The Early Church regularly used the Book of Psalms as an unending source of insight for the Christian life—to inspire faith, to praise God, and to encourage one another. This summer, we’re going to do the same thing at Cornerstone. We’re making a playlist of some of the Psalms greatest hits, compiling a mixtape that we believe will help inspire you and motivate you during the dog days of summer.

We may be in the middle of summer, but it’s never too early to start celebrating Thanksgiving! And no, we’re not talking about turkey, pumpkin pie, and football. We’re talking about cultivating an attitude of gratefulness. Thanksgiving shouldn’t stem from a date on the calendar, but on a realization of all that God has done.

Well, man, it's good to see everybody. How's everyone doing? Doing good, doing good, man. Oh, man, thank you so much for being here. And for worse, being with us today. Welcome everybody on-site and online. So happy you're joining us. Hey, Happy Independence Day to everybody. Happy Independence Day. I want to issue congratulations to everybody who is here today and everybody who's joining us online. You are the elect, the chosen, and the Christians who are in church on the Fourth of July weekend. That's incredible. That's incredible. You get an extra jewel in your crown for being here today. So thank you for being here. We had, I have to say, we had a pretty decent crowd first service. You know, it's hard. And I was kind of worried about man, I wonder if we'll have a lot of people today. Because when the pastor is like, do we really need to have Church-State. It's so nice outside the pastors that you've had. And I'm like, Well, we're probably got some people out. But you know what, we've got a lot of people here. Thank you for being here to worship with us today. I don't know what you've got going on for the Fourth of July. I hope that you have fun plans. I hope you have safe plans, which brings me to something I wanted to talk about quickly before we jump into the meat of today's message. You've probably heard what's been going on in our city. The shooting that happened just recently of Jalen Walker it's national news. Akron is in the headlines. It's in the New York Times and on the Washington Post, all of them reporting about what happened here this last week. And actually, many of the Fourth of July festivities had been canceled, specifically because of this as a response to it and worry about demonstrations and protests. And obviously, information is still coming in. They haven't even released the video footage or anything yet. I think it's supposed to happen today. But regardless of what is found out, what happens, or what news continues to tell us, our responses, Christians need to be the same, no matter what comes out. And that is one of love. One prayer, like we talked about last week, prayer is not our last line of defense. It's our first line of offense. It's what we're supposed to, just our knee-jerk reaction and all these situations. And so that's what we need to be in the church, especially here in Akron. The church needs to be a community praying for the situation, not just for the family of Jalen Walker and his loved ones who are missing him, obviously, but also for the families and the officers involved in this because this is a tragedy. All around. This is traumatic all around, and there's no winner. So we must lift our community in prayer over the next days, weeks, and months. And just praying that peace would happen, that comfort would happen in that justice, whatever that looks like. So be praying with me. We're going to be praying about that as a church cornerstone. So today, Hey, what will happen to the sermon out today, we are starting a brand new series we closed out talking elephants and tipping cows last week, and today we're kicking off this series called Summer mixtape, a playlist of the Psalms. We're going to be looking at a few selected songs throughout this series now. I'm about to find out who I like, oh, gee, Sunday school, church people who remember salty, the singing songbook? Does anyone remember that? Little guy? Little blue guy, little singing songbook? Do you remember him? I think of him every time I see the word songs because that's how it's spelled salty. Let me tell you if you do a Google search for him. And you see the like, not the cartoon version of him. But like, the suit that the guy wears, and all the videos, it will haunt your dreams. It's a terrifying, terrifying look. But we're not going to dive into salty today. Just the Psalms. Today I wanted us to study this because the book of Psalms is one of my favorite books and all of Scripture. And that's because it's one of the favorite books of the early church, the early church. Whenever we read about the church that formed right after Jesus's death and resurrection, that church started in Jerusalem and spread around the Mediterranean rim. This is something that they would read. They would regularly read the Psalms, pray the Psalms, and sing the Psalms, and there were services that they would have in-house churches all over the area. And I think the best thing the modern church can do is turn to the ancient church. Look at the ancient ways of doing things. And so we're going to study the Psalms just like they did because they are an unending source of insight, hope, inspiration, and motivation. And I don't know about you, I need all of the above. Like I need all of that, I need motivation, I need inspiration, I need hope, I need comfort. So I'm really excited about this series. I'm excited as we dive into this. I'm also happy, like, don't get me wrong. I love how our last stage setup was with the chairs and everything. I liked that it was my idea, so I liked it. But I like being mobile again like I can move up here. Keep the camera people on their feet today. And I'm just excited. I'm excited about today's sermon. So if you want to follow along, we're going to be in Psalm 95. Today, we'll have the scriptures up on the screen. But if you want to see if you brought your own Bible or have your app, you can follow along. We're going to be looking at Psalm 95, one through nine. We're going to read it at the onset, and then we're going to work back through verse by verse. So this is what Scripture says in Psalm 95. Starting in verse one, come let us sing to the Lord. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come to him with Thanksgiving. Let us sing songs of praise to Him. For the Lord is a great God, a great king, above all gods he holds the hands, he holds in his hands, the depths of the earth, and the mightiest mountains. The sea belongs to Him, for He made it his hands from the dried land to come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker, for He is our God, and we are the people he watches over the flock under his care. If only you would listen to his voice today. The Lord says don't harden your hearts as Israel did at Meribah as they did at mass in the wilderness for their ancestors tested and tried my patience, even though they saw everything that I did what I want us to talk about today what the thrust and what the main point of Psalm 95 is talking about is the heart of worship, worship. We're talking about worship today. Hey, does anybody in here have an Instagram? Instagram account? All my Instagram people out there, anybody online watching? Here's a shameless plug if you would like to follow me on Instagram, it's at Jay young online you can follow me to help bump up my numbers a little bit. No, but if you're on Instagram, maybe you saw this a few weeks back. I had posted a little story about the summer wean. Did anyone see that? My family and I celebrated summer. We summer weaned, you may ask. What is that? It's a made-up holiday from a kid show called Gravity Falls. Our kids love this show. They love this cartoon. And so summer Wien is this made-up thing. It's Halloween, but in the summer, you do things like carving a jack a melon instead of a Jacqueline or the jack a melon. So you take a watermelon and carve it, so we did that. Let me tell you, way wetter than a pumpkin, that thing was messy. It's all getting out. But it smelled way better than a pumpkin-like it, Bert, you know, putting the candle on and burning the top of the watermelon rind smelled amazing. Right? So we made a jack o melon. We, tricker, treated in our house like we said a little trick or treat stations, and the kids went around did that. We watched the gravity fall summer weaned episode it was a lot of fun. It was a good time. And in the episode on Gravity Falls, the whole show takes place over the course of one summer. These two kids are visiting their great uncle, they call him Grunkle Grunkle. Stan, they're visiting him. And so they're here over the course of a summer. And they find out that every June 23, The people of Gravity Falls celebrate summer wean. And they do that because they love Halloween so much that they celebrate it twice a year. So as I was preparing today, and with what we're talking about, I think about that, and I'm like I love that I love the idea of them loving something so much that they build intention around it like we love Halloween so much. We're intentionally going to celebrate this thing twice a year. And I think about that in regards to what we're talking about today. Worship, and I think Man, is the same thing when it comes to worship. It has to be intentional. It has to be intentional. We're going to dive into that idea a little bit more if you're taking notes today. Our title for today's sermon is Thanksgiving in July. Thanksgiving in July, no, I'm not talking about Turkey or pumpkin pie or football, although I would, you know, love all of the above right now. This all sound fantastic. We're not talking about that, or we're talking about today or things like gratitude. We're talking about Thanks. We're talking about worship, worship, worship, what is worship? Basically, it's the expression of praise to God, the expression of thankfulness to God. Did you know there are 254 verses in scripture 254 that deals specifically with praise or Thanksgiving or worship to God? That's Allah. Anytime God has something repeated that much throughout the pages of Scripture. We need to take notice. We need to pay attention to that. Obviously, worship is an important thing. And we know that we know that if you are a person who worships, you know that worship does something to you, right? I've experienced this when I live a life of worship, and it shifts something in me. And it shifts something in my relationship with God. Everything changes. Just yesterday, me and my little guy, Griffin. He's two years old and going to be three in September. We were in the living room, just him and me. And we're playing. We're at the coffee table, and he's got playdough and, you know, his little Lightning McQueen car and all these different things. I wish you could hear him talk. It's, so you call them Lightning McQueen. And everything is just the cutest little way. He says things. And so he's playing there, and I'm doing what I normally do, like telling him I love you, buddy. I love you. And I just, he's, he's my little guy, right? So I'm constantly telling him, I love you, buddy. I love you. You're my best friend. You know that you're my best friend. And it was so stinking cute. He did something. And I was like, hey, awesome. High five. He gave me a high five. And then about 1015 seconds later, all in a row. I kid you, not all in a row. I wish that we had a security camera to have captured this moment. Because on a row. He says I love you, Dad. You're my best friend. High five. I'm like, oh my

God, this is so stinking cute. Like, this is adorable. And so I'm like, you know, I'm about to start bawling. I'm like given the high five, pick them up hugging them playing with them even more now like I'm I was kind of passively just like continually making a snake with the plate on like, oh, look, another snake is it's the easiest thing to make. After that. I'm getting down on the ground. We're playing with it. We're really getting into it now. Because his love for me change things. It just wholly shifted the entire environment. The whole atmosphere changed whenever he was so open. And so, as a matter of factly, declared his love and appreciation. For me, it changed everything. And I want to tell you, to a much greater degree than that, the same is true of your relationship and my relationship with God. Worship changes things. It changes everything with the way that we relate to God and how our environment is worship changes things worship will work wonders. It absolutely will. So with that in mind, this is what I want to say. If you are someone who you wish that you're like, Okay, worship works wonders. I want that in my life. I want things to change. I want to see the environment shift for me, and I want to see the atmosphere shift for me, if that is you. This is where I would tell you to start as we talk about worship and Thanksgiving, the day if you want to get into worship, get into your feelings. If you're going to work or get yourself into worship, get into your feelings. Let's look again at Psalm 95. verses one through two says Come let us sing to the Lord. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come to him with Thanksgiving. Let us sing psalms of praise to Him. Do you notice a recurring theme through those first two verses? Sing, sing, sing, shout, shout sing, right? Like it's this recurring theme over and over and over again that we need to sing to the Lord, we need to call to the Lord that what that actually is meaning there. If you read some commentaries on this part of Scripture, what the psalm is the person who wrote Psalm 95. What they're saying isn't necessarily like, Hey, you have to sing, you have to sing, You have to sing. What it means is that you need to be worshiping God with your emotions, with your feelings, with the deepest, the innermost part of you, right? Even that needs to be tuned in to God and worshiping God. Songs are just kind of like, you know, an analogy, a metaphor, a stand-in because songs are all about emotion and feeling right. Like whenever we think about songs, our favorite song causes us to feel a certain way. It causes emotions in you to rise up. And that's what God wants from us in our worship. If we want to get into worship, we need to get into our feelings. We express worship the best when we do so with emotion and with feeling. Now, let me give you an example of that earlier whenever Maddie was praying for us, right whenever Maddie led us in prayer, by the way, she said some fantastic things about me, Maddie, I've got $20 for you for service. Thank you. Appreciate it.

When Maddie was leading us in worship, it was leading us in prayer is a fantastic prayer. Right? And very moving the things she was saying I'm like, hey men and right on it's so good. But part of the thing that helped us stay tuned in part that helped us to truly feel the words that she was praying and that she was stating was the musical pad that was playing behind her. Did you notice that? The very just kind of like who like I can't even I can't really mimic it, but it's like the Huh, just playing behind her, it's at that note, and it changes here and there. And just that little thing, that little pad, you may have not even noticed it. But let me tell you, your brain subconsciously noticed it. Its research has shown studies have shown that music helps us to focus. It's why many people do better whenever they have some kind of white noise or music playing softly in the background when they're working. Because even subconsciously, it helps your emotions and feelings, everything to tune in to this specific moment to focus on this moment. You see, whenever our feelings and emotions are also tied up in worship, we pay attention better to God, focus better on God, and are more at the moment with God. Why do you think we do so many things here at church to try to facilitate your emotions and feelings being a part of the worship service? Right? Why do you think we dim lights at certain moments and why do we have stage lights, why do we have the music we have, why we have pads playing behind prayer, we do these things. Because all of these tie in, they affect your emotions and affect your feelings. And by doing so, you stay more tuned, you stay more focused, and you stay more at attention. And so, if we want to truly worship God with our mind, attention, and focus, we need to worship God with our feelings. We need to worship God with our emotions because that's how we can get lost in the moment of worshipping Him.
Let me give you another example. I'm going to fit in another Top Gun reference. How about that? I did it last week, and we're going back to back weeks for references here. So whenever we went and saw Top Gun, sit down, you know, it's late, we went to like, what? Which one? Do we go to 1042? You know, go into the 1040 shouting, which means we went to 1115 showing because after 50 minutes of trailers play, right. So we're sitting there, Tom Cruise comes on gives his like, hey, thanks so much for being here at the movies and for coming and seeing this movie. And then he goes off and screens black for a second. Then you see the Top Gun font, and the title card comes up, right? And then what do you hear

the Top Gun intro music turns on it instantly as you hear those chords. It's 11:15. I'm like, you know, kind of like tired. The second those chords start, you straighten yourself up in your seat, like, okay, here we go. Like, here we go. This is about to go down. It's Top Gun. I can be locked in for the next like five hours right watching this thing. And it's because that music tied to my feelings, played on emotions, and got them all stirred up. And instantly, my focus and attention was boom, right here, right here. And I want to tell you, if you're going to worship God truly with your attention and truly with intention, you've got to include your emotion, and you got to include your feelings. You've got to make sure that you have moments like today when we had worship, we have worship music, things like that, because they help you stay locked in and give God your complete and full attention. I'm going to say this. It's not just music. Like, don't feel like you just worship God through music. You can worship God through prayer. He worships God through journaling. He worships God through what we saw today, the worship team sharing their testimonies, you talking with other people, and sharing what God has done in your life. There are plenty of ways to worship. Worship can take many forms. But I will say this as well. Not only this worship takes many forms, but the object of our worship can also take many forms if we're not careful. Right? The thing that we worship can take many forms. Listen to this. This is again this is Psalm 95, verses three through five. Listen to what it says.
For the Lord is a great God, a great King above all gods. He holds in his hands the depths of the earth and the mightiest mountains. The sea belongs to Him, for He made it his hands form the dry land, too. I love how the psalmist here is making this clear differentiation between creator and creation. Creation is awesome mighty mountains. Beautiful, see powerful see all these wonderful things, but don't ever get creation confused for a creator. And that goes for us. We have got to watch what we worship and watch that we don't worship creation over creator because it can happen so easily. And it can happen so quickly. Watch that you don't worship creation over creator. Did you know that the largest worship venue in America opened in May of 2009? The largest one listens to some of the stats on this. Okay, this is crazy. This place can see 110,000 People, 110,000 30,000 parking spots, which is bonkers Right 30,000 parking spots, the place cost 1.3 billion a B dollars to build the main video screen in this place. 160 feet by 72 feet. Just insanity, right? Insanity is the largest worship venue in the country. Do you guys know where this place is? 
It's AT and T Stadium in Dallas, Texas, the Dallas Cowboys' home. So the largest. Don't I'm not kidding you. I'm not. You're like, oh, I see what you did there. Now I'm not playing with you. That's the largest worship venue in the country because there are a whole lot of people. They wouldn't say it that way they wouldn't articulated that way. They would actually probably say I don't worship this, but they worship it. Right? What we describe worship as like, right, giving your attention and giving your intention and your praise to something your time your talent, your treasure. How many people do that with their sports team? Right? That's where everything goes to. Now, let me tell you this, the Dallas Cowboys since 2009, their home record, when they play in this beautiful, magnificent building, their home record is 58 and 47. So 11 games over 500. That equals out to being one wind better every year at home. That's it right? Now, don't get me wrong. All my browns fans, we would we would sell our soul for that good of a record, wouldn't we? We'd be like, hey, sign me up for that yesterday, like, well, we'll take it. But that just kills me because I'm like, oh my goodness, look at all that 30,000 parking spots. 110,000 can fit in there. $1.3 billion 160 by 72 foot jumbotron all for mediocrity? Like, right, like all for something that actually doesn't really deliver, doesn't deliver, like they would hope it would. They don't win, like they're trying to win all of that time, all of that talent, all of that treasure, all of that attention, all of that intention to be middle of the pack all of that worship for something that doesn't really pan out.

And it seems kind of silly in that way. But my goodness, how often do we do that? It may not be your sports team. But it's that relationship. It may not be that relationship, but it's your career. It may not be your career, but it's a house you're trying to get everything rises and falls on that you wouldn't say that you worship it, but you certainly have made an idol out of it. What I want to tell you is watch what you worship, it's so easily so easily, we bumped the Creator out of the top spot and put the creation up there. And we start worshipping lesser things that are temporary, that will never fulfill and will never satisfy us. Watch what you worship. It happens so easily, doesn't it? Because think about it. I mean,

whenever we start worshiping creation, it's very easy because creation is what we interact with every single day. Like, everything that you interact with today is part of creation. The air that you breathe is part of creation, the road that you drive on the the you know, the the people that you interact with the air and the temperature outside that you feel these are all parts of creation. And so we interact with it 24/7 365 It's easy to just kind of think that that's it, right? What we interact with this is the main thing, but interacting with the Creator. That has to be what we talked about the beginning, intentional, on purpose, because all this stuff, I can't help but interact with creation. It is forced on me daily, but interacting with the Creator. That's something I have to do on purpose. I have to seek God out purposely; I have to seek him out in worship with intent. Listen, when it says Psalm 95 Six, come let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker. I love how it this is talking about taking a certain posture of kneeling of bowing down, right? This this is all about having specific intent of setting up a certain posture. As you see, worship requires a posture and a purpose, a posture and a purpose. It requires intent if you're truly going to worship God, it requires intent. You will never accidentally worship God. I didn't mean to. I just naturally give glory to God all day long. I just don't know. I'm so special. The Holy Spirit has so touched me. I can't help but give Him glory. No, it doesn't happen accidentally. Its intention let me tell you, like I'm never going to perform a cartwheel on accident. Like I didn't miss. I didn't mean to but I just pulled off a perfect cartwheel and ain't happening right like it's not happening. In fact, you can see how little I have put intention into trying to learn And a cartwheel by watching me try to do a cartwheel like you see it, you're like, Wow, this is what like your sixth attempt ever. Like you're 34 and you've tried six ever. On the flip side, my daughter Evelyn she's great Adam. Like she's she's getting real into gymnastics and tumbling and cartwheels and all this different stuff. She actually so do the like one where it's not even like a normal cartwheel. It's the like, she starts back here. But first time I saw was this like when she went she learned this, but kind of like ninja movie is she watching she'll put her one arm behind her back, take off sprinting, and then with her other arm, put it down and do like a crazy quick cartwheel. And like, where did you? Where are you learning this? Because she's not in gymnastics, yet. We're putting her in, right? Like we're putting her hands and she's showing such skill and such love for it. But she's gotten like this just from practice. She does them all the time. All the time. She does them outside. She doesn't mean the house. She doesn't mean places where she shouldn't write by a coffee table. Like, what are you doing? It is funny though, she tries to get me and Jessica and her sister to do them. And none of us can do them. Like Griffin tries to do them too. And he just tries to do a somersault and it looks hilarious. And me and Jessica, when we tried to do um, it looks like we're having a medical emergency like someone needs like something bad's happening. Right? Clearly, we have not put any intention into trying to do cartwheels. But Evelyn, she pulls these things off so well. And it's not happening on accident. The whole reason it's happening so well, the whole reason it looks so flawless. So, so perfect. So seamless, is because she's doing them with intent, and she's doing them on purpose. And she's been doing it like that time and time and time. And time again, you see, it's not accidental. It's on purpose. It's with intention. The same is true of worship, you don't become a worshiper, you don't become a person who is living with a posture of gratitude in life on accident. It only comes through intention. It only comes through regularly setting up intentive with intention rhythms in your life where you're worshiping God where you're telling God man, God, I'm, I'm grateful for you, I'm, I'm thankful for you. It's not going to happen on accident. It's just not. Nobody, nobody, nobody worships God. on accident. It takes purpose. And it takes intention. I love that again. That's why the writer talks about us kneeling and battling, taking this posture of thankfulness towards God. And so when I would tell you that you need to have set up purposeful postures in your life rhythms of worship in your life. That's why we tell people, we know that people are going to be out a lot over the summer, the summer is a crazy time, right? You've got kids stuff going on all summer long with sports and events, you've got vacations, you got holidays, family trips, that's going to happen. Like that's just a given. But that's why we've been telling people do whatever you can do to stay in the rhythm of worship. Don't lose it. Don't lose it. So over the summer, you've been a part of a small group, stay in touch with your small group. They start back up in the fall, maybe texting your small group saying, Hey, miss, you guys can't wait to get together in the fall thinking of you. How can I be praying for you? Tell them what God's been doing in your life. That's why we say man be here on Sundays or on Saturdays. And if you can't catch up online, you can listen to the podcast, you can watch on YouTube. Make sure that you set up these rhythms in your life, these rhythms of worship, because you will not just accidentally stay in rhythm, you won't do it. You will set up a rhythm of worshiping creation over creator of all these lesser things, these lesser gods, that's what's natural to us. If we want to worship God, it's only going to come through purposeful intention, purposeful intention. And when we do that, this is the awesome thing. When we start worshiping God like that we can expect God to talk back. We can expect God to speak to us in real tangible ways. Psalm 95 seven says, We are the people God watches over the flock under his care. If you would only listen to his voice today. I feel like that should be my life verse. I feel like I need to have that verse tattooed on me somewhere. If I would only listen to God. Today. You see, God wants to speak to us. God is speaking to us. Did you know that worship is supposed to be a conversation, not a monologue?

It's supposed to be a dialogue. It's not supposed just to be this this one way thing worship is set up to be a conversation with God worship is a conversation not a monologue. God responds when we worship Him. Think about what I shared at the beginning with my son, Griffin when Griffin heaped that praise on me guess what daddy did? Daddy responded. Things changed right? The same is true of us and our Heavenly Father. Things change. When we worship God responds to us. God was a response to us in the midst of our worship, honestly, if I can just be real for a moment, I think that for a lot of us and please, I'm not condemning because this is me, too. A lot of us we feel like we don't hear from God, like, Well, I'm a pastor jig. We're saying God speaks, but I feel like I don't hear him speak a lot. Even when I worship. I don't feel like I hear him speak a lot. Could I wager to you today that maybe you're not hearing from God? Because you're giving God work orders and not worship? I'm just saying, it may be that you're, you're giving God a work order, like, Hey, God, this is what I need you to do today. And I don't know if you notice, but I was here in church. I had my hand right. Did you see how I had my hand raised at three different points during that song? Did you see it? I even did the like chest Pat. During the one. It was so good. And so with that in mind, here's my work order, if you could just get on this real quick for me. And that's how we see it. We're like, it's a it's a work order. It's a way for me to get what I want. No, that's not it. That's a work order. That's not worship. But when we truly worse if when we truly come to God saying I want absolutely nothing in response, because you are enough, just you, that's all I want is just you. When we do that God works in it. God works in the midst of that kind of worship. He works in the midst of that kind of conversation, not a monologue where we come with our list of things for God to do for us. But we come saying, Nope, just this conversation with you is all I need. It's all I want. I'm here for this and for nothing else in the middle of that God works. He works and I know this, I see this play out, because, okay, so years ago, we used to do a lot of like skits like sketches at churches, if people I joke about this a lot. We've got like two groups here at Cornerstone people have been here for like 20 plus years. And people who've been here for six months or less, like that's kind of our, our dividing line. If you were here in that older group, you may remember how we used to do a lot of skits here, Cornerstone. I actually used to be incredibly shy people. People don't know that I used to be the kid that would be up in like the choir line. And I'm the one standing over at the end like, like now we're not wanting to sing very, very shy. The thing that broke me out of it was doing a skit; some of you might remember this. Do you guys remember the Saturday Night Live cheerleaders skit that we did at Cornerstone? Hallelujah, I saw some of those hands. If you have any footage of that, please burn it at your earliest convenience. What we did is we did you know the Saturday night cheerleaders Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri were the Saturday night cheerleaders. And me and my cousin Sarah did that for like a few sketches. The thing was, this is whenever I was little. And my cousin Sarah was taller than me. So she played Craig and I played Ariana, which means I was up on stage for my that first skit ever for a skit ever. I was up on stage with a wig with like, socks up to hear in a skirt. Me. Let me tell you, if you want to, if you want to break out of being shy, that's how it happens. Like it was a shock to my system. It was it was crazy, right? So from that moment on, I'm like, Okay, I'm in skits now. Now, I don't care. I can't be any more embarrassed than I was for that it can only go uphill from here. So I was in skits. And let me tell you one of the things that I hated more than anything else was being in a monologue. I hated doing monologues. I hated it. Because there's just there's so much pressure, right? Like there's pressure. And if no background pat a music playing while just you talk and it's just you up there. And it's like this. If you forget a line, there's just silence. Right? And people are looking at you like, you're going to do this. You're going to get it's nerve racking. I hated monologues. Now on the other hand dialogues, skits where there were multiple people in it, sign me up for those all day, I had no fear, no frustration about doing those. And here's why. Because when there's a dialogue, I would be able to remember my lines based off somebody else's line. Like I could play what I'm supposed to do, because of what she said. And what she said would trigger me going Oh, that's right. This is what I'm supposed to say this.

This is what I'm supposed to do that and so I loved dialogues because they worked as a guide for what I'm supposed to do. Are you following me? You see the same is true when it comes to worship. Worship was never intended to be a monologue, where you just do all the talking. It was meant to be a dialogue and in a dialogue, God speaks and you hear one of his lines and you go oh, that's good. That's what I'm supposed to do. That's, that's reminding me of my next step. who I'm supposed to talk to next. What I'm supposed to sacrifice next who I'm supposed to go love on, right? It works better whenever we work off God's lines rather than just our monologue. Just tell In Him what we feel and what we want to do and what's going on in our life but say, No, God, I'm not here for me, I'm here for you. Talk to me. I want to I want to hear your voice today. I want to hear you speak to me today. Because I know that worship is a conversation, not a dialogue. And God, I'm expecting you to speak to me. I know you're going to speak to me. And when you speak, things, change. And that's exactly what happens. God wants us to have conversation with him. And God wants us to work off of his lines. So I'll tell you this, if you engage in intentional worship, be prepared for God to speak. Be prepared for God to speak, he will talk to you. Last thing I want to say as we get ready to close out today. That's not why you worship though. Like we don't worship expecting, like, okay, great pastor Jacob said, God, talks. So that's why I worship so God can tell me what to do. And I can do that. And then my life turns out great, and I get the house I want, the promotion I want, and everything works out. So that's why I do it. That's that's the why behind my worship. That's not it at all. Worship should never be contingent on us trying to get our way or trying to get God to work on our work order. Like that's never what it should be about. In fact, this is one thing that we can see from the Scripture that we read today. Even if God does that, even if God is okay, yeah, let me work wonders on your behalf. That doesn't necessarily mean that we will worship God does it? Gods constantly answering our prayers, like there's so many times God comes through for us and answers our prayers, and we don't even realize it right? You can see wonders and still not worship. We see that look at the text. In verse eight, nine, the Lord says don't harden your hearts as Israel did America as they did at masa in the wilderness. For there your ancestors tested and tried my patience, even though they saw everything I did. Think about that for a moment. Israel, the Israelites who had seen God deliver them from Egypt, the 10 plagues, saw the power of God, the power of Jehovah in action, the red sea split, and God deliver them across it and crushed the Egyptians in it. They saw God lead them by a pillar of fire at night and a cloud by day they saw all of these things. And it still wasn't the thing that drove them to worship. That's crazy. So that goes without saying that for us, then our worship should not be tied to what God does for us. While you're you're going to work for me, you're going to do this for me. You're going to work a wonder on my behalf, god, you're going to do what I what I want you to do. You see God can work wonders, and we can still miss it. And we regularly do, so our worship cannot be contingent on that on well, do I see God working in my life or not? If I see working then sure. I'll be worshiping the hands will go up the the songs will be sung, then it can't be contingent on that. Can I tell you I'm just going to share for me this. I'm not saying this is for you. For me the reason I worship God my contingency, the linchpin that everything hangs on for me why I worship Him? Absolutely is not my circumstances. Absolutely is not if I see God working in my life and like, wow, look at this coincidence. And this one, this one that must be God, hallelujah. Like that's, that's not it. The linchpin of my faith, the focal point of everything of why I worship Jesus, is the cross. And that's it. That's it, because I have come to realize that literally everything in my life, everything, my family, my kids, every blessing that I have my health, everything is just extra. If all that Jesus did was the cross for me, that's already more than I could ever dream of. That's it. And so that's why everything for me, every bit of my worship, is tied to that. I don't need to see wonders for him to worship because I've seen the cross. I've seen his love for me. And I'm like, that's enough. And you know why that's enough? Because I don't know your story. Like I'm looking around people in the room. I know some of you there's some I know better than others people online. I'm sure the same is true. There's some of you I know that better than others. But I don't really know what's going on with you.

And you don't really know what's going on with me. As I joked earlier, Maddie Maddie said nice things about me. I've got my own issues. I've got my own struggles. I've got my own ways where I'm not living up to where I should be. We all have stuff. And here's the thing, let me tell you, the most raw REAL CHURCH testimony you will ever hear is still PG 13 It could still be played on TBS, right? The TV is edited for TV approved version. That's the most real and raw gets because every one of us comes on like, Don't Don't lie to yourself. You know this is true. You know you have stuff Don't nobody know? Nobody. It's it's the thoughts, the thoughts that you're like, I'm not telling my spouse this, I'm not telling my mom this, I'm going to telling my husband this. It's the thoughts. It's the words that you're going to say, but you don't, but you're still thinking them. It's all of those little things. And so you know, your real testimony, with acute detail exactly what's going on in your life. And this is why the gospel is the good news: Jesus has saved you and forgiven you for even that. Not the washed up, pretty church-approved one. For the real one. Jesus knows every inch of that story. And he's forgiven you for it. And that is why on my own account, even if nobody else in here will sing, even if nobody else in here will stand, even if nobody else in here will worship, I will. Because I don't know where you've been and what's going on with you. But I know with specific detail exactly what I've been saved from, and I can't help it. I can't help but worship, and I can't help but have gratitude because I know what I've been saved from. And I'm telling you, that needs to be the basis for your worship, not what's currently going on in your life, not how God's currently working in your life. Those are all good things. And those are great parts of the testimony. Those are fantastic things. Whenever I share my testimony, I show how God's proving himself to be faithful. But all of these are like, You know what, these are all great, but it all pales in comparison to the cross. It all pales in comparison what Jesus did for me. And if you never did another thing for me, I'm already blessed beyond belief with just that the cross is the reason for our faith. It's the reason for our worship. It's the reason for our Thanksgiving. It's why we can have Thanksgiving, not just in November, but every day of the year, because our God is a good, good, good God. And he deserves all of our praise. I'm going to pray with you. Alright, let's bow our heads. And let's pray together, Father, God, we're just so thankful for your goodness, I don't even know where to start, honestly. You're just so good. You're just so loving, you're just so caring, you're just so merciful and Grace filled, and my goodness, your mercies are new every single day. That's what's incredible. You never run out of these things. Every day, we wake up and find you just as faithful and as good as you were the day before. And it's mind blowing and it's awe inspiring. And it should be gratitude inducing. God, when we look at who you are and what you've done for us, it should inspire nothing less than our complete and utter worship for you. Help us to do that, God, it can be so easy for us to lose sight we, we see your creation all the time. And it's very easy for us to trade out your place as creator with the creation and fall into worshipping lesser gods and lesser things around us and making idols out of things that we were never supposed to make them into. God help us to keep our focus on you. And our focus on what you've done for us and what you've accomplished for us. Because when we do that, when we with regularity, with consistency and with intention, remember who you are and what you've done for us. Living a life of worship will start to become more natural, what felt unnatural and felt forced and felt like we need to set up specific things will start to become more of a rhythm and more of a routine for us and we will become people who worship you in everything we do. And that's exactly who we want to be as your church God, people who bring worship, glory, and honor to your name. With every breath, we take and with every step we take. Help us to do that. Through the power of your Holy Spirit, God will give you all the honor, glory, praise, and worship that belongs to no one else. But you we love you, Father, we love you. We love you and we praise You today. It's in your name we pray, amen. Amen.