January 24th, 2010

What a blessing it was to see a full worship team up front on Sunday. I don’t know if you felt the same way or not, but when I walked into the auditorium and heard the team warming up my spirit was lifted and I realized something new was happening in our worship. It made me want to sing. Having a full band with additional singers made a huge difference. I heard comments from enough of you to know that I’m not the only one who noticed and appreciated the difference.
Realizing that too often we don’t say anything unless there is a problem I commend Dwight and the worship team, including those who operated the sound, for a job well done. Thank you. I hope you were blessed as much as we were in the congregation. Not that the end goal is for us to be blessed. The real purpose for our worship is to bless God. But when we truly bless God we can count on it that we will be blessed as well.
Sunday I suggested that it is repentant worship that attracts the presence of God. His glory is revealed through the cracks of our brokenness, not in our pride and arrogance. David was willing to humble himself in front of the people as he worshipped God before the Ark of the Covenant with all his might. His wife didn’t think much of it. She thought he was making a fool of himself and the Bible says she despised him in her heart.
But rather than letting her judgmental attitude discourage him, David told her that he was willing to be even more foolish in praising God. David wasn’t concerned about what people thought. His focus was on praising and celebrating God. The more we get our focus off ourselves and other people and on God, the easier it is to worship in spirit and in truth.
In worship that attracts the presence of God there is no room for competition, pride, disrespect, judgment, discord, disunity, selfishness, arrogance, dishonor, haughtiness, rebellion and the like. That is the kind of stuff that got Lucifer and his followers thrown out of heaven. We must stay as far away as possible from identifying with him. Instead we must build a Kingdom culture and atmosphere of love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control that will allow us to build a mercy seat for God’s presence.
This coming Sunday I want to continue our focus on worship and more specifically on why we structure our worship celebration the way we do. There may be those who wonder why we even have a structure. Wouldn’t it be better to not have any structure and just be free to let the Spirit lead? Last Sunday I compared the tabernacle of Moses (representing structure) and the tabernacle of David (representing Spirit life). What you may not know is that these two tabernacles while separate did not stay separated. You may be surprised to learn what happened when they were brought together and united.
While we believe our worship pattern is biblical, we don’t hold it up as the only right way. Churches structure their worship services in many different ways. What I will be sharing Sunday and what the worship team will be modeling is in no way intended to cast a negative reflection on how other churches may or may not do it. The purpose is to clarify the vision we believe God has given us and to explain the reason why.
So I encourage you to come early this Sunday, especially if you want to hear the whole message. For the purpose of illustration, the format will be a little different. Instead of preaching one long message with three main points I plan to preach three mini messages each with one main point. Instead of beginning the service with singing we will begin with the sermon.
The worship team will sing and play from 9:15-9:30am. At 9:30am the first mini sermon will be shared followed by a time of celebration and praise. After the celebration, the second mini sermon will be shared followed by a time of adoration and worship. And after the adoration, the third mini sermon will be shared followed by a time of exultation and response. I wanted to alert you to this before Sunday. If you usually come ten minutes after we start, this Sunday, instead of missing the celebration you will miss the first part of the sermon. I assure you, I will not be offended. Just come on in whenever you get here. You are still welcome.