Worship: For the Purpose of Godliness - Part 3

Prayer Requests

Jimmy Rooks - Recovering from Surgery. Diagnosed with cancer. Will follow up with a doctor this week to find out all the details

Fred Peck - Moved in at Durham. Had 8 doctors appointments on Thursday. Friday began a two day 10 hour chemo therapy. Today had a 5 hour chemo and will continue to have chemo through Tuesday., Will have a full body radiation on Tuesday. His son David will have injections, starting yesterday through Tuesday, to stimulate stem cells. Cells are harvested on Wednesday and Thursday is transplant day. Praying for no sickness during this process.

Blake Taylor - Pet Scan last Thursday was good. Lymphoma is shrinking. They did find a spot on his small intestine that they will check out. He is in chemo treatment number 5 and in the recovery week.

Mary Jo Tyer - having upcoming tests to determine the source of dizziness

Derek & Julia Harrelson - helping transition Mr Ricky to Jesus

Bryce Harrelson - some improvement in his throat. As long as he does his exercises he improves. Praying for movement to avoid other invasive medical procedures

Sandra Harris - Director of Pender Christian Resources - started a project and feels like she is under spiritual attack.

Afghan Dari, Persian Farci, Jains - praying for these unreached people groups

Nabiyumu - A mostly Muslim village in Uganda that we supplied the funds to build a well for them.

International Missions events for 2025

October 13-15 - Global Missions Celebration

Mumbai - February 25-March 1

This team is already set in motion but will part of a regular investment to the people in Mumbai

The first team to go will be getting the information to bring back and then the hope is to send teams regularly (the goal is twice a year) to reach the Jains and help IMB missionaries.

Uganda

This is in conjunction with Wrightsville Beach Baptist

The trip will be sometime in July.

John Macintyre goes twice a year to check on the people there working out of a medical mission.

Next year we get to go and check on the well that we were able to build and share the gospel with a mostly Muslim village

Budapest, Hungary

We’ve built a relationship with a new missionary couple and if you’ve never taken a mission trip before this is the one to go on.

No dates are set yet, but we are looking possibly late Fall of 2025 to go and work with the CRU team there.

Information is coming

Why do we have missionaries share in worship?

We support specific missionaries and it gives us a chance to hear what they are doing

If gives them a chance to be accountable to the congregations that support them

It shows us where our resources are going and we are a part of the ministry of the Great Commission

It convicts us to do better where we are

Worship is...Focusing on and responding to God

To worship God means to ascribe to the proper worth of God,

to magnify His worthiness of praise, or better, to approach and address God as He is worthy.

He is worthy of all the worth and honor we can give Him and infinitely more.

Notice, for instance, how those around the throne of God address God as worthy of so many things

Revelation 4:11 (ESV)

11 “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”

Revelation 5:12 (ESV)

12 saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”

Worship is…Done in Spirit and Truth

Before we can worship in spirit and truth we must have within us the One who is the “Spirit of truth”

To worship God in spirit is to to worship from the inside out.

The balance to worshiping in spirit is to worship in truth.

So we must worship in both spirit and in truth,

with both heart and head,

with both emotion and thought.

If we worship with too much emphasis on spirit

we will be mushy and weak on the truth,

worshipping mainly according to feelings.

That can lead anywhere from lazy, unthinking tolerance of anything in worship at one extreme

to uncontrollable spiritual wildfire on the other.

But if we overemphasize worship in truth

and minimize worship in spirit,

hen our worship will be taut, grim, and icily predictable.

Worship is…Expected, Both Publicly and Privately

Worship Is…A Discipline to be Cultivated

Matthew 4:10 (ESV)

10 For it is written, “ ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’ ”

To worship God throughout a lifetime requires discipline.

Without discipline, our worship of God will be thin and inconsistent.

Certainly though, worship must be much more than discipline,

more that simply the proper expression of the correct words and forms.

I think about those that run through the Lord’s prayer every Sunday

or those that recite the Apostle’s Creed

Even our sending verse at the end of the morning service can become dead

Songs that are sung without thought to the words

or songs that won’t get sung because someone doesn’t like the music

All of these can be discipline without emotion

True worship also exudes evident of “heartprints.”

Worship can’t be calculated or produced.

Instead it is evoked;

it’s the response of a heart evoked by the beauty, glory, and allure pf the object of your mental focus - Holy God.

And yet, we also must consider worship a Discipline,

a Discipline that must be cultivated, just as all relationships must in in order for them to remain healthy and grow.

Worship is a Spiritual Discipline insofar as it is both and end and a means.

The worship of God is an end in itself because to worship, as we’ve defined it,

is to focus on and respond to God.

There is no higher goal or greater spiritual pleasure that focusing on and responding to God.

John Piper wrote in his book, “Let the Nations Be Glad”

Missions exists because worship doesn’t, John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad

But worship is also a means in the sense that is is a means to godliness.

The more we truly worship God,

the more - through and by means of worship - we become like Him.

The worship of God makes believers more godly because people become like their focus.

We emulate what we think about.

If we would be godly, we must focus on God.

Godliness requires disciplined worship.