Untitled Sermon (11)

Lessons in Worship

Gospel of John, Part 1—January 27, 1991

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” 16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” 17 “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” 19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

21 Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” 26 Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.” 27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” 28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

Here ends the reading of God’s Holy Word

You know, people analyze and are kind of amazed by the fact that the more high tech our country gets, the more scientifically advanced, the more emphasis on knowledge and cognition and intellect and information, the more people seem to be passionately running into all sorts of sects and cults and occult cults that promise deep, ecstatic experiences. The more everything is able to be boiled down to facts and figures and procedures that can be packaged, moved around, and turned into a commodity, the more we get tech, the more we feel empty.

My generation of college students in the late 60s was one of the first ones to complain about this, though we weren’t really completely sure what we were complaining about. Do any of you remember we talked about the “plastic” culture? Do you remember that? The plasticity: science, image, money. Phony, we said. Not human. I remember very clearly our college generation turned to drugs not the way the poor turn to it now, out of despair, and not even the way the professionals turn to it now, out of stress. We turned to it out of an inner spiritual emptiness.

I remember very clearly when we turned to the churches, the irony was that the churches back in the earliest part of the twentieth century, so many of them had discarded the idea of a supernatural Christianity. So we turned to the churches. We found for several years (a number of decades) they had been laughing at the idea of being born again through an encounter with the Holy Spirit. They laughed at the idea of a divine book, God’s revealed Word, in which you could discover the very mysteries of his heart and his mind because it was written by him.

They laughed at all these ideas in the name of relevance. That is what is so ironic, and yet when we turned to the churches we found it was as if they were as sterile as our culture. There was as much awe and mystery about their services as there was about a board meeting, you know. We turned to them and they weren’t there. Why have so many Americans turned to drugs, to mysticism, to emotionalism? The answer is (and we mentioned it last week and now we press it this week) because, though many people will tell you you’re made only of earth, you’re actually made of heaven as well, and there is a hunger for intimacy with the infinite.

Intimacy with the infinite. You can’t live without it. What is that? It’s worship, and 10 times the word worship is used in this passage. This chapter is about worship above everything else. The word is used 10 times. So we ask ourselves, “If this is what we most are hungry for, if this in some sense is haunting (not driving) our society today, the lack of intimacy with the infinite, then what is worship?”

We’re going to learn at least three things here from this passage: The what of worship, the why of worship, and the how of worship. Let’s be real basic, all right? What is it? Why must we do it? How do we do it? Of course, all the answers aren’t here, but some very important ones are.

1. What is worship?

Well, the word that keeps getting used again and again (at least the Greek word, if you were reading it in that) is proskuneo. The word for worship originally and literally means to recognize someone or something of superior value. The English word worship is right in line with this Greek word, because the word worship today, as you’ve often heard me mention at the top of the service, is a shortened version of the old, English word “worthship.” Let me tell you about “worthship.”

You see, when we think of worship we just think of going to church, but “worthship” is something we do constantly. Your grandmother gives you a set of jewelry, and, you know, it looks fine. It’s nice. It’s old. It’s pretty. You throw it into your top drawer. But let’s just say one day for some reason a friend of yours who is a jeweler is in your home and happens to see it, and he goes crazy. He goes berserk! He says, “Wait a minute,” and he looks it over, and he assesses it, and he begins to say, “Listen. What do you think this is? This is unbelievably valuable.

Not only are these jewels precious stones that you didn’t realize, but this is obviously the work of a craftsman who lived in the seventeenth century whose works are highly prized and whose works are very rare. This thing is worth hundreds of thousands or more!” What happens to you? Your entire attitude toward the jewelry changes. Your stance of your whole being changes. First of all, you begin to admire it in a way you never did before. The jeweler, for example, points out beauties, things you didn’t see, but now that the jeweler says, “Look at this stone. Look at how this shines. Look at this,” you begin to see beauty as you never saw it before and you begin to fill your mind with the value of it.

Then you don’t just admire it. You begin to think of the implications of that value for your life. You begin to think how your life will be completely different now. You begin to think of how many things there are so different you would be able to do that you couldn’t have done before. You think of how the value of this thing is impacting you. You draw out the implications of it.

Then, of course, you also begin to change your behavior toward it. That night you don’t throw it into your top drawer, now do you? You’re not casual about it, are you? Oh, no. You begin to invest. For example, the first thing you do is buy a strongbox, or you put it in one. Not only that, but the jeweler says, “Listen. You need to repair it. You need to clean it. It will enhance the value double-fold, you see. There is only one person in the world who can do it. He lives in Switzerland. It will cost a couple thousand dollars just to have him do it.”

Does that bother you now? No! You invest in it, you see. What’s a couple thousand dollars? Your whole attitude has completely changed. This is “worthship.” The jeweler has led you in “worthship.” He has shown you the beauty. He says there is a reality here in the midst of your life you do not recognize, and because you don’t recognize the value of it, you are not living properly.

You don’t have the right attitude toward this thing, and you don’t realize the implications of it for your life. As you fill your mind with it, there is an awe which leads to joy which leads to a change in behavior, which leads to a major investment of yourself in that object. That is “worthship.” It happens all the time. For example, you inherit a piece of real estate.

Some real estate assessor goes out to look at it, and he comes back and says, “I don’t know what you thought. This is worth much more than you thought. This piece of real estate is worth at least $400,000. Now if you go out and invest $15,000 in it to fix this and this, it will be worth even more!” So you must do it. Immediately, you scrape up what you can. You put in $15,000. Why? Because the real estate broker has shown you the worth of it.

Now if somebody came to you and said your car needs $15,000 of repairs, you’d be tempted not to do it. Why? Because, you see, when you look at the worth of your car, it’s nothing like the worth of this piece of property. Suddenly, the $15,000 looks small as opposed to large. Or here comes your stock broker. Imagine if a stock analyst could really, really know a particular stock was going to increase in value 100-fold over the next three years. What would they say?

They would say, “Do you know what this stuff is worth? You can’t afford not to buy it. In fact,” the stockperson would say, “you have to get every penny you possibly can together. You have to get every bit of yourself, every bit of your net worth, and put it into here. You can’t afford not to! Every penny. Every bit, everything you can possibly turn into cash you must turn into cash. You have to buy it. It’s so valuable it beggars your own worth, and so your investment must be utter. It must be total.”

What are these people doing? They’re saying, “Surprise! There is a reality in your life of which you are not aware of the worth. Fill your mind with awe. Fill your mind with the value of it, and then let that change the way in which you behave toward it. It will lead you to the joy of knowing how this changes your life. It will lead you to a complete change in behavior toward that thing, and it will lead you to invest all sorts of valuable things in it now that you see what it’s really worth.”

“Worthship.” The jeweler. The real estate broker. The stock analyst. They’re doing it all the time. It happens to you. You’re standing near somebody. You’re standing in a crowd. Somebody is in line with you, and you’re a little bit irritated you have so many people in line. You’re irritated. It’s costing you something to be standing in line. You have things to do, you have people to see, and so forth, right? So you’re looking down and suddenly somebody points out the person in front of you is him or her.

Somebody so unbelievably famous. Somebody you’ve known about, seen, read about, watched for years, and suddenly there you are. You say, “Hi. I like your work,” and they turn around and say, “Well, thank you so much,” and you have this little conversation. The time flies by, doesn’t it? Gosh. Just a minute ago this taking 10 minutes in line was a tremendous expense, an investment much greater than what you really thought it was worth, and all of a sudden you see who you’re standing by. Everything changes.

Your sense of proportion is completely different. What is 10 minutes? It’s nothing. “Give me 15. Give me an hour. Give me two hours. I hope the line doesn’t move! I hope this person asks me out to eat lunch.” This is “worthship.” Do you see it? What is the worship of God? My friends, it’s just doing what you do all the time to almost everybody but God. To worship God means you take this dynamic and you use it again. Only instead of assigning him high value, you assign him ultimate value. Instead of investing much more, you invest everything.

Because if it’s true there can be diamonds and if it’s really true there can be stocks that are of so much value it would change your entire life, if there really are objects like this you really need to invest every bit of what you have in, then surely it must be true if you come before God himself, he can demand worship. How much more would he demand a response like that? How much more awe? How much more joy? How much more thought about the implications of what it means to have someone of this worth in your life?

How much less casually can you throw him into the top drawer? How much differently would you live? In God, the dynamic of worship reaches the height, and whenever you see any account of people who really worship, you realize the result is a tremendous transformation. People are lifted to the heights with it. You look at Isaiah. Isaiah walks into the temple and he is smitten with a picture of God. He sees God “… high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.” and for the first time he grasps the greatness of God.

What does that mean? For the first time, he saw his majesty. What does that mean? He worshipped. He always knew God was great, but now he finally saw the worth of it, and he falls down. Look how it changed this man, because as soon as that happens God says, “By the way, I have a job. I need somebody to go do a job.” This is in . He says, “I need somebody to go communicate to a group of people, not one of whom will ever listen to you.” What does Isaiah do? He jumps up and says, “I volunteer.”

Why? Because, you see, when he’s worshipping he says this. “When I see the worth of what you are and the worth of what you’ve given me, to give you anything less than all I have and all I am is a crucifixion of the intelligence, a crucifixion of decency. I will give you everything I have in Ammon, and at that I will make out like a bandit. I don’t need a successful life. Now that I have you, what more do I want? I’m going to put every bit of me I can possibly put (everything that’s liquid) into you because I know what you’re worth.”

Or look at Stephen. Stephen was one of the early evangelists, a great preacher, a deacon in the early church, and we’re told in , he was about to be executed by the religious leaders of the day. He was standing up there. They were ready to throw stones, and he began to worship. They’re about to execute him. “Do you have any final words?” He looks up and says, “I see God, the Father, seated on his throne, and the Son of Man (Jesus Christ) standing at his right hand.”

What was he doing? Where did he get the courage? He was worshipping, and at that moment the only thing God was requiring of him was his life. Do you know why he got courageous? Do you know why he is courageous and why you’re not and I’m not? It’s because at that moment he got his sense of proportion, and he realized what he was being asked to spend was something very small.

Look, if somebody comes up to you and says, “Hey! Would you like a pack of gum?” You say, “How much?” “Ten bucks,” he says to you. You say, “Ten dollars?” Suddenly, in light of the worth of the gum, the ten dollars looks like an enormous sum. You say, “You’re ridiculous! You’re crazy! What an insult!” You want to punch the guy out. “How dare you insult …? The idea of ten dollars for a piece of gum!” Suddenly ten dollars looks so big. Here comes somebody else. “Hey,” he says. “I’ll sell you this BMW.” You say, “How much?” “Ten dollars.”

You say, “Oh, gee. Ten dollars? Do you know how many ice cream cones I could buy for ten dollars?” Is that what you’re thinking? Are you saying, “Ten dollars, man?” You hand over the money and say, “Here.” What happened? Ten dollars is ten dollars, right? Oh, no its not. It depends. Is it a piece of gum or is it a BMW? Ten dollars is not ten dollars. Ten dollars and what it means to you and how easy it is for you to give it up depends completely on the worth of the object before you.

Why is it Stephen has this courage? Why is it Isaiah has his liberty? It’s because, at that moment, what God is asking of them … In one case God says, “I want you, Isaiah, to invest yourself in a career that will be an utter failure.” He says to Stephen, “I want you to die a bloody death,” and these guys look at him and say, “It’s a snap.” Ten bucks? Sure. Do you see? If you have trouble relating to this it’s because you have never tasted real worship.

I have a 7-year-old child, and that 7-year-old child has a Cabbage Patch doll he’s had a long time. He’s very attached to it. The name is Alexander. Now if somebody sat down with him and said, “Hey! I’ll trade you that Cabbage Patch doll for this brownstone townhouse,” my 7-year-old son at very best would waver. He probably wouldn’t do it. You laugh and you say, “He’s a child! He has no sense of proportion.” You see, all he knows is the cuddly, wonderful feeling he gets when he cuddles up with Alexander in bed at night, and that is more real to him than the abstract, but far greater, value of what that brownstone would mean to his life if he owned it.

He’s a child. He has no sense of proportion. Where do you think we are? What do you think we look like to God? Why are you worried? I’ll tell you why you’re worried. You’re not worshipping, because when you worship, then the reality of God’s provision and wisdom and power is far more real than any threat. Why are you depressed? Why are you so down on yourself? It’s because when you worship, the reality of God’s provision and love and care for you in Jesus Christ is far more real than any criticism.

Don’t you see? All these things we hold on to that seem so dear, that seem like such big things, we’re afraid to let go. They are our little dollies, because we have no sense of proportion. We have to grow up. Our selfishness. Our self-pity. Our self-hatred. Our discouragement. The little dollies. We have to grow up. Worship. Do you see what it is? It’s “worthship.” You do it with everybody else. You do it with everything else. Why not do it with God? Why not let it sink in? Look at all the people in history.

Look at Thomas Cranmer, you know, when he was about to be burned at the stake because he wouldn’t recant. Remember? He put his right hand into the fire first and kept it there until it burned off because one day he had signed the recantation. Where does a guy like that get that? What was he? Was he a noble person? Some kind of “super person?” You know, a kind of being who doesn’t grow anymore?

Look at all the people in the history of the church who were willing to stand up for what was right, lose their reputations, lose their livelihoods, and lose their lives. Look what they did. You say, “Yeah. I guess they don’t grow people like that anymore.” Don’t be ridiculous. They worshipped. That is what worship is.

2. Why do we worship?

Now why is it God comes and we’re told in verse 23 the Father seeks such to worship him? There is a place in here that tells us God presses us, urges us, demands that we worship him. He seeks worship. A lot of people get bothered by that, because what they say is, “That’s ridiculous. If you ever meet a human being who demands people to praise them, you hate them. A human being who is always saying, ‘Admire me; praise me,’ who wants to be around someone like that? Isn’t this unworthy of God to be demanding we worship him?”

The Father seeks people to worship him. He seeks you to worship him. He comes after you. He urges you. Is that unworthy? No. Here’s why. The nature of praise, friends. Who are the most mean, unpleasant, cramped, dusty-soul people you’ve ever met? What is the characteristic of people like that?

They don’t praise anything. They’re bored. They’re disinterested. One little thing ruins everything, you see. One thing they don’t like about the day and the day is ruined. One thing they don’t like about the movie and the movie is ruined. One thing they don’t like about you and the relationship is ruined. They are people who can find nothing to praise, but look at the people you most want to be around. Look at the people who seem to enjoy life the most. They praise everything.

They overlook the flaws and they find something to praise in everything. They are praising constantly. They’re praising the book. They’re praising you. They’re praising the play. They’re praising the weather. They’re praising the day. They’re praising things. If you’ve ever met somebody who obviously has never known real friendship or never known real love or even never read a good book, you know their lives to some degree are crippled.

They have lost some humanity, but listen. That is just a shadow of the deepest crippling and the greatest inhumanity that comes when you are not able to behold the fair beauty of the Lord. The praise of God is the praise that unhooks all other kinds of praise. It releases all other kinds of praise. It’s when you become someone who praises God that you find yourself being able to praise everything else.

Put it this way. The people most in love with God are the people who find the world a gorgeous place, who find something to praise and sing about in everything, who are completely transformed. You see, a lot of folks said, “Yeah. When you talked about these holy types (the Isaiahs, the Stephens, the Thomas Cranmers) they must have been really terrible people to be around. They must have been spending all their time praying; very, very self-righteous; always using religious jargon. I wouldn’t have wanted to be around them.”

That’s not the testimony of the people who have written about what they were like. Those are the people you most want to be around. Because of their ability to give God worth they treat everyone and everything around them as valuable. If you get around a person like that, you feel so valued. Do you know what I mean? Valued! The amazing thing is as ennobling as worship is, here on earth the best of us can only ever do about one percent of the kind of worship we should do. We can only worship him with 1 percent of our being.

One author puts it this way. If you want to see what worship is really going to be like when we get before him, “… suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with God—drunk with, drowned in, dissolved by, that delight which, far from remaining pent up within … flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression, our joy is no more separable from the praise in which it liberates and utters itself than the brightness a mirror receives is separable from the brightness it sheds.”

Do you see why he seeks for people to worship him? Do you see why he presses and yearns? Not because he needs it, but because you need it. To worship is to wake up into the real world. To worship is to grow up so you’re no longer a 7-year-old holding on to a Cabbage Patch doll. To worship is to get up from your dog dishes and to sit at his table. To not worship is to become less than human, because the people who can’t praise lose their humanity and they lose their greatness and they lose their warmth.

The people who can worship become human. The reason you have to worship God is it’s the only way to be fully human. Do you hear that? Listen, friends. You all worship something. You gaze at something, don’t you? We all look at something as our wealth, something we love to long at. We gaze at. We admire. Look, I admit there are some things better than others. It’s much better to make your wealth be your family than to make your wealth be your bank account, but ultimately can any of those things liberate (even your family, if you worship your family, if that is your wealth … if that is the most worthy thing in your life)?

Do they turn you into praising people? Do they get you completely free from fear and anxiety? Do they make you great hearts? No. You know what they do. They drive you, and they make you more worried. What is Jesus saying? The Father seeks you to worship. That means he is saying to you, “Get up from your dog dishes. Stop gnawing your bones. Get up to my table. Drop your dollies. Come. Worship me.” You say. “Well, how?”

3. How do we worship?

The Father seeks for us to worship him. You know, some of you think to become a Christian means you have to curb your appetite. You have to hem yourself in. You have to limit yourself. God does not name us anything but this: He says, “You’re half-hearted creatures. Your desires are not too strong; they are too weak. Here you are messing around, playing on the ground with money, sex, and power when infinite joy is offered to you.”

You say. “All right. How?” The Bible says this way. Through Jesus. Listen, friends. When the Samaritan woman found Jesus knew all about her sordid past, she said, “I don’t get this. I didn’t think there were any prophets among the Jews. I thought our religion was the right one, but obviously, you’re a prophet. So let me ask you this. We worship God on our temple here, and you worship God at your temple there. Which temple should you worship at?”

If you look carefully, Jesus doesn’t say, “You must worship him at my temple in Jerusalem,” even though he admits God’s truth and salvation have come through the Jews. Does he turn around and say you can worship him anywhere? Is that what he says? He doesn’t say that either. He doesn’t say, “Oh, God is everywhere so let’s just worship him anywhere.” He doesn’t say that. He said, “Neither there nor here.” Did you see that?

You know, for years I read this and I thought Jesus was saying, “Oh, no. You don’t have to worship him here or there. You can worship him anywhere,” but if you look carefully he said, “You worship him neither place,” and here is what he means. He said, “You don’t worship him in that temple or that temple; you worship him through me.” Because he literally says, “The hour is coming …” I know your translation I read from says, “The time is coming …”

He says, “The hour has come and now is where you will not worship him there or here, but you’ll worship him in spirit and in truth.” In the book of John, what does his hour mean? Always, whenever Jesus talks about his hour, what is it? It’s his death. He says, “When I die, it will utterly change worship forever,” and here’s why. Anybody in this room who has ever tried to worship him at all, who has ever tried to assess his worth and to fill your mind with his worth, you will find you immediately begin to feel unworthy and uncomfortable, and you want to pull back.

You begin to feel very, very unworthy. It’s painful. Most of us (many of us) what we have done is made up excuses. We say, “Well, the reason I don’t like religion is because I don’t believe in a personal God, or Look at all the hypocrites in the church,” but the real reason we pull back is whenever anybody tries to worship, you sense that unworthiness, because the more worth you see in him, the dirtier you feel. Nobody can take it. It’s traumatic to your self-image. Jesus says, “That is why my hour has changed worship forever.”

Because anybody who goes into worship will always feel like this. “I’d better retreat. I’m not worthy to be here.” Do you remember that little poem your own heart says to you? “Be gone, you wretch. Retreat in shame.” But Jesus says, “My love, come here. I bore the blame.” Do you remember that poem? “You wretch,” your heart says. “Retreat in shame.” Jesus says, “My love, I bore the blame. Come here. Come here! Get up from the ground. Stop lapping out of your dog dishes.”

“ ‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’ So I did sit and eat.” If you don’t come through Jesus … If you don’t come saying, “His hour. He bore the blame. He punched a hole in the roof of the world so now I can enter right into the presence of heaven.” Unless you worship like that, you don’t know how to worship. But I’ll tell you the other thing you must do is you simply have to discipline yourself to worship. Maybe there are some people here who are very discouraged right now because you say, “Man, you talk about worship like … I haven’t tasted much of that at all!”

It takes discipline. How? It says right here “… in spirit and in truth.” It goes like this. You take the truth and you let the truth of who God is dawn on you. Take any verse. Take anything out of the bulletin. Take any of the Psalms. Take anything and let it dawn on you until it gets radioactive, until the truth begins to shine. See what God is worth. Fill your mind with what he’s worth, and you will find a natural instinct, because it was created in you. The natural instinct is to want to give him what he’s worth.

You give him your grudges. You give him your fears. You give him parts of your life. You give him your sins. You give him your idols. You give him your resources. You give him your time. You give him your self. It’s automatic. Not long ago, I was in a Bible study, and a woman came up afterward. We were studying about the greatness of God. The woman said, “You know, it’s an odd thing. Right in the middle of the Bible study, it suddenly occurred to me God was so great I couldn’t worry about my problems anymore.

The bigger God appeared to me, the smaller my problems appeared, and I began to say, “God’s going to take care of them. He’s going to take care of them.” She said, “It’s amazing. I feel so good.” What did she do? She worshipped. She had a worship experience. She went right through it. The truth dawned on her and she responded from the center of her spirit. She gave him her problems. She saw what he was worth and she gave him what he was worth. That’s worship. It’s a discipline. You work at it. You work at it. You let the truth dawn on you until the truth begins to shine, until the worth begins to sink in.

Paul talks about it very clearly in the amazing verse in 2 Corinthians when he says, “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness [from one degree of splendor to the next.]” We look at his worth, and as we do it we are transformed. Look at this poor woman. A broken person. A hard character. What happens? When he reveals himself, “I am he,” she goes berserk. She begins to give him what he’s worth. Look at the joy of a child. Look at how she runs and tells other people. “Come, see a man. You have to praise him with me. You have to see how great he is.” Look at her reaching out to other people. She’s changed.

Dear friends, there are some of you here who lack greatness in your lives because you underestimate the power of worship to change you. You’re not laying aside time for it. You’re not putting the discipline to it. Some of you are facing tremendous losses this week. Where are you going to get your sense of proportion? Where are you going to get it? Not by steeling yourself and saying, I won’t let it get to me, but by looking at who he is.

By worshipping him until you say, “Yes, I have something that might happen to me this week, but it’s like my pocket being picked when all of my real treasures are home in a trunk.” You don’t have the greatness because you don’t have the worship. For some of you, there are people here who your next act of real worship will be your first. Then go to him right now if you realize that. If you sense that you’ve been trying to approach God, but you never relied on Jesus’ death, his cross.

You never relied on his hour. Go to him and say, “I see now I’ve been worshipping other things. I want to worship you.” Everything you’ve ever really wanted is in his face. Everything you’ve ever loved is not the sun’s but just the moon’s reflection of the greatness in his face. Everything you’ve ever wanted is in his face. The psalmist says, “… in [his face] your presence is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Let’s pray.

We now ask, Father, that every one of us in this room might be enabled to worship you. Lord, for some of us we need, during the offering, to actually reach out and begin to taste the deliciousness of what you are, to begin to assess the value of what you’ve given to us. Father, we want to worship. We have to do it now. We want to obey this passage now.

Some of us are eaten up with anxiety, with guilt, with depression, with anger, and there is no way apart from unhealthy repression for us to deal with it unless we wake up to reality, unless we come and grow up and get a sense of proportion, unless we can really worship you now. We want to do that. For anyone here who needs to do it for the very first time, enable that, Father, and enable them to come to you through Jesus Christ. It’s in his name we pray, amen.