The Marks of True Worship - Louie Giglio - Thirsty 06 Talk

How do you know if your church is a worshiping church?

Worship is what it’s all about, it’s all about God, but we make much of him when we worship.

If anything you want to be known as a worshiping church!

Some say - We want to be a missional church – missions isn’t the beginning or ending of anything, missions starts and ends with worship, missions is in the middle

Evangelism/Giving/teaching/discipline/innovative/whatever kind of church

What you really want to say is that we want to be a worshiping church, because that encompasses all the things we want to be about (like above list) when we ARE a worshiping church.

Two Baselines:

1. You are a worshiper! Everyone is a great worshiper (of something)

Worship is about giving glory (setting our affection) to what we value most.

Worship is a human activity, not a Christian thing (Romans 1 – exchanged truth of God for a lie…and they worshiped and served the creature instead of the creator…) worship went right on happening w/out God.

We are good at giving glory to STUFF, humanity is good at it.

The question – are you a TRUE worshiper?

Louie’s Definition of worship

“Worship is a full life response to the greatness and the grace of God”

Marks of True Worship (Romans 12:1-2)

1. Is God happy? - A preoccupation for God’s happiness
1. At the end of the day – worship for God (pleasing to God) in Romans 12:2
2. God decides if the worship is acceptable or not
2. Is there an aroma? – An acceptable offering of worship that is pleasing to God
1. Jesus offered himself as a fragrant aroma, an acceptable offering
2. This is our spiritual act of worship
3. Are we more concerned if they like it or if we like it, instead of wondering if it was a sweet sweet sound in his ear
4. Here’s the question – God, did you like it?
5. We don’t ask, ‘cause we’re afraid of the answer
6. Sometimes we need to stop singing, put our hands down and repent
3. Has it reached the least of these? – The mark of demonstration
1. Is worship still a meal for you?
2. Or is it fuel for missions?

It is trickling down to the least of these?

4. Are people alive? – Are people being turned upside down.
1. They’re seeing in color, not B&W
2. Are they talking about Jesus

For the worship programmers:

How prevalent is the work of the Spirit in you and in the planning of worship?

Distance worship from worship programming…you cannot program worship

You can program a worship service…

New Questions (the people sitting around deciding the logistics – what song’s are we going to sing)

1. Where are our ideas coming from?
1. Are we looking over there to those people,
2. Or are we looking up there to the face of God?
2. What do you want people to change? (As opposed to what do you want people to feel or experience – we need to worry less about vibe and feel)
3. What internally has to happen for that change to take place? (As opposed to what just has to happen externally for the program to work)
1. This could mean – we don’t need any music tonight
4. How prevalent is the work of the Holy Spirit in You and in the body dynamic?
1. In other words, is the question being surface a lot – where is the Holy Spirit? When he is moving and active – stuff happens