Worship… one of those easily spoken but hard to explain terms that gets thrown about all the time in church. And yet worship is probably the definitive call of God on our lives… He longs for our worship… our devotion… our love… heart, soul and strength! When we think of “an awesome worship time” we normally think of an experience where we feel we connected with God… but the worship that God demands is not about a felt experience of connection with God, rather it is a genuine response to the fact that He has already connected with us. This morning we look at what it means for the church to be the worshiping community and how our worship should not be viewed through the lens of experience but through the lens of the gospel!
Deuteronomy 6
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Colossians 3:12-17
Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another,forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.