SPEAKER_00: You're listening to the road.
SPEAKER_00: Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_01: You've heard me say this before.
SPEAKER_01: Face the shame.
SPEAKER_01: Second Corinthians 4.
SPEAKER_01: Face the shame.
SPEAKER_01: But then surrender the shame.
SPEAKER_01: Don't keep facing it.
SPEAKER_01: Surrender the shame.
SPEAKER_01: Quit running from it.
SPEAKER_01: Turn it.
SPEAKER_01: Acknowledge that it happened.
SPEAKER_01: Acknowledge that it's true.
SPEAKER_01: Surrender it to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And God's confidence and strength is going to flow in greater measure in your life.
SPEAKER_00: At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on the road, visit the Road.org.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_01: So we're on a book series on the life of David.
SPEAKER_01: We've been in 1 Samuel 16.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to go back to 1 Samuel 16 today, but if you're new with us today, you can look there if you desire.
SPEAKER_01: But we're doing this series based on my book, Worshiper Warrior.
SPEAKER_01: I want to talk about David as a warrior.
SPEAKER_01: In over 30 years of being a missionary and a pastor, I've heard on numerous occasions this kind of phraseology.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't get that much out of worship today.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't get that much from worship today.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know that worship's not about getting something from it?
SPEAKER_01: Worship is about giving something to him.
SPEAKER_01: It's not about you.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody look at me.
SPEAKER_01: It's not about you.
SPEAKER_01: It's about him.
SPEAKER_01: Worship's about him.
SPEAKER_01: Turn to your neighbor and say, Worship's about him.
SPEAKER_01: Heard the story of this mom was telling someone who told me about it that the son was having a party and they had the party, birthday party.
SPEAKER_01: And they lived here in this area, I think out in Briargate or something, and they had a porch.
SPEAKER_01: Big banner across the porch.
SPEAKER_01: Happy birthday.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever his name was.
SPEAKER_01: And there was a stack of presents on every one of the presents that had his name on it.
SPEAKER_01: And the sister came in, and she's getting madder and madder and more incensed.
SPEAKER_01: And she's getting, she's kind of stomping around, and her brother's name is on all the presents, and his name is on the banner, and his name is on the cake.
SPEAKER_01: And she's just really upset.
SPEAKER_01: And finally the mom looks at her and says, it's not about you, it's about him.
SPEAKER_01: It's his birthday.
SPEAKER_01: You'll have your birthday, but today it's not about you, it's about him.
SPEAKER_01: Many women, worship's about Christ.
SPEAKER_01: We come here and it's about him.
SPEAKER_01: Now, let me just tell you, man, I love the feelings, I love the vibe.
SPEAKER_01: I love when the presence of God comes down and I feel it.
SPEAKER_01: I love that.
SPEAKER_01: But ultimately, worship is gazing upon him, and it's all about him and our relationship with him and giving him glory.
SPEAKER_01: How many of you like the cop shows?
SPEAKER_01: Anybody watch cop shows, you know, like the police stuff and everything.
SPEAKER_01: There's some that are sort of realistic, there's some that are, you know, TV programs and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_01: So there's different kinds.
SPEAKER_01: There's so many, NCIS and all that stuff.
SPEAKER_01: And you see, when they arrest the bad guy, usually it's like this or like this, right?
SPEAKER_01: Universal sign of surrender.
SPEAKER_01: I think the key to worship is when we surrender to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And when we raise our hands, we're not raising our hands because we're charismatic or we're not charismatic or we're Pentecostal or not Pentecostal.
SPEAKER_01: We raise our hands because we're surrendering to Christ and we're uplifting his name because we know that worship's all about him.
SPEAKER_01: And I know for some of you that's uncomfortable to raise your hands.
SPEAKER_01: It's fine.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to raise your hands here.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying, though, that that that this sign right here is often the way in which we we exhibit our surrender to him in worship.
SPEAKER_01: And David got it.
SPEAKER_01: David really got it, even as a 13-year-old.
SPEAKER_01: Today we have a 13-year-old on the stage.
SPEAKER_01: There's a day coming when this stage is going to be a band of all young people.
SPEAKER_01: Because we're going to raise up a new generation of worshipers of the Gen Zers.
SPEAKER_01: Those young people are going to come up and they're going to know how to worship because we trained them here at the road when they were little guys to be outliers and not fit in.
SPEAKER_01: You see, on the value system, I don't want any of our kids to fit in to the world system out here, in this culture.
SPEAKER_01: But I want them to not fit in to such a degree, though, that they're not monks and nuns, but that they can engage the culture in their school as radically committed worshipers and warriors.
SPEAKER_01: Because God has called us to make an impact.
SPEAKER_01: And so David at 13, we've been studying it the last few weeks.
SPEAKER_01: He comes in into the secular ground.
SPEAKER_01: He comes into the secular ground.
SPEAKER_01: This is how it defines secular.
SPEAKER_01: Secular is without God.
SPEAKER_01: Secular meanings without God.
SPEAKER_01: Sacred means with God.
SPEAKER_01: He comes with God.
SPEAKER_01: And as we've talked about, that servant in Saul's court notice David because what did he say?
SPEAKER_01: God is with him.
SPEAKER_01: God is with David.
SPEAKER_01: David comes, and listen, he brings the sacredness of his relationship as a worshiper skilled on the harp.
SPEAKER_01: Skilled on the harp in the hills of Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_01: He comes into the secular court of Saul, who is the lead king of Israel, and he turns the secular into the sacred.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we do.
SPEAKER_01: See, when we learn to worship, we bring the presence of God where there's no presence of God.
SPEAKER_01: When you go to work, if you're learning to be a worshiper, you're learning to behold his glory, you bring the sacred into the secular.
SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, too many believers today that have been in the church are sacred on Sunday, but the rest of the six days of the week, they're secular.
SPEAKER_01: And they wonder why God's not doing anything at work.
SPEAKER_01: But God wants us to daily have a relationship with him.
SPEAKER_01: I was talking to Ron Lent this week.
SPEAKER_01: We had coffee together.
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about Outlier University in his class, and he said, This little guy named Sam, and I think Sam's about 13, was the most studious, most focused student in his OU class for 10 weeks.
SPEAKER_01: 13-year-old, taking copious notes.
SPEAKER_01: Man, that fires me up.
SPEAKER_01: Dave is 13 in our story, and he's already become a worshiper.
SPEAKER_01: So, men and women, worship is how we do taxes.
SPEAKER_01: Let me say that again because I'm really treading on some thin ice here.
SPEAKER_01: Worship is how we do our taxes.
SPEAKER_01: Worship is how we handle our money.
SPEAKER_01: Worship is about how we work when we go into our job and we're being submitted to our boss.
SPEAKER_01: And if you haven't really worked for a demonized boss yet, you really haven't had a job.
SPEAKER_01: And so David goes in and he's got a demonized boss.
SPEAKER_01: His first job, besides just staying in the family business, is he has to work for a demonized boss who's got a spear right next to his throne.
SPEAKER_01: David's a worshiper.
SPEAKER_01: There's no way that he could have handled that kind of pressure without throwing his own spear, or maybe in his case, slinging a stone back if he hadn't been a worshiper.
SPEAKER_01: So God, as God's working in our lives, church, to make you more sacred, to make you more of a worshiper, I can promise you he's going to put you in some environments where there's some spear-throwing people.
SPEAKER_01: And the only way you're going to be able to handle that is that you're a worshiper.
SPEAKER_01: Because when we know it's about Him in His glory in our lives, God gives us the wherewithal, God gives us the composure to handle that kind of pressure.
SPEAKER_01: And actually, instead of us running from it, we can face it and change it.
SPEAKER_01: So turn in your Bibles to Psalm 27.
SPEAKER_01: And we've looked at Psalm 27 before.
SPEAKER_01: But I want to hit it again because David wrote it.
SPEAKER_01: And in the context of David's life, for 17 years on the run from Saul and his men.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't it amazing the betrayal that's all through this story?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's an amazing story, the story of David, of such betrayal.
SPEAKER_01: I was just reading chapter 18 last night because next week we're going to talk about the famous David and Goliath story.
SPEAKER_01: And I was just fascinated to look at what happened after this great victory for David.
SPEAKER_01: And it says that David, after Goliath, after the Valley of Elah, starts leading all of the armies of Saul into battle against the Philistines and all these skirmishes that they have.
SPEAKER_01: But these are the very guys that under Saul's orders turn on David, and David's on the run from the guys that he was just leading a few weeks before.
SPEAKER_01: Is that you run with some folks, and where it really hurts is that you loved them, you ministered together with them.
SPEAKER_01: You were in the battle together.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you feel this in your marriages and in your families.
SPEAKER_01: If you've been through a divorce, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_01: And you remember those happy times, you remember those joyful times, and then something happens, and suddenly there's a betrayal, and you're stabbed in the bat.
SPEAKER_01: And everything in you wants to re-stab in the bat.
SPEAKER_01: But as we grow to be worshippers, something changes.
SPEAKER_01: And I think we see David, who learned this probably better than anyone else in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: What he wrote in Psalm 27 is beautiful because the narrative, there's two narratives here.
SPEAKER_01: There's a narrative of fear, and when I think of a narrative of fear, I think of someone who's gonna get back.
SPEAKER_01: They're gonna get back at those people who've done that to them.
SPEAKER_01: And then there's also a narrative of faith and worship.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord is my light and my salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Whom shall I fear?
SPEAKER_01: The Lord is the strength of my life.
SPEAKER_01: Of whom shall I be afraid?
SPEAKER_01: When the wicked came against me to eat up my flesh, my enemies and foes, they stumbled and fell.
SPEAKER_01: So the narrative of verses 1 and 2, church, is fear.
SPEAKER_01: And all of us struggle with fear.
SPEAKER_01: That fear, that betrayal, enemies, war, foes.
SPEAKER_01: You know what he's talking about, right?
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you feel that with your own spouse when you're coming to church on Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: It's an American Christian tradition that you have to fight from your house when you get in your car all the way to church, and then you're supposed to put on a happy face and worship God.
SPEAKER_01: Anyone know what I'm talking about?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I've I've solved the problem years ago.
SPEAKER_01: I go separately from my wife.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, folks, if you look at what you fear, listen, if you look at, stare at, gaze at what you fear, you will always stumble.
SPEAKER_01: Because there'll always be another thing they say, there'll always be another move they make that you weren't expecting, and you're all in turmoil inside.
SPEAKER_01: David has a choice here, and if anybody had a bunch of enemies, it was David.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 3.
SPEAKER_01: Though an army may encamp against me, my heart shall not fear.
SPEAKER_01: Though war may rise up against me, in this I'll be confident.
SPEAKER_01: It's a focus.
SPEAKER_01: Worship is a focus.
SPEAKER_01: It's a refocusing away from fear into confidence in God.
SPEAKER_01: And he's gonna tell us in just a moment how to do that.
SPEAKER_01: But men and women, I guess what I believe.
SPEAKER_01: After all these years in highs and lows, betrayals, deep wounding, I think as the years go by, God wants every one of you in this room to be growing in confidence in him and losing confidence in yourself.
SPEAKER_01: We need less of you.
SPEAKER_01: Just ask your spouse, do we need less of me?
SPEAKER_01: And they'll go, yeah, amen, brother, sister.
SPEAKER_01: And we need more of him.
SPEAKER_01: You see, worship's about him, it's not about you.
SPEAKER_01: And so the more we take our eyes off ourselves and put it on him, you're gonna grow in faith.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna grow in confidence, you're gonna grow in your expertise in your job because there's gonna be a supernatural power flowing through you increasingly.
SPEAKER_01: Because you're focused on him, and as you focus on him, his spirit then has more access into every area of our life, and especially the wounded areas.
SPEAKER_01: And everybody here's got wounded areas.
SPEAKER_01: We've got areas where we've been betrayed, we've been hurt, we carry shame.
SPEAKER_01: And you've heard me say this before face the shame.
SPEAKER_01: Second Corinthians 4, face the shame, but then surrender the shame.
SPEAKER_01: Don't keep facing it.
SPEAKER_01: Surrender the shame, quit running from it, turn it, acknowledge that it happened, acknowledge that it's true, surrender it to the Lord, surrender it to the Lord, surrender it to the Lord, surrender it to the Lord, and God's confidence and strength is going to flow in greater measure in your life.
SPEAKER_01: Here's how He did it.
SPEAKER_01: Here's how the confidence grows.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 4.
SPEAKER_01: One thing, one thing I've desired of the Lord, that will I seek.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of things we can seek.
SPEAKER_01: We can seek vengeance, we can seek uh intrigue, we can seek manipulation, we can seek talking behind people's backs and slander and gossip, or this one thing David has chosen to seek is this that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Now understand that at the time of David, there's no temple yet.
SPEAKER_01: Because Solomon, his son, is going to build the temple.
SPEAKER_01: So when he talks about the temple, he's speaking of the tabernacle, the tent of meeting, the ark of the covenant.
SPEAKER_01: He's looking at that because that's where the presence was.
SPEAKER_01: Men and women, now that we are we are uh born again in the New Dispensation since Calvary, since the cross, you are the temple of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: You are the temple of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: So wherever we are, whatever we're doing, we can turn to the house of the Lord, which is the Spirit of God, the Ark of the Covenant that's within you, and we can worship right there.
SPEAKER_01: David says, I'm gonna be, I want to behold the beauty of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I don't care about being king.
SPEAKER_01: I never wanted to be king, never wanted to be a commander, never wanted to be a soldier, never wanted to be a leader.
SPEAKER_01: I just want this one thing to behold the beauty of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And some of you are going through some horrific stuff right now.
SPEAKER_01: Some really difficult times in your life.
SPEAKER_01: It might be physical, emotional, spiritual, vocational.
SPEAKER_01: I want to challenge you to be a worshiper, and that means to take time to behold the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: To take time to behold his face.
SPEAKER_01: Look, look down at verses 8 and 9.
SPEAKER_01: This is this is amazing.
SPEAKER_01: When you said, seek my face, my heart said to you, Your face, Lord, I will seek.
SPEAKER_01: Do not hide your face from me.
SPEAKER_01: Do not turn your servant away in anger.
SPEAKER_01: You have been my help.
SPEAKER_01: Do not leave me nor forsake me, O God of my salvation.
SPEAKER_01: I've underlined, seek my face, your face.
SPEAKER_01: Same word, same root word for the presence.
SPEAKER_01: The presence of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: David is saying, I want your presence more than anything else.
SPEAKER_01: I want to seek your face.
SPEAKER_01: I want to see your face.
SPEAKER_01: I want this one thing.
SPEAKER_01: I want the presence of God.
SPEAKER_01: We have three labs, three Labrador retrievers.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, it's two, too many.
SPEAKER_01: But I've got three.
SPEAKER_01: And I've got one that's two that are old and one that's young.
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes it drives me nuts, but but the reality is they teach me a lot, and those dogs are loyal.
SPEAKER_01: And they follow me everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: And when I lay down in bed, they're all right around the bed.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm glad I'm not any older than I am because I probably would have broken a knee or an ankle or a hip just trying to get to the bathroom at night, just kind of going over bodies of dogs.
SPEAKER_01: Now, fortunately, they love our kids too, so they all head up into the different parts of the house.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know where they're at most of the time.
SPEAKER_01: I usually have one there.
SPEAKER_01: But they they want my face.
SPEAKER_01: They want my face.
SPEAKER_01: And man, when I look at that dog, which is not often because they wag their tail and knock things off tables and stuff, but but they love my face.
SPEAKER_01: And some of you know the story that I met Liz smuggling Bibles in China.
SPEAKER_01: And then she's at UCLA, I'm on the East Coast, so we're letter writing.
SPEAKER_01: Then we saw each other briefly in LA while I was going through training to be missionary.
SPEAKER_01: Then I went over, and for 18 months, we didn't see each other.
SPEAKER_01: But we were crazy in love with each other at the time.
SPEAKER_01: And there at this little Japanese-like desk that I had were three pictures of Liz.
SPEAKER_01: And I stared at him like all the time.
SPEAKER_01: We didn't have FaceTime men and women, young people.
SPEAKER_01: We didn't have computers, FaceTime, um, uh, cell phones, or any of that, but our we were dependent on a phone call, and and we we had these things called photographs.
SPEAKER_01: A little, they're they're like kind of on a that you could hold them like this, and they did, and they wouldn't change, they didn't move or anything.
SPEAKER_01: They it was like there was like one spot where that person was, and someone clicked like a picture, and then it was there, and then they like sent it to you.
SPEAKER_01: Photograph.
SPEAKER_01: Staring.
SPEAKER_01: Same photograph because I was in love with her.
SPEAKER_01: We stare at what we love.
SPEAKER_01: That's what worship is.
SPEAKER_01: Staring at Christ.
SPEAKER_01: I love what Tim Hughes, the great songwriter, said the first thing God calls us to do is to watch him, to gaze into his eyes and behold his greatness.
SPEAKER_01: Staring at him.
SPEAKER_01: David gets it.
SPEAKER_01: He brings his stare into Saul's court.
SPEAKER_01: And Saul doesn't know what to do with him.
SPEAKER_01: Because here's what happens, men and women, when you favor God, God favors you.
SPEAKER_01: When you favor God with your stare, he favors you with his stare.
unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: And his favor is upon you.
SPEAKER_01: It'll be upon you at work, it'll be upon you with your colleagues, it'll be upon you in your marriage.
SPEAKER_01: If you'll make the focus of Christ your ambition, this one thing, he'll take care of many things.
SPEAKER_01: If you'll take care of the one thing, he'll take care of the many things.
SPEAKER_01: David gets it.
SPEAKER_01: You see, the temptation here, as he writes in Psalm 27, is a fear narrative or a faith narrative?
SPEAKER_01: And the fear narrative is what Satan, some of you are camping out too much in fear.
SPEAKER_01: You have fear of finances, you have fear for your families, you have fear for for your future.
SPEAKER_01: And I get that.
SPEAKER_01: I have those too.
SPEAKER_01: But we can't camp out there, church.
SPEAKER_01: We can't camp out there.
SPEAKER_01: We we have to refocus ourselves toward the glory of God, toward the majesty of God, toward the beauty of God.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to just say this, and I know it's this is I'm probably out of line to say this, and I'll probably get a lot of we'll probably have a staff meeting over this statement.
SPEAKER_01: But I would love it if even though our doors are locked, you can ring the doorbell, you can come in, and some of you, God might be calling to come here during the week and just worship the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: If you would like to come into our sanctuary, you would come in here and you just worship God.
SPEAKER_01: I just say, come do it.
SPEAKER_01: Wouldn't it be cool if in the days ahead the house of the Lord had 24-7 prayer and it wasn't even planned?
SPEAKER_01: But it's because people want to come.
SPEAKER_01: Because people hunger for the house of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: They believe in the house of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: They want to be where the house of the Lord is.
SPEAKER_01: They want to be in it.
SPEAKER_01: They want to be around it.
SPEAKER_01: They want to feel it.
SPEAKER_01: They want to sense it.
SPEAKER_01: They want to open heaven.
SPEAKER_01: And in our church right now, there's an opening heaven.
SPEAKER_01: It's not open yet, but it's opening.
SPEAKER_01: Have you felt it?
SPEAKER_01: Keep coming.
SPEAKER_01: You'll feel it.
SPEAKER_01: There's an opening heaven.
SPEAKER_01: The power of God.
SPEAKER_01: We are seeing more salvations.
SPEAKER_01: More people get healed than ever in the history in our brief five years.
SPEAKER_01: And me, I've been doing this thing for a long time and I haven't seen so much happening.
SPEAKER_01: We're trying to figure out how to document them all.
SPEAKER_01: Because people keep coming up and saying, My back was healed.
SPEAKER_01: My knee was healed.
SPEAKER_01: My ankle was healed.
SPEAKER_01: I got saved last week.
SPEAKER_01: We need some systems here.
SPEAKER_01: Because it's happening all over the place.
SPEAKER_01: We've had, as far as people who've raised their hands to indicate they want to give their heart to Christ, nine people in the last two weeks.
SPEAKER_01: It's fantastic.
SPEAKER_01: It's super.
SPEAKER_01: So, so that next week after Christmas, which is December 30th, we're going to have a baptism service.
SPEAKER_01: So if you've recently given your heart to Christ or you've never been baptized, or you were baptized as an infant and you'd like to be baptized as an adult believer, put down December 30th during the service.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to have baptisms because people need to get baptized.
SPEAKER_01: And even if you have been baptized, but you're just now getting saved, then get baptized as a believer.
SPEAKER_01: I was reading about a gang member out of Miami on Fox News last night.
SPEAKER_01: I was scanning down some stuff and I and I can't remember the guy's name, forgive me, but some guy, he he was an MMA fighter, gang member, just a whole life of in and out of prison, lost most of his friends to shootings and rumbles and stuff with gangs and everything.
SPEAKER_01: Just radically got saved in 2016.
SPEAKER_01: And when you listen to his testimony, it was just a three-minute thing I listened to, he said, something happened when I got baptized.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Man, I don't know what happened.
SPEAKER_01: And I think he said, dude, I don't know what happened, but like when I went down in that water and I came out, all I know is I was a totally different person.
SPEAKER_01: There's something powerful about communion.
SPEAKER_01: There's something powerful about baptism.
SPEAKER_01: There's something about the presence of God in the house of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: This place, though all of us are the house of the Lord, there's something about a place where people come and worship every week.
SPEAKER_01: And year after year after year.
SPEAKER_01: And this sanctuary's been here for almost 20 years.
SPEAKER_01: And congregations have come here and worship.
SPEAKER_01: This area right up here, I can tell you in the last year and a half, and then before that at Chapel Hills, is stained with tears of people getting saved and healed right here.
SPEAKER_01: This is holy ground.
SPEAKER_01: Not all ground's holy ground.
SPEAKER_01: I know some of you Bronco fans think that you know, mile high and everything in Vesco Field is holy ground.
SPEAKER_01: It's not.
SPEAKER_01: This is holy ground.
SPEAKER_01: Right here is holy ground.
SPEAKER_01: Because the presence of God inhabits the praises of his people, and there's been a lot of praise happening in here.
SPEAKER_01: God loves houses of praise.
SPEAKER_01: God loves places where we worship him.
SPEAKER_01: Look at that, look at that, look at verse 5.
SPEAKER_01: For in times of trouble, he shall hide me in his pavilion, in the secret place of his tabernacle, he shall hide me.
SPEAKER_01: He shall set me high upon a rock.
SPEAKER_01: And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies, all around me.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore I will offer sacrifices of joy in his tabernacle.
SPEAKER_01: I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: This is the same man, David, who said, God inhabits the praises of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: So God is in those praises, and as he as he comes, let me just say this, church, it's up to you to draw near to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Draw near to me, and I will draw near to you.
SPEAKER_01: So it starts with you, even though it started with him, because the desire for you to draw near to him comes from him, but you still have to be obedient.
SPEAKER_01: And so when you make a choice to rejoice with an attitude of gratitude, when you don't feel like it, that's a sacrifice of joy.
SPEAKER_01: That's a sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: If we can only do it when we feel like it, first of all, you won't do it very often, and a lot of times that's from the flesh anyway.
SPEAKER_01: But when you make a sacrifice, in other words, today, when we go into worship, next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna go into worship.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna encourage some of you to come up front and worship right here on this holy ground so you won't be distracted.
SPEAKER_01: Come and worship, or wherever you're at, you're gonna worship, and you don't feel like it, you got a million things in your head, you're going shopping right after, your your stomach's making sounds like something out of Cinderella man when he's going into his big fight, and you don't know what to do, but you do it anyway.
SPEAKER_01: That's a sacrifice of praise, and God inhabits says praises, and he'll meet you in a mighty way.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, when we worship the Lord, make a we make a sacrifice to worship the Lord in times of prosperity, he will be there in times of poverty, and times of poverty will come.
SPEAKER_01: That's what David's saying here.
SPEAKER_01: Is that God, because I worship you, will you now not hide me in your tabernacle?
SPEAKER_01: Some of us need that hiddenness, don't we?
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes at night when I'm all jumbled up, I'll take the covers.
SPEAKER_01: Liz isn't there yet, and I just put the covers, I put my knees up and I put the covers all the way over my head, I tuck it in back here.
SPEAKER_01: So they're not sitting there like that.
SPEAKER_01: But they're coming up here and it's in that, in that place, almost like a cave.
SPEAKER_01: I like to make a cave and hide myself there and pray.
SPEAKER_01: Now let me close with this.
SPEAKER_01: 2 Corinthians 3.18.
SPEAKER_01: Look in your Bibles, just go to the right, come to 2 Corinthians 3.18.
SPEAKER_01: This is really important in relation to what David is saying about worship.
SPEAKER_01: He says this, but we all, all means all, with unveiled face.
SPEAKER_01: So his, if you look at the whole context, church, he's talking about Moses who had to veil, he had to put a veil over his face because of the glow from being in the presence of God.
SPEAKER_01: We with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into that same image.
SPEAKER_01: From glory to glory, just as the Spirit of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Do you get it?
SPEAKER_01: He's saying that as we stare and behold the glory of the Lord, his image changes us.
SPEAKER_01: He's transforming you, church.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that exciting?
SPEAKER_01: So you could take a young person who just got saved, no history in the church, no relationship with God, maybe a life of sin and debauchery and rebellion.
SPEAKER_01: And they start to set aside 30 minutes a day, and they just worship the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: They just put on their iPod, they put on their computer, they put on their earphones, they worship the Lord 30 minutes next to someone who's been walking with the Lord for 30 years, and the only connection they have with God is maybe five seconds on Sunday morning with a few hymns.
SPEAKER_01: Who is gonna get changed more and quicker?
SPEAKER_01: Well, the answer is obvious, but the process isn't.
SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you have been blessed by today's message.
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SPEAKER_00: Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.