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My aim and motive this morning is to encourage you to worship the Lord from the heart

What’s the look and feel of worship from the heart?

First is an illustration

Worship from the heart is like a resonating string

I want you to image that here on the platform is full-sized Stienway concert grand piano (I dream!)

If I open the lid and press the sustain pedal, all the dampers will lift from the strings so they’re free to vibrate. Now I sing a note into the piano and what happens – the piano strings pick up the note – they resonate with the note and continue to vibrate at the same pitch.

In my picture here, God is the singer, and we are the strings! He constantly floods his world with a whole symphony/album of notes.

He is constantly singing

• notes of love and acceptance,
• notes of joy and patience,
• notes of strength and resilience,
• notes of discipline and direction,
• notes of forgiveness and peace!

And what He looks for, he searches the world for, are people like us who will pick up his notes and resonate with them!

• So that our hearts beat like his, so that our minds think like his, so that out hands act like his did – especially like his son Jesus did.

True worship, worship from the heart causes the character and purpose of God to be replicated in his children here on earth

<ppt> So Worship is my heartfelt response to God’s grace-filled initiative

So as we devote our hearts and our attention and our minds to him, the veils disappear.

Paul talked about this veil that masks the reality of God

2 Corinthians 3:18 … whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. … And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Our hearts beat in time with His – that’s resonating worship.

What worship is not

We need to understand what worship isn’t if we’re going to enter the full wonder of what it is

Worship is not singing

E.g. “Now let’s move into a time of worship”

After sung an up-beat song “now lets sing some worship songs”

Actually there is a grain of truth in that because the quieter musical material is likely to allow us to experience a greater sense of intimacy with God

So does that mean we don’t need to sing? While it is possible to have a service without singing there’s no question that using our voices to praise God together has a unique place worship.

King David had been waiting on the Lord for a breakthrough. We don’t know what it was, but we do know the Lord heard and answered him

Then this is what he said …

<ppt> Psalm 40:1-4

I waited patiently for the Lord;
he turned to me and heard my cry.
2 He lifted me out of the slimy pit, …
he set my feet on a rock
… 3 He put a new song in my mouth,
a hymn of praise to our God.

So worship is not singing, but singing is often a vehicle for worshipping from the heart

Worship is not services

Like this one.

I sometime hear or see on notice boards “Worship services to be held at …”

Does that mean I don’t need to commit myself to coming here? No way!

This event is a means of grace, a channel, a vehicle through which God’s grace and love can flow to your heart.

It’s not worship by itself but it is a place where worship can happen more intensely, more openly, more publicly and more personally than at other times of the week.

Coming to services is vital if you want to grow, but it’s not worship by itself.

<ppt> Hebrews 10:19-25

19 … brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter God’s presence by the blood of Jesus, … 22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, … 25 let us not giving up meeting together, as some have got in to the habit of doing, but let us encouraging one another – (encourage one another to meet) and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Worship is not rituals

Paul talks about rituals, about religious formalism when he was warning Timothy about people who would damage the church

2 Timothy 3:1-5 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, … lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God – 5 having a form of godliness (all the forms are in place!) but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.

That’s pretty strong stuff!

Rituals have no power by themselves and people who rely on rituals can use them to mask dark and dire stuff in their lives.

Rituals fail when they don’t connect to anything that matters to us or when they degenerate into formality oe just going through the motions.

Worship is not rituals, but rituals are actually vital for us to worship.

What makes the difference is our hart attitude to the Lord as we use the ritual to worship from the heart.

Worship from the heart is an end in itself

We often hear people from this platform, including me, say “Jesus commanded us to go and make disciples”,

It’s our over-arching statement of purpose

• We declare that the purpose of Victoria Baptist Church is to make disciples. But this can lead us to a false conclusion – and it’s one I want us to be aware of.

Let me ask “Why do we make disciples?”

Some people will answer “We make disciples to help other people become followers of Jesus Christ ans become disciples too” That also is true, but it’s not the whole truth.

• In fact to suggest that we win people for Jesus Christ only so that others can be won for him worries me greatly.
• We can sometime give the impression that evangelism is an end in itself.

Just imagine one of your good friends, someone you love and know well who is not yet a Christian

• Suppose this is someone who knows you’re a Christ-follower and has had the odd chat with you about it
• And someone who’s moderately impressed with Jesus Christ or with church because of what you’ve said and the way you live. (get the picture?)

One day in conversation with you they ask the perfectly obvious and genuine question: “Why do you want me to become a Christian?”

• “well, we want you to become a Christian so that eventually you can witness to other people and they can become Christians too”
• At that point your friend will reel back on his chair and say “but hang on, this is strange. You mean the goal of your religion is to recruit people to recruit other people, and so on.
• So where is the substance? Where’s the content?”

I remember going through a phase of deep questioning myself about my own ministry and wondering “what really is the point of all this activity and work and effort and cajoling and sweat and tears?

• Because if getting people to join is all there is to it, I am nothing more than a purveyor of a particularly ingenious form of hype!”

The answer to that dilemma is here – we don’t recruit people for ourselves, we recruit people for God!, For the wonderful purpose of connecting with him! And that’s what worship is! Worship from the heart is the substance! Evangelism is not an end in itself, worship is!

What’s on the inside? Worship from the heart is on the inside! A transformation of the heart is on the inside.

A transformation that liberates us to

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength”

Worship from the heart, at every area of life, is an end in itself.

• It gives my life meaning and purpose as it did for Adam and Eve before they fell into sin.
• It gives me joy and strength, it assures me that my wrong-doing, my sin, my shadow side has been decisively dealt with.
• I convinces me that I am loved, and not only by a few people here on earth, but by the maker of the cosmos Himself, the God of the universe is my heavenly father and I am his adopted son!

That’s the substance! A complete transformation of my life’s meaning and purpose! Worship from the heart!

William Temple was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1942-1944 and here is his description of worship from the heart (one of the best in English!) is …

Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is

• the quickening of the conscience by His holiness;
• the nourishment of the mind with His truth;
• the purifying of the imagination by His beauty;
• the opening of the heart to His love;
• the surrender of the will to His purpose –

and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centredness which is original sin.”

Worship from the heart shows who Jesus really is

There are several compelling examples, I’ll give you just one.

The ascension of Jesus

<ppt> 50 When Jesus had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. 51 While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. 52 Then they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. 53 And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.

These people were card carrying, scripture believing, Sabbath worshipping Jews

• It would have been completely unthinkable for them to use the word ‘worship’ of anyone other that God himself!
• And yet here they are, freely and shamelessly using it about Jesus – so who does that make Jesus?

So if you’re wondering about the person of Jesus, who he is and how we can be confident about his identity there are several places you can look.

• Look at his direct statements about himself (“I am the light of the world, I am the resurrection and the life”
• Look at his indirect statements

and in particular, look at the way people treated him – and see how the people who knew him best worshipped him.

Even the people at the time realised that Jesus really was the messiah

• and when he died the centurion just blurted it out “surely the was the son of God!”

While I didn’t plan it this way, I’m so glad that today is Whit Sunday – the day we recall how the Holy Spirit deluged the fear-filled church on the day of Pentecost – and transformed them!

And I pray that he will do something similar in our day

Worship from the heart is only possible by the Holy Spirit.

I sense that, as I’ve been speaking, some of us have been saying “Lord I want my worship to come from the heart more that it does already!”

• My worship has drifted somewhat, and I don’t want it to be stilted or formal or light-weight or trivial any more
• Then ask him to fill you (you personally) with his spirit.

Jesus told us to do this!

“If you, even though you’re sinful people, know how to give good things to your kids, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.

Did you think today’s title ‘kissing God’ was a bit off- the-wall?

Finally, Let me explain it

The most frequently used New Testament word which translates as ‘worship’ is ‘proskneo’

• it’s made up of two component parts
• “pro” – the preposition for ‘come towards’
• “skuneo” – the verb ‘to kiss’ (hence today’s slightly provocative title – “kissing God”)

So embedded in the NT word are these two truths:

Approach – coming towards God, closing in on him, coming into his immediate presence

and intimacy – enjoying the kiss of god. And his kiss is no mere peck on the cheek, It’s a lingering and deep expression of affection, love and acceptance

Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness

bow down before him, his glory proclaim

With gold of obedience and incense of lowliness

kneel and adore him, the Lord is his name.

Pray …