What Do You Talk About?

One thing that shows us what we love is the things that we talk about. What do you spend your words on? For many of us, we might talk about our family or our favorite sports teams. How often do we talk to others about God?

While sharing the gospel is an important part of our Christian faith, it’s not the focus of this discussion. Do you ever talk about what God has done in your life? Do you ever give Him credit for the things in your life when talking to others?

When we think about praising God, we often limit praise to a worship service or singing. As Ron Allen points out in his book called And I will Praise Him, we may need a broader view of what praise is. Allen points out that biblical praise is made up of at least 2 key things. These 2 things are that praise has to be vocal, and it has to public. Speaking to others about God is praising God and this is a great way to carry Christ’s love to others. The following passages of scripture express this.

Hebrews 13:15
Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name.

Psalm 34
1 I will extol the Lord at all times;
his praise will always be on my lips.
2 I will glory in the Lord;
let the afflicted hear and rejoice.

Psalm 19:14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.

All of these passages are not limited to singing to God with music in worship, but also include openly talking about God as an ongoing part of life. Praising God involves more than singing to God. It involves letting your life sing and promote His name alone as the center of life. The following song by Matt Redman expresses this kind of praise.

One Name Alone 

Everybody praises the thing they love
Everyone announces what they adore
Where you lay your treasure there is your heart
There is Your heart there you find your heart

Everybody’s singing a song inside
Bowing down low with a sacrifice
We speak many words but our hearts we show
By what we’re spending our lives upon

One name alone I am living for
One name my heart and my soul adore
Be the first and the last
Be the song that I sing
Jesus be my everything

Let it be seen in this life now
If anyone should look my way at all
This I prize and treasure most
You my God and You alone
Well it’s You my God and only You

One name alone I am living for
One name my heart and my soul adore
Be the first and the last
Be the song that I sing
Jesus be my everything

What Do You Worship?

Psalm 115:8 says that we become what we worship. This means that who, what and how we worship edifies us into something. What we worship develops habits in us. St. Augustus developed this truth a little more as he said, “what you worship is what you love.” If we love the wrong things in public worship, we will develop habits of loving the wrong things in our daily lives. For example, if we love to express ourselves to God in worship, we become people who love the act of expressing worship to God. If we love entering in to experience God in worship, we become people who love the act of entering in to experience God. One problem with loving these things is that these acts of expression and experiencing God are a means to an end. They are ways of relating to God, but not God. Loving these things will edify us in the wrong ways.

One very important thing to keep us on the right track is to see that no matter what we love, we have habits and rituals that keep us connected to our loves. In Matthew 6:21, Jesus confirms this as He says, “for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Jesus points out that where you put your money, your heart will soon follow. This passage points out that our habits and our actions help form what we love. Humans are primarily creatures of habit who love people and things through these habits. This is how we were created by God. The key thing is that God created us to love Him as the center and foundation of everything else in life. We will only rightly love other people and other things once we come to love Him.

It is a common misconception that when it comes to loving God, religious habits are a bad thing. The reality is that habits are inescapable. The thing to be concerned with is discovering what or who your habits are centered on. Where do you spend your money, time or talents? The answers to these questions will show you what you love and worship.

Recent studies show that Americans religiously check their smart phones more than 150 times a day. This is a repeated ritual that forms desires and produces love for something. Are all of these smart phone habits centered on Christ?

Romans 12 tells us that we are to be transformed by God instead of being conformed to the rituals of the world.

How can we be transformed by God instead of the habits of the world?

Romans 12 says that to do this we need to present our bodies as a sacrifice to God on a daily basis. To be transformed by God, we have to be in the daily ritual of centering all of our habits on Jesus.

We tend to accept habits when they are in the areas of our life that are seen as less spiritual. For example, we have schedules that we repeat. We may watch a television program at the same time every day, but this mentality is often rejected when it comes to the worship of God and our spiritual life. When it comes to God, rituals and habits are often seen as burdensome. But this is simply not true. 1 John 5:1-4 sums all this up nicely:

5 Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome. 4 For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.

In conclusion, take some time to reflect on what your habits are centered on. Whatever you discover during this time of reflection will reveal to you what or who you love.

Remember that what you love is what you worship, and what you worship is what you become. Here at WBC we want to become mature disciples of Jesus Christ, and to do this, Paul tells us, “Here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” Romans 12:1-2 (The Message).

Christ @ the Center of Worship: What Drives Worship?

It is often said that Christian worship is more that an hour on Sunday, and that ultimately worship is a lifestyle. These things are true. But one thing that we need to have on our radar about worship is that what we do during the hour of worship on Sunday matters more than we might want to admit. Public worship forms everything else that the church does. What we do in worship forms how we love God with our habits in our inner spiritual life as well how we love others in our attitudes and behavior. Ultimately what we do in worship even determines our view of God. Worship is not only the place we worship God, but it’s the place where discipleship and evangelism happen as well. Hopefully it’s not the only place that worship, discipleship and evangelism happen, but at the very least it’s the place where they start. Since so much of who we are as Christ-followers happens in a worship service, it is very important to consider what is in worship. What is the one thing that we should be concerned with in worship above all else? Can something as important as worship even be shucked down to one core thing? The answer is, “yes,” and one way to get to the core of worship is to focus on what drives worship.

What do you think about when you hear the word “drive”? You might think about driving a car. If so, then you are already driving down the right road for this discussion. When you drive, you go from one place to another. You go on a journey. After you get there you might stay there or go back to where you came from. This is a good illustration for a worship service. What drives a worship service? Where is a worship service going? What journey is it on? What story is it a part of? One way to determine what drives a service is to look at what its purpose is. Some of the options for the purpose of worship are: expression to God, evangelism of the lost, entering in to experience God, education of the believer and/or the edification of the body of Christ. While most of these options are a part of worship, all but one of them falls short as the core driving purpose of worship.

In 1 Corinthians chapter 14 verse 26, Paul drives home the one main purpose of worship as the edification of the Body of Christ. One of the problems that Paul was addressing by making this point was that the Corinthian believers were caught up in individual expression of worship to God. This is a common problem that the modern church has as well. In past years, there have been many worship debates about what is the best way to express ourselves in worship to God. As we all know, the “best way to worship” is a relative debate based on a person’s preferences of relating to God. More specifically, the preferences usually revolve around styles of music. It is important to keep Paul’s purpose for worship in mind in this modern day expression battle. The purpose of worship is not personal or intimate expression from us to God. The purpose of worship is to edify the collective body of Christ. This means we all need to take a step back from the mentality that the way we choose to express ourselves to God should be the driving force behind worship. This wrong mentality has produced the contemporary vs. traditional approach to worship. This approach lets personal expression drive worship to the point that the Body of Christ is separated into groups of people who worship God with their preferred style of music in different kinds of services. This contradicts the whole purpose of worship, which is to edify the body together in Christ, not separate it.

Paul more specifically unpacks this point in verses 24-25 of chapter 14 when he debunks evangelism as the purpose of worship. In these verses, Paul tells the Corinthians that the way to reach out to the lost is for them to let unbelievers watch them worship, and when they see genuine worship happening the unbelievers will then fall on their knees to worship the one true God. There is no hint of creatively putting together worship services in ways that makes evangelism drive worship.

Another popular purpose of worship that needs to be rejected is the idea that worship is about entering in to experience God. This view often seeks to experience heaven on earth by making the exchange of praise to God from man the driving of worship. The thought is that since heaven is ultimately a place where we sit around and forever sing to God, then the goal for worship is to get a taste of what that will be like as we sing and connect with God in worship now. The order of worship and the words that the leaders use to lead worshipers become highly focused on experiencing this connection or feeling. One of many problems with this approach is that it is based on a wrong view of heaven. Biblically speaking, heaven is a place where we reign with Christ and serve Him and His nation forever. It is a place that will probably involve singing to Him, but it will also involve things like serving Him with our hands and eating food. The glory of this is that work and food will be without the affects of sin and the curse. Ultimately, heaven is a physical place and this means that we will no longer need to relate to God in a spiritual way. In heaven we will have a real body and real eyes to relate to a real God in a face-to-face way without having to have faith. Hopefully we can recognize that trying to mesh the future face-to-face experience of heaven with our current faith-based experience of worship has some concerns that keep it from being the driving force behind worship. It is also important to note that the phrase “experiencing God” is not found in scripture and is not a biblical driving force for worship. In fact, the book of Colossians is devoted to teaching a lifestyle of worship that is contrary to this “entering in” approach to worship. The Colossians were faced with a problem of seeking to “enter in” and experience the God of Gnosticism. Their goal was to reach God during a highly emotional feeling or connection with a hidden spiritual world. This whole mentality is the exact opposite of what the totality of the bible teaches about worship. The bible proclaims that worship is about God’s kingdom coming to the physical earth through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Another subtle but important thing to keep in mind here is that Paul calls us to edify the body of Christ in worship, not educate it. Edification and education are not the same thing. Education is about learning knowledge. Edification is about building our whole being up in Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit. This involves knowledge, but learning knowledge is not the driving force of edification. In 1 Corinthians 13:2, Paul points out that knowledge is nothing without love. Edification involves developing the fruits of the Spirit in our lives. This is done with more than knowledge. It takes more than mental knowledge to develop virtues and character that lead to Christlike attitudes and behavior. One important thing about edification is that it’s concerned with what is being caught, not just what is being taught. It takes into account what is being modeled in worship. The modeling aspect of worship is key to developing habits in worshipers that happen not only in worship services, but in the life of worshipers on an everyday basis. This is key to Paul’s thrust of making edification the driving force to worship. Paul develops this further in many places in scripture. One of these places is in chapter 9 of 1 Corinthians when he compares following Christ to the habits of a runner and a boxer. For Paul, living a lifestyle of worship involved the development of a consistent regimen of worship practices that take discipline in order to be successful. A marathon runner does not just run a race, he has to train. A boxer does not just box, he trains his whole body to work for the goal of winning. We too need to develop habits that train us in worship if we are going to succeed in living a life of worship. How can we do this?

The most important thing we can do is accept that the edification of the body of Christ is the only driving force to worship worth pursuing. While expression to God, evangelism of the lost, entering in to experience God, and the education of the believer are all a part of worship, they are not the driving force of it. It’s crucial that we see that all of these things are the affects of worship. They do not make worship effective. Edification is the one driving force that is heavily focused on letting the things in a worship service be driven by building up worshipers in effective ways that spill over into their daily habits and practices.

How can we make edification drive worship? If we are driving a car through the order of a worship service where would that car take us? What journey would best edify the local body of Christ?

Since developing habits and practices are key to edification, the car needs to drive worshipers through practices of worship that can be mimicked in their daily lives. This involves having elements of the complete scope of worship, discipleship, and evangelism. How can we do this?

Jesus Christ is the center of the totality of scripture. He is the one person that can be followed who can develop the right habits in our lives. If we are going to edify the body of Christ in the right way, the person of Jesus Christ needs to drive every element of the service. How can we allow Jesus do this? Until we see Jesus face to face, we worship by faith. We worship the person of Jesus that is presented in the scriptures. The whole bible concerns itself with one story that is centered on Jesus. This story is called the gospel, and it involves the following key things.

Jesus created the world perfect and walked with man face to face. Mankind sinned against God and wrecked God’s plan for glory in the world. In order for glory to be restored, there needed to be a perfect person to pay for the damage that man created. No human being is perfect, so Jesus Christ came to the world to die and rose from the grave in order to redeem the world back to God. One day, Christ is coming back to fully redeem the world and His Children to a face-to-face relationship with Him. Until that happens, the best way for us to let Christ be the driving force of worship is to center ourselves around His gospel story. As we do this, we will develop the habits and rhythms of adoration, confession, assurance, thanksgiving, petition, instruction, charge, and blessing. These things happen as we immerse ourselves in the story of Jesus in ways that form our daily rhythms and habits. The result of this is edification.

This is what we seek to do here at WBC as we allow the gospel to drive our worship. We seek to do this in a way that leads us through the whole story of Christ in the order in which we worship. The gospel is not just something to know with our minds or speak with our mouths. It is the way of true worship and the only real true way of life. We seek to point to this in our services so that we are all more fully edified in Christ in our daily lives.

In conclusion, it is true that worship is more than what happens on Sunday, but at the same time worship will never be more than what our services contain. What happens on Sunday forms all the other parts of the Christian life. Therefore a fully developed Christian life depends upon what is included in worship. This is why it’s important to let edification be the driving force of worship. Doing this will allow us to be continually formed by the whole story of the gospel so that our whole life will be more like Christ. As Psalm 115 says, we become what we worship. If we want to be like Christ, we have to worship Him and Him alone.

Psalm 115 

Not to us, O Lord, not to us, 

But to Your name give glory 

Because of Your lovingkindness, 

because of Your truth. 

2 Why should the nations say, 

“Where, now, is their God?” 

3 But our God is in the heavens; 

He does whatever He pleases. 

4 Their idols are silver and gold, 

The work of man’s hands. 

5 They have mouths, but they cannot speak; 

They have eyes, but they cannot see; 

6 They have ears, but they cannot hear; 

They have noses, but they cannot smell; 

7 They have hands, but they cannot feel; 

They have feet, but they cannot walk; 

They cannot make a sound with their throat. 

8 Those who make them will become like them, 

Everyone who trusts in them.

This Month's Focus

As we get going into the swing of things this new year, we hope to provide you some more ways to center yourself on Jesus Christ. This month we will look briefly at three questions: What Drives Worship? What Do You Worship? and What Do You Talk About? As we attempt to answer these questions, we hope to unpack ways that will shed some light on how we can more fully center our whole life on Jesus. As we begin, these words from Deuteronomy 5-6 are a good place to lay a foundation for this discussion.


6 ‘I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

7 ‘You shall have no other gods before Me.

8 ‘You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. 9 You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, 10 but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

11 ‘You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.

The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your sons 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 up. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.