Core Values of NBCC - Prayer and Worship

When I was in high school, like many of you, I attended many of my school’s sporting events. Specifically basketball and football. And if you have been a student and attended a sporting event, you know there there is usually a student section. A designated spot for the students of the school to stand (because no one is sitting) and root for your school’s team. Now you may also know that some of these chants have little to no meaning at all like “we’ve got Spirit yes we do, we’ve got Spirit how ‘bout you!”. There is the basic “D-Fence” clap-clap-clap. If it is basketball and someone completely misses the rim you may say “airball!” or if it football you may chant “Move those chains!” whenever your team gets a first down. And see, when you have these two student sections you can have some incredible back and forth and it can make the game more fun and interesting, it can even make it seem like the crowd is helping your team.

But in the end, the schools that have great student sections, are the teams that win. You aren’t going to find a student section for a team that loses all the time. Because who you are cheering for impacts how willing you are to make it known that is who you root for. If it is a good team that you will scream your head off, if it is a bad team, you might not make it to the game. See the character of the one that you are praising will change the extent that you will praise them.

This is also true of God. The way that you view the character of God will change how you worship, how often you worship, how often and long you pray, the kinds of things that you pray for. And your confidence in your worship and prayer and how that will affect the overall “play” of your church. You will be more willing to pray boldly, if you think that God is great enough to do the things His Word says that He can do.

What does devotion look like?

So as we continue looking at our core values as a church we are going to look at two important things. Worship and prayer. In Acts 2 we see these two things were foundational. In v. 42 it says the apostles devoted themselves to prayer. Then in v. 47 that they ate their food “with joyful and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.”

Now at another time we can speak on the importance of prayer and worship for us individually. But today I want to focus on what it means for us to pray and worship together as a church and why that is important.

Worship is transformational

Worship, as I will define it is “a means of attributing worth to the one who is worthy.” Worship is the way in which we are called to give honor to God as a community. In the Bible we see time and time again the people of God worshipping the Lord. In worship we share our emotions, we offer our desires, and we state our beliefs through what we sing as an expression of our love to Him. We come and declare as a community what we believe. It proclaims we seek something greater than what we have in this life. As Hebrews 13:14-15 states.

Hebrews 13:14–15 CSB

For we do not have an enduring city here; instead, we seek the one to come. Therefore, through him let us continually offer up to God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name.

Our worship is a declaration that we desire the Lord’s presence and that we seek something greater.

But worship is also formational, it transforming us into the image of what we worship. We see this in Colossians 3:16-17

Colossians 3:16–17 CSB

Let the word of Christ dwell richly among you, in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

I think this passage gives us a clear view of what it means for us to worship in community.

1. Worship should reveal to us who God is.

a. Paul tells us here in Colossians that the words that we sing should reflect what we believe about God’s character.

It says the Word of Christ dwells among us IN our psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

Our worship reflects the Word of Christ dwelling in us. If it does not reflect Christ and His character than we are worshipping wrong.

I have heard of some churches do things like taking secular songs and singing them during worship. This is not a practice I would encourage any church to do, what is said through this is that what matters is just what we feel about God and not who He says that He is. Or maybe I could say it, “you shouldn’t be able to say the same thing about your girlfriend or wife that you do about God.”

Worship should be doctrinally strong, that what we sing about God will shape what we think about God.

In the same way that you learn your ABC’s or you learn the books of the Bible through a song, what you sing in worship is forming habits about who you think God is.

This is why we sing songs that don’t just tell us what we want to hear or songs that have the best sound to them, but songs that reminds us of who God is.

Worship also brings us to gratitude of God because of what we have sung to Him.

2. Worship calls us to accountability to the one another

Notice that we teach and admonish THROUGH psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

This shows that our teaching should not be dry but worshipful and full of life.

It isn’t just us standing in our seat, closing our eyes, and pretending no one else is here.

But as we worship, as we stand before God recognizing who He is and as we share with one another, we recognize that our songs are calling us to tell our brother or sister about our struggles, it is calling us to repent before God, it is calling us to greater faithfulness in our lives.

3. Worship leads us to devote our time to Him.

Notice that our singing and worshipping leads us in whatever we do, in Word or deed, doing it in the name of Jesus and giving thanks to the Father. This is a direct consequence of our worship.

And this is not just directed towards Christian worship music. Any type of music that you listen to will impact you.

In fact a study was done that sought to see the affect of music on the brain. What they found was that the type of music you listen to can change your mood, but it also alters how you see the world. In fact this is the conclusion of this study says “Our results show that our conscious experience of the world may be less objective than we think…the music you are listening to might directly alter the way you perceive the world.”

This is not me saying you must only listen to Christian worship, but it is saying that we should consider the affect that the music we listen to and sing has on our habits.

One commentary puts it this way “There is no discontinuity envisioned between worship and daily living; on the contrary, the whole daily life should be lived out in the same spirit - “your spiritual worship”.

4. Worship should be filled with joy.

In v. 46 of Acts 2 it says that when they met together they had “glad and sincere hearts”. They were full of joy because of the joy that they had in the Gospel. Our worship should be a celebration of the might acts of God through Christ. They were in reverence and awe of God’s character as well. They had an understanding of this incredible God that they worshipped and just how thankful they should be that He loves us the way he does.

Part of worship also includes prayer, in fact it is essential to our worship. The church should be in prayer whenever it meets together, the church in Acts shows us this.

Prayer is effective

The church devoted themselves to prayer. They were committed to prayer as a group of believers coming together for a common goal. When came together and prayed they did it because they recognized that they would fail in their mission if they didn’t ask the Lord for strength to do it. Prayer was the catalyst for the widespread growth of believers in Acts 2. It wasn’t the apostles, but it was the Spirit working in the hearts of people.

in 1907 the church in Korea was in a state of crisis. Only 1% of the population in Korea (which at this time had no north or south) was Christian. But now, in South Korea there are over 12 million Christians. In fact, South Korea sends the 2nd most missionaries of any country in the world, only to the US.

But then something happened, a group of 1500 pastors in the country decided to gather. During this meeting they confessed sins to one another, they weeped, and they prayed together. They then went back to their churches and held meetings where they prayed, where members confessed sins, where they reconciled with those they sinned against. They would come confessing adultery, murder, stealing, everything you can think of.

Then all of these believers who had come and confessed their sins decided to meet together and pray in the morning. But not 7 am praying, or 6 am, or 5 am. 4 AM! They would also have all night prayer meetings.

Even through 30 years of Japanese rule and the Korean war the church grew.

To this day the prayer meetings continue. There are prayers meetings at night that fill entire stadiums with 90,000 people! and they have even had gatherings of over 1 million people just to pray!

Can you imagine?

It is often very easy for us to blame various factors for the decline of the church. “Kids are just on their phones nowadays”, “no one wants to have a conversation”, “prayer isn’t being allowed in schools”, “sexual sin is just accepted ”.

But what if we, as a church decided to pray? Not just for the health issues people are going through, though those are important. Not just about the troubles that we are facing personally, though those are important as well. What if our church was a praying church in the face of all trials. What about if we confessed to God our sins? What if we thanked God for everything that He has done for us? What if we called on him to heal our churches from our disunity and our pride and for the way that we have treated others? What if we went to God and said “forgive us, for we have been unfaithful”.

Now if you don’t believe me, read what James 5:13-16 says

James 5:13–16 CSB

Is anyone among you suffering? He should pray. Is anyone cheerful? He should sing praises. Is anyone among you sick? He should call for the elders of the church, and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up; if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect.

Also,

Isaiah 59:1–2 CSB

Indeed, the Lord’s arm is not too weak to save, and his ear is not too deaf to hear. But your iniquities are separating you from your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not listen.

As we end today I think it is important to practice what we, or I, preach. Because honestly prayer has been something difficult for me recently. Meagan and I have 2 foster kids in our home, making it difficult for me to find any time to spend in solitude and prayer. And it has been hard to focus even when I do get a chance to pray. But it is something that I’m working on, that I believe any Christian can grow in. So we are going to spend the last 10-15 minutes of our time together in prayer. For us to be silent where you are, whether in your seat or at the front. There are 4 elements of prayer I would like for us to include. And all of these come from the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6 and are made clear in what is called the ACTS prayer method

Adoration - Praise God for who He is. We give God the glory that He is due and declared the character of God. It reminds us who we are to worship, not idols, not ourselves, but only God who is the Creator, who is the sustainer of all things, who is our Father, who redeemed us. “Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy.”

As we recognize God’s glory what we will also start to recognize is that in view of His glory that we are sinners. This leads us to confession

Confession - This is a time of acknowledging our sins and failures, our recognition that we have fallen short of His glory, and not just confessing but repenting, as in telling Him that we seek to turn away from our sins and follow Him. Just like Jesus says in the Lord’s prayer “forgive is our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” But also like the tax collector who prayed “Have mercy on me God, a sinner.”

But as we recognize how God has forgiven us we remember how God has gracefully provided and cared for us.

Thanksgiving - Where adoration is praising God for His character, thanksgiving is gratitude for His direct work in our lives and the lives of others. We remind ourselves of the ways God has protected us, supplied for our physical, emotional, financial, and spiritual needs.

As we go through our thanksgiving and we are reminded of God’s grace and His character we then come to recognize our need to continue to supply for our needs in the future.

Supplication - Supplication is asking for God to meet the needs of us individually, for our church, for our country, and for our world.

Now we end there is another way that I would like for us to pray and that is a prayer of intercession. Intercession is the act of believers going on behalf of another before God with the troubles they face. It is praying that God protects them, that God helps them in the truth, and that the Spirit would be active in their life. If anyone here is in need of intercession, then please come forward, or go to your brother or sister in Christ next to you, or your spouse and ask them to pray for you.