're in a, a series right now called, uh, "Church Words," where we were just looking at words, uh, that church people use and kind of clarifying what goes into the suitcase of meaning in these words. And, uh, today's word is a really, really important word. Uh, it's the word "worship." I want to talk about the word "worship." Now, if you just think about it off the top of your head, um, there's the handle, right? Is the handle of "worship," and you have the suitcase of meaning. Most of the time in the Christian world, when you hear somebody say the word "worship," the suitcase, all it has in it is music, right? Isn't that kind of what we mean? Like singing. Uh, we, we mean, uh, the part of service that comes before the preaching, where there, where you may or may not be still out getting your coffee when it starts, right? And you may or may not stay out there and have small talk until it's almost halfway over, and Jonathan doesn't like you. Um, just kidding. Kind of. Um, it's, it's a, it's a genre, right? If you say "worship," you mean a genre of music. It's a playlist. I have a playlist on my Spotify that's called, uh, "Worship." It's right below the one that I have labeled "Old School" that has like Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit in it. Um, and it's right above the one called "Taylor." Whatever. Shut up. I also listen to jazz sometimes. And a month ago, I got on a kick, uh, of Irish pub music. Have you ever listened? Wild stuff. There's like one really good song. Um, so I listen to all kinds of stuff. It's not just Taylor. Um, but we think music, right? So when you have that handle, when you say "worship," almost all the time the suitcase has just got music, and it's just got singing in it. Is that wrong? Now, I, I want to say no. I, I don't think that's wrong, but it is incomplete. 'Cause what actually should go into the suitcase isn't just singing, isn't just music. There's more to it. And the reason this is important is because when you read your Bible and you read that word "worship," and the only thing that pops into your mind is singing, it's just incomplete. God means more than that.
So, what I want to do today is I want to, I want to put some more stuff in the suitcase. Okay? I want to, I want to put a couple more words in there that, that I want to kind of help inform, uh, the way we think of this word. So, "worship" is the handle. We already have music in there. What else should go into this suitcase? I want to add the word "always." The word "always." I want "always" to pop into your mind when you see the word "worship." Now, this might be surprising to you, but when the Bible talks about worship, uh, it talks about something that's always happening inside of you, that you are always worshiping. It's not something that you can turn on or off. It's not something that other people do. The people who sit in the front row here and, and, you know, I sit in the back, so I don't worship and they do. It's not something that some people are better at than others. It's kind of like breathing, actually. It's something that all people do all the time. I want to show you a quote by a guy named David Foster Wallace. He said this: "Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship." Now, this is a really interesting quote because David Foster Wallace, he said this during a commencement speech at a college, and it's actually one of the more famous commencement speeches in the past decade or so. And he made this argument. He, he said, um, human beings inevitably organize their life around something that they have made ultimate, that your life just kind of gets organized around something. So he said, "Hey, whatever that thing is that you've made ultimate, that you're organizing your life around, that's the thing you worship." And he also observed that if you worship the wrong thing, that thing can, like, destroy your life. It's really, uh, damaging to put the wrong thing in that ultimate place. And, and he just kind of watched as this person, you know, they made that ultimate, that happened, and then they made ultimate that. So, he's just watching this happen, and he makes this observation: "Hey, everybody worships. The only choice you get is, is what to worship."
Now, here's the crazy part. I find this fascinating. David Foster Wallace was not a Christian when he gave this commencement speech. It wasn't at a Christian college, and he's not a Christian. He's actually an atheist. So when he says this, he actually was just observing it. He was looking at the people in his life and he was seeing, like, "This is what happens. Everybody organizes their life around something, and then if it's the wrong thing, it destroys them." And he, he saw that. And now we can look at it, and I actually, uh, can say that that the Apostle Paul in Romans also recognizes the same thing. Uh, in chapter 1, verse 25, he says this: "They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise. Amen." So notice when, when Paul's looking at the world, he's saying, "Hey, some people stopped worshiping God." But he doesn't say they stopped. He said they traded, right? They went from worshiping God to something else. They, they worshiped this instead of that. They couldn't turn it off. They could just aim it. They could transfer the thing that they were worshiping because we're always worshiping. You can't choose to just stop. That's not a choice you have in your life. You are going to make something ultimate. You are going to organize your life around something. You are going to worship something. Your choice is what? Your choice is what?
So, think about that. How important is that, that mindset to say that the opposite of worshiping God isn't not worshiping God. That's not the opposite. The opposite of worshiping God is worshiping something else. And by the way, that's really your only—in this verse, you got the only two choices. You can worship the Creator, or you can worship creation. Those are really your only two choices. The guy who created everything, or everything that he created. That's it. And whatever you make ultimate in your life, that's the thing that you're worshiping. The thing, the thing you know that your life kind of orbits around. The thing you trust when life gets scary or uncertain. The thing that if you lost it, you know, that thing that you say, "Man, if I lost that, I, I don't know if I could keep going." Or that thing, that thing that, like, defines your identity. It's at, like, the core of your being. That's the thing that's ultimate. That's the thing that you are worshiping, and it is always happening. And in order, uh, to worship God, we have to make sure that those other things haven't taken his place. God needs to be—if you're, if you're wondering, "Hey, what am I worshiping?" You need to ask the question, like, "What is my life orbiting around? What is the thing that just kind of keeps everything else going?" You could ask the question, you know, um, "What, what do I trust in when things get bad or things get scary or things get uncertain? What is it? What is it that I'm trusting in?" That's the thing. What, what's the thing that if you lost it, you'd say, "I can't keep going?" Is it, is it God? Your relationship with God? What is, is God the thing that defines your identity? Like, those are really important questions that can help you say, like, "What am I worshiping in this moment?"
Now, if you're not a Christian, real quick, I just want to talk to you real quick. I, I want you to consider that quote from David Foster Wallace. So, since he wasn't a Christian and he made this observation, I think he, he's maybe you listen to him a little bit more than you might listen to me because I'm clearly biased, and I am. Uh, but he, he noticed that, like, when you're always worshiping, you don't get to choose if you worship, you get to choose what you worship. And then he made the observation that, well, if you worship the wrong thing, it destroys your life. And I just want to ask you, like, "Hey, have you noticed that whatever you make ultimate in your life, it ends up kind of causing you trouble? That maybe it even ends up being the thing that hurts you the most in your life? That thing that you make the most important thing, it, it causes the most pain?" Now, the sad part for this guy is he, he only observed all these things that cause trouble. He didn't take that one extra step, which I would encourage you to say, "Well, the reason those things couldn't handle being in that ultimate spot is because only God was designed to, like, be—we were designed to have God at the top. God was the one who's supposed to be the thing you worship, and that's the thing that clicks. And anything else you try to put in that spot's not going to work." So, just, I just want to encourage you if you're not a Christian to think about that, to say, "What is this? What are the implications of this for me and all the stuff that I've made ultimate in life? Where is this going to? Where is this going to lead?"
So, first word, when you think "worship," you're putting in the suitcase the word "always." You are always worshiping. Always. The second word I want you to put in the suitcase is the word "sacrifice." The word "sacrifice." A hallmark of worship, worship is sacrifice. If you read the Old Testament, the people of Israel, one of the main ways they worshiped God is they would bring a sacrifice to God, right? An animal, some of their crops, their crops. They, they always worshiped God. Uh, there was this element of, it cost them something. It cost them something to worship God. Romans 12:1 says, "And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice, the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him." So Paul, who wrote this, he's writing in a language that the people of Israel would understand. They, the people of Israel back then, they associated sacrifice with worship. That that was in their suitcase already, like the word "sacrifice." So Paul's saying, "Hey, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know how you used to bring, like, an animal to the altar? Well, now, um, don't bring the animal anymore. Just bring yourself. Jump up there. You're, you're the sacrifice now. Bring your life as the sacrifice to God because Jesus was already the sacrifice. He died once and for all for all the sins. Now you give him your life in response to that." And keep in mind, this is interesting when you put these two things together. If you're always worshiping, that means you're always sacrificing. That's always happening in your life. If you're always worshiping something, you're always sacrificing for something. And that also means if you're worshiping the wrong thing, that means you're sacrificing the wrong things. And you can see this play out all the time, right? You can, you can use a ton of different examples. If you worship alcohol, you're sacrificing money and relationships and health in order to keep that thing up there, right? There's a, there's a sacrifice involved. If you worship money, you're going to sacrifice your family and your morals and your time to keep that thing up there. If you worship success, you're going to sacrifice rest and relationships and integrity. If you worship approval, you're going to sacrifice honesty and convictions and courage. If you worship comfort, you'll sacrifice growth and purpose and obedience. If you worship control, you'll sacrifice peace and trust and relationships. If you worship beauty, you'll sacrifice time and money and self-worth. Whatever you worship, you're going to sacrifice for. And you're always worshiping means you're always sacrificing. And one of the ways that you can kind of see what you worship is, what do you sacrifice for? What do you sacrifice for?
Now, I don't want to overstate that. I know some of you like, "Hold on a minute. Anything good in life requires sacrifice." And that's true. So, I don't think it, it's, uh, it's true to say that if you sacrifice for it, you're worshiping it. That's not—I, I know you have to sacrifice for a lot of good things in your life. I suppose I want you to think through, what's the one thing that you'd sacrifice everything else for? You know, the thing that kind of wins. If this is happening, no, I'm—everything else is getting, you know, if, if this happens on the calendar, everything else gets thrown off the calendar 'cause this is it. If, if, if this is happening, uh, all the money's getting spent here. We will, we will drop other things. Like, what's the thing that everything else gets sacrificed for? Because whatever that thing is, that's the thing you're worshiping. That, that's it, because you're sacrificing for it. And if you want it to be God, then you have to put God in a place where he doesn't get bumped, you know, he doesn't get bumped for other things. God is the one, he, everything gets moved because he's in that spot. Your life gets reorganized around that. You're giving things up in order to have that relationship with him. Sacrifice.
So, you got your handle, your, your "worship." You, you put the word "always" in there. And then you put the word "sacrifice" in there. The third word I want you to put in the suitcase is the word "response." The word "response." Worship is a response. So, I want to teach you a Greek word. Are you excited? Um, this is so you can impress your church friends, other church friends. When they don't go here, they go to another church. Tell them you go to Mosaic. It's important to me. You tell them you learned it here. Um, and actually, as I look at the word, it, it will not impress them. This is not like a sexy Greek word. Uh, whatever that means. It's a boring, it's a boring Greek word. This Greek word is a conjunction. It's a conjunction. Do you remember what conjunctions do? Go ahead, sing it. Who is it? Somebody singing? I hear you over here. You should join. You should join the worship team. You're good. You're good. Um, so you don't actually, you don't—because I tried to sing the song, I'm like, the only thing I remember about that song is "Conjunction Junction." What I remember the question, "What's your function?" I don't remember the answer. Uh, so a conjunction connects things. Okay. Stop it. Now you're off the worship team. Sorry. They, they connect things, right? A conjunction is a, is a connector. Uh, and that's, that's what this word is. This word connects one thing to another thing. So, you ready? Here's the word you're going to, you're going to learn one. It's really simple. It's the word "oun." Oun. Maybe it is sexy. It's good. Say that to the person sitting next to you. Um, now the word literally, it means, uh, literally, uh, "therefore." That's what it means. It's "oun" means therefore. So it's an indicating that that it's a word that indicates one thing follows another thing necessarily, um, conclusion of, of a connection, like things are connected together, and this is an important word logically. If this, therefore that, and it makes sense, it's a rational connection. If you have this thing, therefore obviously you have this thing. It's a rational connection. Okay. Uh, so the verse we just looked at actually has the word "oun" in it. So I wanted to show that to you in Romans 12, or 12, verse one. Now, our translation doesn't have "therefore." It has "and so." But other translations, if you read this verse, the first word in the, in the verse would be "therefore," but it's "oun." Now, that, can we just admit is a weird way to start a chapter? We just said it's a connector, right? Like this word connects to the thing that just happened, and for some reason, whoever decided to put the chapters in decided to make the chapter start with "therefore." So we have to see that this verse is very much connected, and it, like, necessarily follows what happened before this. So I wanted to show you the verse right before this. It's actually 11:36. So that's what this verse looks like: "For everything comes from him." That's God. "And exists by his power, and is intended for his glory. All glory to him forever. Amen." And then he tells us what to do. It's a response, and he's pleading with us: "Give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice. This is truly the way to worship him." Your worship is a response to who God is and what he's done. And, and this is important. So, you, and you get that, right? Like, I think generally people understand, like, "Hey, this is God, that's who God is. The usual, all the things God has done. My worship is in response to that." But what Paul is saying is that it is a logical response. And that's the part I like, because so often we associate worship with emotion, right? And generally, that's what we think, like, when, that's kind of what's kind of in the suitcase already. Maybe that's one of, like, the subtext of worship. Yes, singing's in there, but we kind of have emotion put into there as a part of the way we think about this word. But here Paul's like, "Hey, fine. Keep that, but also put 'logical' in there because he's not, he's not appealing to your emotion here. He's saying, 'Hey, worship of God is actually very rational, logical.'" Next thing, if you see who God is and you recognize what he's done in your life, the logical thing for you to do is to worship him. And that's really important. Especially if you, like, walk in here and you, like, don't, I don't know, you don't get it, you know, and you kind of look around and you see, you see people with their hands raised. You see people with, with the look in their face, and, and maybe a tear coming down their face, and you're like, especially if you're not a super emotional person. You look at that person, you're like, "Okay, so they're emotional people, and I'm not an emotional person. They worship, and I don't," because we associate it so much. And you look at those people like they're probably the people who cry when, like, the adopt-a-dog commercial comes on, right? And like, those people cry at that. Those people cry during worship. And you just, you just kind of separate yourself out. And I get that. I get that. But, but I want to say like, here, here we have, like, the Apostle Paul appealing to you, logical person. You, person who's not super emotional. He's saying, "Hey, your worship is logical." Like, this, this, this makes sense. If you believe that that's who God is, he's Creator God. He created everything. If you believe that in what he did, if you're a Christian, this works double for you. You're not just worshiping God as Creator, you're worshiping God as Savior. You're saying, "Hey, Jesus died on the cross in my place for my sins." Like, that is a, a thing that needs a response, right? It's a, it's a logical thing to say, "Hey, if he died for me, I'm going to worship him. I'm going to give my life to him." It's a response. It's a logical response.
So, in your suitcase now, you got the word "worship." You've, you've got the word "always." You, you've got the word "sacrifice." Now, we've got the word "response." The last word I want to put into this suitcase is the word "expressed." Expressed. This is where I want to answer the question that some of you do ask about singing, right? Again, if you don't get it, you might be asking still, "Okay, but why do we sing?" And why are some people so—why does the guy jump around up here? Why does he do that? And why are these people with their hands up down here? Like, I don't, I don't get it. Why do we sing? See, so a part of worship must necessarily include expression. If you're worship—listen to me. If you're worshiping God in your heart, then it will come out of your mouth. That's, that's a, it's, it's another "if, then." It's another "therefore," or it's another "oun." Like, if it's in here, "oun," therefore it will come out of here. Look what Jesus said in Matthew 12:34: "For the mouth speaks from that which fills the heart." Another way to say it is, "Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks." So whatever's in you comes out the mouth. The heart and the mouth are connected. If you've got worship in here, it's going to come out here. That, that happens. And you can see that, like, that's kind of supposed to be, like, "Hey, if you get, if you get bumped into, whatever's inside of you is going to spill out, right?" And then that's supposed to be what happens in your life. Worship in the heart means worship coming out of your mouth. And it's even deeper than that.
So, as usual, uh, C.S. Lewis can explain it better than me. So, I'm going to read you a quote, but I even put it on the screen, and it's really small print because it's long, but it's really good. It's really good. Uh, he says this: "I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment. It is its appointed consummation. It's not out of compliment that lovers keep, uh, telling one another how beautiful they are. The delight is incomplete until it is expressed. It's frustrating to have discovered a new author and not be able to tell you how good he is. Or to come suddenly at the turn of a road upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then have to keep silent because no one is there to share it with, or to hear a good joke and find no one to hear it. Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But we then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify him, God is inviting us to enjoy him." And you could take the word "glorify" here and just change it to "to worship." To fully enjoy is to worship. To, in God, in commanding us to worship him, is inviting us to enjoy him. That they are actually the same. And that's what's so compelling to me because think about this. You already do this. Anything you enjoy in your life or you really love in your life, you can't help but talk about it, right? When's the last time you sat around a table and you ate something that was really good? What did you do? "Oh my gosh, this is so amazing!" Right? And if somebody else was eating the same thing, not only did it come out of your mouth that this was amazing, you wanted them to talk about it, too. "Isn't this amazing? Isn't that good?" Like, you, you're praising it, and you want it, you were inviting them to praise it, too. It's instinctual. You, you do this all the time. All the time. When you enjoy something, when something's good, it comes out of your mouth, and you want other people to be included in it. It just naturally, it's a human thing. You don't have to be a Christian. You don't have to be anything. All humans do this. So, what Lewis is saying here is, "Hey, this works for God, too." That when you recognize that God is so good, it's going to come out of your mouth. And you're going to be like, "Hey, don't you think he's good?" So, by the way, this works. Imagine that table where you're sitting there eating something, and somebody across from you goes, "Man, isn't that good?" And you're like, "My gosh, it is, right?" You're not offended by that. You're not weirded out by that. You think that's a totally natural human thing. But when a worship leader stands up here and says, "Hey, praise God with me," you're like, "Why is he asking me that? Weirdo, right?" No, no, no. He's doing a completely natural thing to say that, "Hey, he's standing up here. She's standing up here saying, 'Hey, God is amazing. I want, I want you to be in on this, and I'm going to say, and I, I want you to respond as well,' because there's something to that, right? Because especially when you're sitting at that table and you're like, 'Man, this is so good.' And somebody else says, 'It really is.' It's not that enjoying it and then praising it were two separate things. I love the way Lewis said, "Actually saying it is the completion of enjoying it." That it's not two different things. It's the same thing. It's the logical end to worship is that it comes out of your mouth, and you're actually incomplete. You're missing something if you don't. I find that super fascinating and again, fiercely logical, and I like that. By the way, King David also recognized this. Psalm 96, he said, "Sing a new song to the Lord. Let the whole earth sing to the Lord." He's inviting everybody. "Sing to the Lord. Praise his name each day. Proclaim the good news that he saves. Publish his glorious deeds among the nations. Tell everyone about the amazing things he does." They'd be like, "You got to tell somebody. You got to, you got to—it's got to come out of you. If it's in here, it's got to come out." We, we have to. It's, it's a part of it.
So, here's what I, here's what I want. I, I want to encourage you. Not all of you. This specific group. If you, if you come here and, and if you're a Christian, if you say, "Hey, Jesus is my Savior. He died for me. I, I follow him." And, and, and if you come and, like, during the singing part of our, of our service, if, if you stand there and you don't sing, and I, I know, I get it. I just want to challenge you, like, take a step. Start singing. And I, like, I know you're like, "I'm not a good singer." Dude, that's why the music's so loud. Did you know that? But it's like, if you ever complain the music's too loud, I'm like, "Well, that's 'cause the person standing next to you is a terrible singer, and we really wanted to, to make them comfortable." And if you're like, "I don't think it's loud enough." The subwoofer is right there, and the other one's right here. Come sit right up front, and, and you'll get drowned out. And, like, I just want to encourage you to, to be a part of it. And, yeah, hey, I'll be honest. Maybe it'll be awkward at first. Maybe it will. I agree that this isn't my world, you know that, like, this is not, this, I get it. I'm with you. But there's something to it. There's something to it. There's something to it coming out of your mouth, and there's something to it happening together. Just like at the table, if you're eating a meal by yourself and you say, "Man, isn't this good?" to no one. It's weird, right? It doesn't quite hit the same. But if you're sitting at a table and everybody's doing it, something happens. And I want to say in this room, when everybody's lifting God up, there's something to it. And it's not even just a physical thing. It's not just a human thing. I think there's a spiritual thing that happens when we all are recognizing the same thing, seeing the same thing, raising up. There's something to it, right? There's something to it. Let's go. So that's what I want to encourage you on. Take a step in that. Take a step in that.
So, so when you, when you think "worship," always, you're always worshiping. That's always happening. It's, it's not, it's not if it's what, um, it's, it's it involves a sacrifice. What are you sacrificing for? That's going to be the thing. What are you giving up for the ultimate thing? It's response to who God is and what he's done. And, and if you're struggling with worship, you need to go back to that. Who is he? What has he done for me? That'll, that'll rekindle that in your life. And then it's expressed. It, it comes out of you. So, if you would, would you stand with me, and I'll pray, and then we're going to, we're going to worship together.
Lord, I thank you so much that you built us like this. I, I pray that whatever is blocking us from from operating the way you want us to operate would move. Lord, I pray for the person, uh, sitting here who maybe, maybe they've not opened their mouth up yet for whatever reason. I pray that they would feel drawn to do that today, to, to step into that. I pray for the person who maybe hasn't crossed that line of faith yet. Lord, I pray that you would move in their heart right now, that they would see that that thing that they've made ultimate in their life is going to crush them, and it's not working. It's not satisfying. It's not doing it. And that they would look to you as the answer, to put you in that place of ultimate, to put you in that place of worship. So I pray that they would give their life to you, Lord, right now, that they would just stop and ask for your forgiveness and give their life to you and invite you to be king. And Lord, I pray for this church, that we would be a worshiping church, not just in song, but in life. That we would order our life around you. That we would sacrifice for you. That we would respond to you. And yes, that we would sing to you and lift you up high, and the world will be drawn to it. In Jesus name, I pray. Amen.