Prayer, An Act of Submission

Text: Matthew 6:9-13

Focus: Prayer

Function:  To Help the Congregation See how important prayer is to worship.|

Form: 

Intro: 

Let us pray together the Lord's prayer.

 Our Father in heaven

Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.

How do we say those words?  I was a young minister, and I was concerned about how well the worship flowed, I was concerned about how many esses were spoken together, so I always instructed the congregation to use the words debts and debtors. One person questioned me about the use of the word debts. He said “it sounds like you're going to the bank.”

Several people ask me about the proper words for the phrase. Do you know what? God doesn't care! It isn't about the words and the forms, it's about the heart.

This is a prayer about God's honor and glory. It's a prayer about God's kingdom coming on the Earth as in heaven.

It was, after all, Jesus who is going around saying it was time for the Father's name to be honored, for his kingdom to be on earth as in heaven.

Jesus came to bring good news. God's kingdom on earth is good news for the world! There is healing for this sick, grace for the sinner, hope for the widow and the orphan, freedom for prisoners, and the promise of salvation for everyone who believes.

God's kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven, is a kingdom where every one is brought back into God's family. This is also pretty much what Christianity is all about.

Therefore, the prayer is a way of saying to the Father: Jesus has caught me in the net of his good news. The prayer says: I want to be part of His Kingdom movement.

I want to be part of his bread for the world agenda, for myself and for others. I need forgiveness for myself, from sin, from debt, from every weight around my neck and I intend to live with forgiveness in my heart and in my own dealings with others.

Now notice something. In this prayer, at the heart of this prayer, we commit ourselves to live in a particular way, a way we find difficult.

And because we live in the real world, where evil is still powerful, we need protecting and rescuing. And, in and through it all, I acknowledge and celebrate the Father's power and glory.

Prayer is submission to God. An important act of submission. Prayer is us telling God that we need Him. It is us reminding ourselves that we are not independent. It is us telling God that we believe.

And the Lord's prayer is us, committing ourselves to live different than the world around us.

This prayer is a prayer of ultimate trust.

In it, we make the request of, and promise to, God that we will not live in fear. We tell him that we trust him. We trust Him with everything. His promise is to make sure that today, we have what we need. Living by faith is trusting Him for TODAY and not letting fear grip our possibilities of tomorrow.

I remember, 25 years ago, living as a traveling salesman. I covered Southern Indiana, Kentucky, and parts of Tennessee. Most of the time, I was able to receive 700, WLW. I loved the shenanigans of Gary Burbank in the afternoons. And I listened to the morning guy, he didn't seem as extreme as he is now. Anyway, one day he was talking about personal finances and savings.

A woman who sounded like she was still in her 20's called in and told the man that she felt insecure because all though their $250,000 house was paid off, they had $600,000 stashed away already for their 3 kids college funds and they had over $500,000 in emergency cash in case of a rainy day, she still didn't think they had enough to feel secure. She said she would not be happy until they had saved $2,000,000.

I am not exaggerating her numbers. I was appalled.

This prayer, the Lord's prayer says: “give us today our daily bread.”

It is a confession that we live by faith. It is an act of trust for us to say to God: “we will let you care for the future.”

It changes us. When John the Baptist began to preach the people were convicted by his messages. They came to him. John said: “if you have 2 coats, give one to someone who has none.”

But our culture says, you better hang on to that second coat, you may find yourself in trouble and need it.

The prayer “Give us this day our daily bread” is a prayer of trust that today, we will live in the moment with God and rest in Him. Today. We will not let fear of the future grip us.

You all should sit with our deacons when we discuss giving away our love fund money. There is no hoarding it for a rainy day. They are quick to give, because they know that God will supply the needs that we have for tomorrow.

This prayer is a commitment to another way of living. It is a commitment to trusting God for the future.

And of course, there is the whole question of forgiveness. Since we, in the affluent culture of North America are pretty sure that we are not going to starve to death, most of us have that security for today's bread. So for us,  forgiveness becomes one of our bigger issues.

I am not going to pick on the rich. God loves everyone. God still loves the rich, the powerful, the beautiful and the wealthy. But the poor and the oppressed have always been close to His heart. God says that whoever mocks the poor, mocks God (Proverbs 17:5). Because God is love, He promises to stick up for the powerless. God promises to judge people who harm other people. Because the Bible calls hell a place of utter darkness and loneliness, and at another time, a burning fire pit, I don't know what hell is exactly. But I know that God loves justice and hell is God's loving and fair judgment on behalf of all the oppressed.

We have promises from God that first, He knows how to avenge evil and second, He will (Romans 12:9). He promises it. And, at the same time, He commands us to let Him do the job of revenge. As Christians, vengeance belongs in the hand of God alone. Not us.

That is why forgiveness can be hard. What if we forgive someone and God does the same thing? What if God's concept of justice for us is much more merciful than ours?

What if, instead of getting revenge on our enemies, God chooses to bless them?

If we let go the idea of vengeance, what guarantee do we have that they get their punishment?

Don't beat yourself up if you are feeling this way. I am not going to shame you for having those feelings.

I have three boys. And the older two were always trying to strengthen the metal of the youngest, to toughen him up. And, I know that they did it because they loved him. I know that because I am the youngest of 4 brothers and there were a lot of things that happened that my mom never saw.

But there were times when I as dad had to step in and discipline the older two because they may have gone to far. If I never stood up for the youngest, who at the time was the weakest, then the youngest child would have reason to believe that I did not love him. The younger child would have felt like he was Cinderella with wicked older siblings.

But that isn't God. And because God loves the oppressed and the oppressor, he does fair punishment.

God loves our enemies. God loves them as much as He loves us.

God never gets revenge. When I punished the older boys, it wasn't because I loved the younger more than them. Nope, protecting the one while punishing the other was an act of love toward both of them.

When we let God deal with our enemies, then God does what is best, sometimes with punishment, for them.

But we don't see as God sees.

We are hurting. We want to see God punish them, because we want to know that God loves us. So don't beat yourself up about needing vindication. We all need to know that God loves us enough to protect us.

Now this gets deep. Because sometimes God is dealing with whole nations, and sometimes God lets evil go in order to prove to a nation, or a person, that they are indeed wicked. God proves Himself right in all of that. And sometimes we believers are the recipients of that evil. We do not know the cosmic struggle. Job had no idea of what was going on in heaven when Satan attacked him.

How do we trust that God is doing the right thing? For us? For our enemies?

He is.

This part of the prayer is important. It is a way of life. This whole prayer is a way of life. Jesus says: “if you want to be forgiven, then forgive.” He makes it simple. And in Matthew, this is the only part of the prayer that Jesus chooses to explain. Jesus wanted to make sure that he wasn't speaking in some sort of metaphor when He made that claim.

Prayer is indeed an act of submission. Because in that prayer of forgiveness, we say to God: “God we trust you to vindicate us, forgive us and deal with our enemies.” We trust you to do it with love.

We pray: “Your Kingdom come.” Here is the big difference between being a part of God's Kingdom and the World's kingdom.

The members of the worlds Kingdoms seek revenge. The members of God's kingdom seek what is best, both for themselves, for their neighbors and for their enemies.

What is best for our enemies.

This prayer. This prayer where we are asking God to let the events in our lives transpire according to the heavenly plan instead of the worldly plan is a way for us to submit to God.

We pray: Your will be done in earth as it is in heaven.

We are not praying, your will be done as long as it fits with my plans, goals and dreams. In this prayer, we are submitting to God's plan. Period.

This prayer teaches us how to be Christians.

Celebrating God in Scripture and Breaking Bread

Adapted from Simply Christian, by N.T. Wright.

Text: Communion

Focus: remembering Jesus' sacrifice

Function: to help people worship from a pure heart.

Form: Storytelling

Intro:

Worship is Celebrating God.

We worship God because he both created us and he redeemed us. God saved us. And his salvation wasn't cheap. Perhaps the plan, all along, was for sin to destroy this world, and then God Himself appears to destroy sin and save us. He proved His love by personally coming to earth as Jesus, walking among us, healing us, showing us how to live in love, and then dying on the cross for our sins. The best response to all that is worship.

Some people would dispute the idea that we are sinners.

There are two ways of looking at our world. We can behold all of its beauty and believe that everything is peachy keen. Or, we can accept both the beauty and the evil that has overtaken much of the planet

Wise Christian worship takes fully into account the fact that creation has gone horribly wrong, has been so corrupted and spoiled that a great fault line runs right down the middle of it-and down the middle of all of us, who, as image-bearing human beings, were meant to be taken care of it.

That's why Christian worship is also the glad celebration of God's action in the past in Jesus the Messiah, and the promise that what he accomplished in dying for our sins will be completed. In other words, as in Revelation 5, worship of God as Redeemer though, the lover and rescuer of the world, must always accompany and complete the worship of God as Creator.

Celebrating God through Scripture:

We've a story to tell to the nations. A story of good news.

Telling the story, rehearsing the mighty acts of God: this is near the heart of Christian worship, a point not always fully appreciated in the enthusiastic, free-flowing worship coming in many circles today.

We know God through what he has done in creation, in Israel, and supremely in Jesus, and what he has done in his people and in the world through the Holy Spirit.

Christian worship is the praise of this God, the one who has done these things. And the place we find that God-given an account of these events is of course Scripture: the Bible.

Later on, we will focus for a few sermons on the importance of Bible and Bible study. But in the context of worship: reading the Bible aloud is always central to Christian worship.

I have been guilty of cutting back on this for whatever reason: sometimes trimming reading so that the service doesn't go on too long, or having only the few verses I am to preach that misses the point.

The reason we read Scripture in worship isn't primarily to inform a congregation about some biblical passage they might have forgotten. Reading scripture in worship is, first and foremost, the central way of celebrating who God is and what he's done.

Unfortunately, today's worship services are so short that it would be impossible to read chapters of the Scripture and keep the worship service to a manageable time. The worship of God is more important than our time.

Somehow, when the Scripture is read out loud, it changes us. We enter into the realm of the divine. Spiritual things begin to happen in our own lives. It is like a twisted piece of steel that is suddenly straightened and made useful again. God's word heals us.

Even the simplest acts of Christian worship ought therefore always to focus on the reading of Scripture. Sometimes there will be a time for the congregation to meditate on one or more the readings. Sometimes there will be an opportunity to respond.

That's how Christian worship begins to develop the particular shape, a “liturgy”: as a showcase for Scripture, a way of making sure that the faithful are treating it with the seriousness it deserves.

And yet, the idea of liturgy is often discarded as being old-fashioned, to traditional, boring, or even meaningless.

However, the Bible is one of Gods great revelations of himself to humanity. It is important to God. Psalm 138:2 says: “You have exalted your word over your name.” Honoring Scripture, honors God; as long as we use the Scripture to point us to Jesus, instead of justifying ourselves.

The Bible is, in short, the staple diet of Christian worship, as it is of Christian teaching. The story of the two disciples walking with Jesus shows us the good. As Jesus explained scripture to them, the text says, their hearts burned. But then, Jesus revealed Himself to them.

But their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, when he broke the bread.

Celebrating God-through the breaking of bread

The second aspect of Celebrating God comes from a pattern that Jesus Himself taught us. And no, I am not speaking of the Lord's prayer. I am speaking of Communion.

Three opening remarks. First, we break bread and drink wine together, telling the story of Jesus and his death, because Jesus knew that this set of actions would explain the meaning of his death in a way that nothing else-no theories, no clever ideas-could ever do. After all, when Jesus died for our sins it wasn't so he could fill our minds with true ideas, however important they may be.

Jesus didn't die just to fill our minds with true ideas.

He died, so he could do something, namely, rescue us from evil and death.

Second, it isn't a piece of sympathetic magic, as some have often worried it might be. This action, like the symbolic actions performed by the ancient prophets, becomes one of the points at which heaven and earth coincide.

Paul says “as often as you eat the bread and drink the cup you the Lord's death until he comes” (First Corinthians 11:26). He doesn't mean that it's a good opportunity for a sermon.

Like a handshake or a kiss doing it says it. Like a handshake or a kiss doing it says it. When we do communion, we proclaim Jesus.

Third, nor is the bread-breaking a mirror occasion for remembering something that happened a long time ago. When we break the bread and drink the wine, we find ourselves joining the disciples in the upper room. We are united with Jesus himself as he prays in Gethsemane and stands before Caiaphas and Pilate. We become one with him as he hangs on the cross and rises from the dead. Past and present come together. Events from long ago are fused with the meal we are sharing here and now.

But it isn't only the past comes forward into the present. The bread-breaking is one of the key moments when the thin partition between heaven and earth becomes transparent, it is also one of the key moments when God's future comes rushing into the present.

Like the children of Israel still in the wilderness, tasting food which the spies have brought back from the secret trip to the promised land, in the bread-breaking we are tasting God's new creation—the new creation whose prototype in origin is Jesus himself.

This is one of the reasons why he said “this is my body” and “this is my blood.” we don't need elaborate with long Latin names to get to the point. Jesus—the real Jesus, the living Jesus, the Jesus who dwells in heaven and rules over us as well, the Jesus who has brought God's future into the present—once not just to influence us, but to rescue us; not just to inform us, but to feed us, with himself. That's what this meal is about.

Perhaps the biggest problem that Christians have faced about this meal is the idea that it is a “good work,” which people “do” in order to earn God's favor. Some still feel that way about anything that is “done” in church; but unless we are to sit absolutely still and say nothing at all, we are bound to “do” something in our worship together.

Even choosing to be silent, as in a Quaker meeting, is a choice to do something—namely, to come together and be silent. Of course, there is a danger that fussy ritual will forget what it's there for and become an end in itself.

Sometimes the building, the ritual itself, the pastor, the organist, the choir can be the best that money can buy. But then, people stop caring about the object and focus on the form of worship.

Yesterday, Kathy and I celebrated 35 years of marriage. I had a friend, whose friends surprised them with an anniversary celebration. They told them to dress up in their finest. At the appointed hour, a rented limousine picked them up from their home. The limousine driver proceeded to take them to McDonald's where they were served McDonald's food by candlelight, fine linen, fancy silverware, and an haughty taughty maître d'.

But it was still McDonald's food.

Stuffy formalism and traditionalism can be just that: something all fancy but the substanced isn't there.

Equally, there are some that are so proud of having gotten rid of the stuffy formalism and ritual for a free worship which iitself can be reduced to a McDonalds' form of worship. They too, are concentrating on the outward form rather than the real meaning.

The danger, you see, is not confined to “high-church” ritual. It is not only present when people insist on crossing themselves at exactly the right moment and exactly the right manner; it is just as present when people insist on raising their arms in the air during worship, or indeed when they insist on not crossing themselves, raising their arms, or doing any other action.

I have on occasion been wryly amused when the churches abandoned its robed choir and organ because they seem to “professional,” and then employ half a dozen people to spend the whole service twiddling knobs and pushing sliders to control the sound, the lights, and the overhead projector.

Anything that needs to be done during worship can become a ritual performed for its own sake. Likewise, anything that needs to be done during worship can be done as an act of pure gratitude, a glad response to free grace.

Christians argue whether bread and wine should be done every Sunday, once a quarter, or once or twice a year accompanied as it was with the first communion service, the love feast.

There is also the danger that doing Communion means that we are ourselves practicing our own form of sacrifice. People sometimes suppose that the point of the sacrifice, in the Old Testament, was for the worshiper to “do” something to earn God's favor. Not so. That rests on misunderstanding of the Jewish law itself, in which the sacrifices were required by God, and were offered in Thanksgiving, not as an attempt to bribe or placate God but as a way of responding to his love.

Communion is worship within our larger picture of heaven and earth, of God's future in our present.

Heaven and earth overlap, and do so at certain specific times and places. That's why Christian worship is what it is.

In Worship, heaven and earth are joined.

This, I believe, is the right framework for all our thinking about worship. The rest of the discussion about worship is footnotes, temperament, tradition, and—let's face it—individual likes and dislikes (which is what I call them when they are mine) and irrational prejudices (which is what I call them when they're yours).

What I love about communion is its mystery. Every time I approach the bread and the wine, I think of the terrible truth behind it. Jesus was killed to restore us to God. They took His life. But the symbol of us eating the bread and drinking the wine means it wasn't them who killed Jesus. It was me.

And that thought makes me shutter. But on the other hand, Jesus gave his life. We took it. But He willingly gave it. And He did it for love.

Let us break the bread together.

We will prepare ourselves. I spoke of the way that worship can be mere tradition, focusing on the form instead of the person we worship. I spoke of how that form can be just as bad in the churches that claim they are free and have no form as much as it can be bad in the churches that have elevated ritual over God himself.

When the text from today states that it is possible to take the bread and wine in an unworthy manner, he is speaking as much about anything as insincere forms of worship.

We often give pause to consider if there is someone with whom we need to offer forgiveness, or a sin we need to repent of. And that is good and important. But we also must consider the importance of the meaning of it.

In communion, we are proclaiming Jesus' salvation.

Our communion is not closed to members only. But understand this, God set it aside for believers only. That doesn't mean that you have joined us, although belonging to a body of believers is important. What it means is that you accept Jesus mercy on your behalf and by taking this bread and wine, you are saying to God: “I believe in Jesus and what Jesus did to save me and my hope, my salvation, my reconciliation to You rests in Jesus.”

Take a moment to self-examine.

Celebrating God

Text: Revelation 4:1-11

Focus: Worship

Function: To help people see the importance of worship (here).

Form: Story Telling

Intro:

Happy New Year! Last year was pretty hard on us as a Church. But we are still here! And I thank God for that. Some pronounced us dead and or dying. And I don't blame them. It hasn't been easy.

But Jesus said that He will build His Church and the gates of hell cannot stop it. (Matthew 16:18)

We have a lot planned. You met Kathy Royer. You will also meet Dan Poole. They are two people from the district who are going to help us find out more about ourselves and find ways to bring about healing.

And in prayer, and by the witness of The Holy Spirit, in conversation with Karen Garrett, our Leadership Team chair we are going to focus on the basic fundamentals of Christianity.

We want to get back to what it really means to be a Christian. So, for the first 3 months of this year, instead of the Lectionary, we are going to look at basic themes like Worship, Bible Study, Prayer, Going to Church, Simple living, Service toward God and others, Fasting and Giving.

And that sounds like a lot, but what we are really doing is trying to keep it simple.

There is a section of this book (hold up Simply Christian) that is titled “Reflecting the Image (of Jesus).”

After all, that is what Christians are, the image of Jesus.

And throughout these three months one thing will be evident. It is about God, not Us. And it all starts with Worship of God.

And, I need to disclose that most of my material is not going to be original. I am seeing it through the lens of a mind much more profound than mine. The mind of Bishop N. T. Wright. Of course, he isn't so hifalutin that he goes by that title. His people know him as Pastor Tom.

Worship is different than entertainment. Movies, football, basketball, soccer, theater and music is entertainment. But you are not coming to be entertained. Worship is about us proclaiming TO GOD, His worth.

And here is why: When we begin to glimpse the reality of God, the natural reaction is to worship him. To not have that reaction is a fairly sure sign that we haven’t yet really understood who He is or what He has done.

The best way to discover worship is to join in and find out. However, many people who do that for a while, or even for their whole lives, find themselves getting stuck in the routine. (ANYONE?)

But that isn't all bad. Perhaps they begin to ask deeper questions: What does it all mean? Why do we do it? And many who don’t join in with worship, or who used to but stopped a long time ago, remain puzzled as to the point of it all. For people in any of these categories, and indeed for people who enjoy worship but want to go deeper, a good place to start is with our text, the fourth and fifth chapters of the last book of the Bible, the Revelation of St. John.

Here we find ourselves eavesdropping on a majestic mystery. John the “seer," or prophet, is describing a vision he has seen. And John himself is something of a fly on the wall, peeping into the very throne room of God Himself. And we, we are watching the scene through his eyes. We are eaves-dropping it second hand, as it were.

The scene tells us a great deal about worshiping the one true God.

John has been privileged to watch something going on in heaven. This doesn’t mean that he has been fast-forwarded to some remote future.

At the end of Revelation, he describes the distant future. And it doesn’t look like this earlier vision at all. Nor does it mean that he’s been snatched off to some distant location far up in the sky Rather, when he says that “a door stood open in heaven,” he is insisting on one of the main points of the book of Revelation -namely that God’s sphere and ours are not far apart- and that at certain places and moments they interlock. (fingers interlocked)

Sometimes the boundary between them is like a thin partition, in which, to some people and at some times, a door is opened or a curtain pulled back, so that people in our dimension can see what’s going on in God's dimension.

What John sees in his vision is the regular life of heaven, the worship of God which, in that dimension, is going on all the time. What John sees is what is happening in heaven right now, as we speak.

It is an astonishing sight. John begins by describing God's throne -and cautiously- God himself.

Thunder and lightning are coming from the throne, telling us that this is a place of majesty and awesome glory Around the throne are representatives of both the animal kingdom and the world of humanity: the whole creation is worshiping God -for all He is worth. There are two songs sung. One by the animals and one by Humans and Animals. The animals are singing a song of God’s eternal holiness. It is a Song straight from our Hymnal. (SING)

Holy holy holy
Lord God the Almighty
Who wert and art and ever more shall be.

The scene that John depicts doesn’t stop with a single song of praise; in fact, the scene is only just beginning. The animal creation praises God ceaselessly; the humans join in. But now their song is fuller, because they have something more to say; they cast their crowns before God’s throne, not just to celebrate his greatness but also to express their understanding of why they, as His creatures, are right to offer him praise. A song that comes from Contemporary Christian music:

Thou Art Worthy, Thou Art Worthy, Though art Worthy, Oh Lord
To receive Glory, Honor and Power
For Thou hast Created all things, and for They pleasure, we are created, Oh Lord.

Here we see God’s world as it should be, God’s world as it already is within the dimension of heaven. All creation worships God; human beings, through their chosen representatives, worship God because they have grasped an essential secret: they know why God ought to be praised, and why they want to praise Him—because he has made everything.

This is the point at which many of us want to say: “But wait, the world is a mess! It’s all very well for people to praise God as creator -but look at the state of his creation! What is God going to do about it?”

And there is good news. And this is also right at the heart of what Christian worship is all about.

If you were afraid that saying to God: “What are you going to do about it?” is a form of blasphemy, don't be afraid. Because that it is exactly the reaction taking place before our eyes in the heavenly court itself.

At the start of the fifth chapter of Revelation, John notices that the figure on the throne is holding a scroll, which we gradually realize is the scroll of God’s future purposes, the purposes through which both the oppressor and the oppressed will get their justice and the world will be healed. Because that is the story of Revelation. The problem, however, is that nobody is able to open the scroll. The fact that we all have sinned and harmed others means that no creature is found who is worthy.

That does not mean that God isn't powerful enough.

Ever since Creation began, God has committed himself, to working through his creatures -in particular, through us, His image-bearing human beings- but they have all let him down.

And in heaven, for a moment it looks as though all God’s plans are going to be thwarted.

But then there appears, beside the throne, a different kind of animal. It is, we are told, a Lion; but then we are also told that He is a Lamb. To read Revelation, you have to get used to its kaleidoscopic imagery.

The beings are highly symbolic. The Lion is an ancient Jewish image for the Messiah, the king of Israel and the world. And The Lamb is the customary sacrificial offering for the sins of Israel and the world. Both these roles are combined in Jesus in a way that nobody had ever imagined before but that now makes perfect sense. And when He —the Lion/Lamb— appears, those who were already singing (the animals and the humans) turn their praise of God the Creator into their praise of God the Redeemer. God Himself takes on this dual role. Here are the words directly from the text:

“Thou are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth.”

Then, like a great concert with more choirs joining in from all directions, the angels take up the song:

“Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom arid might and honor and glory and blessing!”

And, at last, “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them” join in the song:

“To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might, forever and ever! Amen!”

AND THAT, that, is what Worship is all about! It is the glad shout of praise that arises to God the Creator and God the rescuer from the creation that recognizes its Maker and creation itself that acknowledges the triumph of Jesus the Lamb.

That is the worship that is going on in heaven, in God’s dimension, all the time. The question we ought to be asking is how best we might join in?

Because that is what we are supposed to do. And let’s get one thing clear before we go any further. There is always a suspicion that creeps into discussions of this kind, a worry that the call to worship God is rather like the order that goes out from a dictator whose subjects may not like him but have learned to fear him. “The Dictator wants an hundred thousand people to line the route for his birthday parade? Very well, he shall have them, and they will all be cheering and waving as if their lives depended on it —because, in fact, they do. Turn away in boredom, or don’t turn up at all, and it will be the worse for you.”

If it has crossed your mind that worshiping the true God is like that, let me offer you a very different model:

One Saturday afternoon, while I was bored I was flipping through the channels on TV. I caught the start of a couple's figure skating routine.

Now, generally, I would rather watch golf than figure skating, but something seemed to tell me to keep the channel there.

I am not a figure skating judge, but to me, for all intents and purposes, it was perfect. It was just the right music, just the right costumes, just the right choreography. The couple skated and danced as one. It was probably the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

It was so good that at the end of the routine, I found myself weeping.

And, it turned out that I was not the only one impressed by it. After the ovation, every single judge gave them a perfect “10.”

But maybe the most electrifying part was the ovation itself.

The performance was so beautiful that the audience just sat there for a moment, completely transfixed. They too, were stunned by the majesty of it. And finally, when they realized that they had witnessed something of unsurpassed beauty, they erupted into thunderous applause.

When you get to witness something of such incredible beauty, at the end, you feel like you are bigger, wiser, -like maybe you have just grown more mature.

That sort of response is pretty close to genuine worship. Something like that, but more so, is the mood of Revelation 4 and 5.

That is what, when we come to worship the living God, we are being invited to join in.

When something like that happens to you, you are aware of things in a new way. You are changed.

Worship changes us. lt’s a bit like falling in love. In fact, it is a kind of falling in love. And when you fall in love, when you’re ready to throw yourself at the feet of your beloved, what you desire, above all, is union.

This brings us to the first of two golden rules at the heart of spirituality. You become like what you worship. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character of the object of your worship.

Those who worship money become, eventually, human calculating machines. Those who worship sex become obsessed with their own attractiveness or prowess. Those who worship power become more and more ruthless. Those who worship anger, want to hear a message that makes them mad about somebody else. Those who worship excitement want to be entertained.

So what happens when you worship the Creator God whose plan to rescue the world and put it to rights has been accomplished by the Lamb who was slain? The answer comes in the second golden rule: because you were made in God's image, worship makes you more truly human. It is biblical: Genesis 2, In the Image of God did God create Adam and Eve. When you gaze in love and gratitude at the God in whose image you were made, you do indeed grow. You discover more of what it means to be fully alive.

The opposite is also true. When you give that same total worship to anything or anyone else, you shrink as a human being. It doesn't, of course, feel like that at the time. When you worship part of the creation as though it were the Creator himself—in other words, when you worship an idol-—you may well feel a brief “high.” But, like a hallucinatory drug, that worship achieves its effect at a cost: when the effect is over, you are less of a human being than you were to begin with. That is the price of idolatry.

The opportunity, the invitation, the summons is there before us: to come and worship the true God, the Creator, the Redeemer, and to become more truly human by doing so. Worship is at the very center of all Christian living.