Worship Is Love Expressed __ 24Ever (Part 2)

1:07 Man, I am so excited that you are in the building today. And we believe that this is not an accident, that it's on purpose, and God has something specific for you. So I do not care how you got here. I don't care who bribed you to come and who invited you. We believe God's going to meet you today. And we are in week two of a sermon series that we are calling 20 Forever, How to Worship the King. And I don't know about you, if you were not here last week, you missed it. Because God came and he spoke to us. And really this whole concept around worship is stemming from a burden that I have. Like, like I have a burden that a lot of people who claim to know God and claim to have a relationship with him don't understand some of the primary functions of having a thriving, alive relationship with God. And I've been in church all my life, and that may not be your testimony, and that's okay.

2:08 Because there are many people that are finding out about Jesus and accepting him every week here. And this is why this church exists. So you don't have to, you don't have to belong or you don't have to behave before you belong here. We're glad that you're here. But from somebody who's grown up in church, somebody who's been around, there are certain things that have never been explained to me. And worship was one of those things. Like, like you're supposed to do it. Like most times I thought it was the two slow songs in the beginning of service. But like, as I began to study the scriptures, I found out that worship was so much more expansive, so much more close to the heart of God. And honestly, the reason why this series is so important is because worship is the only thing that we can give to God. Like worship is the only thing that has nothing to do with us. Prayer that has to do with us being helped and communicated with.

3:05 The Bible is an instruction manual for us. Even us giving is a way for God to bless us. But when we worship God, it's the only thing that is only for him. And there are thousands of people gathering in churches right now and not giving God the one thing that they could give him today. Their worship. Because they didn't play your song. Or because you didn't really feel like it today. I'm trying to raise up a church and a group of people who do not consult their feelings to decide if God is worth your praise. Matter of fact, let's take five seconds right now and let's shake off everything you've been going through today. And let's give God a shout of praise, a shout of worship. Oh, come on. I know this is unusual for you, but lift your hands. Give God a shout of praise.

3:58 God, you are worthy and we love you. See, the thing that I'm trying to do is I'm trying to get you comfortably uncomfortable. I want you to start living a life where how you feel does not determine what you do. Like I've been in a gym this week and I hate it. Let me be very clear to everybody. I'm sore as we speak, okay? but every morning when I get up at 5 30 to make it to the gym at six o'clock in the morning I never feel like it not one time have I felt like it but I knew that when I did it something was going to transform in me now you can't see it yet okay but it's transforming the thing is every time that I don't consult how I feel and I begin to worship God, something transforms in me. My attitude transforms. My perspective transforms. When I am hot and bothered and lustful thoughts begin to come into my mind, oh, a pastor not supposed to have those. But I'm telling you that before I'm a man of God, I'm a man. And I have to still go to God. And when I worship him, it transforms my thoughts all I'm trying to say maybe worship is a weapon maybe worship is not a ritual that we do maybe it's a weapon that we should pick up every single day and I just know for transformation church one of the things that you may or may not know is that we have some core beliefs and are we we call them here at transformation church our culture code that there are things that that we've built this church on. And the reason I'm teaching on this is because worship is one of those things.

5:50 We have culture codes like love. We love first. Like that's what we do. That's why you can come in here off of drugs. You can come out of here out of an adulterous relationship and we're going to love you first. Now we're going to help you and we don't want you to stay the same, but we're going to love first. Everybody say we love first. We have a culture code of faith here. And this is what the statement says. It says we have faith in God, faith in people, and faith for miracles. We're a church that believes in these things so the vision can live. You have to have a culture so the vision can live. And so one of our culture codes is worship. And the statement that goes along with this is so simple. It says we use our lives to express God's worth. We don't use a song. we use our lives and last week we talked about worship is one of those things that has been relegated to a song but it's much more than much more than a song and and today we're going to just keep going on that same track and and and move down the road on what worship is and I want you to write down this definition of worship because I want you to have the wisdom to do it okay worship is our love expressed everybody say love expressed say it like you mean it say love expressed worship is our love expressed to God as a response to his grace towards us we learned last week that that that worship starts with love so so many of us came to the altar last week and cried out I mean it was the most beautiful picture of people saying, you know what? My love has been leaking.

7:33 I've let situations and circumstances poke holes in my love, but I can't worship God without love. So God replaced my heart. Give me a new heart. Searching me. And y'all, something shifted in our church last week. But now that we have love for God, we have to express it. So the title of today's message is Worship is Love Expressed. And I want you to turn with me to Deuteronomy chapter 11 verse 1 and pay attention to everywhere that it says love and then they're going to give a different way of how we express that love. Let's look at it. Verse 1 it says you must love the Lord your God and always obey. Obey his requirements, decrees, regulations, and commands. I want you to go down to verse 13 and I'm going to show it to you there. It says if you carefully obey the commands I'm giving you today, if you, here's the word again, love the Lord your God, and look how we're going to express it, serve. And actually the Hebrew word for serve right here is literally translated worship. So if we're going to love God and serve him or worship him with all our heart and all of our soul, go to verse 22. I'm going to show you one more scripture. It says, be careful to obey all these commands I'm giving you and show love to the Lord your God by, look how we're going to express it walking in his ways and holding tightly to him what I'm trying to say and what I believe the scripture is trying to convey is that worship really is a love expressed in verse one it was love God and express it through obedience that means when you obey God when you like return the tithe because his word tells us to do that give 10% back to God return it back to him we're obeying him and that is a form of worship or when we look at verse 13 and it says love God and express it through service so when we're working in the parking lot when we're serving tc kids when we are serving our fellow co-workers when we are serving our enemies that's what happens to be

9:38 in our scripture that we consider the word of God that's called worship because you're loving God and expressing it. And my favorite one, verse 22 says, love God and express it through walking in his ways. What I'm trying to tell you is when you live upright, that is worship to God because you're expressing it to him. What I'm trying to get in this whole thing, take it full screen. I need everybody to see this right now. It is not worship if it's not love and it's not worship if it's not expressed. You would not imagine how many people I meet standing cold faced in the presence of God and they'd be like, I love God. And I'm like, nothing about your attitude, your atmosphere, your face, it doesn't express anything. Have you met anybody that stands like this and like I'm happy. Well, notify your face that you're happy. And this is how many believers do in their worship to God. They say they have something that they never express.

10:48 But let me talk to all the married people in the room. If you say you love somebody and you never express it, that's not a good marriage. Like what happens, and forget marriage, just say relationship. If you say you love somebody and you never show them in any way, it will not be a long lasting relationship and it will not be a good relationship. The reason that I found this out is because many times when I do marriage counseling, a lot of the problem is that what's in people's heart never comes out in their hands.

11:21 What's in their heart never comes out of their mouth. What's in their heart never sacrifices themselves. and when it comes to our worship to God you have to understand you may love him but it is not worship until you express it to him and so today I want to dig deeper into this like what if I was in a relationship and I said to my wife I told you I loved you 20 years ago I'll let you know when something changes I would be single faster than an NBA player that lost his contract you hear what I'm saying? I would be single. But could you imagine how it feels when somebody says, I love you, God, when they first get saved and they don't express it for another 15 to 20 years? Or what does it look like when we're praying for blessings and we're asking God, what are you trying to say, Pastor Mike? All I'm trying to say is the love that God's given us when he sent his son to the cross who gave us grace when we didn't deserve it, who knows what you did this past week and you've been hiding it from everybody else, but he still says he loves you, even with all the baggage you walked in here today.

12:28 I'm telling you that that God deserves to have love expressed to him. Can I get somebody just right now to take one more second and express your love to God? Tell him, I love you, God. I worship you, Father. You're a good father. Pastor Mike, why are you taking these moments? Because I want this to be an interactive service. I don't want you to just sit there and be like, oh, this is good. This is really good. This is we're trying to get you to express it.

13:00 Because what you express reinforces what you believe. Hear what I'm saying to you. What you express reinforces what you believe. if I don't want my daughter to do something and I express it in a tone that that that makes her jump Isabella stop it now I just use my words and express to her to reinforce what I want her to be able to do the same thing when we say God I love you and I lift my hands and I don't care who's around me I reinforce what is in my heart does everybody understand what I'm saying and what I'm trying to make us not be are passive believers I think one of the biggest epidemics in the world today are believers who will not will not express how they feel about God dependent on who's around them. So God meets your need, but I'm in front of somebody who I want to like me and care about my status. And so I'll deny my relationship with God to impress somebody that doesn't even know me.

14:18 but the thing about have you ever seen anybody who's really in love like puppy love they don't care who know i mean you've seen people who annoying kiss and and and like you you eat it no you eat it and you you public displays of effect they have no problem expressing to somebody who they don't even have history with yet, who has never even really sacrificed for them. But our God has sacrificed his only son for us, and it's worth us. Everybody say expressing. Okay, so I want you to understand this, that love has to be expressed. Write it down just like that. Love has to be expressed. I'm giving free marital advice right now. Husband, she knows you love her, but when you express it, it reinforces you love her.

15:18 Like you've been waiting for her to change, and she needs for you to express it. It works in every arena. And so our love has to be expressed.

15:58 Now, let me give you a definition of express because this is going to take it down the road just a little further. I love the dictionary. Look what the word express means to convey a thought or a feeling in words, gestures and conduct. OK, I'm going to break that down and I want to talk about how we express to God to convey a thought or a feeling. My love for God. That's our thought of our feeling. I love God. He's been so good. But I have to convey it in words, gestures and conduct. The word convey means to communicate. So when I come to worship and remember, worship is love expressed. I have to take what I feel on the inside and I have to communicate it, convey it on the outside. well pastor mike i'm just more of a reserved person i didn't give you a volume that you have to convey it at i did not give you a a a level of enthusiasm but i did say what's on the inside has to come to the outside okay so i have to communicate it but then the first word i love it says through words so when we come into worship not not just the worship experience but when i wake up to worship, you missed it. Not the worship experience in here with the lights and the music, but when I wake up to worship, the first thing I can worship with or how I express it is with words.

17:36 How would you just tell somebody you love, you feel about them? I tell my wife every day, I love you. There's nobody like you. Every day I get to wake up, I am blessed because you are right here. If you leave me, I do not know what I'm going to do because there's nobody in the world like you. Use your words and express your love to God. God, I love you. There is nobody in the world like you. I don't know what I would do without. I'm trying to help somebody. I want to give you practical steps right here. Father, if it wasn't for your grace, I don't know where I would be. And today, Father, just like I did the day before, I want to thank you for being good. I want to thank you for sending me a care package every morning called grace and mercy. And God, I thank you that today as I walk through this day, you won't leave me.

18:35 You always with me. You're always. Come on, y'all. You're expressing with your words. You're feeling or your thought of love. and so when we come in this place and the worship leader says come on let's worship God a lot of people do this and that is a way that we're going to talk about worship but do you know the highest form of worship is when you open your mouth the bible tells us life and death is in the power of the what like like like the same words I use to express love to my wife could be the same words that send her into depression if I'm speaking death. And God says, I would rather you talk to me about who I am to you, not just what I do for you. See, the crazy thing about many people is we haven't widened our span or widened our vocabulary of worship.

19:33 So all we end up doing is thanking God for what he did. But what would happen if somebody only talked to you because of what you did? not for who you are like like what if what if my daughter came up to me and said daddy thank you for just providing sandwiches thank you for getting me this backpack thank you for for just being um the one that gets um um our our house together like but she never said thank you for being my dad thank you for loving me thank you for always listening like i want us to move beyond just thanking God for what he does and thank God for who he is. When we sing the song, you're a good, good father. The reason why that's so powerful is because that is worship that is going straight to the ears of our father, that we're not praising him. You're a good, good provider. Like, like, not just what you give me with your hand, but what you give me with your face, God, you are the reward of my worship. You are the, I got your name. Like, and that's where we have to move because if we don't move there, we'll only express if we have enough. Like, so if we feel like God's given us enough blessing, then we'll express to him. And God says, am I enough? And I'm just challenging everybody that we need to start expressing our words or expressing our love to God, communicating through our words. And then look at the next one. It says, communicate through your words, how you speak to God, and then gestures.

21:13 Thank you, Lord. Ah, yes. Like all of those things that I just did are worship to God. See, what ends up happening is you see some people start doing it. And this is what a lot of people say. It don't take all that. But you don't know what God rescued them out of. You don't know what these hands used to do. You have no clue what this body used to do. And so when I start lifting hands, that's a sign that I'm free from the shackles that I used to be in. That's a sign that I've turned around, that I'm not in the same place. When I shout, it's not because I'm trying to impress you. It's because I'm trying to worship my God. And what you have to understand is that worship is not just what comes out of our mouth. Worship is what we do with our body.

22:10 Come help me real quick, okay? I want you to see this. This is Josh. Everybody say hi, Josh. Josh is a dancer. And I want you to just see something real quick. Because there are people who express themselves without words. What happens if your vocal cords were taken away from you? or you were born, as many people are, with the ability not to be able to speak. But then the word says, let everything that have breath. I can't talk, but I have breath. I'm living, but I can't use my words. It says, let everything that have breath praise the Lord. So I just want you to see this. If Josh, you could somehow communicate. Don't speak, don't talk, don't say nothing.

23:02 but I want to see if you can communicate a feeling or a thought because remember that's what expression is communicating a feeling or a thought through words but right now we don't got them or gestures so Josh if I said I need you to express joy through dance how would you express joy come on give it to me oh oh oh oh oh oh oh yeah Give it up for him real quick. OK. Now, Josh, you express joy and you didn't say anything. But if somebody saw him, they wouldn't think he was sad. Because he used his body to express what he was feeling on the inside. Now, Josh, OK, I want you to just tap in. I know this is not you, but if you were expressing being mad or angry or upset, what would that look like in expressing ingesture?

24:05 that's demonic stop it that's demonic that is demonic but did you get the feeling of what he was feeling with no words with the gestures that he was able to give off of his body. Josh, one more. Could you express love? Like however it translates to you, how would you express love? Your beautiful wife is here. Can you come up here real quick, Toya? Come here. Y'all give it up for Toya real fast. Come on, come on, come on. Now, this is unscripted. So I need you. How would you, now, okay? This is a child-friendly church service, okay? But just in a dance, okay?

24:58 How would you express love with your wife? How would you convey that? Oh, okay. Okay. I see what they're doing. I see what they're doing. The salsa. Okay. They were practicing. Will y'all give it up for Josh and Toya? Thank y'all. Listen, all I'm trying to say to you is that if we had no words, we could worship.

25:23 With bronchitis, you can worship. with not feeling like everybody would under, in a different language. If you go to Guatemala and don't understand one word, you can lift your hands. You can be able, oh, y'all better. You can clap your hands. You can stomp your feet. You can run around and express worship to your God. Will you take two seconds and express your worship to God? Come on, lift your hand. God, we love you. God we worship you God listen listen listen y'all sit down sit down sit down I need y'all to get this because if you don't understand that worship is love expressed you will not use all the weapons God's given you to overcome in this world as well as the one thing that we can give to God and then look at this I love it It says convey or communicate in words how I speak to God and in gestures, lifting my hands, clapping, pumping my fist.

26:34 Then look at this last word and conduct. The way you live. This is my favorite part because worship is more than what I say. It's more than how I move. You like that? it's how I live and this is where most Christians get messed up because they want worship to happen in a service and they want worship to be relegated to the church building but God says how you conduct yourself outside of the church what how you live how you talk to people who are rude to you, how you do what you do when nobody's looking called integrity, how you treat people and talk about them when they don't listen. If you lie on your taxes, all of those things are forms of worship submitted to me if they're done with the right heart.

27:39 And so I realized like, like when I treat my wife right, I'm worshiping God. no I need you to hear me say it again like like when I steward over my money I'm not just saving a nest egg for one big day I'm stewarding over what God gave me and it's worship to him I need you to hear me when you when you are are responsible over relationship God trusts you with, you are worshiping him in the way you live your life.

28:46 And this is where I want to camp out because everybody gets this excuse that I'm not that expressive. I'm shy. And you know I'm a pastor that's coming straight for it. Okay, shy and not that expressive are a set of patterns that you have developed over a long period of time that allowed you to escape maybe what you could have been because of how it felt in the moment. And so you didn't do it that one time and then you didn't do it the next time and then you didn't do it the next time and now you're 40 and you're shy. And many of us are using excuses that really are patterns that need to be broken to not do everything that God has called us to do. So I'm going to help you today. It's funny that the same people that say they're not that expressive or they're shy or they just don't do all of that. If you take them out of a church environment or you take them out of an environment where they're supposed to worship God.

29:44 And maybe you just take them to the Super Bowl, the NBA finals. You take them to a Taylor Swift Beyonce concert. You take them to a Kenny Chesney or a who else Kanye concert. Somehow they start lifting their hands, using their words. They start conveying their love. So this is the point I want to make to you. Everybody's a worshiper, but not everybody worships the right thing. you were created to worship and you're gonna worship something the problem is many of us are worshiping the thing that has done nothing for us many of us are worshiping celebrities who who just take from us you paid 180 for that bruno mars ticket and he didn't give you nothing back except some 24 carrot magic do you hear what i'm saying to you like like and we will we will express our love scream shout i love you Can you let that sink in?

30:54 How people every day are going to go to a game, pay money and express their love for a group of people who do not care about you and are literally playing a game. And I have nothing against sports and nothing against concerts, nothing against it. But if those are the only thing you're worshiping, you've missed the whole point.

31:22 My worship, your worship is supposed to be love expressed to our God, not for what he's going to do, but for what he already did by sending Jesus to die for us. And that's why I want everybody to know the question is not if you are a worshiper. The question is whom or what do you worship? and that's kind of what I want you to sit with today because some of you are going to express your love to money as soon as tax season comes around I mean you get that bonus and people start acting a fool you're gonna buy a big screen tv you're gonna get a new car you're gonna do this and we start expressing our love to things that never have expressed their love to us first church I want us to become a church who realizes in the view of grace that everything that we can do even looking a little crazy in other people's opinion is worth it for what God has already done for us and I made a decision about three years ago that I would never let anybody stop me from expressing my love to God no matter where I'm at if you find me in a worship service no matter where I am in the U.S. or in other countries, somewhere in that worship service, I get down on my knees just like this. And I go like this. And I'm talking, I've done it with celebrities sitting next to me. I've done it with people who I respected and didn't think it took all of that.

32:53 I did it. But I said, I will never let a man or a woman stop me from expressing my love to God. and before I step on platforms and before I go I will sit there and I'll cry out to God and I'll hold my heart and I'll say God you're worthy I don't care how expensive the clothes I'm in I don't care if I'm wearing white jeans I don't care I do not care what it is I get on my knees and I express my love to God why because he's worth it you gotta understand the word worship Break it down. It's worth-ship. Is God worth it? And if you don't think he's worth it, you need to serve another God. And come back and tell me how that worked out. But if he's worth it.

34:17 Check your embarrassment at the door. Check your credentials. well I make this much money and I'm dignified and I wear these type of suits and I can't let my clients see. They weren't there for you when you almost lost your marriage and God restored you and now you're going to tell me that because of what somebody may think you would hold back the only thing you could give to God your worship. I'm challenging you today church because I do not want us to have a form of godliness and have no power. And many of us are missing the wisdom to worship. I want to show you where this whole thing started because what I'm sadly finding is that a lot of our dysfunction in our Christian life comes from a natural dysfunction in our family. And I'm not going to try to have a psychology Dr. Phil moment right now because everybody be crying talking about my cousin Jimmy. Like we're not going to do that right now. But what I am going to say is that one of the main reasons I don't believe people worship or express their love is because they grew up in a family that did not express their love regularly.

35:34 A lot of people grew up in households that you just knew daddy loved you, but he never said it. Or you knew it was based on your performance, not who you were. And that's why we come into the presence of God and we put on a performance and that's where we wear masks. And we were never allowed to tell our mothers, our fathers, our parentals what really happened because we know we would get in trouble. So we held back from what we really needed them for because we thought it was going to make us not worthy in their eyes. And so all of these different things. And so when we come to God, we still try to hide stuff. And when we come to God, we won't express our love because we never really expressed our love. unless we did something good. But what happens when you worship and you've done the worst thing you've ever done? Pastor Mike, can you do that?

36:27 Listen to me. God sees you. Your father sees you in every situation that you go through. And he's a father that doesn't want you to go away and fix it by yourself. He's a father that wants you to come to him and allow him to help you fix it. And when we understand that, that grace, that's what that is, is grace. Y'all remember the prodigal son story where this man goes out and squanders everything that he ever had. And then the father welcomes him back with loving arms, doesn't make him a slave, gives him a ring, gives him sandals, gives him a robe, gives him all of this other stuff. And that was grace. All the son could do in response is express his love to the father. It's the same thing that we have to do as believers. I'm going to show you a scripture in Genesis 4.25 where worship first started.

37:24 Most people don't know this, but this is the first time man ever worshiped God. And I want you to see this and I want you to see why it happened, okay? Genesis chapter 4 verse 25, it says, Adam had sexual relations with his wife again and she gave birth to another son. She named him Seth, for she said, God has granted me another son in place of Abel. Y'all remember Cain killed Abel at the beginning, okay? So they had another son. Nobody talks about Seth, but this is the first time worship started. Look, it says, verse 26, when Seth grew up, he had a son named Enosh. And at this time, people first began to worship the Lord by name. Let me say it a different way. In the message version, it says that's when men and women begin praying and worshiping in the name of God. Let me tell you what happened before this.

38:18 Adam, Eve, Cain, all they were doing at the beginning was answering questions. Who told you that you were naked? Where are you at, Adam? Cain, where's your brother Abel? All they were doing was answering questions. but at this time was the first time that they stopped answering questions and they were not just the reciprocators of information to regurgitate they initiated the conversation and the first time this happened is when God says there's worship because the angels are worshiping me but they don't have a choice but when you worship me it came out of the decision not to just answer questions or not to just ask me for things that came out of your decision to tell me how much you love me. What I'm telling you today is it was God's plan from the very beginning that love always be expressed. And all I'm here to tell you, church, is God's longing for you to express your worship to him. I'm not even, I'm five words into our anchor definition for this whole series that that worship is our love everybody say expressed so the crazy thing about this is that because God starts to express his love to you through the cross through how he blesses you when we don't deserve it through grace I don't know how you could hear or see all that God's done and not be moved in some way to express it back to him.

40:04 Last week, something very interesting happened that I did not plan. That in the six o'clock service, I was up here. I gave him this example in every other service. And I started talking about my daughter, Bella. And I started talking about how she randomly comes up to me and says, Daddy, I love you. And I start telling this whole story. and somebody brought her, one of our assistants brought her into the service because we were gonna leave right after service and she just happened to hear me talking about how it made me feel when she would express her love to me and they pulled out a video camera and taped her expression while I was in the pulpit talking and she was in the very back of the auditorium, just listen. I've never seen my daughter make this face in her whole life. she was overwhelmed with emotion. And I didn't even know it until like four hours afterwards.

41:01 And after this clip, I want to show you what happened. My daughter will randomly come up to me when we're not doing anything and look me in my face and grab my face and say, I love you, Daddy. what what is that saying she didn't have to do that she had a choice to do it and the only other thing she can do to express her love to me is live her life in a way outside of my presence that tells other people she was in my presence that's why when you go to your job you gotta act like you've been in his presence because that's worship. It's not worship because I'm in his presence. When she goes away and spends the night at somebody's house and they come back and tell me she's so well-mannered, she's expressing her love to me because she represented me when I wasn't even there. what I'm telling you as a church we're going back to the heart of worship where it's all about him can we sing that one more time as a church say I'm coming back wasn't that the most beautiful thing ever listen listen listen listen but before I saw this footage when I went to the back and we were getting into the car she said daddy I heard you talking about me and I love that you love me and she said you're the best father in the world now that may not be true but all it did for me is let me know that my child truly loves her father and there's about five six seven eight hundred of us in here and he our daddy needs to know that his kids love him can we all over this place right now stand to our feet and begin to express our love to God come on use your words use your gestures

43:13 come on use the way you live use how you walk out of here use how you treat people God we want you to know that we love you not father by just what you do for us but just because of who you are thank you father God that we will no longer be embarrassed to express our love to you no matter who's there no matter what's happened no matter what we've done you're still worth our praise and God today God we make a decision to express our love to you every day because you're worth it thank you for all you're doing in Jesus name come on can somebody worship God