Text: Psalm 24
We are coming now to the end of our study of the Seven Words of Worship that we began back in July. We have looked at worship through the lenses of Creation, Grace, Love, Response, Expression, and Presence. Today we come to the seventh and final word of our study: Experience. In this word of worship, we are reminded that worship should above all else be both an experience of God and an experience with God.
Text: Psalm 136
We have looked at the WHO of worship. Worship is directed from us, the created, to God, the creator and sustainer of all things. It takes both for worship to happen. We do the worshipping, and God receives it.
We have looked at the why of worship from two different angles. First we considered the grace of God that transcends our sin in order to free us to worship. Second, we considered the love of God expressed clearly in His willingness to sacrifice His only begotten Son for our sakes, and, even further, the love of God as God the Son in willingly letting go of His position in heaven to come down to earth as a man who died in our place on the cross, the very worst kind of death.
Based on the book Seven Words of Worship: The Key to Lifetime of Experiencing God by Mike Harland and Stan Moser
Text: Psalm 139:13-16
We are continuing this week in our series on the Seven Words of Worship, a study from Lifeway focused on the idea of having a lifetime of experiencing God, rather than scattered moments here and there in our week or life. We focused last week on the idea that we are worshippers. It is who and what we are. That is the introduction to the series. For each of the next seven weeks – including this morning – we will look at one of seven different words that speak clearly to the idea of worship that is so central to our faith.
Text: Revelation 4
Some things we just seem to take for granted. You know what I mean. We live with them, even depend on them in vital ways, without giving a thought as to how they work or whether we can do better by them than we currently do. We take for granted, at least sometimes, things like breathing, food in the pantry, the effects of gravity, that we will be around tomorrow, and that family will always be there for us. Of course, some of those things are more dependable than others. But we live our lives around them as if they will always be there, like a comfortable pillow that is only missed when it suddenly isn’t there.
Text: Psalm 44
A friend of mine from seminary posted a video on his Facebook page this last week. In the video, a teenager performs a song in which he talks about the many problems he faces as one who lives in the First World. He complains about how hard the ice cream is to scoop out, not being able to hear over the vacuum cleaner, not having the right connections for his media player in the sports car he drives, having to get up to cross the room to get the charger and cord because his laptop battery is running low, constant texts on his cell phone while he is trying to play a game, and an incessant beep from some device – is it the automatic Roomba vacuum cleaner in his room, the convection oven, the microwave, the coffee pot, or his sister’s telephone? Then he talks about killing a spider with a dollar bill because he didn’t have a tissue nearby.
