http://bible.com/events/49403060
Church of the Nazarene – Harrisonburg Campus
Beyond The Song: A Life of Worship Part 2
Take your everyday, ordinary life, and place it before the Lord as an offering.
Today we are continuing in our 4-part teaching series called Beyond the Song: A Life of Worship.
Throughout this series, we want to be challenged to re-frame our thinking on worship. That we would not only think of worship as somewhere we go on Sunday mornings, or a certain song we sing, but that we would see all of our lives as an opportunity to worship the Lord.
Deuteronomy 6:5-7
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
The definition of worship we are working with in this series is behaviors in a believer that reflect the awesome majesty and worth (“worth-ship”) of Almighty and Holy God.
So, the question is, what does a life full of those behaviors look like, especially away from the church building on Sunday morning?
Pastor Kevin’s definition of Worship in Week 1:
EXPRESSING OUR LOVE AND GRATITUDE TO GOD FOR WHO HE IS, WHAT HE IS, WHAT HE’S DONE, WHAT HE’S SAID, AND WHAT HE’S PROMISED TO DO.
Romans 12:1-2
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. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Quick review of all the mercies of God Paul has explained to us thus far in chapters 1-11:
· Justification from the guilt and penalty of sin.
· Adoption in Jesus and identification with Christ.
· Placed under grace, not law.
· Giving the Holy Spirit to live within.
· Promise of help in all affliction.
· Confidence of coming glory.
· Confidence of no separation from the love of God.
· Confidence in God’s continued faithfulness.
Susanna Wesley (defining sin)
Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, takes off your relish for spiritual things, whatever increases the authority of the body over the mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may seem in itself.
Dallas Willard
You can live opposite of what you profess, but you cannot live opposite of what you believe.
Pastor Bill Lakey
What is worship? It is living your life – your everyday, fold the laundry, go to work, pay the bills life – before the face of God. It is realizing who God is, who you are, that he is the most important thing in the world, and living your life in response to that truth. It is the freedom to focus on him instead of getting caught on the treadmill of religious do’s and don’ts. It’s living the life you were designed to live.
Colossians 3:1-2
So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective.
WE ARE NEVER NOT WORSHIPPING
Romans 12:1-2
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Richard Foster
This way of living is not confined to people in religious orders or those who have special skills in spiritual matters. No, this life is also for ordinary people. People who work in high-pressure jobs of information tech and finance. People who are constantly dealing with the stresses of raising children and balancing the family budget. People who teach school and work in hospitals and provide social services and so much more. In short, people just like you and me.
Extras scripture + quotes for further reflection/worship
Galatians 5:22-23
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Colossians 3:23
23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters,
1 Corinthians 10:31-33
31 So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. 32 Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God— 33 even as I try to please everyone in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.
Dallas Willard
We don’t believe something by merely saying we believe it, or even when we believe that we believe it. We believe something when we act as if it were true.
Richard Foster (Celebration of Discipline)
The divine priority is worship first, service second. Our lives are to be punctuated with praise, thanksgiving, and adoration. Service flows out of worship. Service as a substitute for worship is idolatry. Activity is the enemy of adoration.
Brother Lawrence
The best method of going to God is that of simply doing our everyday work without any view of pleasing men. Rather, as far as we are capable, we should do even our daily tasks purely for the love of God.