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A Modern Expression of a Timeless Tradition. A local church in the Glastonbury Neighbourhood of West Edmonton. Sr Pastor Brett Esslinger.
I woke up this morning, my daylight savings did not start out well, because I woke up at like 1.52. I think the time changes at like 2 o'clock and the one thing you don't want to be is awake when the time changes. I don't know what happens, but like you might get stuck in some sort of like time continuum that you can never get out of. And so that was I. Was like I closed my eyes. I'm like Jesus, help me go to sleep, help me go to sleep, help me go to sleep. You know, just desperate to fall asleep. I think I did fall asleep within those eight minutes, and or maybe I'm in the continuum right now, I'm not sure. And then I woke up this morning and I was feeling good and I'm like you know what? This daylight savings is not going to affect me. I went into the shower, I grabbed my soap and I washed my hair with my body wash, so it didn't start out well. Thankfully, there's been no incident since then. So you know I always say that daylight savings is like a communal jet lag, like we're all jet lagged at the same time. So if people are grumpy today, if people are, you know, a little bit testy, if your kids are a little grumpy today. Just give them a little grace. I know you're probably grumpy too, but you know what Jesus has grace for you today.
This morning I am going to sort of be continuing what Pastor Des preached about last week and actually Pastor DeAndre kind of stole like my main illustration, like I didn't even, he didn't know, he didn't know, I didn't know, and he kind of stole it. But that's okay, I'll use a different version than Cam. But how great was that little guitar solo? Come on, let's go for Cam. One time I was at a conference this I was at a conference and somebody did that to the guitar player, but it was their first time ever playing guitar. Yeah, illustration did not go well. When I was, Pastor Des last week preached about a spiritual awakening, that God wants us to be awake to what his presence is doing, to what he is saying and doing in our lives.
And when I was 14 years old, I started a band with a bunch of friends and I it was a worship band, so we really wanted to be spiritual and like. We really cared about all of the important things. And when you start a band, the most important thing when you first start a band, doesn't? You don't need to know how to play an instrument, you don't need to have a place to play, you don't need to own an instrument, you don't need to have any skill. What you need to start a band is a good band name.
Now, when I was 14, we were trying to come up with good band names and we finally, after weeks of talking, we finally settled on this amazing band name and we decided that the best thing to do. We were 14 and my, the drummer of my band's brother, was five years younger. What we decided the best thing to do would be to present our band name to his eight-year-old brother and he would have, you know, he would love it because we're older and we're cool, right. And so we go to him and we say James, we decided what our band name is. We're going to be called the Silver Tones and he looks at us. He's like that's the stupidest band name I ever heard. And so you know, out of the mouths of babes, the truth was told and we ended up changing our band name later on to Awakening.
That's why I'm telling this story, because last week Pastor Des preached about Awakening the whole time. I was just thinking about that story and I was thinking about this band and Awakening the band that I had growing up relates to what I'm speaking about today, because we are going to be talking about worship. We're going to be talking about what it looks like to worship, to hear God. Pastor Des said last week that God is speaking. He wants to speak to us. I've been reading a book called Hearing God by Nathan Finocchio and one of the things that stood out to me as I was reading this book was that the author said that God wants to speak to us, that he is speaking to us he's not some far-off person who's just whispering that we have to, like, crane our ear towards to try and hear that he is speaking and that he wants to speak to us. And in fact, he's speaking now to each and every one of us. He has something that he wants us to hear, and what I realized about myself, and I think we can probably all relate to, is sometimes, when I'm listening for what God is saying, I'm actually listening for a very specific answer. I'm like, god, give me a million dollars, and I'm like craning my ear hey, where's the yes? Where's the yes? Okay, okay, I need to. What is it that I need to do? But maybe God is saying something else. Maybe he's saying no, maybe a million dollars would wreck me, who knows? I'd like to try.
Sometimes we get caught looking for the answer that we want. I have two little girls, a four and a half year old and a two and a half year old, and sometimes we have to. You know, we tell the girls what's about to happen, and sometimes the thing that's about to happen is not something that they want to do, like bedtime, or like that they have to eat their supper, or like basic things, like going to the bathroom Very basic things. Now, when we tell them those things, sometimes they go into a temper tantrum and they start repeating over and over and over and over and over the same things that they want. All the time they say no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And it doesn't matter how reasonable we are as parents, it doesn't matter how well we hold our composure together, it doesn't matter how well we can reason with them and say we just need to go to the bathroom because if you don't, you're going to pee your pants. It doesn't matter what we say, because they have an answer that they want to hear from us Okay, you don't have to go to the bathroom? And how many of us know that five minutes later, they're going to pee their pants and they're going to have to go to the bathroom and probably have a shower?
I think we do the same thing when it comes to hearing God. We have this answer that we want to hear and we don't. We aren't listening to his voice, and maybe the problem isn't even that we're not listening to his voice, but that we don't know what his voice sounds like. We don't know the voice of God. Being part of God's family means that we value spending time with God in his presence, and as we spend time in God's presence, as we spend time with God, we grow in our understanding of his voice and his desire in our lives.
And specifically today I want to look at, like I said earlier, I want to look at worship and how a worship service on a Sunday morning, how worship, will impact our relationship with God. And now I want to preface this whole thing by saying worship is more than just a Sunday morning event. Worship is an every single day, every part of our life event. That worship is when you go to work. Worship is when you're with your family, when you're making dinner for your family. Worship is you're coming and you're going. Worship is giving all that we have to God. But today I want to look specifically at what it looks like for us to worship as a church. But let's pray it first this morning.
God, we thank you that you are here. We thank you that you're a good God, that you have good plans in store for us. God, we thank you that you are speaking and, god, we thank you that you give us the opportunity to hear your voice. Lord, we're thankful we don't have to yell and scream to get your attention, but you are attentive that you're ever present. You're our help in time of need, and so, god, we just praise you today for who you are. We praise you and we thank you that you are a good God. In Jesus' name, I pray Amen.
So, as Christians, we walk this life and we know that God wants to speak to us. We know that he wants to talk to us, and sometimes we're like fighting it a little bit. We're trying to hear his voice, and one of the areas that I've realized is that if we don't know what the family looks like. If we don't know what our family looks like, if we don't know what our heavenly family looks like, it's going to be hard to hear God's voice. See, the Bible says that we are adopted, and as we are adopted, we start and we should start looking like the family. I think about Matt and Lacey, and they have two amazing young boys, and if you've ever come to pre-service prayer, those boys are following their parents around because they want to look like their parents. They care about what their parents are doing, and that's the same thing that God wants for us. He wants us to follow him and to walk in step with him and to look more like him.
Ephesians 1, 3-6 says all praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. This has already happened. This isn't like it's going to. This has happened Even before he made the world, before he made you, before he made me. God loved us. He loved you and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family, before we even made mistakes, before we sinned, before we ran away before we betrayed him, before any of those things he chose to bring us into his family through Jesus Christ, because this is what he wanted to do and listen to this, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace that he has poured out on us who belong to his dear son.
You see, sometimes we walk around and we just we feel like oh, what is my relationship with God Like? Is he far off? Do I need to yell? Do I need to try and get his attention? Or like what does he actually want? And when we read a verse like this, we can see God isn't playing hard to get. He's not someone who's like oh, I'm going to like pretend like I don't like them so that they can like pursue me more. He's not doing that. He's extremely and explicitly clear about how he feels about us. He's extremely and explicitly clear about where we stand in his eyes. We are adopted as his sons and daughters.
He chose us before we chose him. He made a way for us before we had a way to him. And not only that, but it gave him great pleasure. It wasn't just like oh, I guess I got to do this thing, because these guys are all messed up. No, it gave him great pleasure. He was so happy to do it. And so what is our response to that? Our response is that we praise God for the glorious grace that he's poured out.
And today I wonder do we know God's voice? John 10, 27. Pastor Des uses this. Last week too. She said my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. I question for myself sometimes do I know what his voice is? My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. Now, when you spend enough time with someone if anyone here is married I mean, everyone here has a family of some sort we all spent time with people, a lot of time with people we know that we can start to hear things that they might not be saying. We can kind of interpret what's happening.
And so yesterday I had two days where I was like sitting and studying and doing all this stuff, and one thing about me is that I go stir crazy so quick. If I don't go outside, I want to just explode. So Haley knows this about me and she asked oh Seb, how are you doing? And I said oh, I'm fine. And she knows that I'm not fine. She knows that like I might say that I'm fine, I probably don't look like I'm fine, but I'm telling her the words I'm fine. But she knows the interpretation is get Seb outside right now because he's going to blow. And so she told me, you know what, go to Costco, fill up the van, like I was just cruising through Costco yesterday. Terrible to go to Costco on a Saturday. But you know what? It gave me life because she heard what I actually needed. She heard, she knows what my voice is. If we had just met and I said I'm fine, she wouldn't know that I needed to go to Costco. I mean, everyone needs to go to Costco. You know what I'm saying. But the samples are abundant on Saturday, let me tell you.
But often we're so focused on only ourselves that we miss what the Shepherd is saying. We're so focused on what I want, what I think that I need, what maybe I do need, that we miss what the Shepherd is saying. And I've found that relationships don't thrive just going through the motions. Relationships don't thrive of just doing the day-to-day. Hey, how's it going? Good morning, goodbye. What are we having for supper? Good night. Relationships don't thrive on that they don't thrive on simply having information from another person. Relationships require intention and thought to be able to blossom and grow.
Last or two weeks ago, haley and I my wife and I went on our first trip away from the kids in three years and it was a beautiful, beautiful thing, just being able to like yeah, it was crazy, like we could stay out past seven o'clock. Now we still went back to the hotel and went to sleep at seven o'clock, but we could have had we wanted to, and that's a big difference. And as we were on our trip together, one of the natural tendencies that you want to do when you finally get alone, away with somebody is you kind of just want to work on the problems. Except, at least that's what I want to do. I want to work on the problems, like let's talk about our finances, let's talk about what school or kids are going to next year, let's talk about like, let's talk about all of these things. Let's do this information exchange, let's get your opinion I'm going to get my opinion and let's kind of come to a conclusion. Let's just share information with each other, and it would have been really easy to just focus on problem solving of getting all of our ducks in a row, but what I realized is that that wasn't going to make a successful trip, that wasn't going to bring us closer and our decisions weren't going to be better If we just simply talk to each other.
We had to remember that we needed to enjoy each other. We needed to remember that we need to just spend time with each other in each other's presence. We needed to relax and just be present with one another. We need to remember our first love and when it comes to our relationship with God, I think we can sometimes make the same mistake. You know, we come to church and we hear a sermon and we're getting information. And we hear a podcast and we're getting more information. And we hear this thing on on social media and we're getting more information. We're grabbing all this information and we're giving information to God. God, blah, blah, blah, blah blah. But we're not just spending time in God's presence. It's easy to forget that our relationship with God is a love story. It's not just an exercise of how much I know about him.
In Acts 17, we find Paul, the apostle Paul. He's in Greece, and I think the Greeks were similar to us in this way, and verse two says now, all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend all of their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. They would spend all of their time sharing information. They'd be talking about God's. They'd be talking about different theories. You know, if Ted talks existed, they would have been watching Ted talks. They'd just spent all of their time talking and hearing about new ideas. They love to learn and talk about God, but they didn't know the person of Jesus Christ.
So today I want to encourage us that we need to spend time in God's presence. We need to spend time not just getting information, not just hearing sermons, not just going through the motions. We need to spend time drawing close to God and just being in his presence and knowing his goodness and declaring his goodness over our lives Every single Sunday morning. Is that we do that through worship? Worship is such an important part of the service for me. Like you know, I love Pastor Brett Sermon and everyone else's sermons who preach here. But for me, if there's no worship like, I don't really want to be there. Because worship is my time, just to be there, because worship is my time just to spend with God, just to be in his presence to just give him what I have in my life, to lay it all down at his feet. And when we worship as a church, it's amazing because we've all been adopted as sons and daughters that were part of the family and we're doing what the family does. We're looking like the family, we're looking like the father, we're looking. We're looking like the family. We join the saints as we sing, as we worship, and not only that, but I don't know about you, but when I am in a worship service, like this morning, and my eyes are closed and I'm worshiping God and the saints join in song around me and I hear that, that noise rise to heaven, man. That encourages me, that lifts me up, I know I'm not alone, like my brothers and sisters are here and they're going in the same direction. All the arrows are pointing in the same direction. We're all going the same way.
Now, why do we do this as a church? Why do we spend half of our services every single week in praise and worship? Well, it's not something that we just invented. Because we like music, because we like guitar solos, because we like drums, because we like hymns. We didn't invent it. This has been happening since the beginning of time.
Psalm 104-33 says I will sing to the Lord as long as I live. I will sing praise to my God while I have being. Psalm 147, verse 1, says Praise the Lord, for it is good to sing. Praises to our God, for it is pleasant and a song of praise is fitting. Matthew 26-30,. And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. That's talking about Jesus. Jesus sang hymns. Now, that's not like an exclusive, like we only sing hymns because Jesus said hymns, because they use the word hymn to translate that Hymns are great, but they were singing together, they were joining together. And 1 Corinthians 14-26 says what then, brothers, when you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Let all things be done for the building up. See, when we join together as a church, when we join together as a congregation, as a family, we have an opportunity to lift up our praises as a sweet incense to God. And this has been taking place for all of time.
When I was, you know, rewind a little bit to, before I had the band, when I was 12 and 13 years old, I went to YC in Edmonton and YC was come on, come on, that's right. Even the people in Calgary knew what YC was because it was so good, am I right? That's right. And when I was 12 and 13, hillsong United was at YC and I didn't know anything about them and I didn't really know anything about worship music at the time.
But I remember as a 12 year old having a moment of impact in my life. It wasn't just because the lights were crazy, it wasn't just because the band was great, it wasn't because the bass players bass flew off of his guitar strap and smashed on the stage. It wasn't because of any of those things. Some of those things were sweet and sad when I saw the bass being destroyed, but it was a moment in worship. It was when my eyes were closed. I wasn't focusing on the band, I wasn't focusing on what was happening, I was focusing on God. That moment, for me, changed my life. It set my life on a completely different path and direction.
But I'm sure that all of us have had an experience or two in our lives where we go to a worship service and it's not that experience. It's actually the polar opposite kind of thing. It's painful, it's like, oh man, I cannot wait until this service is over, because this is get to the sermon already. That guy needs to work on whatever his thing is. Maybe the worship leader is playing his guitar and his string breaks, or maybe he's singing and he has a voice crack and you're like I'm out. That's never happened to me on a Sunday morning. Hey, why are you guys all laughing? See, it's so easy for us in worship to think that it's about the music, to think that it's about the band or about my favorite song, to think that it's about no voice cracks or think it's about a great guitar solo. It's easy to think that it's about the right song selection.
And this thing that's supposed to draw us closer to God, this thing that's supposed to let us just be in God's presence, this thing that's supposed to bring us closer to the Father so that we can hear His voice in a more tangible way, this tool, it ends up that we make the wrong thing the main thing. And for God, this isn't a surprise to Him. In fact, he's very aware that this has always been a problem for humans. Exodus 20, 3-5,. The first two commands that he gives is you must not have any other God but me. Now.
We can think about that in the sense of like the Old Testament, they had all these gods. But we can also think about that in the sense of what God am I making when I'm worshiping? Is worship about me or is it about God? His second command is you must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth, or on the sea. You must not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord, your God and a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other God. You see, god isn't surprised by this. He knew that this is a thing that our hearts are prone to wander. Our hearts are prone to going in the wrong direction. But the intention of worship is that we meet with Jesus. The intention of worship is that we spend time with Jesus. But when our priorities get messed up, our desire for worship is that I get everything that I want and we end up carving our own idols.
Ellsworth, in his book Opening Up Psalm, says it would seem to go without saying that God is the object of worship, but we have to constantly be reminded of this because we have the tendency to shift the focus of worship to ourselves. We very easily fall into the trap of being religious consumers who attend services with the idea that something must be done for us instead of our being responsible for doing something for God. Wow. We fall into the mindset that we can only worship when we have the right atmosphere, the right songs, the right band, the right amount of new songs versus old songs, the right amount of hymns, the right amount of volume, the right amount of coffee before service, our kids being obedient enough before service or the plans after service being right. We depend on all of these things when we go into worship. Let me tell you, it's all of us. We've all been there. I have been there a thousand times and I'm probably going to be there a thousand times more, because during worship, the enemy's coming and he wants to distract us and he wants to take our eyes off of the object of our worship. The very tool that should bring us closer to God sometimes pulls us away.
Well, if we go back to the story of those Greeks, paul saw this same problem. He saw that the Greeks had a desire to worship God, but they didn't really know how to put it together. Acts 17, 22 to 31 says so. Paul standing in the midst of the Arab oh, I practiced this word earlier but man area, oh boy, in the midst of the eight said men of Athens. I perceive that in every way you are very religious, for as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription to the unknown God. What, therefore, you worship as unknown? This I proclaimed to you.
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man. He doesn't live in this building. He's not served by human hands as though he needed anything. He doesn't need what we have, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything, and he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place. He knows exactly when your start is and when your end is. He knows every single part of you. He's that big that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way towards him and find him. That's sometimes how we treat it right that we're blind and we're feeling our way towards God to find him. But this is what Paul says. Yet he's actually not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring, we are adopted into his family, being then God's offspring. We ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.
See, what Paul wanted the Greeks to hear and what we need to hear today is that worship is not about you. Worship is not about me. Worship is not about the band. It's not about the place. Worship is not about me. It's not about our preferences. It's not about how well the songs are played or sung. It's not about if the piano cuts out in the middle of the intro. Right, nathan. It's not about any of those things. It's not about the perfect service order. It's not about having the perfect drive to church. What worship is is an understanding that God is not far from us. In fact, we live and we move and we have our being in him.
Worship is about understanding Ephesians 1 that we are adopted, we are his offspring, that, while we think that we have found God, that we felt our way to God. Oh, haha, he's there While we think that no. Worship is saying no. The whole time you were chasing after me. You were following me, you were seeking me. You were seeking my heart. The whole time that I thought I was looking for you. You were pursuing me. Worship is resting in the assurance that we are adopted, that he is good and that he has good plans.
Worship is really about getting over ourselves and giving glory to the creator of the universe. It says God is not served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. He doesn't need worship for his own sake. He doesn't need it. He doesn't need us to come here and to sing, because you know he needs his ego to be filled up. He's not some desperate lover looking to be reassured that we still love him. He's not worried about that. In fact, he's the king of the universe, who purchased our lives with the blood of his son on the cross.
So the reason that we worship God on a Sunday morning, the reason that we worship God with our lives, it's not because he needs it, it's because he deserves it, it's because he made a way that he paved a path for us when we were still far off. It comes all the way back to that adoption that, if we know where we stand, he's made it clear where we stand. And so, man God, thank you. Thank you for what you did on the cross. Thank you, god, that you are good and that your mercies are new every day. Thank you, jesus, and we have the opportunity to worship you. Worship is a response to what God has already done and what he has promised to do. It's a response to who he is, and when we worship him in that way, we find rest, in that we draw closer to him, in that we have a nearer relationship with him.
So how do we worship? Well, let's look at what the Bible says. Psalm 96, 1-13 says oh, sing to the Lord. A new song, a new song. Sing to the Lord all the earth. Sing to the Lord, bless his name, tell of his salvation from day to day, declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples. For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all gods, for all.
The gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens. The things that I bring, the worship that I try and control, those are worthless idols. He made the heavens, he made you. Splendor and majesty are before him. Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Ascribe to the Lord. Give credit to the Lord, o families of the people. Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory. Do his name. Bring an offering and come into his courts. Worship the Lord and the splendor of holiness tremble before him. All the earth Say among the nation the Lord reigns. Yes, the world is established. It shall never be moved. He will judge the people with equity.
And then this is what the Psalmist says. He says not only are we saying praise the Lord, not only are we declaring God's goodness, but nature itself is crying out to God. He says let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice, let the sea roar and all that fills it, let the fields exult and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord, for he comes. For he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the people in his faithfulness.
So how do we worship the Lord? Well, we sing a new song to the Lord. What does a new song mean? Well, a new song can mean a new song. You know we introduce a new song of the month and we do that to keep things fresh, that we have a new way to express our worship towards God. But a new song is also just a song that you want to sing to God, a song that, in those quiet moments that you just tell God that he's worthy, that he's good, you tell him how much he means to you.
What else does this Psalm tell us? Well, we bless his name. We bless his name and we give him credit, the credit he is doing in our lives. It's so easy I think Pastor Brett was saying this three weeks ago it's so easy for us to like go around our lives and look at all the bad things and be like all the bad things are Satan and all the good things are a coincidence and there's no room for God. But what the Psalmist said is is describe to God the glory that he is due, give him credit that he is doing our lives, for taking us, for the breath that we breathe, for the lives that we live, for the all of the all that he provides for us. We declare who he is.
Sometimes we'll sing a song like authority, saying this morning or holy forever the joy will sing these songs to declare who God is. Sometimes you can get tired of singing the same song over and over again, but the reality is is that when we declare those songs, we're reminding ourselves this is who God is Like. Maybe I had a bad week, maybe I had a bad morning, but it doesn't matter, because God is greater than these things. I have the joy of the Lord. He's my strength. It's not because it's comfortable, it's not because I like the melody, it's not because of any of those things. To be honest with you, sometimes I don't even like the songs that we sing here and I'm the one who chooses them. But it's not about my preference, it's not about any of those things. It's about God. It's to declare that he is greater. So we humble ourselves as well in reverence before him. We bow down, we make ourselves low, we raise our hands. That's why we do these things. We do these things because he's worthy of the praise.
The band came out here way too early because I have 15 points, 15 more points. I'm not even joking. You guys ready? Okay, let's do it. I got 15 points, 15 ways to maximize your time spent in worship.
Number one come to the prayer service. Get prepared, get ready. That lets you put all those things aside before we even get to worship. Number two be in service for the first song that. I don't know who needs to hear that, but probably 50% of the people here. Be in worship for the first song.
The fast songs are just as important as the slow songs, because they're just tools. At the end of the day, they're just tools and we're using them to worship God. Number three put your eyes onto God. Take your eyes off of yourself. Number four put to death your own preferences. Number five sing with joy for what he has done. Number six lay everything down at his feet.
Number seven this one's hard. Be present. Don't be looking at your phone. Don't be worrying about all the things that are gonna happen after. Don't try and figure out what show you wanna watch after church is done or where you're gonna go for lunch. Be present.
Number eight raise your hands, dance, kneel, sit, clap, shout. Number nine sing a new song. Sing something you've never sang before. Number 10, proclaim his majesty. Number 11, ascribed to God the praise he is due. Give him credit for what he's done, even just today. Give him credit that you woke up this morning, that you have breath in your lungs. Number 11, or number 12, sorry, wow, we're ripping through these. Listen to what God is saying. It's really easy just to spend the whole time telling God what we need and sing, but spend some time listening to what he wants to say to us.
Number 13, get comfortable in the quiet moments that one's hard. Sometimes it gets quiet and it's just like I'm there and I'm like twiddling my thumb Like this is weird. Did the band not practice this transition right now, like this is an awkward moment. But man, those are opportunities for us and it's not that the band didn't practice it. In fact, it's probably intentional. Those are actually moments for us to look to Christ, to spend time singing our own song, to have room to be able to listen to him.
Number 14, put away distractions. And number 15, step out of your comfort zone. Sometimes we like to just come and do the same things we do every single week, because that's my personality. Well, I don't really like to jump Like I'm a big dude, I don't jumping, for like a whole chorus is a lot for me. But you know what, sometimes I jump because I'm about to be distracted by something that's going on and I'm like I just gotta. You know what? This isn't about me. This isn't about what's going wrong. I need to focus my attention on God and so I spend that time jumping, or maybe I spend that time dancing or kneeling or sitting or clapping or shouting or whatever it might be. Step out of your comfort zone.
A few years ago, right after COVID was like all the government restrictions were done, I went to a conference and it was like the first it was this worship conference and I was so excited about it. I was like man, a worship conference People are just going to be like singing, like crazy and like going for it. And we go to this conference and the first night was so awkward, like everyone, like no one was singing, and then in between songs, I actually think that maybe the band didn't practice the transitions. So there was all these like weird transitions and like everything. There was so much silence, like it was like we had just like forgotten. You know how to put on a conference and I was like man, like oh, I really wanted this conference to be good, but worship was just like awkward and like you know, and I just felt God correct me and say this wasn't about spoon feeding you, this wasn't about you.
What did you bring for me? What did you bring to lay at my feet? What did you bring to lay at my feet? What did you bring to raise as an offering to me? And sometimes we, you know, in those uncomfortable times when it's silent and it's like God. I don't know how to sing a song, I don't know, like I'm not a singer, I don't know how to sing a song. He doesn't care that you don't know how to sing a song. He doesn't care that you don't know how to raise your hands or that you. He cares because he cares about you, but it's the act of doing those things that he cares about.
Wearsby says we approach God only through Christ's righteousness. We're not going to be like. We're going to be like God only through Christ's righteousness. But listen to this but we please God when we are obedient children. We please God when we are obedient children.
So this morning I brought a drawing. I don't know if you can see that. Probably can't see that that well. So I brought a drawing here this morning and this was done by my two and a half year old. There's some glue on there, some nice sparkles and glitter. Looks like the letter F actually. Well done, lucy.
And I brought this because if I was to give this to anybody here today now, I'm sure there's like a few people that are a little bit weird, but the rest of us would take this to our car and we would immediately throw it in the garbage Because, well, it doesn't mean anything to you. It doesn't mean anything to you. It doesn't mean anything to you. It's just a bunch of scribbles on a piece of paper. In fact, I could have I was actually planning to draw my own illustration and then pretend it was one of the girls, but I'm not quite this good at art, so I decided not to do that. But if I gave this to you, it wouldn't mean much to you because it doesn't have value to you.
But when my daughter gives me this drawing, I'm her father and I see this drawing and while I can objectively say this is never going in a museum, I can also say I love this. I love that she did what she could with what she had. I love that she sat there and she drew this and she thought of me and she thought about giving this to me. She thought about all of those things.
It's not because of how good the art is. It's because of our relationship that this has value when it comes to our worship of God. It's not because of how good our worship is. It's not even because of how good Cam's guitar solo was earlier. I hate to say it, but even our good works are like filthy rags to God.
But you know what? He's adopted us as sons and daughters, and so it means something to him because as his children are obedient and as we step forward and as we give him things that make us uncomfortable, as we give him what we are and we rest in his presence, he takes those things and the Bible says that he imbues his righteousness upon us, which means it's not because of our goodness, it's not because of how good we are, it's because of how good he is. It's because he cares about us and he values us and he made a way for us, and because he loves us, he gives us a way through his grace. He imbues his righteousness upon us Now, this drawing. Right now, it's worth nothing other than to me. But in 25 years from now. If my daughter became a famous artist and she had art hanging up in museums all around the world and those pieces of art were worth millions and millions of dollars, I can tell you this piece of art would be worth a pretty penny. It's no different in 25 years when she's a famous artist than it is today. But it's because her future art's value imbues the value upon this.
That's what Christ has done for us His, the cost that he paid, the sacrifice that he made, the obedience that he lived when he went to the cross and died for us. That is imbued upon us through Christ, and so when we worship and when we praise God, it's the most beautiful and valuable thing. He loves to hear his children singing. He loves to hear and see his children worshiping as worshipers. Our worth is found not in what we do, but what Jesus did on the cross for us. He uses our drawings. He uses our gifts, our abilities, our sacrifices for his glory.
So today we come with open hands and we say God, use what we have, use what little we have. It's exactly what Pastor Deondre said this morning during his tithing. He's called a tithe Use what we have. We have two fish and five loaves. Use what little we have and use it for your glory, god, because you are worth it. Why don't we stand this morning?
Worship is a posture of our lives. Worship isn't just something that we do here on a Sunday morning, it's not just something that we get to spend doing together, but on a Sunday morning there's something special about it Because we are setting time aside to meet with Jesus. We are spending, we are setting time aside to put what we want on the back burner and what he wants in the forefront. So, church, I would encourage you, just be happy to draw. Just be happy to draw to bring him what you have, because he loves it, and he will meet you where you are. That's the amazing thing about a good father is that we don't just give him the drawing and then you know, that's it. He meets us where we are and he speaks to us and he wants to know us in a deeper way.