Express Yourself

Express Yourself

Man, in this series, here’s what I hope to do. I hope to challenge each and every one of you to get out of your comfort zone, to get out of your personal preferences, to get out of your own head, and express yourself in worship to God. Yeah, think about it. I think we spend a lot of time, a lot of our life expressing ourselves. Think about it like this. Every time we talk, we’re expressing ourselves. My daughter will not stop talking. What’s she doing? She’s expressing herself. Every time y’all post online, what are you doing? You’re expressing yourself. Every time you make fashion choices, you’re expressing yourself. For those of you who dye your hair and put on makeup, what are you doing? Expressing yourself. For those of you, I won’t point any fingers who get tattoos, CeCe. What are y’all doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? You’re expressing yourself.

And did you know that one of the reasons that God created you was for you to express yourself to him? That’s one of the reasons that you’re here. In fact, that’s my title. If you’re taking notes this morning for week one of the series, is this: express yourself. Express yourself. Pray with me one more time. Father God, we’re grateful for you. You’re great, we’re grateful for your word. We’re grateful for your presence, and we would ask that you speak to us this morning and that you would help us to listen and receive and to implement the things that you tell us to do. So it’s in your sons, let me pray. We’re grateful. And everybody said Amen.

Change Your Planet

So when I was in this church as a teenager, my youth pastor was a guy named Jeff Wimpy, an exceptionally unfortunate name. Spelled exactly how you’d expect. Jeff Wimpy. And one year for summer camp, he took all of the students, as youth pastors do, to a camp, and the camp was called Change Your Planet. Change your planet. And it was, I think it was in Colorado somewhere, but the meetings happened in this huge circus tent, red and yellow circus tent in the middle of the mountains. In fact, let’s try let’s try it. Anyone, if you went to the Change Your Planet camp with me, can you raise your hand? Oh, depressing. I see three. One’s my wife and the other one’s my sister. And the third one’s Jeanette. Man, youth ministry is brutal. It’s crazy. It is.

Anyways, this camp, fun fact, one of the people that was there, Joey Howard, Pastor Shirley’s eldest son, he brought with him, he had this big tub of Gatorade powder. And I’m assuming Pastor Shirley brought it with him so that he could make Gatorade. It’s in the middle of the summer, but that’s not what we did. We discovered that if you would just eat it straight, I believe the kids call it dry scooping, is that right? So if we dry scooped it, it just tasted like pixie sticks and it was delicious. It was orange and fabulous. So we were just eating it by the spoonful. We’re just downing the Gatorade powder. Well, turns out it’s not just candy, and there’s like electrolytes and stuff in there, and if you eat too much of it, bad things happen.

Dancing Before the Lord

So I’ll never forget the one night that we were all downing the Gatorade powder in the back row, because that’s where we sat, the back row. And then four of us started puking in the middle of church service. Just orange Gatorade powder. But I was on the worship team, I was playing, I used to play electric guitar for the youth worship team. And one night we were having worship, and it felt like God did something in me, and he was doing it in a lot of people in the room. But I just felt the presence of God just like so strongly that I just had to, I just started to dance. It’s like my feet had a mind of their own, and they just started moving, and I just started dancing, and I could not stop.

I was still playing guitar. I had a wireless pack, so there was no chord, you know, so I could go wherever. And so I started dancing. I danced up and down that tent. I danced out of the tent. I danced circles around the tent. I just I could not, I could not stop dancing. I was just going, going, going. Funnily enough, my guitar, because of the wireless, it was still working, and so the people inside the tent could still hear what I’m playing. I dancing on the outside could not hear myself, and so I can only imagine what atrocities were coming out of my guitar. But man, I was just I was running around this tent holding a guitar, just screaming at the top of my lungs how much I love Jesus.

And some of y’all are thinking that’s a cute story. Other y’all are like literally looking for an exit right now. Like, what church is this? But man, it to me it was an amazing experience to be to be so free because we spend so much time, so much of our lives thinking about how we’re being seen by other people. So much energy trying to look certain ways, trying to be certain ways, trying to appear dignified and never uncomfortable with. But what I’ve learned, I don’t know if you’ve learned this too, I’ve learned that being obedient to God and being super concerned with what other people think all the time cannot coexist for very long. There was just something on the inside of me that just had to come out.

David’s Undignified Worship

And in 2 Samuel chapter 6, hopefully you found your way there, we see King David, and he’s in a similar situation, but wearing considerably less clothing. Let me show you. To set the stage, King David has just been anointed the king, and they’re bringing the Ark of the Covenant back into the capital city. If you don’t know what the Ark of the Covenant is, it was like this really big deal. It was this sacred box that represented that was symbolic and even literally the presence of God. And so it was like this really sacred box that represented God’s presence. And in verse 14, we see David’s response to the ark coming into the city, beginning in verse 14.

Wearing a linen ephod, David was dancing before the Lord with all his might, while he and all Israel were bringing up the Ark of the Lord with shout and the sound of trumpets. As the Ark of the Lord was entering the city, Mikal, daughter of Saul, who was David’s anybody? Wife, this is David’s wife, watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing, can you picture this if you were Jordan? Looking out the window, seeing King David leaping and dancing before the Lord. Listen to this. She despised him in her heart.

So what we’re gonna get to see is a behind the scenes look at how domestic disputes start. Right? Because Mikhail looks out and she sees her husband dancing in a crazy way, and she’s furious with David. But the thing is, this is all happening in public, so she keeps quiet and she just lets it simmer until he gets home. Anyone else? I’m sure none of y’all have experienced that. Like, don’t raise your hand. But she was just sitting there thinking it over, playing what she might want to say. Eventually the party’s over, and David comes back to the house, and Mikhail is gonna tell her husband what she really thinks.

Look at this, verse 20. When David returned home to bless his household, Michael, daughter of Saul, came out to meet him and said, This is what his wife says to him. How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, going around half naked in full view of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would. And to be fair, I do not believe that David in this situation is fully nude. Perhaps there is a time and place for dancing before the Lord fully nude, but I think he was essentially what it happened is he took off his kingly outer garment, and he’s wearing something to the effect of a loincloth.

And Mikel, his wife comes up and says this, David, you are shameless. You’re so bad that you’re even making the slave girls uncomfortable. She says, It’s vulgar what you’ve done. Verse 21. David said to Mikel, this was his response it was before the Lord who chose me rather than your father. Whoa! Chill, chill, bro. Or anyone from his house. Oh my god, her whole family? He’s dissing her whole family. It was before the Lord who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the Lord’s people Israel. I will celebrate before the Lord.

Man, I’m gonna you’re gonna want to put this in the column of don’t ever do. Like if you’re gonna bring up the in-laws, you better have God on your side. So I just want you to remind you that God rejected your father and chose me. Look at this, verse 22. I David’s saying, I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. It’s interesting, he’s saying, Oh, I embarrassed you. Well, next time I’m gonna do it twice as hard. He says, next time I’m gonna be so bad, I’m gonna make myself uncomfortable. He says, I made you uncomfortable. Next time I’m gonna even make myself I’m gonna be humiliated in my own eyes. That’s how bad.

And then look, he continues, but by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor. He’s saying, I’m gonna humiliate myself, but the slave girls are still gonna love it. And listen, the story ends like this, verse 23. And Mikael, daughter of Saul, had no children to the day of her death. I think the implication to that is pretty clear. She’s like, and needless to say, these people never had any children, if you get what he’s saying.

Everybody Worships

So David here in this story, it’s a crazy story, but he’s expressing himself to God, not worrying what people, even his wife, thinks. He’s dancing before the Lord with all his might. And I am not suggesting in this series that you dance in a way that causes your wife to not have any more children with you. But I am I’m asking you, I’m imploring you to develop the habit and the lifestyle of expressing yourself to God. And we’ve got a lot of incredible speakers planned in this series, just to let to let you know what we’re doing. Week one, this is week one. I’m just trying to lay the theological foundation for what we do, why we do it, and what happens when we do it.

So I’ve got three points. If you’re taking notes, I want you to write these down. Number one is this everybody worships. I’ve made this point before, but it bears repeating. Some of y’all know, you might know, a very famous author named David Foster Wallace. He wrote a book called Infinite Jest. It’s widely regarded as one of the top 50 English novels of all time. It’s about just under 1,100 pages. So you can pass if you want on that one. Incredible writer, great thinker, hanged himself in 2008, not having anything to do with the financial crisis, but that’s when he did it.

And there was he had no faith of any kind that anyone knew. But a little bit, a few months before his before him taking his own life, he spoke to the graduating class at Kenyon College. And look, this is what he said. Remember, this is not a man of faith. He said this everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of God or spiritual type thing to worship is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are what you where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough.

Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. Worship power. This is a nice good feel, feel good quote. Worship power, and you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you from your own fear. Worship your intellect being seen as smart, and you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious, this is the last part, but the insidious thing about these forms of worship is they’re unconscious. They are default settings.

So I know that’s not a feel-good quote, but the point is right. That everybody worships. Everybody worships, you included. So the question is not if you worship. The question is what you worship. Or the question maybe is who you worship. And what you worship is not just determined by the songs that you sing in church. Young people, I grew up singing songs about worshiping God, and it was, but I had never made, I hadn’t, and it’s great. It’s great to sing the songs. But that there wasn’t real worship because I hadn’t made that personal commitment. It’s not determined just by the songs that you sing, it’s determined by what sits on the throne at the center of your heart.

And for the majority of people, what they worship in the world is themselves. The temptation of Satan is not to turn you into a Satan worshiper, it’s to turn you into a self-worshiper. Right? And I don’t know about you, but like I’m not impressed enough with me to worship myself. I’ve seen myself in the morning. Yeah, I’ve heard myself sing. It’s like I know that I’m not worthy of worship, but it’s not that people are choosing to do that. It’s what sits at the center of them of their heart is themselves. And see, self-worship is exactly what the enemy wants. David Kinlawt’s great theologian. He says it like this, and I need you to focus in on this quote.

Satan disguises submission to himself under the ruse of personal autonomy. He never asks us to become his servants. Never once did the serpent say to Eve, I want to be your master. Listen to this. And instead of his will, self-interest now rules, and what I want reigns. And that is the essence of sin. Right? So it’s not about worshiping the devil, it’s about worshiping yourself. Because again, everybody worships. The question is not whether you worship, you for sure do. The question is, what do you worship? Or who do you worship?

Paul says this in Colossians chapter 3, verse 5.

Put to death, therefore whatever belongs to your earthly nature. Sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and listen to this last part, and greed, which is idolatry.

Did you catch that? So Paul is saying that greed is idolatry. In other words, obsession with money and possessions is a form of worship. It’s giving ultimate worth to something other than God. And in the ancient world, of course, when we talk about idolatry, they had these actual statues of gods and goddesses, and they would go and they would actually worship them. They had Athena, the goddess of wisdom, Plutus, the god of wealth, Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and love, Ares, the god of war and power, and people would bow down to these statues and offer sacrifices and devotion.

Well, here in 2025, we don’t have physical statues. I mean, maybe I’ve never been to your house, but I hope you don’t. We don’t have physical statues that we worship, but we see people worship at the altar of intellect and knowledge all the time. Go to any campus, and you see people that have elevated intellect and knowledge to be above everything else, and they think they’re not worshippers, but they are because everybody worships. We see people worship at the altar of financial security. They don’t think they’re worshiping, but they worship money, but because for them the most important thing is money. We see people worship at the altar of physical appearance. We see people worshiping at the altar of success and achievement. The thing they care about most in life is being successful.

We see young people who worship at the altar of looking cool or looking successful or looking pretty. You shall have no, and it’s not because God’s a control freak. Right? It’s because that he knows that any other god will kill you. Right, and so let me ask you a question. What who or what sits on the throne at the center of your heart? What is it? In other words, in other words, what drives your decisions? Where does your mind go when your mind wanders? Because it probably goes to your God. What do you spend the most time in life improving? What is it? Because everybody worships. Everybody worships. The only question is what? That’s point number one. Everybody worships.

Worship is Something You Do, Not Something You Feel

Okay. Number two, y’all alive? Okay. Number two is this worship is something you do, not something you feel. Worship is something you do, not something you feel. You know, when people hear the word worship, they tend to think that it’s like a genre of music. Oh, what do you listen to? Oh, I listen to rap. Oh, I listen to country. I listen to classic rock. I listen to metal core, posts, grunge. Oh, I listen to worship, right? And it’s fine that they use that. Like, that’s fine. Like you go to Apple Music and you click what genre of music worship. Worship is like a genre of music, and that’s fine. We don’t argue over language, but that’s what some people think.

Or some people think that worship is something that you feel or something that you experience. So like you’ll hear people they’ll say something like this, oh man, worship was so incredible. I got crazy goosebumps, and I was crying because worship was so amazing. Like my gosh, it was so thick in there, it was so incredible. And it’s like they’re talking about a drug. You know, they’re like what they’re talking about is an experience that they had, and feelings are cool. Like, it’s great. It’s fun to get goosebumps in worship. Happens to me. I like it. We try to set the mood and make it easy for you. We got, hey, we got to look at all these lights. I mean, we try to make it easy for you, and that’s great so long as you understand that worship isn’t about what you feel, it’s about what you express.

Worship isn’t about what you feel, worship is about what you express. Worship, in fact, it comes from the old English worth ship. Worth ship, to express worth. So worship is not about feeling gratitude. It’s about expressing gratitude. It’s not about feeling love, it’s about expressing love. It’s not about feeling adoration, it’s about expressing it. You could say it like this the people you love don’t benefit from the love you feel, they benefit from the love you show. Right? Like, let’s imagine I would go to my spouse and I’d say, like, sweetheart, deep down I really love you. I just don’t ever feel like expressing it in any way that’s tangible in life. But deep down I feel lots. How would that work out for me?

Right? Because it’s not about the love that I feel, and look, I’ve told you a million times before, successful marriage is not built on feelings of love, but a commitment to love. Right? And so the question is not do you feel love towards your spouse? The question is, are you treating her with love? It’s not about what you feel, it’s about what you express. That’s why God, He’s constantly calling people not to feel grateful, but to express devotion. Express devotion, don’t just feel it, show it. Jesus, there’s a time in Luke chapter 17 where he goes and he heals ten lepers, and then they leave and they’re all healed. One comes back to thank Jesus. And Jesus says what? He says, Were not all ten cleansed? Where were the other nine?

He didn’t say, Oh, I’m sure they felt grateful in their heart. It’s fine. They didn’t have to say thank you. I’m sure they were grateful. No, no. It’s about not just not just feeling grateful, not just thinking you’re grateful, but showing that you’re grateful. He’s looking for expressed gratitude, not just felt gratitude. Marriages are the same way. Like sometimes my wife, I can only imagine, she’s like madly in love with me because I’m so great. Like other day, other days your husband just stinks up the bathroom and burps and just bugs you. Right? But it’s it’s not about how she feels on any given day, because it’s not a feeling thing. Our love is not based on a feeling, it’s a commitment to show love to each other.

Worship works the same way. It’s not about feeling, it’s about expressing. Just feeling grateful doesn’t make you a worshiper. Right? Coming in here, and oh my God, I felt, and so like, I don’t know if you know this, but like being a pastor, it can be very aggravating. Like, there is nothing that can ruin your day like people. Did you know that? You’re like, I work on a roof for a living. Yeah, I know, but I bet your hardest days aren’t about roofs, they’re about people. Right? And like this job would be easy if it weren’t for all the people. So sometimes I come in here, you know, Sunday morning, and I come and I sit in my little seat and I put down my Bible and I’m like super bugged. Like, because I love y’all, but some of y’all bug me. Not you, the other people. Not yet.

Right? But but here’s what I do. I go and I put my Bible down and I turn around and I look at the words and I raise my hands and I sing loud and I clap, even though the inside of me I’m like feeling frustrated and annoyed, because it’s not about me deciding whether or not I feel like worshiping today. It’s not about feeling. I’m also not wondering if I feel like treating my wife good today. Right? I do it because it’s the right thing to do. I love her because I’ve made a commitment to love her. I worship him because he’s worthy of my praise. And so it’s not about it’s not about feeling it. It’s not.

Romans chapter 12, look at what Paul says.

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.

Notice he does not say, come and offer God your feelings. Right? Come and offer God your emotions. He says, offer your bodies, your physical, tangible self, that you can do something with your physical body that’s worship. Right? It’s not something that happens in your heart, it’s something that you do with your body. You worship God with your body. And of course, he’s not just talking about what you do in a Sunday service, but it for sure includes that.

So I’m hoping you could do something with me to illustrate this point. Some of y’all are taking notes, that’s incredible. Some of y’all on Facebook, that’s fine. I’m not here to judge. Put your phone down on your lap is fine, or your pen. And on your it’s it’s fine, not to be far. But it here’s the question. If you feel like God has been good to you, generally speaking, you don’t have to close your eyes, we’re only like have a moment, but I just I want you to raise both of your hands really high. Right. So here’s the question. When you did that, did you feel anything? Who cares? It’s not about that. Okay, you put your hands down. It’s not this is not about you feeling something, it’s about you acknowledging.

You were I asked you a question. If you were great, if you feel like God had been good to you, you raise your hand. So you weren’t feeling gratitude, you were expressing gratitude. And so you show up on Sunday morning, you’re not questioning, do I feel like worshiping? The question is, will you express worship? And I’ve told you this, I’ve told you this a hundred times, but it’s one of the hard parts about having like an incredible worship team because it they’re they’re so good and the vibe is so good that you can start to feel like I’m only gonna worship when I really feel it. It’s such a tragedy because it turns worship into something that’s about Him, expressing something to Him to something that you’re doing. You’re a consumer. Consumerism has ruined the entire world. But one of the places that it’s ruined is the church, can be, so we fight against that.

We don’t come in here, we’re not coming in here just to receive. Our first posture in particular in worship is to him, to him, to him. There was an old pastor, I don’t forget who he said. He said, he said, worship is for him, the word is for me. I don’t know if that’s exactly that simple, but there is something there’s something to that that I’m expressing God when I’m there, I’m I’m starting by giving him something, inviting him something so into something.

Worship Has a Reward

So number one, everybody worships, two, worship is something you do, not something you feel. Number three, and I’m done, worship has a reward. Worship has a rewards coming soon. So let me be crystal clear. We don’t worship because of what it does for us. Right? It’s not a transaction. It’s not like because then it would be then it would be self-focused and not God focused. But there’s this amazing paradox in worship, is that we don’t worship because of what it does for us, but it does do something for us. It’s not it’s not the reason that we worship, but it’s the byproduct of our worship.

And in 2 Chronicles chapter 5, we see it. We see what happens when people begin to worship God. When worship goes up, God’s presence comes down. And so the reward for worship is the manifest presence of God. And you might be thinking, isn’t God everywhere? Yeah, yeah, he is. But there’s a difference between God’s omnipresence and his manifest presence. And you’re thinking, what does that mean? Let me see if I could illustrate it. So let’s imagine you come to my house. Don’t. But let’s imagine you come to my house. And like you come into my house. That does not necessarily mean if me and you are in the same house, that does not necessarily mean that you’re in my presence. Why? Because I can be in one room and you can be in another room.

And so if you wanted to be in my presence, though, what you might do is someone who would come into my house invited. And then they would, then they would call my name, and I would hear them, and then I would come into the room that they’re in, and then it would be where they’re in my presence. Right? And so it’s the same, it’s the same here that we that we that we come into God’s house, right? We’re coming in here, and so we’re in his omnipresence, but then what we do, what do we want? Because we want his presence here with us, his manifest presence. So we call on his name, and he comes in.

So all week people are like in this room. I don’t know, they’re all over the facility. People are coming in, people are delivering packages, people are fixing air conditioners, we’re setting stuff up, doing stuff on the computer. All week people are here. Exilda cleans, does all the million cleans a million things, but they’re in God’s house, but that does not necessarily mean that they’re in his manifest presence. Right? And so every Sunday we come into God’s house and we call on his name, and then he responds to us by coming into the room. That’s his manifest presence.

And King David is so desperate to get the Ark of the Covenant back into Jerusalem because he knows that the Ark symbolizes God’s presence, and he knew that there’s certain things that you receive in God’s presence that you don’t receive anywhere else. There are some things that only happen in church. And there are some things that only happen in God’s manifest presence. You might be thinking, okay, like what? Okay, well, here’s three things. These are like sub points to point number three. Three things that come with when we worship comes with God’s presence. Number one is this refreshing. Refreshing.

I don’t know if you can think back to like the time that you were the most thirsty that you have ever been in your entire life. Can you remember that? You just everything’s dry. You’re just trying to drink your own spit. Doesn’t work. It’s a closed system, right? You’re just moving your spit around. That’s what I do if we’re ever in the car with my daughter, and she’s like, I’m thirsty, and we don’t have anything to drink. I say, drink your spit. Such a good dad. I know. I know. But remember when you get that drink of water after you’re so thirsty and you finally get that cool drink of water, it’s like, ah, it’s just so refreshing.

Look at this, Psalm chapter 42, verse 1.

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Where can I go and meet with God?

Just like you can’t quench your thirst with your own spit, you can’t, you can’t refresh your own soul. Psalm chapter 16, verse 11.

You make known to me the path of life. Listen to this: you will fill me with your joy in your presence. You will fill me with joy in your presence with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

So refreshing. Number two, that you get in God’s presence is this counsel. Counsel. Psalm chapter 32, verse 8 says this

I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go. I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.

So, you know, one of the Jesus reveals himself through the Old Testament prophets. One of the ways in Isaiah chapter 9 is this wonderful counselor. We only say that during Christmas. Did you know that God wants to give you counsel? He wants to tell you what you’re supposed to do. And I’ll tell you, I’ve told you this before, and I’ll tell you a million more times. The devil works primarily through bad ideas. Right? Like every temptation in Scripture is the implanting of a bad idea. Eat the fruit, and you’ll become like God. This is a bad idea. Every mass shooting is centered around a bad idea. Oh, God will be pleased if I do this. This will get me significance. These people deserve to die. There’s a hundred reasons, but behind every mass shooting is a bad idea.

And that’s like an extreme, obvious example, but we see bad ideas ruin marriages all the time. This will be fun. That’s the bad idea a lot of times. This will be fun. It’s just a bad idea. We see families destroyed by bad ideas. We see young people destroy their destiny by believing bad ideas. We see businesses and churches destroyed because of bad news. The good news is this is that if you follow Jesus, you have access to a counselor who’s gonna give you the right advice every time. Right? All it’s always and so and so when you come into worship, one of the things that we believe we receive, let me just sit say for me.

So I’m gonna come and I’m gonna sit in my and stand up next to my little chair, and I’m gonna worship and I’m gonna praise God. I’m not thinking about myself. I’m thinking about his goodness. I’m thinking about like he’s so holy, he’s so worthy, he’s so faithful. I’m thinking about attributes of him, and I’m and I’m expressing myself to God. That’s the primary motivation. And as that’s happening, I’m also believing that there’s something on the inside of me that I’m being refreshed, but also that God, as I’m focusing on him, he’s instilling in me his wisdom and his counsel. And so when it comes to Monday, and I got that tough decision to make, oh call it. Well, because I was in God’s presence, I received his counsel, and so I’ll know the things to do.

And it won’t always be, oh well, God told me this, and God told me that. It won’t always be that. But a lot of a lot of times it will be because God gives you wise counsel when you’re in his presence. So refreshing counsel, lastly, number three is this power. I’ll take some keys if y’all can get to me. Let me say, let me say this. We are in my family, almost exclusively girls in my household, except for me and one dog. But we’ve got I’ve got a wife, I’ve got a daughter, I’ve got a girl dog, I’ve got two guinea pig dogs, all the cock guinea pig girls. My God, I mixed up girls and dogs. Okay, wow, it’s bad. There’s a lot of girls in the house, and I love that.

I generally think that girls tend to be better human beings than boys. That’s my general thought. I love being around girls, and I am at my house, I am the undisputed jar opening champion of the whole house. It’s not even hard for me. They bring me a jar, nothing. Oh, there we go. Like nothing. I can open jars. So, like if my daughter or my wife, you know, working on a jar and they can’t get it, they a couple of seconds, they just walk up to me, boom, bam, I pop that thing open. And this will probably get me canceled, but it’s because I have a power that they don’t have, and it’s grip strength and forearm strength. Right? And so, and so they come to me and they’re able to utilize my strength to open the jar.

Now, is it safe to assume that God has some power that you don’t have? Yeah. But here’s what’s amazing is that is that if Jordan comes to me, the best I can do is I can use my power directly on her situation. And that’s great. But did you know with God, not only does he do that, he can also transfer his power into you so that you have the power. And so instead of him always having to open the open the jar for you, he empowers you to open the jar. And that and one of the ways that happens is by being in his presence, by being in his presence that comes down, right? When praise goes up, God’s presence comes down, and one thing that gives us is power.

I need a chapter and verse. You got it. Acts chapter one, verse eight says this,

but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you. You will receive power.

Psalm chapter 28, verse seven says this

the Lord is my strength and my shield, my heart trusts in him and he helps me. The Lord is my strength and my shield.

You think about Peter in scripture, he’s this he’s this interesting guy, but about halfway through his story, we find Peter denying Jesus. He’s too chicken to even admit that he knew Jesus. Fast forward a few pages, and he is boldly proclaiming his faith, even to the point of it costing him life, costing him his life. What happened? What changed? Well, he had been in God’s presence. Look at this, Acts chapter 4, verse 13.

When they saw the courage of Peter and John, when they saw the courage of Peter and John, they were astonished, and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.

Right? So when they saw that man have so much courage, they said, He must have been with Jesus. Man, he’s got so much strength, he must have been with Jesus. And that’s what I think when I when I think of the people of this church. Like sometimes I see people in here, and I don’t know, I don’t know how you’re so strong. Like you’ve gone through things, you’ve gone through pain that I haven’t gone through. And I’m like, how do you do it? Pastor Shirley, how do you do how do you do it? And you and you know what it is? You know what it is? I know that those people have been with Jesus. They’ve been with Jesus.

And so when I’m in God’s presence, I’m praising God. I’m not focusing on myself. I’m not trying to make a transaction happen here. I’m focusing on him. But I know that at that same time as I’m praising God, he’s putting in me, refreshing. I’m being refreshed, I’m receiving counsel, fresh wisdom, and I’m receiving power. Power in God’s presence. Refreshing counsel, power.

Here’s my closing statement Is this everybody worships. You don’t choose whether you worship, only what you worship. Something always sits on the throne of your heart. Number two, worship is something you do, not something you feel. It’s not about feeling gratitude, but expressing it. The people you love don’t benefit from the love you feel, but from the love you show. Three, worship has a reward. When worship goes up, God’s presence comes down, bringing refreshing counsel and power that we can’t manufacture on our own. God is worthy of our worship.