September 14, 2014 Are You Cultivating Good Fruit in Your Life? Dare To Plug In to God s Love With Passion! Worship = Reverence, Devotion, Adoration OPEN 5 Practices of Fruitful Living and Fruitful Congregations 2 basic approaches to life. You can wing it and hope things work out. Or you can get intentional and practice. Golf club, the importance of practicing to improve. We re looking at 5 Practices to improve the fruitfulness of our lives and church. Radical Hospitality, Passionate Worship Like any good farmer we would all like to maximize our harvest for God s Kingdom. Last week we started a 5 week study of 5 Practices for Fruitful Living. It looks at the reality that just like some farmers get a better harvest from their fields than others so some people get a better harvest from their lives and some churches get a better harvest from their ministries. Our goal is to be as fruitful as we can for God so we re studying the methods which can produce greater results for ourselves and our church. Last week we studied the Practice of Radical Hospitality. We saw that average love won t cut it for building a fruitful life or a fruitful church. And we celebrated the joy of Page 1
how our lives, our families, and our community all get better as we grow in our ability to love more and more like Jesus. Today we re going to dig in to God s gift of Passionate Worship. Might help to take a moment to define worship. What is worship? Look in the dictionary means God is worthy of our praise, our devotion, our best commitment to listen and to learn. The Bible teaches us that worship is opening our hearts and minds to connect to God, to hear the Good News that God loves us, and to equip and empower us to follow God s instructions for our lives. Another definition that I like is that worship is learning how to plug in to God s power. We all like power. It s better to be power-full than power-less. So this morning we re going to learn how to cultivate Passionate Worship in our lives. Because boring worship won t help us. We ve all seen the difference between boring and passionate worship haven t we? Go into some churches and you can feel the electricity the power of the Holy Spirit is at full voltage. People are excited to be in God s presence and can feel the power of God filling them up with love, courage, and joy. After you go to a passionate worship service you are powered up and ready to tackle the challenges of life. And then there is boring worship. When you walk into a church where the worship is boring you can see people starting to wilt all around you. There s no joy in the singing. People keep staring at their watches saying I ve never seen time move so Page 2
slow will this ever be over? After you go to a boring worship service you feel like a vampire sucked out all of your energy and that it s time to go home and take a nap. One pastor said that he could tell right away after every church service if the worship had been passionate or boring that Sunday. One of the church members, Mildred, would tell him right away. If Mildred bounced up to him and said: Pastor! Praise the Lord! You fed my soul! And he knew things had not gone well, if Mildred shuffled up to him, quiet, with her head down, Pastor, I m going to be praying for you all week. Do you want a passionate life or a boring life? We all want a passionate life yet far too many of us end up settling for a boring life. Henry David Thoreau claimed: Most people lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with their song still in them. They had a chance to sing with joy but that joy stayed bottled up inside of them until it finally gets buried forever. Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw give us another way of looking at the difference between boring and passionate. In the play, Macbeth, Shakespeare makes this famous quote: Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the Page 3
stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. George Bernard Shaw had a completely opposite view of life: This is the true joy in life - being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one Life is no brief candle to me, it is a sort of splendid torch, which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible Are you going to settle for a life of quiet desperation or do you want to sing all of your songs with joy? Is your life a Brief Candle Signifying nothing? Or is your life a splendid torch which with God s help you are going to make burn as brightly as possible? Life confronts all of us with many challenges and difficulties on a daily basis. The Bible teaches us that the biggest difference between a life of silent desperation and a life that sings with joy is our connection to God through worship. The word worship means that God is worthy of our praise. Worship is our time to reflect on the awesome majesty of God as the Creator of the Universe, the giver of our lives. Worship is our time to open our hearts and ask God to cleanse all of the evil out of us and fill us with holiness, love, and power. Worship is our opportunity to come into God s presence and learn Page 4
more about how much God loves you and the good things that God has planned for you and wants to empower you to accomplish with your life. God is reaching out to you this morning to unleash the song in your soul and to set your soul on fire so that you can live your life as a splendid torch and burn as brightly as possible with Jesus love! READ WITH ME: Psalm 100:1-5 (NLT) Shout with joy to the Lord, O earth! Worship the Lord with gladness. Come before him, singing with joy. Acknowledge that the Lord is God! To help you plug in to all the power God wants to give you I want to ask you what gets you excited? Maybe I should ask do you ever get excited? Get EXCITED What is really worth getting excited about? This afternoon millions of people across our nation are going to sit down in front of a television and get excited about football Page 5
games. Of course it s always a pretty big gamble if you re a Buffalo Bills fan if there is going to be much to get excited about. Obviously football is entertaining but is it really worth getting excited about? How important is a football game? How much is a football game going to improve your life or make our world a better place? I enjoy football but I think that one of the best descriptions of a football game is that it is a game of 22 men desperately in need of rest being watched by 100,000 people desperately in need of exercise. Football is fun but it doesn t empower and transform our lives yet people shout, jump, and wave their arms in a frenzy because they are so excited about their team. But when it comes to worshipping God 3/4ths of our nation no longer shows up and for those who do show up it can feel strange to think that I m supposed to be even more passionate here than I would be cheering for my favorite team in the bleachers. God isn t opposed to us having fun at a football game but God wants to make sure that you know where you should really get excited in your relationship with God. Psalm 122:1 (MSG) When they said, "Let's go to the house of GOD," my heart leaped for joy. God wants to help us learn how to be excited about coming to His House. God loves Page 6
you. God wants to power you up. Jesus got excited when He saw people turning God s house into a den of thieves. God s House is supposed to be a House of Prayer for all of the nations. Mark 11:15-17 (MSG/NCV) Jesus started throwing out everyone who had set up shop in the Temple Then Jesus taught them, quoting this text: It is written in the Scriptures, My Temple will be called a house for prayer for people from all nations. But you are changing God s house into a hideout for robbers. God wants everyone to be welcome in church to know God is always available and eager to communicate with them. What is worth really getting excited about? Has any football player ever told you that you are a Masterpiece? Ephesians 2:10 (NLT) For we are God's masterpiece! He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. Page 7
God wants you to hear loud and clear that He created you to be a masterpiece. You are loved. You were created to accomplish good things with your life through the power of Jesus Christ. Passionate worship unleashes the song in our souls and sets our hearts on fire. And Passionate worship helps us to discover the dreams and visions God has for our lives. Are Dreams Really That Important? Life is hard and there are times we all feel like giving up. That is why Passionate Worship is so important because in Passionate Worship we have a fresh opportunity to hear the Good News that God has a dream and a vision for your life. The Prophet Joel came to the people of Israel after they had been devastated by a ravaging plague of locusts. The locusts had come in like an army and eaten their entire harvest. After all of their hard work for a year they had nothing to show for it. Everything had been completely wiped out. Page 8
Joel came to help them find the power of passionate worship to help them out of one of the most painful times in their lives. I know it hurts. Don t give up God will pick you up and help you to build a new future. Joel 2:28 (TM) The LORD said "I will pour out my Spirit on every kind of people: Your sons will prophesy, also your daughters. Your old men will dream, your young men will see visions. I have always believed that dreams and visions from God are important to give us hope and courage especially after we ve been knocked down. But earlier this week, I got a powerful reminder of how vital God s gifts of dreams and visions are when our son Matthias sent Penny and me one of those tear jerker letters that parents want to hold on to forever. I know our son gives Penny and I too much credit but his letter helped to remind me Do we want to stand on the shoulders of giants? Or will we settle for microscopic dreams and visions? How big of a dream are you asking God for your life? Pastor Wilbur Reese said that a huge tragedy is that a lot of Christians are asking for a dream of just three dollars worth of God. Page 9
"I would like to buy three dollars worth of God, please. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep. Just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don't want enough of God to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant worker. I want ecstasy, not transformation. I want the warmth of the womb not a new birth. I want about a pound of the eternal in a paper sack. I'd like to buy three dollars worth of God, please." Did Jesus Christ die on the Cross and Rise again to give us a dream of three dollars worth of God? Over the past few months we have been reminded just how powerfully your dreams and visions can impact the world. ISIS has been brutally killing thousands of people all across Iraq and Syria because they have a vision that they believe God wants them to destroy without mercy anyone and everyone who doesn t believe in Islam. As followers of Jesus we are inspired by a very different vision. We believe that God loves every person on this planet and wants them to be saved. To experience the best life possible while they are in this world and to be raised up to eternal life in heaven Page 10
READ WITH ME simple but powerful lesson from Jesus. John 3:16 (MSG) This is how much God loved the world: He gave His Son, His One and Only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in Jesus, anyone can have a whole and everlasting life. Are you ready to stand on the shoulders of the greatest Giant of all the God Who gives us life? Do you want to be passionate in asking God to give you a Jesus sized dream or will you settle for $3.00 worth of God? God wants to give you a bigger dream and a greater vision to help each one of us to join as partners with Jesus Christ, to build loving marriages and families, to offer care and support to hurting people all across our community. Passionate worship helps us to ask God for a bigger dream a Jesus sized dream; and Passionate Worship helps us to get powered up and fully equipped for every challenge life will ever throw at you. Would You Like God to Fully Equip You? One of the greatest gifts of passionate worship is that it reignites the fire in our souls it empowers and equips us for the challenges of life. As a pastor there are plenty of times that I wish I could sit back and coast. But I know that coasting won t lead me to Page 11
the place I really want to go. A lot of people in our country have been coasting and that coasting has left them poorly equipped for life. People who are just 10 years away from retirement have a median savings level of $12,000. The average marriage lasts approximately 8 years. And the average credit card debt is about $16k. Passionate Worship helps us to see that we have two choices. We can accept what everyone else in our culture is doing. Or, we can focus our attention on God and ask God to help bring out the best in us. Read with me Romans 12:2 (TM) Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God and let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. You'll be changed from the inside out. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God will bring the best out of you, and develop well-formed maturity in you. We celebrate the gift of passionate worship because we know God won t drag us down. God will lift us up and help us to grow into the best woman or man we can become. Page 12
God is eager to bring out the best in you and God offers you all the tools you need to get the job done in the Bible. God says let me show you how to be a great mother or father; a great husband or wife; a great friend. When you study God s truth with passion you will be fully prepared to do every good thing God wants for you. Read with me 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NLT) All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do what is right. It is God's way of preparing us in every way, fully equipped for every good thing God wants us to do. Your life is a precious gift. God wants to make sure you realize what a Masterpiece you were created to be. Refuse to settle for a life of silent desperation. Sing all of the songs God put in your soul with gusto. Plug in to God s power with passionate worship so that the flame of your life will burn as a brilliant torch! Page 13