God

Currently, we’re in a messages series entitled “Worship Can Change Your Life.” You were created to worship God and that innate desire to worship is inside of every human being. If you don’t worship God, then you will worship something that He created. Worship can change your life because when you worship God you become like Him. When your worship pleases God, it will change your life. If you worship something other than God, you will become like it and that’s not good.

So today, I want to teach on the topic “How To Worship.” Unfortunately, although worship is a hot topic in many churches, either the teaching is bad or people are just not getting what worship is all about. A recent Barna poll shows that most people think worship is primarily for their benefit. However, the purpose of worship is not first and foremost for your benefit, we are to worship in order to please God. You exist for God’s pleasure, you were created for God to enjoy. That’s the attitude that we must enter into worship with.

Most people, according to that poll, look at worship as something for them. If it makes me feel good, it must be good worship. If the music and band are awesome, it must be good worship. If everyone raises their hands or sings on key or dances or claps or whatever, then that is good worship. But those common opinions aren’t correct, they’re not biblical. True worship cannot be determined by outward appearances because worship is a matter of the heart. True worship is worship that pleases God first of all. TEV Hebrews 12:28 Let us be grateful and worship God in a way that will please him, with reverence and awe.

So there are basically only two kinds of worship, worship that pleases God and worship that doesn’t please Him. There are all kinds of styles of worship, but what is going on in the heart is what is important to God. NIV 1 Samuel 16:7 Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart. So the very best worship in St Louis this week, the worship that pleases God the most, may not be going on in a church of thousands with paid professional musicians. The best worship in St Louis this week may go on in a small group meeting in someone’s living room or it may be happening in a middle school gym like this. Today, let’s take a more in depth look at “How To Worship” in a way that pleases God.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my March 26, 2006 message entitled How To Worship

Today I’m going to talk about “How To Get Close To God.” Why would you want to get close to God? Think about it for a minute, why do people want to get close to other people? Some people want to get close to other people because they love and care about them. Other people want to get close to someone else because that person has power, money or influence and they feel they can receive a benefit by being close to them. Another reason someone might want to get close to someone else is to learn from them, to follow their example, to become like someone. All of those reasons are also reasons to get close to God.

When you are close to God, you benefit from that close relationship. NCV Psalm 73:28 But I am close to God, and that is good. The Lord God is my protection. When you are close to God, you receive God’s protection. When you are far from God, you’re out of His protection. That’s just one example of how getting close to God benefits your life.

Some people think being close to God is just for pastors or other spiritual leaders, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Regardless of your career, you can get close to God. Getting close to God does not depend on some special gifting from God, getting close to God depends on you. If you want to get close to God, if you follow God’s principles to get close to Him, you can become one of God’s best friends.

NLT James 4:8 Draw close to God, and God will draw close to you. This verse is both a command and a promise. God commands you to draw close to Him. He also promises that if you obey that command to draw close to God, then God will draw close to you. God is waiting for you to respond to Him. He has issued the invitation. He is calling you this morning to draw close to Him, you need to answer His call.

God is calling you to draw close to Him. If you ignore His call, if you ignore His command, if you ignore His direction, you won’t build your friendship with God. You won’t get close to God, you’ll miss out on all the benefits of living life in the presence of God. In fact, if you don’t live a life close to God in this life, you won’t spend eternity with Him. Heaven is reserved for friends of God, those who have a growing close relationship with God. So today, let’s look at some biblical principles to discover how to get close to God.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my message entitled How To Get Close To God

For many people, God is hard to understand, hard to comprehend. We can’t see Him, we can’t touch Him, we can’t hear Him with our physical ears. Some people think of God as a force, but God is not a force, God is a person. God is a person who has all power, all knowledge and is everywhere present. How can a mere finite mortal human being like you or I interact with such a person? God is the one who created us and He rules the universe. Most of us would be in awe if we came into the presence of the President of the United States. How much more if we came into the presence of the Lord of the cosmos? Yet, this person, the Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, wants to be your friend.

Today we’re going to talk about “Friendship With God.” You can be a friend with someone who is not your equal. That’s why I chose our theme picture today, a father walking down a path with his son, walking together through life as friends. You and I are like that little boy and God our Father wants to be our friend. He wants us to walk through life with Him, hand in hand. NLT Romans 5:11 So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God– all because of what our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us in making us friends of God. When you become a believer, when you surrender your life to God, you become a friend of God. God wants your friendship with Him to grow deeper and stronger over time.

Friendships don’t grow deeper, relationships don’t grow stronger automatically, it takes effort. Most of all, it takes communication. Learning to understand another person in a relationship strengthens the relationship and deepens the friendship. Jesus said in NLT John 15:15 I no longer call you servants, because a master doesn’t confide in his servants. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. You see the difference between a servant and a friend is that friends confide in one another. God wants you to confide in Him and He wants to confide in you.

Today we’re going to talk about how to build your friendship with God, it’s what worship is all about. God is absolutely amazing, He is able to communicate with and be friends with millions of people at once and He wants you to be one of His best friends. God cares about you. He wants to be your best friend. He’s waiting for you, so let’s see how you can build your friendship with God

To hear more about this topic, listen to my March 12, 2006 message entitled Friendship With God

The last person to be rescued from the Twin Towers of the 9/11 tragedy was Genelle McMillan. She had been trapped in the rubble for 27 hours when she was finally rescued by fire fighters. Genelle had worked on the 64th floor of the World Trade Center but when the planes hit she was encased alive in between slabs of concrete. Although Genelle had been raised in church, she had fallen away from God. In the darkness of the rubble, her thoughts once again turned to God and she began to pray. She prayed, “God, please save my life. Give me a second chance. I promise, I will change my life and do your will.” She prayed that prayer of surrender over and over until she was finally rescued.

When we’re in trouble over our heads, when our lives hang in the balance, we know that we need to surrender our lives to God. How much better to live a lifestyle of surrender to God. Today my message topic is entitled “Surrendering To God.” Surrendering your life to God is an act of worship. In fact, worship is really about surrendering the throne of your life to God.

Every person begins with self firmly seated on the throne of their lives. God asks each person to step down from the throne of their lives and surrender that throne to their creator. TEV Romans 6:13 Nor must you surrender any part of yourselves to sin to be used for wicked purposes. Instead, give yourselves to God and surrender your whole being to him to be used for righteous purposes. When you or I are on the throne of our lives, we have surrendered to sin and the enemy uses us for wicked purposes. The middle letter of sin is I and the essence of sin is self being on the throne. However, when you surrender to God, when you allow Him to be enthroned in your life, God can then use you for righteous purposes. That is how you were created to live. You were created to live a life surrendered to God and His purposes.

Today I’m going to talk about some of the barriers we have to surrendering our lives to God and about the benefits of surrendering the throne of your life to God.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my March 5, 2006 message entitled Surrendering To God

Currently, we’re in a message series which I’ve entitled “Worship Can Change Your Life.” Worship is one of the five biblical purposes for your life. God created you to worship and He gave you a free will to choose what or whom you would worship. The only worship that makes sense is to worship your creator, God Himself. However, many people worship created things. The Bible calls worshipping created things foolish and it leads to big problems in your life.

When you worship God, you build a relationship with Him. You draw near to God and God draws near to you. That’s a good thing to have God close to you. Worship is all about pleasing God. If you do things that aren’t pleasing to God, it certainly is not worship. So, if we can learn to do the things that please God, we are learning to worship Him, we are building our relationship with God. So today, I’ve entitled my message “Learning To Please God.”

You can learn a lot of God as your Father by observing children interacting with their parents. Have you ever been in a store where a child was screaming and yelling about buying something and the parent was dragging them out of the store as fast as possible? What kind of expression was on the face of that parent? I’m sure it wasn’t a smile, they weren’t pleased with their child. In our theme picture today, the father is smiling at his daughter and they are enjoying their relationship. She is pleasing him as he reads to her and she is smiling back. That’s a picture of how you and I should please our heavenly Father.

Pleasing God is a necessity for a believer. NIV Galatians 6:8 The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. So I want to learn how to please God. Our world is full of people who are not God pleasers but self pleasers. Our world is similar to the world that existed in the time of Noah. Jesus said in NIV Matthew 24:37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. We’re closer today than we were yesterday to the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ and our world is becoming more and more like it was in the days of Noah.

In a world full of evil, there was one man who was different, his name was Noah. The Bible says that NCV Genesis 6:8 But Noah pleased the Lord. God wants you and I to be radically different than the people around us. He wants you to be like Noah. He wants us to learn how to be God-pleasers and truly worship God. So how can we learn to please God?

To hear more about this topic, listen to my February 26, 2006 message entitled Learning To Please God

Today we begin a new message series which I’ve entitled “Worship Can Change Your Life.” I suspect that if I went out on the street and asked people the question, “How could you change your life for the better?”, an answer of worship would be pretty low on the list. People would say things like, “Exercise can change your life” or “Getting more education can change your life” or “Working harder can change your life.” However you wouldn’t hear anything about worship.

For many people, worship is a take it or leave it proposition. Most people equate worship with going to church and for more and more people going to church and worshipping is something to do if there is nothing better to do. So today I’m going to address the question “Why Worship?” Is worship really irrelevant to our lives? Do we really even know what worship is? Many people think of worship as singing songs in church. Singing worship songs can be worship. NIV Psalm 100:2 Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Singing can be worship if it is joyful singing from glad hearts.

Here, we are beginning to get a glimpse that worship is more than just performing some religious activities. Worship is not some outward ritual, worship must come from the heart. Jesus said in NIV John 4:24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. Jesus describes two aspects of genuine worship of God. First of all, worship must be in spirit, since God is spirit. Worship must not be simply outward physical actions, whatever they may be. Worship must engage the spirit and the emotions. Secondly, worship must be in truth. Worship must engage the mind and it must be in keeping with God’s revealed truth in the Bible.

As we’ll see in a few minutes, everyone in the world worships, but it is not all genuine worship and it is not all directed toward the same object. Not everyone that worships, worships God. Not everyone who worships God, worships in spirit and in truth. So let’s look more closely at the question, “Why Worship?”

To hear more about this topic, listen to my February 19, 2006 message entitled Why Worship?