Potted or Planted: Worship

Good morning. Let me hear you say good morning.

This is different.

I'm thankful to be a part of this with you. If you're new here, man, I hope you'll just pop by the info desk today. There's some good people out there for you to say hello to. We love to meet you and I hope you come back. That's how we all got here.

We're another imperfect church on the block. But God's grace is sufficient for you and for us today. And for me. My name's Chris. I'm a fumbling forward follower of Jesus, husband to Amelia and father to Greta and Ellis John.

I love reading, but struggle to sit down and pick up the book. I love eating, but struggle to stop because. Ice cream. Oh, my gosh. My happy place is waking up in a cold tent, snuggling the kids in the hammock or a campfire.

Worship has been a vocation and a calling that's surprised me for more than 27 years. I've been held by God's hand hundreds and hundreds of times in planning and leading worship. I've gotten it right and I've gotten it wrong. I struggle with perfectionism, entitlement, disappointment, and the insatiable need to prove my worth to others. Let's add, I think, the Bengals to the list of struggles.

I don't know. Thursday was a lot of fun, though, wasn't it?

Yeah. I wish could have eaten one of those turkey legs myself. After that. I grew up a bit shy and unsure of myself. But I'm sure about one thing.

Today I'm in the palm of his hand whether I always feel like it or not. And that's grace for you? That's grace for me. Years ago, I was in a basketball league and had my Jordans on, and we just had grace written across our shirts. Grace.

And in the middle of a game, our sweet, kind of insane, small fan base just started kind of aggressively and uncomfortably chanting, grace. Grace in your face.

Let me hear you say grace. Grace in your face.

That's good, isn't it?

Grace. Grace in your face.

Let's pray. Holy God, we ask you to open our ears to hear and our eyes to see. For all those who feel near but are far. For all those who feel far but are near, come and reign today through your word. Amen.

In this fall teaching series, we've asked, will we remain potted spectators or become planted participants? A potted plant might live, but can only grow so far, its roots only go so deep. Isolated, walled off from the garden and Unattached, a planted life spreads into the shared soil of meaning and purpose and belonging. Rooting deep, known and loved. We walked through a handful of gospel practices.

The everyday rhythms of a planted life like prayer. What is it really and who can do it? The word of God. How to quit trying to reshape God's word and let God's word reshape us. Belonging, bearing with each other, carrying each other's burdens and celebrating each other's joys.

Generosity, our joyful response with hearts growing in gratitude and faith. Serving your maker has gifted you from for the sake of those around you and gathering both large like this and small, inconsistent, committed presence. We show up.

And here's the point of all of that. If we're going to grow in Christ Jesus in meaning and purpose and belonging, we cannot remain potted in casual consumption and critical observation and as half hearted, occasionally present warm bodies, we've got to be planted together.

Now today we're capstoning this beautiful season of study with a topic that isn't simply another gospel practice, but the reorientation of all spiritual practices toward God as those who were called God's beloved children. The posture that houses all gospel practices within the reality of God's worth. Today we're talking about worship. And everything we've been Talking about for 12 weeks gets its teeth here. Hang on tight.

We're gonna ring the bell a little bit. Hopefully we'll have a little bit of fun. But I pray that we all leave here on our knees.

Two weeks ago, Josh was teaching on prayer and pointed out that sometimes we have a hundred thoughts on prayer, if we're lucky, and a thousand questions. Well, I think when it comes to worship, the opposite is true. We have a thousand thoughts and not nearly enough questions. We relish our ideas about worship, don't we? Our personal standards of what flies at church and what just doesn't do it.

For me. The truth is, our human thinking about worship is often ridiculous.

We hold God's honor hostage with a ransom on our worship, a price tag hanging on our hearts and minds in a silent, subtle holding pattern until our weights and measures are satisfied if we're honest. Our weights and measures in worship are rooted in self worship. And that's the same game the world plays. A wolf in sheep's clothing, idolatry, normalized.

It's as if our worship can only be achieved in some sociological vacuum arranged just for me so I can have my personal experience in a house of cards meticulously arranged to move me.

As if the full Weight and reality of God himself is insufficient. Oh, worship was okay today.

I just couldn't worship insofar as we have fed that, ignored that, and excused that we need to repent.

We all have pictures in our minds of what worship should look like. Like this picture frame we've all hung up in our hearts, but we've never put our own distinct picture inside it. We let someone else put some other picture in it, or we put the wrong things in it all together. Like the Samaritan woman at the well in John chapter four who's stuck in her own cultures thinking about worship. And Jesus response to her is, you're thinking about it all wrong.

You're missing the mark.

Now imagine two things. First, the God of creation, the Alpha and Omega, brimming into his own creation with loving kindness and justice and mercy and beauty and wisdom and knowledge far, far beyond our ability to grasp and weigh and determine this Maker of the moon and the ever expanding depths and breadths of reality.

Now imagine this God from before time, inverting and submitting to my ideas about worship, kindly navigating my sophistication.

I just couldn't worship today.

That's not for me.

Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord. God is not human. He's not an intellectual competitor, not an equal. God does not live inside our linear time reality. He's not relegated to our five senses that perceive a fraction of reality.

God was and is and is to come. His presence goes before you and behind you and all around you and within you. And so, the moment that we insist that God's being, God's thoughts and God's actions must fit inside our frame of reasoning, we're unintentionally suggesting this.

No mind could possibly exist beyond mine.

I lose my phone 10 times a day.

Friends, what I've described, that's functional atheism.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come. Let's say that together out loud now. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come. Let's say it again. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come.

Almighty God of mercy and mystery. Christ Jesus, we worship you.

Let's get into it. Romans 12.

Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind in view of God's mercy. That's a humbled response.

Brennan Manning, author of the Ragamuffin Gospel, writes this.

God is not moody or capricious. He knows no seasons of change. He has a single relentless stance toward us. He loves us. He is the only God man has ever heard of who loves sinners.

So, in view of God's mercy, offer your body as a living sacrifice. That's an unrestricted whole body, whole self posture. Scripture calls that our true and proper worship, and then immediately warns, don't conform to the pattern of the world around you. Instead, be transformed with a renewed mind. 2nd Corinthians 5:17.

I love this. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. It's a new identity with a new perspective rooted in reality.

This is your true and proper worship. Henri Nouwen, author of one of my favorite books, Return of the Prodigal Son, writes this. And I just invite you just to close your eyes.

We are the beloved. We are intimately loved. Long before our parents, teachers, spouses, children and friends loved or wounded us. That's the truth of our lives, spoken by the voice that says, you are my beloved. I have called you by name.

On you my favor rests. I have carved you in the palms of my hands and hidden you in the shadow of my embrace. Wherever you go, I go with you. And wherever you rest, I keep watching. You belong to me.

I am your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your lover, and your spouse, yes, even your child. Wherever you are, I will be.

Worship is the spark and the echo of identity rooted in Christ, A constant remembering and rehearsing of reality that in Christ Jesus, God's self, we are the beloved daughters and sons of God. God, the utter and total source of identity and delight.

Worship is the spark and the echo of belovedness. Hmm. It's the cause and the result of every other gospel practice we've studied. And so all true and proper worship is born out of this position and posture. I am the beloved.

Let me hear you say, I am the beloved that's eternal right now. Covenant. Identity in God. You get that?

Brennan Manning says, define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.

And so true and proper worship is an utterance by utterance, song by song, choice by choice. Return to your first and final identity as the beloved in God's holy garden. Shalom. Shalom. Identity and delight.

A spark, an utterance, an echo.

Worship is our ongoing position as the beloved. An ongoing posture of awe, delight, dependence and pleasure that names God as the Source. We get that wrong a lot, don't we? We praise created things, but the beloved child praises the Creator. When my son Ellis, brings me his latest Lego creation, I don't heap praise on the Legos.

I praise the make for the sunrise, the first sip of coffee, my bare feet in the cold grass. Or the touch of sun sending pleasure through your nerve endings into your whole body. The willow tree, the laughing child. The surge of the orchestra. The silent harvest in the garden.

The cool pillow in the new morning. Lungs swollen with bright, clean air. Thank you, Father. Thank you.

That's not real life, Chris. We all feel the enduring friction of a life spent, wounded and wanting. We watch the news. It's breaking. And honestly, I don't even have time to think about that.

I gotta go to the thing at the place. I don't even know how I'm gonna pay that bill or cook another meal or fold those five baskets of laundry or. Or please all the people I'm supposed to please. While my life is being obscured into meaningless moments, I'm a slave to a fake world with real problems. When I feel like that several times a day, I remember this moment that happened in our backyard in Tennessee.

I'll tell you the story. I looked over across the yard and one of my children, who will remain nameless, was on our little wooden swing set. Lying all the way back, gripping the chains, legs outstretched, wearing nothing but the clothes she was born in.

Head back swinging, watching the world upside down. Free as a bird, filled with unsophisticated delight. Teaching her daddy about the real world. Fast forward just to last month. We'd been camping for a few days.

Greta and Ellis were at the playground. I finally finished packing up. I'm sweaty and anxious. It's time to go. I head down the path to tell them it's time to leave.

And I see the swings.

And I remember.

My beloved child swinging naked as a bird into the upside down Tennessee sky.

Without a word, I got on the swing and started swinging fully. Cl.

I laid my head back and watched the beautiful upside down October world. Sunlight, clouds, tree and sky.

My fake problems all fell into order for a moment. And I noticed the spark. Who I really am. Beloved child. And I felt the echo of unsophisticated delight.

Spark and echo. Another story, real quick. Just go with me for a sec. Just close your eyes. I saw this video and I just Want to describe it to you?

A massive arena. Just picture it, a massive arena. The lights are dimmed just right. The worship band is singing. The Lord bless you and keep you.

Hands are raised across a sea of worshipers lost in the moment. I hope you're picturing that. Slowly the camera zooms into the crowd and you see a man moving along with the beat of the song. And he's just going to town on a giant ice cream cone.

He's not just getting started. He's not like, bringing it in to finish. He walked in with a whole ice cream cone. Probably Grater's mint chocolate chip. The Lord bless you.

Lost in the crowd, the unsophisticated delight of the Beloved.

First Chronicles 16:29. Would you read this one out loud with me? Let's read. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name. Bring an offering and come before him.

Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness. Unsophisticated delight ascribes to the Lord the good and the beautiful and the delicious and the inspiring and the moving and the in the quiet wonder of sunsets and hummingbirds or a well designed home or beautifully engineered car or poem or novel. Touch. Pleasure. Song.

Thank you, Father. Let me hear you say, thank you, Father. Thank you. Women, you are the beloved daughters of God Almighty. Men, you and I are the beloved sons of God.

Everywhere, all the time. Don't get lost in your own sophistication. Relax. Beloved unsophisticated delight. Now, sounds great, right?

But what are the real everyday obstacles to true and proper worship? Number one, this is a quick one. We forget that God is God. God's not human. We're not God.

And so, contrary to our skin and bones and blood and water and carbon and our wonderful ability to see, hear, touch, smell and taste, it's humility. That's the highest form of spiritual intelligence.

God is God. We forget obstacle number two. We forget who we are. We live out a false life from a false self, detached from the source, focused on and feeding on a passing world. Lacking spiritual responsibility and personal devotion.

We forget who we are. And so we conform and live fragmented, distracted lives. We love our distractions, don't we? We love to focus on anything or nothing to keep us comfortable or to guard us from intimacy. Check this out.

Especially in worship.

Oh, there was a lot of distractions today during worship. Here's the truth. You're distractible. I'm distractable.

Satan, the prince of all darkness and violence and evil, loves a distractible heart. The world is discipling weak, distracted hearts. Careful there, Friends. When we lose sight of our identity as the Beloved, we fall into spiritual inertia. That just means when we're moved, we're moved.

When we're not, we're not. But your worship will only be as robust and meaningful and beautiful and powerful and worthwhile and focused as your own experience of truth and grace. As the Beloved. We walk into rooms like this every day with our fingers crossed, waiting to be moved by external forces. The right leader, the right song.

Ravenous for a well performed external force that will move me from my unmoved state.

That's not the church's job. Friends.

Your church is not working to conjure a response from you on the outside. That's not happening already on the inside.

Think about this. You go up to Michael's craft store because it's incredible and they have incredible sales on picture frames all the time. By the way, you've been shopping for a great picture frame for a while and finally you see this big, well built, attractive frame. It's got that stock photo of those strangers in it. They look good.

I like it. I buy it, I take it home, I hang it up. Awesome. What's the problem?

The photo inside the frame isn't yours.

That picture is just there to show you what could go in the frame. And so this church, the music, all the planning and the environment, it's just a frame. And it's nice. Somebody's working really hard to fill that frame. But it's place holding.

You've got to put your own picture in it. Your own heart, your distinct belovedness. That's what goes in the frame.

And so when we forget who we are as the Beloved, we run full speed into our next obstacle to true and proper worship. It's destructive and pretty widely practiced by us.

Obstacle number three, Comparison. We do this every day. Sizing ourselves up and sizing each other up to some unspoken, unagreed upon shifting standard that conveniently looks like me or looks like what I wish I looked like. At its most benign comparison is the path to shame and self rejection.

They've got something I don't, right? I look over. Or I scroll through the fake world and think awful degrading thoughts. I don't measure up to whatever that is.

Listen.

Comparison is a lie that replaces God's creative heart for his beloved children with a type of soulless, image obsessed measuring stick that doesn't exist in God's kingdom.

Like that generic picture in the frame that's not yours.

Or maybe you're Standing there during our worship thinking, I used to have that and I don't know how to get it back. They must have some kind of spiritual antenna that I don't.

One of my favorite authors and Trappist monk Thomas Merton says.

God removes our sense of God's presence when our sense of God's presence becomes to us what God is.

God removes our sense of God's presence when our sense of God's presence becomes to us what God is.

God is God. And occurs to each of us differently, growing each of us uniquely, removing idols, even things we thought were good, removing them for our sake. And so when we forget who we are as the beloved, comparison trades our unique relationship with God for shame and self rejection. Henri Nouwen reminds us, I am the chosen child of God, called the beloved from all eternity and held safe in an everlasting embrace. And, and so self rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the beloved.

That's comparison at its most benign. Let me hear you say I am the beloved.

Some of you didn't say it. Let me hear you say I am the beloved. I am your beloved.

At its most malignant comparison poisons and corrodes my heart with critical arrogance. This one isn't, they have something I don't. It's they're crazy and I'm not. Maybe for you it's I used to look like that or worship like that, but I'm more mature now. Listen, there's no place for critical arrogance in true and proper worship.

I've led worship a lot of times in a lot of places. And this moment from 20 years ago still burned in my memory. We were singing How Great Thou Art, an all time great. The room was full and we were heading into that big final chorus. Then sings my There it is.

You hit the note and right in front of me is a man that I loved and respected. And I'm watching and he lifts his hands and takes a sip of his coffee.

Standing there sipping coffee and I remember thinking, what an idiot. Are you unmoved?

Okay, now I'm not here to talk about that man's heart. I'm talking about mine.

That same season, my friend Ann and her husband Mark had me over for dinner and I was venting about someone or something that had disappointed me. And my wonderful friend Anne, she's a really good friend, just almost burst out in loving kindness and said, chris, you are not the standard.

At its most malignant comparison poisons and corrodes My heart with critical arrogance. I am not the standard.

Friends stop observing and evaluating in worship.

If we sense critical comparison in our heart, when we think about our own spiritual maturity, we aren't worshiping Jesus. We're worshiping our own image again. Humility is the highest form of spiritual intelligence and the beginning of true and proper worship. London School of Theology Professor Alistair Begg says it this Tune in, Fess up and bow down.

Grace, grace in your face.

Our obstacles on the path to true and proper worship. We forget that God is God. And because of that, we forget who we are. And because of that comparison.

So here's our two part challenge. First, delight every day that you are the beloved. While every human thing in our world will lead you directly away from that.

Here's your homework. Memorize Psalm 37:4. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. That doesn't mean that God is going to fulfill all your desires. It doesn't.

It means if you're paying attention to God, he's going to put better desires into your heart until you're uttering at every turn.

Thank you, Father. Let me hear you say, thank you, Father. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for the sun on my skin and the breath in my lungs. Unsophisticated delight is high praise.

Eat some ice cream and thank God.

Here's the cool part. As you delight in God and come to see yourself as the beloved, you'll start seeing those around you as the beloved. Henri Nouwen writes, when you know yourself as the beloved, you can love others without fear. And I'll add, without comparison.

So delight every day that you are the beloved. And finally, commit to being planted in community. We show up. We don't flake on church. The gathering of the beloved daughters and sons of God is critical, not optional, to your spiritual, mental and emotional sanity and to the well being of everyone else around you.

Belonging is always mutual. Our belonging is tied up in each other's belonging.

Man the church and the people around me are not my commodity to consume. The church and the people around me are not my commodity to consume. And the universally real worthiness of God is not a food that I may or may not be in the mood for that morning pre decide that this is part of your rhythm. It's not an extra, it's an essential. Grow up spiritually and agree with yourself that this matters.

Take ownership. Show up. Take initiative. Our challenge takes delight every day that you are the beloved. Commit to being planted in community.

Friends, you are the beloved.

And the unsophisticated delight of the Beloved is high praise in the Maker's heart.

Will you stand with me? Let's close together in Hebrews 10. Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain that is through his flesh and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Finish up out loud with me. Let's read this together.

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near, let's continue in our worship. Friends.