Give Him What He Wants

The Worshiping Church

Pastor David started a new series last week that we’ve entitled The Worshiping Church. So worship is the subject that we are talking about, and we will be for a few more weeks. And you know, as I was thinking and praying, what came to me right away was you know what? I love worship. I love worship. It’s probably not true of everybody in the room, but like for me, worship is easy. It’s fun. Like, I don’t care what songs we’re singing, I don’t care about any of that. I love worship, and I always have.

But I came to realize a couple things. The first thing is during COVID, when we could not be together, the part I missed was worshiping together. Because I’m sorry, but I can listen to the word anywhere. I really can. It’s better when we’re all together, but I am not one of those people who’s gonna be in my living room worshiping by myself in front of the TV. I’m just not gonna do it. Like it’s gonna be, I just it’s not the same. I might do it in my car when I’m by myself, but when we’re in watching online, worship is not the same, and that’s because corporate worship is something special.

Worship Through the Years

But I learned that in worship together, and it started when I was a kid. I was raised in church, I’m a pastor’s kid, but you know what? I still remember the songs that Miss Shirley taught us in kids’ church, and we proved that a few weeks ago in a funny moment preparing for women’s. We started singing a funny song, and there’s video of it, but you may not see it. But I remember the motions, I remember the words, it all comes flooding back, and it was worship, it was worship to God.

I remember the songs we sang in youth. I remember those songs, and during the time that David and I were in youth, we like to sing songs, the same song for so long. Like, and you’re singing the same words over and over for so long. And now when we try to do that, I’m like, we can’t do that. I love God. I love Him a lot. But I can’t sing those words anymore. That happened to us one time at a women’s conference. We were somewhere else. And I think we sang “Good Good Father” for, I’m not kidding you, 15 minutes. That was a long time. Because the words to “Good Good Father” are pretty much the same over and over. And we love church and we love God. And we were like, new song. Can we sing a new song?

And now I have my favorite songs. I have the songs I love in this room that we worship together, and they’re always changing. But you know what’s not changing is the fact that I love worship. The songs have changed, the way we sing them has changed. I don’t want to sing some of the songs we used to sing, and that’s not blasphemous. It just means I’ve sung them too many times, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But my heart, the posture of my heart when we’re worshiping, is just something that God has given me.

Worship is Not Just Singing

But I know not everybody has that same experience. That worship doesn’t come easy for you. But the truth is, like David was saying with offering, worship is not just what we sing on a Sunday, but that’s how we treat it. Worship is something we treat like, okay, we just come in here, and the first thing we’re gonna do is we’re gonna sing some songs, and we just mark it off the list. Good. I’ve done my worshiping for the week, I’m done. That’s not what we’re talking about here.

And last week David laid the foundation, and he talked to us about why we worship, and he gave us three points, and it was that everybody worships something. And what he was saying there was whatever is on the throne of your heart is what you’re actually worshiping. And whether or not that’s God or something else, there is something on the throne of your heart, and you are worshiping it, whatever that might be.

The second thing he talked to us about is worship isn’t just something we feel, but it’s something we actually do. And then the third thing he talked to us about was worship has this amazing reward, and that’s God’s presence. And to me, that reward is what you always want to be pushing towards.

How Do We Worship God?

So we understand now that everybody worships, all of us worship something. Hopefully, the thing that is on the throne of your heart is the Father, is God the Father. And if it is, as it should be, then the next question you might be asking yourself is how do we worship God? And how do we worship him in a way that truly honors him? That really is God honoring.

And if we turn to Psalm 95 in chapter, um chapter 95, and we’re gonna start in verse one. We’re gonna read through seven.

Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord. Let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation. Let us let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. For the Lord is the great God. For the Lord is the great God. Get that. The great King above all gods. In his hands are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it. Come, let us bow down and worship. Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker, for He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His care.

There is so much instruction in these seven verses. It gives us instruction for what to do with our physical bodies, right? To sing, to shout, to bow down. But we get stuck right there. That’s where we stop. And we forget the part that the reason we worship, because it also gives us the reason we worship is for he is our God and we are his people.

The Outward Expression of Worship

But the truth is that when it comes to worship, most people get stuck in what the physical expression looks like. They get stuck in the physical expression. And the reason they do that is because maybe they don’t know what to do. Do I raise my hands? Do I kneel? Do I dance? Do I shout? You’re asking all those questions, and you’re super concerned about those things, but those things are secondary. Those are the secondary things.

So the outward expression, if you’re new to being a believer, the outward expression that you see from believers is something that started inside. That’s right. So we get so wrapped up in what do we do out here where everybody can see, but really we need to be examining what’s going on on the inside of us. Because what’s going on in here, what’s really going on in here, shows itself or it should in some form of outward expression.

And I believe that because when you, if you’re someone who maybe isn’t very animated with your body, when you are in worship, you are so connected to the Father that you’re gonna do something that you would never do. It makes you uncomfortable. It’s something you would never do. And so, with that in mind, we know these things, but we get hung up and we get stuck over here.

Am I Giving God What He Wants?

Well, let’s ask ourselves this question. I really believe the primary question we need to be asking ourselves is this: am I giving God what he wants? Or am I giving God what I prefer to give? When it comes to worship, it has nothing to do with you. Nothing. Think about this. Our entire belief system, everything as a Christian that we believe is built on faith. It’s built on faith. It is not built on what we prefer. It is not built on our preference.

Our very salvation, the thing that brought us into the room, the thing, the reason that we can worship is our faith. Because think about it. We are believing in something that we really can’t see. We can’t see our salvation. We’re just believing it. We’re trusting it. And it’s a big deal to say, I’m gonna trust in someone that I cannot physically touch, and that I cannot physically see. But we make it about our preference. We make our worship so much about what we prefer, and we remove our faith from it. We remove our faith from worship. But that’s the reason that we’re here.

Why is it that when it comes to that time in a service or outside in the world, when it’s really an opportunity for us to worship the Father, we can’t get past what people will think. Or will I look funny or will I look silly? We like can’t get past that. And I think the reason is because really socially it’s not acceptable to people to worship a God that way and to worship the God that way.

Worship is an Extension of Our Relationship with God

I don’t watch sports a lot, but I watch it sometimes, and I grew up watching it. Y’all, these men paint their stomachs. And they’re perfectly fine with it. I’m sorry, but they don’t walk in the city like that, or at least I hope not. But they do think it’s perfectly fine. They wear cheese heads, cheese hats, and they, I mean, my gosh, I don’t get it. I don’t get it.

But on the flip side of that, you go to a concert. Girls are doing the same thing. They’re doing the same thing, and it’s perfectly acceptable, and it’s this socially, it’s great, it’s wonderful, everybody’s doing it, so it’s okay. But then you come in this room, come on, and you can’t lift your hands. You can’t, or you can’t shout, or you can’t clap. And the reason you do that, I think there’s two things. I really do think there’s two things going on.

One, I think that can answer the question of what’s sitting on the throne of your heart. I’m sorry. I know that’s hard. It’s true in so many areas. But you do have to ask, why am I okay doing it there, but I’m not okay doing it in church. But the other part of it, and it is very real, and we can’t pretend that it’s not, is that it’s very difficult, and it makes us very uncomfortable to put on display our love for God because most places we go, that’s not accepted, and it’s challenged, and we do worry about what people think, and we shouldn’t, but that’s just the reality. I think that’s just the truth of where we are in society.

But worship is supposed to be an extension of our relationship with God. So worship is this action step that we as followers of God get to take. And it might make you uncomfortable, but that’s where we need to stretch, and that’s where we need to grow. And that’s where we need to step into something different. And we need to move beyond that place where we’re questioning all the time well, what am I supposed to do in worship? Or what do I do? I’m not a good singer. What if someone hears me? We have to kind of move past that.

And we have to start saying that the worship that we offer has absolutely nothing to do with us, but everything to do with the Father. And so what does that look like? You know, last week, I think it was as David was closing, he kind of just mentioned that there was a, it was either a quote or something, but it was just this idea that first we come in and we worship. So we give, and then we receive. That’s gonna be the first thing you do.

And you might just think like, oh, that’s just, you know, like the way it works. Socially, that’s just, you know, we create a service and you start with worship. But really, it’s actually very practical, and I believe the way God designed it. He designed it so that we would come into a place where we’re here for Him, and the first thing we would do is offer up our offering and our praise and put our eyes on Him. I don’t think it’s just something that churches across the world have decided that’s how you start service. I think that is something that God designed. He designed it.

Preferences vs. God’s Design

And people do not, I’m being totally transparent, people do not value worship in this house in his house. Not the way they should, not the way they should. You know, people will take themselves out because they’ll say things like, I don’t like to sing, or I don’t like the sound of my voice. I’ll be honest, we don’t, we can’t hear you. He can’t hear you. So don’t worry about it. But also, there’s this part of like, oh, it’s too loud. Or sorry, young people, it’s too quiet. You’ll say that too. You make it all about you. You make it about what you want.

Did you come here just for yourself? When we step on this property, we are no longer here for ourselves. We are here to worship a living God. And it does not matter what songs we sing, if it’s too loud, if it’s too quiet, and if you’re honest with yourself, that’s not why you actually came. But that’s what you make it about, and we’re all guilty of it. We are all absolutely guilty of it. But it means that we have to shift.

Or maybe on a Saturday night. Who would have thought? Thinking about church on the day before church. But ask yourself this what about God? What does he want? And what am I denying Him? Have you ever asked yourselves those questions? Because you gotta get to a place where you realize that God isn’t doesn’t want our worship because He has an ego problem, or because He thinks He’s so great that we need to worship Him. That’s not what it’s about.

But the truth of the matter is, if you’re honest with yourself, the only person worthy of worship is God. I mean, He’s the creator, He’s the reason all this stuff is here. So, but that’s not why. God, I believe God really created and designed worship with a purpose, and that purpose is for another way for us to connect to Him. It’s another language between me and Him. But it’s really difficult, I think, to move ourselves out of our preferences because we live our days, our daily lives by our preferences. We really do, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing.

I’ve got a lot of preferences, and there’s a lot of things I’m not gonna change. Like this one, I wake up in the morning and I make myself coffee. I like my coffee a very specific way. Very specific. The only person other person who would know how to make my coffee is my husband. But I like my coffee a certain way. I’m not gonna change that. But I start my day with my preference. That’s how I start my day.

Or I don’t know, maybe this is just me, but we all have like our spot on the couch, or we have our chair, or we have our seat at the dinner table. We certainly do amongst our staff. I don’t know what it is. We go into a meeting and we all sit in the exact same spots over and over and over. I don’t know. We just all have our preferences. We all have the things we like. Again, not saying any of that is bad. It’s not. It’s fine. I just want you to recognize how often we live by what we prefer.

You know, think about this like when I was young, you take a picture and you gotta wait for it to get developed and you hope there’s a good one. Nowadays, you can take like 1,500 of you in a five second span and choose which one the world gets to see. If you don’t think that’s about preference, then you’re kind of like overlooking something. But that’s how we’re doing that.

Or this is a big one. You go to a restaurant. It’s time to order your food. How many of you order food directly off the menu and don’t change a thing? Not very many. It’s not too many. Now, when I was young, I would just eat whatever was on it or choose something that I could eat all the things because I was too afraid to say what I wanted. And I was probably 16, 17, maybe in my 20s before I would actually order what I wanted.

But now that fear is gone. The salad was a honey money, a honey mustard chicken salad. Okay. We would order it just like this. I want a honey mustard chicken salad with no honey mustard. We wanted ranch instead. Now it’s funny, it’s silly, these are funny examples, but it really is. Does it help you see how much of our days are spent adjusting things so that we’re comfortable? So that we’re getting exactly what we want. We live in that place.

And please hear me. I am not saying that you need to like start going to a restaurant and eat the eat things you don’t want to eat. Like I don’t have a problem with how you want to do that. But we do have a problem when we take that same thinking and bring it into the house of God. And expect to receive the things from the Father the way we want it. When He designed it to be a different way.

But it’s like that chef who made the honey mustard chicken salad designed it with those flavors in mind. Like they had a plan. I didn’t care about the plan, just chucked the plan. I don’t want to do that with God. He orchestrated this whole thing that I do not understand. I don’t want my preference to get in the way. And just take a moment and think that when we are putting our preferences above everything else, what we are actually worshiping is our comfort and not God.

It’s that idea that David talked to us about last week that what’s on the throne of your heart is what you’re actually worshiping. The more our preferences creep in, the more our preferences take over. We’re putting our comfort on the throne of our heart. We’re not putting God on the throne of our heart. Because God designed worship to be a specific way with his instruction. And we have to be willing to surrender that back to the Father so that we can really worship. That’s what we’re seeking.

Worship in Spirit and in Truth

And all relationships require two people a marriage relationship, a friendship, any of those. They require at least two people. And those two people are different. Those two people, David and I, we’re very different. We’re not the same. We have a lot of differences. We have a lot of things about us. But when you take time to learn, you take time to get to know someone, you start to learn what is love to them, what is service to them.

And so it does bring up this idea, you’re probably familiar with it, of the love languages. And initially that was something really meant for husbands and wives, but I believe it relates to all relationships. I can tell you what my daughter’s love language is. It’s gifts. She likes gifts, okay? That might change as she gets older, but I know that. I know how to communicate love to our daughter when she really needs a pick-me-up. The same is true of my husband. I know how to communicate love to my husband. His is words of affirmation.

Now, if I love to give gifts, I wouldn’t say my love language receiving is gifts, but I love to give gifts. I love giving gifts. But I learned pretty early on that don’t mean nothing to David. He doesn’t care. And that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if I kept trying to give David gifts over and over, then I’m not communicating love to him. I had to learn to speak his language, right? That’s the relationship.

Well, if we’re in a relationship with the Father, don’t we need to learn how to communicate to him? He already knows how to communicate to us. He’s got it. The problem, the disconnect is not between the father to us, the problem is us to the Father. That’s where the disconnect is. And so we really have to begin to ask ourselves, God, what do you want? When it comes to worship, and worshiping, whether it’s with our voices or with our entire being, we have to start asking, God, what is it that you want?

And so I really believe that there are three questions that God wants us to look at this morning about how we worship. And these are the three questions. Are we worshiping God for who he is? Are we worshiping God for what he’s done? And are we worshiping God with all we are? Those are the three questions that we’re going to spend the rest of our time on this morning.

Are We Worshiping God for Who He Is?

So look, let’s look at number one. Are we worshiping God for who he is? Worship begins here. Worship starts with our understanding of who God is, what his character is. So we need to put our attention on his holiness, his faithfulness, his goodness, all of those things. And when we put our attention on those things, then worship should just start to rise up out of us because he is such a good father.

But I think most of us have at least this basic understanding of that God is good. God is faithful. He is all these things. And so we can worship from that place. But you have to know him, and you have to know who he is in order to worship that way.

Let’s think about some people that we’ve seen in the Bible that worshipped Jesus well. And one of the first ones that comes to mind is Mary, and there’s a lot of Mary’s in the Bible. Who we’re talking about is the sister of Lazarus, and she understood how incredible Jesus was. She really did. Let’s read in John chapter 12. We’ll start in verse 1.

Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here, a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him.

I just want to say that I understand Martha’s frustration in this story. That’s not what we’re talking about, but I do understand her frustration because she’s working and her brother’s just reclining at the table, and then we’re about to see what Mary’s doing. I just understand it.

Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard and an expensive perfume. She poured it out on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

It really is. But you know, when I read it, the first thing I think, ew. Am I the only one? I’m like, ew. She’s pouring perfume on his feet, and then she’s using her hair to wipe his feet, and feet are gross, and feet were really gross then because you only wear sandals and there’s a lot of sand. I mean, all this stuff is going through my head, right? But you know what I just did? I put my preference into this very holy moment. It’s such a holy moment, what she’s doing. And I took myself out because I was grossed out.

And I don’t, I don’t think that’s bad. I’m just, people don’t do that anymore. It’s much more common then. But I did recognize what I did and how often we do that. We read something, we say, I wouldn’t do that, and then we take ourselves out of ever doing it, out of ever doing it. But not Mary. That’s not what Mary did. She’s got all these people there watching her, and she wanted to worship him. She understood who he was. She knew he was the Messiah. She knew with everything inside of her that he was who he said he was, and that they had been waiting on him. And she did the only thing that she knew to do, which was worship him with everything that she had. And that’s what she did.

And I just think when you recognize that this woman took everything, I mean everything, that bottle of perfume was expensive. In those days, her hair would have been something that was considered kind of like the crown of glory. She took the very things that were most important and she offered them to Jesus in the only way she knew how.

But I think what our struggle can be is that we take God and we shrink him down to make him fit our understanding. We make him fit into the box of things that we can understand. And when we do that, we are missing the magnificent God that He is. He is big. He is huge. He is everything that we see, taste, experience. He is all of that. But because we don’t understand it, we shrink him down and then we worship small. We worship small.

Our worship becomes quiet. Our worship becomes gentle. Our worship becomes like, okay, maybe I’ll go here, or maybe not at all. Maybe I’ll stop singing. Sometimes I think our worship, when we make God small, we become cynical. We just become cynical because we don’t recognize how big of a God that we serve, how big he really is. We’ve shrunk him down when really he is the only person worthy to be given praise. And we just so often take ourselves out. We just take ourselves out because we don’t understand.

That’s not what it should mean. Just because I don’t fully understand everything about God does not mean that I should shrink it down to something that I do understand. The way we get a bigger picture of God is by worshiping him because we know who he is, we recognize that he like just the fact that he created the earth, all of that should be enough. Don’t even get us started on like the intricacies of who we are as human beings. I don’t understand my body. There’s all kinds of things happening in my body that I don’t understand. But it doesn’t mean my body doesn’t work, and it doesn’t mean my body isn’t magnificent. I can worship God just with that understanding. Thank you for creating something that I don’t understand and making it work. That makes me perfectly happy.

But we’ve got it, we shrink him so far down. I love that honestly that Jesus’ words give us such big instruction for how we can worship. Just like everything in our lives, if we dig and we look and we seek to understand, the direction we need for how to worship God for who he is is right there in front of us. And in John chapter 4, Jesus is talking to the Samaritan woman at the well, and she asks a question about the proper place to worship. She asks that question. And in that moment, Jesus takes the opportunity to flip the culture upside down. He says it has nothing to do with where the ritual of worship. And in that time, that’s how you worshiped.

Let’s read in John chapter 4, verse 23 and 24.

Yet a time is coming and now come and has now come when true worship worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For they are the kind of worshiper the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in this in the spirit and in truth.

Well, if you’ve received Jesus, you then you’ve got the helper, the Holy Spirit. And to worship in spirit means that you’re gonna worship being led by the Holy Spirit. You’re not worshiping in your own understanding, you’re worshiping in spirit from the Holy Spirit. And I believe that when we do that, our expression of worship will become something that makes us uncomfortable. It doesn’t mean you’re going to embarrass yourself. I’m not saying that, but it is going to push you beyond your comfort zone because you’re letting the Spirit lead.

And if you’re worshiping in truth, then that means you are worshiping God for exactly who he is. Not what we make him to be, for exactly who he is. Which means we have biblical understanding of who God is, because that is the only truth that we can trust. That’s the only truth. So when we’re worshiping in spirit and in truth, true worship happens. True worship happens when we are led by the Holy Spirit and how we express ourselves to God while simultaneously honoring God, honoring God for exactly who he is, and not just the parts that we prefer. That is how we truly worship God for who he is. That’s how we do it.

Are We Worshiping God for What He’s Done?

The second question is how do we, or are we worshiping him for what he’s done? Are we worshiping God for what he’s done? Let’s think back to Mary, for a minute. A lot of Bible scholars believe that part of why Mary worshiped Jesus the way that she did was because in the previous chapter, in chapter 11, Jesus had just raised Lazarus from the dead. So Jesus had given her her brother back. What a miracle. I mean, that’s incredibly life-changing for Lazarus, but also for Lazarus’ family for Mary.

And so Mary wasn’t just worshiping Jesus in some abstract, like, oh, I know who he is. She had something tangible, something tangible for something that he had done that she wanted to worship him for. And so in that moment, she added on to her worship. She was already worshiping him just for who he was. Then she added on top of that, worshiping him for something he had done. So in her worship, she’s saying, You gave me my brother back. You turned my morning into dancing. And you did what no one else could do. So see, she took one piece and then added to it. How could her worship not get bigger? Her worship just grew.

And in Psalm, David says this 103, chapter 103, verse 2.

Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits.

Forget not all his benefits is saying, remember all the things he’s done. There are benefits. There are things that God does for us. There are incredibly worthy things that he does that we need to worship him for. But we are forgetful. Human nature is forgetful. Our nature, we don’t remember things. We’ve got short term, long term, we’ve got all these things, but we sure do not remember things and we don’t remember them well. And so that’s why you hear me say, probably almost every time I speak, but you need to write stuff down. Write it down. Take the time. When God does something good and big, big or small in your life, you need to write it down.

And I say that because we are forgetful. Just by nature, we’re forgetful. Have you ever been like put on the spot by someone? Like you’re walking somewhere with a trap, a mind, like your brain is on something, and people stop you and they ask you a question that you definitely know the answer to. But you’re like, I don’t know. Like this happens to me all the time. Somebody’s like, What’s your favorite TV? TV show. I’m like, I don’t know. What’s your favorite movie? I don’t know. I do know. But in the moment, I don’t know. You put me on the spot. Or like someone says, tell me a funny story about you. Suddenly you’re not funny at all. Like nothing funny has ever happened. But it’s just because you’re on the spot and you can’t remember.

A few months ago, we had our staff fill out one of those like favorite things sheets, and everybody was like, Can I take it with me? I don’t know how to answer these questions. Like it’s just hard. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I just think that that’s if you can put it in that perspective that it’s like you can’t even remember the things you like. How in the moment are you gonna remember all the good things that God has done?

And to me, that’s why we need time and we need to prepare. And so we need to come into the house of God. We need to come into our time, quiet time of worship, whatever it may be, and we need to come prepared. We need to come prepared. Take the time that you’re driving into church and be thinking and meditating on the good things that God has done. And if you’ve been doing that, when you come in this door, don’t you think worship will come easy? Like we come screeching in. And listen, I get it. I had that morning this morning. It’s like, whoo, everything went kind of crazy at the end. It happens. But it’s like, that’s not the only time I’m prepared. We gotta prepare along through the journey.

And so I think it’s important to recognize that there’s definitely those times where it’s like life is hard. Situations are hard, and you are having a hard time remembering the goodness of God. And that’s where you really do need to remember what He’s done. And so I think about this a lot. So our daughter Grace is seven and a half. And for those of you who don’t know, she we adopted her as an infant. And so she’s almost seven and a half. It’s been almost a decade since we started the process, since we had started the process. And so we had about 15 months of time where we were just waiting, just waiting for anything. A phone call, an email, anything. And it was long and it was hard.

And in what is now Grace’s room, I had created a vision board of what I wanted her room to look like. There were scriptures, there were all these kinds of things that I just pulled together, and that’s what I created to keep my eyes on the goodness of God and what we were believing for. And God answered those prayers bigger than I could have ever imagined. So much bigger than I could have imagined. I had little secret prayers about it being about having a daughter. And I wouldn’t put those in places because I was afraid to. I don’t know, but God heard them. But I sure have written all that stuff down.

And now I love to look back on those things just as memories. But also when life gets hard again, I have all of that to look back at and see the faithfulness of God. And just like Mary in chapter 12, she had that chapter 11 where her brother was gone. We all have chapter 11s. We all have them. Every single one of us in this room has a chapter 11. But if you are in this room and you are breathing and you are alive, then you have something to praise Him for because you are in chapter 12. And if it’s not chapter 12 right now, if it feels like you’re still in chapter 11, go back to chapter 10. Because there are always previous chapters. And there is always something worthy to praise God about.

And if you can’t remember, if you’re saying what kind of thing is chapter 11, what about that job that you didn’t that you thought you would never get, but God made a way? What about that relationship that seemed completely lost and God somehow restored it? What about that health diagnosis that really scared you? But he carried you through. He carried you through whatever treatment, whatever it was that you needed. Or maybe you’ve suffered from depression and anxiety, but God is slowly bringing you back to fullness of joy and life.

We all have that chapter 11. But we need to step into the chapter 12s and declare the goodness of God for what he did. Because what he did, he will do again. It may be a different situation, but he will do it again. God has never left you, not once. Keep writing the story, keep worshiping God through it all, because all of us have previous chapters, and God is worthy to be praised in all of them.

And I just want you to remember this. Remembering things is not passive. It’s not a passive act activity. It requires action. So for you to remember the goodness of God, it’s going to take effort and it’s going to take work. And you’re going to have to be willing to go back and write it down and make your own book of all the things that God has done. Because when we start to worship him for how good he is, we can really worship him for the things that he’s done in a new way. Because we recognize how good he’s been.

True Worship Costs Us Something

Sometime later, God tested Abraham. He said to him, Abraham. And then Abraham replied, Here I am. Then God said, Take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain that I will show you. Can you imagine? I can’t imagine getting that direction. I really can’t. And if you’re Abraham, you’re thinking that this is who he loves most in the world. Like he loves him with everything. He is your promised son. Remember that him and Abraham and Sarah had Isaac when they were way past the age that they should be having kids. He was their miracle child. And also he was the son that God had promised to build a nation.

So if I’m Abraham, I’ve got a lot of questions about what he’s asking me to do. And we don’t know if Abraham had those questions, but we do see this. We’re gonna jump to verse 5.

He said to his servants, stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship, and then we will come back to you.

Abraham called the sacrifice that he was about to offer, worship. And I think that Abraham really understood something that is really big. And it’s this true worship costs us something. It costs us something. And we have a really hard time offering God everything. We put our lives, I’m so guilty of this. Put our lives into little compartments. I’ve got my church life, I’ve got my work life, I’ve got my social life, my private life, I’ve got my kids’ lives. We have all these little compartments. And we’re good at offering some of them, but rarely are we good at offering all of them. All of the time.

Matthew 22, Jesus here is answering the questions of the Pharisees, and it’s verse 37 and 38, and it says,

Jesus replied, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.

We know this. We know this verse. We know it by heart. But do you ever apply it to the worship you offer? You know, Jesus doesn’t say, love the Lord your God with some of your heart and when you feel like it. But keep all the emotion out of it. That’s not what he says. With all your soul, and with all your mind. That is complete, complete total worship. That is you giving God all of it.

Let’s think back to Mary. She didn’t just bring Jesus a little bit of perfume, she brought him the whole jar. And that little jar was a year’s worth of money. And she brought the whole thing. And she didn’t just sprinkle a few drops, she poured it out. And then, like I said, she took her hair, which for a lot of people in that women in that day would have been their greatest asset. And she used her hair to wipe his feet. Mary held nothing back, not a thing.

And then think about Abraham. He was ready to give it all. That’s how completely he trusted God. And in that story, what do we see? We see that God provides. And the ram becomes that worship to God. So here’s the truth God will be worshipped. He will be. And an offering will be given. But like Abraham, he provides the offering. Everything that we have in our lives is an offering to God. But God provided everything that we have. So we should just be offering it back to him fully.

Think about it. God provides his own sacrifice. Because everything that we have is not because we’re so good. And not because we’re so great. We have it because we worship a God who has given us more than we could ever imagine. And all he’s asking us to do is offer it back. That’s all he’s asking us to do. And this is a such a beautiful picture of what God ultimately provided for us in Jesus. Jesus is God’s ultimate intervention and provision. He is that for us. God gave it all, and he ultimately is just asking for us to say, here you go, I’m giving it back.

Would you all stand with me? You know, we can’t ever out give God. We really can’t. And I think that’s a to me, I take that as a good thing. I don’t even have to try. But if we don’t have, if we can’t outgive him, then why aren’t we giving him everything that we can? We really have to get to that place. And ask yourself this which parts of your life are you keeping closed? Which part of your life are you keeping a fist and saying, nope, you can’t have this. I’m gonna keep this. Is it your money? Is it that relationship that maybe you shouldn’t be in? Is it your time? Is it your kids? Ask those questions.

Because our offering should be, Lord, here’s here it all is. Open your hands. And so we’re gonna close this morning in worship. We’re gonna practice. We’re gonna practice. And so ask yourself: Am I worshiping God for who he is? Not just the parts of his character that I prefer, but all of who he is in spirit and in truth, like he instructs. Am I worshiping God for what he’s done? Remembering my chapter 11, those times when God showed up and carried me through. And am I worshiping him with all that I have? Not compartmentalizing, but surrendering every part.

One of our highest callings as Christians is worship. Worship to the Father. Mary understood this and she poured out the perfume. Abraham understood it because he was ready to sacrifice Isaac. And both of them were in the place where they were saying, it’s all yours, anyways. Here I am. Are you? Ask yourself, are you in that place? And so this morning, as we sing, I want to challenge you. Lay down your preferences. Remember his goodness and hold nothing back. Let’s worship God for who he is, for what he’s done, and with everything that we have.