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Be Christian: Learning to Worship, Learning to Love God
Pastor Rollan Fisher
Every day, we are answering two eternity shaping questions regarding God:
Do we worship him?
Do we love him?
Focus: To be Christian, we must learn what it means to worship and love God through Jesus Christ.
Learning to Worship
Learning to Love God
Learning to Worship
Being Christian means learning to worship God the way the Bible prescribes.
Psalm 145:1-12
A Song of Praise. Of David.
I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts. On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate. They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds, and I will declare your greatness. They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of your righteousness. The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made. All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your saints shall bless you! They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and tell of your power, to make known to the children of man your mighty deeds, and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.
A life of worship to God, in service to him, begins with the acknowledgement and praise of who He is. When you come to God, he gives you a song to sing because you finally get a realization of his greatness, his majesty, his abundant goodness, his righteousness, his mighty acts and particularly what you realize that he’s done in your life.
Being Christian ultimately means making the transition from acknowledging God as a king, to declaring him your king, the Lord of your daily existence.
This is how the Psalm begins.
I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever.
Being Christian doesn’t mean just trying to be a better person - it means finally coming to and submitting to the one who will make you who you were always intended to be.
A benefit of the worship of God is that being recreated in God’s image you find access to the greatest freedom, joy, peace, daily satisfaction and life fulfillment you’ve ever known.
And this is only a small portion of the wonders of God for which we extol him. This is why it has been said:
“The only one that can satisfy the human heart is the one that made it.”
-Unknown
Praise makes this known. Giving God praise is something that can be done anywhere, at any time. Praise can be accompanied by meditating on the wondrous works of the Lord, singing, sharing testimony, dancing, clapping, shouting and leaping.
These are all things about which the Psalms speak. Yet as far as frequency, praise needs to be every day and forever, meaning without end.
This means that despite what is going on around me, I am going to take the time to proactively praise the Lord.
Why is this so?
*The art of praise is like the art of encouragement but with reciprocal effects.
A friend recently posted about mental health awareness by sharing a quote from influencer Stephanie Peltier who said:
“Don’t tell a mother she looks tired; she already knows that. Tell her she’s doing a great job; she may not know that.”
-Influencer Stephanie Peltier
Also avoid saying, “Whoa, you look like you have your hands full!” Instead say, “You’ve got this” or “I’m here to help whenever you need it.”
Saying these things would be learning the art of encouragement and would only be made more powerful with the truth of God’s Word attached. Similarly, the art of praise works like this:
You are telling God what He already knows about himself but is that about which you need to be reminded.
**The reality is that the life that you need in your soul (mind, will and emotions) comes through praise and worship - when you are declaring what is TRUE about God despite your feelings, what you perceive in your circumstances or what report you’ve been given.
It lifts you to the place of God’s eternal rule and heavenly influence.
This is what was demonstrated in a particular instance with the Israeli prophet Elisha who was referenced in a wonderful message spoken at our church right before the pandemic lockdown in March by Pastor Jim Critcher.
If you’ve not listened to it, I commend it to you.
2 Kings 3:15-16
But now bring me a musician.” And when the musician played, the hand of the Lord came upon him. And he said, “Thus says the Lord, ‘I will make this dry streambed full of pools.’
When we praise, it is preparing our hearts for the hand of the Lord to come upon us and for the power of the Holy Spirit to be released for healing, refreshing and deliverance in our minds, our bodies and our situations.
Whenever we are singing songs of praise to God, we are joining in prophesying what God will do by his sovereignty, strength and might.
When I praise, I feel like I’m singing the opening lines of Hamilton each time....
“Just you wait, just you wait....”
“The God whom we worship is not a weak and incompetent God. He is able to beat back gigantic waves of opposition and to bring low prodigious mountains of evil. The ringing testimony of the Christian faith is that God is able.”
Every time we stop to give praise to God, this is the truth we are declaring.
This is why you need to praise God throughout the day and make moments every day (v. 2) - in addition to our corporate gatherings.
People often say to me:
“I need more faith”
I ask:
Have you been reading your Bible?
“I need more peace”
Have you been praying?
“I need more encouragement”
Have you been fellowshipping with other believers in the places provided (i.e. - church and community groups)?
“I need more joy”
Have you been worshiping?
Worship transforms you because you are over and over again immersed in the reality of God’s matchless worth.
You need to know this:
More worship = more transformation.
This ultimately leads to you learning to love God.
Learning to Love God
Being a Christian ultimately means learning to love God.
Psalm 145:14-21
The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works. The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desire of those who fear him; he also hears their cry and saves them. The Lord preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord, and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever.
As the Psalm intimates, there are times that we feel like the things on which we have been leaning are removed, and possibly, that things are out of control.
This is what much of 2020 has felt like.
When we feel like we’re falling, we find out what it is in which we’ve trusted most because we grasp hardest to maintain those things to sustain us.
-Jim Carey who has recently made guest appearances on SNL said the following during a 2018 interview in the Talks when asked what had prompted his spiritual awakenings:
“I guess just getting to the place where you have everything everybody has ever desired and realizing you are still unhappy. And that you can still be unhappy is a shock when you have accomplished everything you ever dreamt of and more and then you realize, “My gosh, it’s not about this.” And I wish for everyone to be able to accomplish those things so they can see that.”
It is from the trappings of wanting desires that Jesus comes to set us free.
The Scripture continually alerts us to the truth that without a Biblical love for Jesus, we will never truly be satisfied.
The Lord upholds those who are falling.
And then there is the bowing down.
Worship in the Bible was often accompanied by those who were bowed down, kneeling and even laying prostrate before the person or thing to whom they were demonstrating an internal submission.
In our time, the question is: to whom or to what have we been bowing down?
The Lord lifts up (encourages, sustains, refreshes and exalts) those who are bowed down to him.
*Biblically we can see that any ideology that places the love of certain people, parties and systems before and above God is at the root of humanistic idolatry.
This is why William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army which has done so much good in the world, was prescient for our times when he said,
“The chief danger of the 20th century will be religion without the Holy Spirit, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.”
- William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army
There is no way to truly love God if you are placing any person, cause, agenda, group, pursuit or thing before Him.
Why?
Because worship was never meant to go to an amorphous, ambiguous God, nor was love for God ever left to be obscure or undefined.
John 14:1-7
14 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
In the Psalm, God reminds us that He is the provider and sustainer of all life giving things and therefore, we should learn to love him.
So it needs to be said that:
Participating in a church service no more makes you Christian than stepping into a gym makes you an athlete or wearing Lululemon makes you a certified yoga instructor.
Love for Jesus is what makes a Christian.
So how do we love God?
Jesus made it a plain.
John 14:15-27
15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. 18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me. 25 “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
Don’t allow our trying an muddled times to allow your love for God to grow cold.
Don’t let your disappointments with people, frustrations with our political environment or the personal and emotional strains from the pandemic diminish steal the peace that Christ has for you.
*Rather let everything deepen your love for Jesus as you recognize Christ alone is our standard of perfection and our eternal hope.
“The LORD hath promised the crown of life to those who love Him. Only lovers of the LORD will hold out in the hour of trial; the rest will either sink or sulk, or slink back to the world. Come, my heart, dost thou love thy LORD? Truly? Deeply? Wholly?”
-Charles Spurgeon
As you deepen your love for Jesus, the love that you have for others in the world will follow.
As you relish in the grace of God expressed at the cross towards you, it will overflow in the grace that you are able to show others.
It all begins and ends with the love of Jesus.
Remember that you are more than a conqueror - not solely by the virtue of your love for Jesus, but by the strength of Christ’s love for you, demonstrated at the cross.
We are not saved by the love we exercise, but by the love we trust. -Richard Lovelace
So again, at the end of the day, when we all stand before God in judgement, these are the questions that will have to be answered.
Did we meet Jesus at the cross so that he might take the punishment for our sins?
Did we repent of those sins in return to give God our submitted worship?
Did we love him?
This is what it means to be Christian.
Second City Church - Be Christian, Pastor Rollan Fisher 2020