Making Space

Pastor Jeff and Cheryl Orluck

Jeff: Oh, the wonders of technology. Yeah, the Hope radio hour, we've got some new faces that are going to be in it. I've got a feeling that we are going to be retiring The Orluck Brothers comedy. My brother's in Florida. Carl is going to be in Hungary. But we scored a great new writer. Mary Gibson is writing for us and she is amazing. She has written a skit that's going to have us all rolling in the ground, laughing. We've got a few new actors that are going to join the team for the comedy portion. It should be a lot of fun. And of course we know the music here is always amazing. So it's going to have a dessert intermission, no dinner, and it's just come with an offering. Everything that we take in the offering after we do free the basic costs of the event, which aren't a lot, is going to go to the Hope Children's Home in Uganda. We are hoping to raise a tidy sum to send them. Every year at Christmas, we look forward to sending them a few thousand dollars to help them with the needs that they have. Of course, especially this year with Linda going through everything she has been going through where we really want to give them a boost. You can start saving your shekels for that offering right now.

We are going to talk about worship. That's not a unheard of topic. And for many of us who have, uh, spent much of our lives in the charismatic culture of worship, a lot of this is not new. The Lord just awakened some new thoughts about the value of corporate worship. We are in a season where a lot of a lot of the church has exited the church. They haven't stopped loving Jesus, but they are done with church. In fact, there is a name for those kinds of people. It's called the doners: done with church, but now with Jesus. That's unfortunate. I mean, it partly is because of— we've heard from this platform from many people, over the last couple of years, the whole idea of the fact that the church has done a good job of misrepresenting Jesus throughout history.

There has been a lot of fallout because of that. A part of the fallout in recent years is just the wounds that have caused to people who have attended church. After you get beat up enough, you just decide, there has got to be something better out there and you quit going to church. But if we can get it right, if we can just soak in the things that Pastor Brian has been sharing with us over the two years about the nature of Jesus, if we take to heart what Pastor Robert talked to us about two weeks ago about being a community that displays its love for one another, we can turn that around. Because the church of Jesus Christ gathered together actually is a very, very special and powerful thing.

There is nothing that's more powerful and there is nothing that the devil wants to undermine more than corporate worship, the gathering of God's people together to worship the Lord together. There is something very special that happens when we are here together worshiping. Many of us worship every day alone. How many people here worship the Lord every day? When you set aside the time to worship the Lord, he shows up. He does wonderful things. And so we don't want to take away from the value of worship. All alone, wherever you happen to be driving in your car and the shower, first thing when you wake up in the morning before you go to bed, whatever. And yet when we gathered together, there is a value in corporate worship that I just want to talk a little bit about this morning and I want to talk a little bit about how we are going to arrive at the benefits of what this brings. 

Some years ago, many of you were part of hope when we started an evening Sunday gathering. It was actually intended not to be a second service, but a separate service. In the course of working through worship and some of those things, I heard Micah start to use a term, just a phrase of making space. He would use that in reference to the worship team. In talking with Micah, it really is more of an artistic term. It's a musical term. It's a relational term. It has to do with just making room for other people and making room for things to unfold as people step in and do their part.

As he told me, even this morning, I was asking him about, he said the one thing a musician ever wants to do is play with the lead guitarist, who is all about their solo. Every time there is a little space in the set, he jumps in with a guitar solo. The goal is, the whole concept of making space artistically is to just allow room for the free expression of all the individuals who are part of what's happening and for more of a full experience to take place. And we want to see that in a worship expression, but actually I coined that term and I started using it in a different sense. Especially when we've been meeting and we've been praying together, reaching for more, believe it or not for over 200 days now every night at 6:45. None of us are there all the time, but there is always somebody there. There is usually more than one. But Jesus is always there.

It's not a closed group. You go to your Hope happenings that you get every Tuesday from Rachael and the link will be there. It has been a pretty amazing thing. Lots of times I'll kind of open a little set. Somebody usually opens up with a little prayer and lots of times I found myself just praying, Lord, we are here. We are all together right now. The reason we are here is to make space for you to come. I've come to understand that that when it comes to worship, when it comes to corporate worship, what we are really wanting to do is make space for God to come. There is a scripture that is familiar to all of us who are familiar with worship, and it's found in Psalm 22. I'm going to have Cheryl read it in three different versions, and you can go ahead. Cheryl, if you want to, it's a Psalm 22 3, we'll start with the NIV.

Cheryl: Yes, you are enthroned as the holy one. You are the one is real praises.

Jeff: There, in the NIV, which I read for many, many years, he is in throne as the holy one, but for a good 20 years after I got saved, I read the new American Standard Bible before the NIV was published. And here's what it says in the New American Standard. This is really what I grew up on

Cheryl: Yet you are holy, oh, you who are in throne upon the praises of Israel.

Jeff: How many of you have heard that phrase? God is enthroned in the praises of his people. I've always pictured it when we praise that our praise actually builds a throne for God. And he comes in our midst and he is in throned in his majesty. Oh, Vitay, you are getting me excited now. Amen. And then the King James Version, which predates the New American Standard, what does it say there, Cheryl?

Cheryl: But that art holy, O thou that inhabits the praises of Israel.

Jeff: Now, in the King James Version, we see that the Lord inhabits, he comes in and dwells in. He comes in and stays in the praises of his people. See when we make space for God, God comes and joins us. And there is nothing that he likes more than to come and be with his people. That's kind of where we want to go there. Now, what the Lord really stirred in my heart one night as Pastor Brian said when we were in our 15 minutes of prayer, is I had talked about making space and I pictured the Lord in his throne, in our midst, suddenly what came to my mind was the picture of the throne room of God in heaven. We are going to read a description of that from Isaiah six in just a minute, but the Lord spoke to me and he said, "When I come to be with you, I bring my whole court."

We know from reading those scriptures, that there are cherubim and cherub and there were thousands of angels. There are 24 elders in revelation. We read there are 24 elders seated on their throne. There is a sea of glass; there is lightning and peals of thunder and power and all this stuff happening in heaven. And the Lord said to me, "When I come to be with you, I bring my whole court." What can happen in our midst when God is here with his whole court, with all of this power and all of his angels? Some of you have probably seen angels in worship settings. You've seen angels. They are there. They are all around us because God comes and he brings him with you. Let's just take a minute. Let's just look at Isaiah six because this is a great description of what joins us when we worshiped together

Cheryl: In the year that king Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and exalted seated on a throne and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him, were Serafin each with six wings. With two wings, they covered their faces. And with two, they covered their feet. And with two, they were flying and they were calling to one another, holy, holy, holy is the Lord almighty. The whole earth is full of his glory. At the sound of their voices, the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. Woe, to me, I cried. I am ruined, for I am a man of unclean lips and live among people of unclean lips. And my eyes have seen the king, the Lord almighty. Then one of the Serafin flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it, he touched my mouth and said, see, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.

Jeff: Jesus is a live Coal There is something about the presence of the Lord. We sing a song every once in a while: one touch from the king changes everything. There is actually nothing like being in the presence of the Lord. It completely undoes you. If you've been there, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't been there, you are going to be soon. When the Lord comes— Just for a second, I'll just do a little turn here. There are different types of ways that we experienced the presence of God and it's all through the scriptures. Several of them, we all understand. One of them is very clear. It's the Omni presence of God, right? He is everywhere. David said, if, if I make my bed in hell, you are with me. If I'm in the highest heights of heaven, you are with me. No matter where we go, we can't escape his presence. He is everywhere. 

We see it in all of nature. We see it in everything around us, the presence of God. He hears what's going on. He sees he is not ignorant of the plight of mankind. Another presence that we often talk about, I would called the abiding presence of Jesus. He said "Where two or three are gathered in my name, I'm there in your midst." He abides. Whenever we are here, he is here. There is no doubt. Anytime we are together, Jesus is with us. It's just the fact. It's just the way it is. That presence can become very intimate. And we experience the intimate presence of God here at Hope, almost every Sunday when we worship. Many of you, when you worship alone and when you are praying alone, you experience the intimate presence of God. He comes in, he surrounds you and he holds you. It's described and it's comforting, it's healing. It's it brings peace. It brings understanding. It helps you through your day when he is intimate with you and he carries you. That's something that we live for.

Once you've lived in that— Christianity, it's just a bunch of rules without that, without Jesus, without the experience of Jesus. God's people— I shouldn't really say should, but I feel like God's people are better off as mystics than they are as theologians. A mystic is someone who looks for seeks and experiences, the spiritual world, the spiritual things. Our experience of Jesus is real. It changes our life and it helps us in life every day. So that's the intimate presence of God. 

But then we see times when Daniel was visited by the Lord and he fell on his face. Saul, the Holy Spirit overcame him. He laid on his back all day prophesying. We see there is this way that God comes in the days of the Toronto blessing and revival in the mid to late nineties, we called it the manifest presence of God. There is a way that God comes that when he comes and he manifests his presence, all bets are off because he'll do whatever he wants. You are lucky if you can stand. In fact, let's, let's just read that in second Chronicles. It says in Isaiah here that his train filled the temple. So in second Chronicles, we are going to see what happens when just the train of God's robe fills the temple or the place where God's people gathered. Let's, let's look at that and we'll see what we are talking about when we say the manifest presence of God.

Cheryl: Second Chronicles.

Jeff: Second Chronicle 7.

Cheryl: When Solomon finished praying fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. The priests could not enter the temple of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled it. When all the Israelites saw the fire coming down in the glory of the Lord, above the temple, they knelt on the pavement with their faces to the ground, and they worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord saying he is good. His love endures forever.

Jeff: That's something. They couldn't even go in. The glory of the Lord filled the temple. The priests couldn't even go in. When God manifests his presence, all bets are off. Anyone who is around and watching or participating in the years of the Toronto Blessing, I've heard the stories. I had a good friend who went up to Toronto and God hit him. And he said he was lying on the ground and ways of the glory of God started passing over him. And they were so powerful, he was afraid he was going to die. He started to say, "Lord, please stop. I'm going to die. Stop. I'm going to die."

People have experienced that stuff here. We had one couple come and visit hope for the very first time and when the service is over, they couldn't rush out of the church and back to their car quickly enough because they both had to burst into tears because the presence of the Lord to touch them so deeply. We've had people here, who in the middle of worship, no one is praying for them, no one even knew it happened till they told us later, but in the middle of worship, the presence of God surrounded them and he broke all the self-hatred that they carried. They regained a new love for themselves as the Lord revealed his love for them. These things are common when we make space for God, because he comes with his court and he moves in ways that are powerful, beyond our understanding and he changes everything.

Once you've tasted it, you want more, you just want more. And that's what we want. Isn't it interesting that Isaiah, I mean, it's really, it's really telling because when Isaiah stood in the presence of the courts of heaven, the first thing he realized is that he was a man of unclean lips. The first thing he realized was his deficiency as he stood in the glory of God. How can you not? That's natural, but God had a solution for that. God always has a solution for that. When you come into the presence of the Lord, you might not feel worthy, but Jesus makes you worthy. He comes in, he cleanses you and he takes away your sin. So you can stand in the very glory of God and not be ashamed and not be afraid. And what I really think is amazing is that when the Israelites saw the fire of God come down and consume the offering and they saw God moving. They saw his glory coming, situated and the priest couldn't even stand up, they all knelt before the Lord. Of course, you are going to kneel. Of course, you are going to get down on your knees or on your face before the Lord when he is there in that way. But what did they say? He is good and his love endures forever. You see the revelation that comes with the presence of God is a revelation of his goodness and his love. We'll feel like we deserve judgment, but the first thing he'll do is he'll wash that away with the blood of Jesus. He'll touch the coal to our lips. He'll make us clean and we'll realize how good God is. That's what comes when God comes: an understanding of his love. It changes our lives. There is nothing that changes us more than being loved by Jesus.

Anybody want this? I do. We are going to get into a little bit of practical on how to make this happen, but before we do, I couldn't— all the time I've been contemplating this, I had been just stuck on the Hebrides revival. Could you do me a favor? I brought Kleenex up there because they knew I'd start crying and I need it, but I forgot to bring it up. How many of you have heard of the Hebrides revival? Anybody? It was a revival on an island outside Scotland. It's part of Scotland. Thank you. If I don't blow my nose, I'll keep sniffing. Thank you. 

It was from 1949 to 1952. So it was three years of revival on this island. It's spread into all of Scotland, I think. I had to read it to you. Cause I read it this morning. I just started crying. Let's see here. In 1949, two elderly sisters, Peggy and Christine Smith, one nearly blind and the other bent-over by stenosis, begin into pray. The Lord would bring revival according to the account of revival written by a ministry called Beautiful Feet. So the first thing I want to tell you is you are never done. There is always more; keep dreaming. These were old women. One was blind, one was crippled and they were the instruments of revival. 

That's you and me. No matter where we are at, no matter what's going on in our life, Jesus will use us. They prayed fervently in their small cottage, two to three nights a week and Peggy received division of her church filled with young people and unidentified pastor leading the awakening. So Peggy encouraged her minister, Reverend James McKay to exhort other church leaders in the area to pray in the same way. So Pastor McKay organized a group of pastors and they developed a resolution to all the free churches of Scotland stating their concern for the baroness of the parishes and urging everyone to turn again into the Lord whom we have so grieved with our waywardness and iniquities. And they asked for many to be visited with a spirit of revival. Weeks of prayer followed the resolution, sometimes in unheated buildings during the winter. And there was a growing sense of desperation for God to move in their midst with power. 

One night at a prayer meeting, in a barn, a young deacon read from Psalm 24, 3 to 5, who showed us in into the hill of the Lord or who shall stand in this holy place. He that hath clean hands and a pure heart who has not lifted up his soul to vanity nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. And when he closed the Bible, he asked if we ourselves are not rightly related to God. And then he prayed, God, are my hands clean? Is my heart pure? The meeting went on past midnight and at about 3:00 AM, the Holy Spirit fell with power, not only on their assembly, but also on the surrounding village. The intercessors left the barn before daylight and were shocked to find men and women kneeling along the roads, crying out to God for mercy. Almost every home had their lights on. People could not sleep because the Holy Spirit broke into their lives in such a powerful and unexpected way.

When the Lord shows up, all bets are off. Someone sent me a message. Yeah, a message from heaven. Some of you might've heard this. I think you can still find it on YouTube. Back in the season, in the mid to late nineties, there was a small church of Inuit people up in the north Eastern part of Canada, that island in Baffin bay. They were in a Sunday church service in the Lord, visited their service and he came into their service like, like a mighty rushing wind. It's actually on video. You can watch it. This wind just starts blowing inside the church building and this thunderous sound starts to rage through the building and everybody is diving under the pews.

And then you hear this drumming ball, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah as the presence of the Lord just passes through. They actually have a video of it. But then the guy who documented this went and interviewed these people in this church and they couldn't even talk about it without breaking down and weeping. Find it on YouTube. You can watch it yourself. My heart is stirred because I believe that the Lord wants to come again. That way I sure want him to. The way that it happens is when his people make space for him. That's all we have to do. We just have to make space for him. 

I'm going to give you a few suggestions about worship. Because worship is so powerful, there is nothing that is more important to the devil to stop than meaningful worship. He'll use every trick in the trade to get us to not participate. I just want to give you a few encouragements for you just as an individual, to be part of the group of believers who gather every Sunday to worship. I just want to say to you who are watching online, take these to heart as well, because in your own living room, as you worship with all of us, as we all worshiped together, presently here and online, we all are together making space. The Lord will visit you in your living room. He'll change your life forever. 

I've got four points. Number one, choose not to be aloof. It's very easy to come into a worship setting and make the choice to sit back, to not buy in, to not give yourself to the people around you, to not entrust yourself to the faith community that you are part of, to not Join them heart to heart. It's easy to not want to do that to just say I'll just watch this one. The single greatest key to making space for the Lord to come with his court is participation; it's when we all participate, not when we watch. If you ask anybody who stands on the platform who leads, worship, they'll let you know that on any given Sunday morning, it's pretty evident that about 50% of the people are aloof, just watching.

Cheryl: Unity is a very powerful thing. 

Jeff: Very powerful. It's easy to step back and withhold your heart and to be outside of the worship experience, to not join everyone else to choose independent, but we are called to be one body we are called to be joined together. Pastor Robert has been talking about that really, really well. If we join together, then we have to give our hearts. We have to give our hearts to each other and we have to choose to give our hearts together to the Lord. You don't make space by watching worship. We make space by worship.

Using one of Pastor Robert's favorite words at every gathering, each of us has to be intentional about joining everyone else and giving her whole heart to worship. That makes all the difference in the world. Number two, suspend your judgments. We all have our favorite music styles. They are different. When I first got saved, we would go to the home of this guy and his wife. He was an elder at a church that we ended up starting to attend. She would lead worship with the accordion. And she was not a good accordion player.

These are in the seventies, so I'm listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash, and young, and my favorite. We go to Bible study and we sing charismatic worship songs from the seventies with an accordion. I want more of Jesus more and more and more. Let's do it. But I'll tell you what, when we gave our hearts and we sing those silly songs within accordion, that wasn't very good. Jesus showed up. 

Cheryl: We would get lost in worship. 

Jeff: We go to Bible study on Friday nights and we'd worship till after midnight. And then the guy would start to preach. We get home at one 30 or two in the morning.

Cheryl: Common.

Jeff: Common. We didn't want to stop worshiping. I love alternative music. I like classical music. My favorite music is opera although I there is a white rapper named Tom McDonald. I really like him right now. The one kind of music, I've never really been able to develop a taste for his Country and Western. Don't hold it against me.

Cheryl: To each his own.

Jeff: Yeah, to each his own. Well, I went on a man's retreat once and lo and behold, the band that came to lead worship was a Country and Western worship group. And I shook my head and I said, oh God, how am I going to do this?

But you know what? I gave my heart. I sang the songs and God showed up. And I had a wonderful time with Jesus because I suspended my judgment and I joined in, you may not care for the style of music. You may not care for the appearance of the worship team. They may not be that talented. Cheryl and I pastored a church for what, how many years? There was no musical talent in that church. I'm telling you. It was painful. Either we chose to worship in spite of the music or we didn't worship. When we came to Hope, it was like we died and went to heaven, but we worship. We worshiped our hearts out. We worshiped our hearts out. It doesn't matter. The music doesn't matter. One of the songs, the heart of worship; we are coming back to the heart of worship. That was stirred in the heart of a guy who had experienced all the new, the great, the musical stuff that Christian music was moving to.

He realized it's the wrong thing. I'll tell you what can happen with the, with the greatest and the latest, because it happened to me, God actually convicted me of this. You can worship the worship music instead of God. I was pastoring. I was at church all by myself. I was praying and worshiping the Lord and I had a tape on it and music was coming on and I'm worshiping and I'm praying and this song comes on and I go, "oh, that song" and the Holy Spirit said, "You worship that song more than me." Just like that. Boom. Oops.

The music is wonderful. Singing is part of worship, but it's not about the music. It's about our heart. We can be critical of a lot of things. I'm going to tell you one more story. That was really a poignant moment with me and Jesus. We were at another church and worship was great and worship ended and the pastor got up and did kind of what we do in the middle of the service. I didn't really care for the style of their culture. I didn't care for how they did church. The worship was fine, but the overriding thing was a little bit—I don't know, it didn't fit with me. And so the pastor gets up and starts to talk. In my mind, I say, oh, I forgot how much baggage is in this church. And the Holy Spirit speaks right back to me and he says, "That's not baggage. That's their culture. I don't have a problem with it. Why do you?"

Everybody in Christ that's worshiping, no matter how they do it, whether you approve or not, it's pleasing to God go into a Lutheran church, go into a Catholic church, go into a Pentecostal church, anywhere. If people are worshiping, God, Jesus wants to be there. Our judgment can destroy all kinds of opportunities to make space for Jesus. So let's just let that go.

Number three is probably the most important one of all. Resist all the lies of the enemy that are intended to remove you from the worship experience. I've had such a hard week. I think I'll just rest on this one. I'm tired. I don't feel well. I've been offended, such and such. Man! Here's one the Cheryl brought up. Do you want to say the one that you brought up about I've been so bad this week?

Cheryl: I've been so bad, I can't worship.

Jeff: How can I come into his presence after what I've done? Anybody ever get that one? Yelled at my wife this week? What am I going to do? I'm unacceptable to the Lord. I failed as a husband. 

Cheryl: I was reading these this morning and these can all be reasons why you wouldn't worship, but these things happening to you during the week, all of these things that happen to you should make you say, I need to go worship because these things have happened to me. It's like you are coming into the Lord's presence and he is wiping everything away for you. So let it hasten you to come. Instead of saying I can't.

Jeff: I pretty much guaranteed that any reason that comes into your mind, why you can't participate is from the devil. You can just go to Jesus with his blood. You can forgive the ones who offended you. You can get forgiveness for the things you've done wrong. You can ask him to quicken your mortal body so you have enough energy to participate and you do it. And you'll be glad you did. How many Sundays, how many Sundays have you not wanted to go to church and after worship, you were so glad you went? How many Sundays? Ah, I just want to relax this morning. Oh, I've got to go to church and then worship is over and it's like, oh Jesus, thank you I came to church.

Cheryl: And after you are in that worship, I believe you are changed and you leave with his fragrance.

Jeff: Number four, come excited for worship. Come anticipating the experience you are going to have with Jesus, expect that he is going to come. Expect that he is going to speak to you. The most dynamic, profound, amazing revelations of the things of God have come to me in the middle of a worship service. Expect that he is going to heal you. Jesus heals in the middle of worship. You don't need anyone to pray for you. When he comes with his court and all of his power, he will touch you right where you are. We don't need to have prayer lines. Not that we don't have prayer lines. We'll pray for anybody, but we want to pray every week. He'll touch you. He'll touch you in your living room. He'll heal you right as you are worshiping. When you are worshiping in your living room, get out of your chair; stand up just like the rest of us. Participate. Worship is not a spectator sport.

Cheryl: I want to say here that what's better than anticipation. I almost like anticipation better than the thing, because it's just so exciting. I wanted to share when we were going to the Toronto Blessing in Canada, we drove through an ice storm to get there and nothing could stop us or keep us back because we were so excited to go to this revival place. I realized I was sitting forward in my car seat a lot of the way. I just wanted to get there. I just wanted to get there. I just think about how God loves us, his kids to be like that, to anticipate what he is going to do for us every day. Some mornings I'll wake up and I'll say, ah, good morning, Lord. What do you have for me today? What do you have? Help me to get it.

Jeff: Anticipate the goodness of God all the time.

Cheryl: Anticipation

Jeff: Some of the greatest experiences of conviction and repentance have happened in my life during worship; profound, emotional healing. And we talked about the one experience, heart restoration can happen in worship. Physical healing happens in worship. God's intimate presence is very real in worship in God's manifest presence, turns your whole world upside down. All we have to do is make space and he is here. 

Cheryl: He is real. He loves you expect and anticipate him being active in your life. He'll do anything for you.

Jeff: We've been talking about this the last couple of days getting excited. Cheryl said we got it all backwards. I said, why? She said we should, we should have the message first and then worship. So I asked Pastor Brian, if he and Jackie would come up and we'll just close this with some worship, if you guys could come up and let's just—

Cheryl: Time to anticipate and expect.

Speaker: Hello. Good morning. My heart is exploding. I've been praying and praying for this day to happen. I've been praying for our people to hear the call of the Lord. And it's been a long time coming. Hasn't it, Jacque? Faithful heart standing around praising the Lord. And I've known of several friends going through the same thing. It's almost like our spirits are seeing when Lord? Where are we supposed to be, Lord? And it's happening. It's happening right here in Hope Community Church. And to two weeks ago, I started doubting again and I started praying again. Lord, come, come please Lord. And he answered me this time. He said, "I am preparing to perform my word concerning Hope community church; prepare your hearts to receive what I have for you." Let's prepare our hearts, please. We've waited a long time and it's just, you see all these changes that are going on. Be observant and see, and your hearts will be heartened and excited because the Lord is going to wake this church up. Like you have no idea. And I just praise and thank you. Thank you for listening.

It was something that this week happened. As I was praying— and this is just so God, Pastor Jeff. This is so God, because he stirred my heart in the middle of the night about praise and worship. And I've been in praise and worship many years, but we all have a common denominator. We all do. And that is thankfulness. It starts with thankfulness. Thankfulness leads us to praise and praise leads us to worship. So the day you might not be thankful, try to find one thing to be thankful for. And then all of a sudden you are praising the Lord out of your gratitude. And then from that gratitude, you move into a place of such worship. That's all you can handle. You just keep going. And I just encourage you. I really encourage you to join in every Sunday. We are here. We want to enter in with you. We are family. Amen.

Jacque: Can we stand together? And can we just— you know, so many of our worship songs are prayers. We are singing straight to God. So let's just seek him together. 

Music (1:35:08 -1:43:15) 

Brian: Pastor Robert, why don't you come?

Robert: The scripture tells us that the day would come, and then indeed is now that the true worshipers will worship him in spirit and in truth. We thank you that the day is now that we don't have to second guess who it is or to whom we worship. Because we know the spirit of God and the truth has been revealed to us in his son, Jesus Christ. So the revelation of Jesus Christ has been manifested to us. And we know it as he that was there at the creation of the world. And it was he who was the word that has become flesh to tabernacle with us. It is he who promised that he would send the spirit of God, the Holy Spirit to indwell in all those that believe we thank you. The promise of God, as we are able to enter into worship. The Bible speaks of living our lines as a daily sacrifice, a living sacrifice before God. So we thank you, Lord that as we live and breathe, we thank you for your presence that's forever with us. 

And we thank you, Lord, that you have promised to be with us and that we can boldly come before you and obtain mercy and grace in our time of need. But that promises to those who have accepted your son, Jesus Christ. We want to take this time to have a special invitation. If you want to be a carrier of God's presence, if you want to be able to partake in all the promises and blessings of God, he needs just but one thing to you and that's to accept his sacrifice that he has made for you. We do that first by the confession of our mouth that comes from the conviction of our heart. We secondarily do it by the way we live in honor of him. So I want to invite you now to make that first step and to pray this prayer.

Dear God, I know now that I'm a sinner in need of your forgiveness and your redemption that was brought by Jesus Christ. I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. I believe that he was sent here to tabernacle as a human being with us, but he was also sent here to suffer and to die so that his blood would be shed and that my sins would be forgiven. I believe in that sacrifice. I receive that sacrifice and I ask you God to forgive me of my sins, to cleanse my heart and have my spirit be born again so that I can join in your faithful church to worship you all the days of my life. Lord, receive me now, as I receive you in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.

If there is anyone here in this building that has prayed that prayer for the first time, we would like you to come and talk to us. You can come see me after service. If you are online and you are watching and have prayed that prayer, we want to reach out to you. We want to connect with you. So please let us know. Email us, call us, to let us know and we'll make sure we connect to you. Because it's one thing to say the prayer, but it's another thing to say it, and then become a lifelong disciple of Jesus Christ. We want to point you in the direction and on the road of being a follower of Jesus Christ. So father, we thank you for you today. We thank you for who you are and we thank you that we have the opportunity to belong to you. Thank you, Lord, for all that you do in Jesus name. Amen.

Music (1:48:54-1:51:47) 

Brian: Lord, there are so many words that escape us in moments like this, to let you know just what our hearts are crying for and longing for. But we do, Lord, want more of you. We want you to Lord be exalted on our praises. Lord, we need a touch from the king today. We need a touch from Jesus. So as we continue to worship in our tomorrows, May we come with more expectation, more anticipation, less judgment, more passion for you, Jesus. May our worship demonstrate what Paul said: I am not ashamed of the gospel. May our worship reflect that we are so proud to be called children of Jesus Christ. Our hearts need more of you. Lord. Our souls need more of you. Our lives need more of you. As we worship you, you will pour that into us. We thank you for that, Lord. 

Let's raise our hands together, shall we? Now may the Lord bless you. May the Lord keep you. May the Lord, make his face to smile upon you. Give you a peace. May the Lord turn his face towards you, look you in your eyes and may you hear the words of love when he says you are my child. This we pray in the name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit.

Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 11-14-21. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.