The Heart of Worship-Part 1

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Jesus had a conversation with a woman at a well once about Worship. SUMMARIZE.

She had a simple question:

‘What is the right way to worship?’

Yknow, what steps, what are the things that we have to do before it becomes good worship?

This is a question that’s on our hearts too. We’re here to praise God! We have to make sure we do it right!

Jesus’ response was awesome.

John 4:21–24 NIV

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

So, let’s establish something early on. What is the primary, most fundamental unit of this conversation of worship? What is the singularly, most important question we should all be asking ourselves about what it means to worship.

What does God want from worshippers?

Jesus says it here - that the people who worship in spirit and in truth are the people that God is seeking out. And that’s the goal here. It’s not to feel a certain way, it’s not to have a certain experience - it’s to be the kind of worshippers that the father is looking for. Plain and simple.

And that’s kind of the crux of the woman’s question here - where’s the approved place? Where’s the place on earth the Father is looking?

Jesus taught that the answer to ‘what is true worship’ wasn’t a where - it was a how

And not only does Jesus say, the how is everything, he says, the people who understand this are the kind of worshippers that the Father REALLY wants.

That’s what we want to talk about over the next few weeks. What does it mean to be the kind of worshipper that the father desires. What’s our ‘HOW’ - HOW do we worship in the right way.

And I believe we have a few questions that we should walk through together as a church.

Question 1 - Where does true worship start?

This is a great question to ask. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we all have an answer to that question. We have all had an experience with a church service and said, ‘That wasn’t real worship’, or ‘that there, that was the good stuff’.

Where does it start?

Does it start with the style of music? Is it hymns, or new songs? Fast or slow?

Does it start with a specific instrument? Piano or guitar? Drums or organ?

Is it in a big building, with a large stage or a bunch of musicians? Is it a smaller group, with a single person on an instrument and everyone sitting in a circle? Is it at home by ourselves?

But this is really important! If we want to get at this topic of worship, we gotta know where to start.

Paul lays out the very first step of worship.

Romans 12:1 NIV

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.

True worship starts as a way of life.

Worship isn’t something you can travel to. It’s not a specific place, or a specific instrument, or a specific chord. It’s not a style, or a genre.

The truth is, worship doesn’t start anywhere outside of you at all. Worship starts on the inside.

Paul here says, true worship is offering ourselves up as a sacrifice. Saying “here I am God for you, every day and in every where.”

True worship starts long before Sunday morning - and continues long after it

Somebody asked Jesus once, what’s the GREATEST commandment, if you could just name ONE THING that God wants from us - what is it?

Mark 12:30 NIV

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’

He could have said anything. Go to the temple faithfully. Tithe. Make sure to always read the psalms. Whatever.

But Jesus says, the single greatest thing, the crux of everything God has said and done up to that point leads up to this

Love God with everything that you are.

And I’ve learned over my years, that

It’s never our perspective of God that dampens our worship experience. It’s our perspective on anything else BUT God

The band, the song, the lights, the room. Other people. The volume. OUR KIDS. EMERGENCY IN LIFE EARLIER IN WEEK.

It’s never anything about God that causes us to say, ‘ya, worship wasn’t great’. It’s always the not-god stuff.

We look at things that are less than the most amazing, holy, majestic and awesome being in the universe, and we let those things take away from how we worship God. God forgive us.

We hunger for meaningful worship experiences. But they need to start with our hearts, minds, souls, and strength.

True worship is about offering ourselves as sacrifices to God - all the time

This is the heart of worship. We sang a song earlier. ‘I’ll bring you more than a song, for a song in itself, is not what you have required. You search much deeper within, through the way things appear, you’re looking into my heart...’

And this is beyond intentions. It’s beyond, ‘come with the right attitude’. It’s more than that, deeper than that.

The thing God is looking for us to bring first is US. Not the right song. Not the right speed. Not the right chord. Us. Our lives are the offering of worship that God is asking for.

And here’s a secret -

The quality of your worship experience is determined by how much YOU bring to the altar

If worship is, offering yourself up on the altar - then how much of you you bring is how much worship you’re giving.

And that has nothing to do with anybody else.

Nobody has the power to take that from you - but also - nobody has the power to create that in you. I can’t make you worship. This is a transaction that’s between you and God. As a worship leader, I can help demonstrate the way, I can help clear the path of obstructions - but it’s your choice at the end of the day.

Lastly, and this is a big one for me:

True worship gets is about us and God - and nothing else

And i think out of everything we’ve talked about - this is the hardest part. To separate our feelings about our worship expressions from the nature of true worship.

In fact - it can be dangerous for us to try and put our concepts of right worship in people or structures.

Paul had a situation in the church in Corinth. He had groups of believers starting to rally around specific personalities.

1 Corinthians 3:1–7 NIV

Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.

Our faith and focus needs to be constantly in God - and not in anything on this side of eternity

And for sure, we have our ways to worship, we have our passions and certain words and styles and expressions mean more to us than others.

But with TRUE worship - we need to actively fight to keep the focus on God. and when we start saying, ‘Ya, I’m a Christian - a Paul-following Christian, the RIGHT kind’. then we’ve lost what true worship is.

One of the reasons I’m big on constantly trying to introduce new songs - not new as in ‘made recently’, new as in ‘I don’t know it’ - is because

We have a habit of taking a MOVEMENT of the Spirit and turning it into a MONUMENT to our experiences

The spirit does something, and it’s wonderful and amazing - so we want to bottle that thing, and repeat it to get that same feeling, and we love it again so we hold it up higher, put it on a pedestal - and sooner or later, we start worshipping it. It’s in our nature, it happens all the time.

And Paul was saying to the corinthian church, even when we fall into these defaults of, ‘i follow appolos’ and ‘i follow paul’, and ‘hymns are the only real worship’ and ‘new or nothing’ and ‘big band or it doesn’t work for me’ etc etc etc, that these are all alreaddy signs that we’ve just missed the point of worship entirely.

So today,

God wants to call us back to the true starting place of worship

Offering ourselves to Him. And remember - if God is big enough and good enough, then just focusing on him is enough for us to get everything we could possibly want or need out of worship.

So we’re going to enter a time of worship and prayer. And we’re going to put some background music on - no words, just music. And we want you to just take a bit and offer yourself to God. Just worship him where you are.

Time of worship and prayer