6-20-10 Worship: Gratitude and Joy

Why do we worship? What keeps us from worshipping more? What keeps us from falling more in love with God? What keeps us from falling on our face in front of him speechless because of the wonder of who he is? What keeps us from singing at the top of our lungs because of who he is? What keeps us from praising and loving God more?

In case you guess it, I just want to state that my point this morning is to move our worship to the next level. The point of this morning is to take your worship with God and put it on steroids and grow it bigger

Did anyone here find the series on marriage helpful! Yeah, I did too. One of the principles that I brought out in that first week of talk on marriage had significant meaning for my worship. It changed everything for me when it comes to my relationship with God. It took my relationship with God and put it on steroids, and it’s my hope that it will do the same thing for you this morning.

A few weeks ago in our marriage series, we said that as soon as a marriage is centered around expectation, then the intimacy and the romance just evaporates and the reason why intimacy and romance evaporates is because as soon as our desires translate into expectations, we move our relationship from a covenant relationship, where love is unconditional, to a debt debtor relationship – to an I owe you and you owe me and I will if you will, but I won’t if you don’t type of relationship.

When our wishes, dreams and desires change into a list of expectations, then suddenly our relationship changes into a “You owe me” type of relationship with another person.

Any time any relationship revolves into a debt debtor relationship, the intimacy, and the trust, and the romance evaporate, because in a debt debtor relationship there is no place for unconditional love.

We said that if your expectation is for your husband to mow the lawn, how much credit does he get if he actually mows the lawn? None, because he was expected to mow the lawn – if that’s the expectation and he does it, he’s just back to zero, he just got out of the hole and is back to zero, because after all, that’s what husbands are supposed to do, right? Why should I throw him a party if he’s just doing what he’s supposed to do, right?

We said that if your expectation is for your wife to stay at home with your kids every day, and she actually does that, how much credit does your wife get? None, because she was expected to do that, because, after all, that’s what wives are supposed to do, right? There’s no reason to throw a party for her because that’s what wives are supposed to do, right?

Expectations like that kill the possibility of unconditional love. They are in fact opposites. Where one exists the other cannot.

Once our relationship devolve into expectations it squeezes out the potential for receiving or expressing unconditional love, because love, the kind of love that you and I were created to receive, is a gift. And if everything is expected, then there is no opportunity to give or receive the gift . . of . . . love.

Here’s the point I’m trying to make. We don’t express gratitude for things we’ve come to expect.

Now, throughout the scriptures, there is this understanding that, as a Christian, we are, in a sense, married to God. Christianity is that kind of commitment. Christianity is a commitment between us and God bound together by a deep love for one another. Baptism is like the rings exchanged between a husband and a wife when they get married. Baptism is a sign and a seal of a commitment between a human being and God to love each other unconditionally forever. For a Christian, baptism is a promise or a vow between them and God that they will love each other no matter what.

For many in the church, they believe in God, and even to some level, trust in God, and though there is a semblance of love, many of the people in the church are missing the deepest kind of love in their relationship with God. Deep passion for God is missing in the hearts and lives of many Christians today, I see it here, and I feel it sometimes in my own heart.

However, the love that ‘s missing in the church is not because we don’t want to love God more, it’s just that we can’t conjure up any more love than what we have. We sometimes know something’s not right, but we don’t know what, because we love God, but there’s no passion or intensity in our hearts toward God.

For me, sometimes, it’s like that in my marriage. Sometimes I look at my marriage and remember back to a time when there was more spark and passion and romance and intimacy in our marriage. And though I want that in my heart, I cannot just will it to be so, because love doesn’t just sprout up because I want it to be. Something inside of me has to change for our marriage and our romance to get more passionate.

I believe this is true with God. I often times talk with other church leaders and we talk about how our spiritual lives are going and sometimes they tell me or I tell them, “My relationship to God is distant right now” or “The fire that was in my relationship to God last year has fizzled and I just feel kind of distant right now.” Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever watched someone else worship and wish that you had all the passion that they did? Or maybe you heard someone else pray and you said to yourself, “I wish I could pray like that, because that person has passion and fire and a connection with God that I can’t conjure up.” Sometimes it feels like all I have is smoldering embers in my heart for God.

So here’s the question that I want to answer today: How do I grow in my connection, my passion, my love for God? How do I grow more and more in my dependence and my devotion to God? How do I grow the romance and intimacy in my relationship with God? How do I grow in my unconditional love for God? The answer is really quite simple.

The answer is the same as it is for marriage. In our marriage series, we said that we all have wishes dreams and desires. We said that to have wishes dreams and desires is normal, even God given. However, we also said that when we take our wishes dreams and desires and move them into the box called Expectations that it kills intimacy and romance, and unconditional love because it put our relationship into a whole other category called a debt-debtor relationship.

Let me ask you a quick question. Did you get up this morning and take the air that you’re breathing for granted? Was it something that you took for granted and therefore, could you say that you expected that air to be there all day, without interruption? Did you wake up this morning going, “Oh my gosh, what if God turned off the oxygen in the world at noon? Did you wake up this morning taking the air that you breathe for granted and if so, how come? Did you create the air? Did you somehow mix up just the right ratio of hydrogen and oxygen? Did you somehow earn the air that you’re breathing? What right do you have to it? The air that you are breathing right now is a gift given by your Creator and without it we wouldn’t last more than a couple of minutes.

We are told in Genesis 1:1 that God created the heaven’s and the earth.

In Exodus 20:11 we are told that: In six days God created the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. God created it all – everything that we have, everything that we know, everything that is, God created.

Here’s my point. If everything that God gives to us each day is expected, then you and I will never be grateful for the gifts that he has given to us in love.

Because here’s the deal, We don’t express gratitude for things we’ve come to expect. Will you repeat this truth with me? All, right side, left side, men, women, etc.

For most of us we come to God with a whole box load of expectations. If we have grown to expect things from God, then that kills any opportunity for us to show God love. If we expect God to give us air everyday and God meets our expectation and gives us air, how much credit does God get for what he’s given to us? None! Zip! Zilch! Zero! Congratulations God, now you’re up to zero!

I mean we’d all be upset if God turned off the air. You’ve heard of blackouts where there’s no electricity, so the whole city goes dark, right? But have you ever heard of an “Air out” where the whole city just ran out of air? Can you imagine your son or daughter or your mom or your dad being in a place where they just ran out of air and died? I’m thinking I’d be awfully angry with God if that happened to one of my kids.

If that’s true for you, then maybe you’ve got some expectations in your box for God. It’s kind of like the relationship between you and your mortgage company we’ve been talking about.  Your relationship with your mortgage company is without conflict as long as you make your payments on time, but as soon as you miss a couple of payments, you get some special attention and it’s all bad.

As long as God provides me air, things go pretty well between us, though there’s not much love, but as soon as he stops giving me what I’m expecting, I give God some special attention and it’s all negative.

Did you wake up this morning thanking God that the sun came up or did you wake up this morning expecting the sun to rise. Did you know that if the sun did not shine, there would be no light – none; there would only be darkness, inky black darkness. If there was no light, nothing would grow; everything would die. If the sun did not shine, then there would be no heat. If there was no heat, everything would be but ice and dead, there would be no life.

Did you wake up this morning thanking God for the immeasurable gift of the sun, or do you have some things in this box (expectations) that maybe shouldn’t be. You see,

We don’t express gratitude for things we’ve come to expect.

If you’re having trouble conjuring up any passion or love for God, then it’s safe to say that you probably have a box full of expectations. If we come to worship and there is not this immense gratitude in our heart that wants to explode from inside of you like juice that explodes from peach as you bite into it, then maybe you have a box full of expectations.

Expectations kill intimacy, they kill passion, they kill excitement. Expectations are like rain on a parade, because they kill the joy within us. Expectations are like acid on steal, because it eats away at the foundation of love that should exist between God and us. Expectations are like a tornado in a trailer park, because it destroys all the love that’s in it’s path between God and us.

Did you know that if the sun were just a few miles closer that it would be so hot that all the water would evaporate and we, ourselves, would burn up? Did you know that if the earth was a few miles further away from the sun we would all freeze.

If only the sun shown, but no rain came, the ground would dry up and our food would not grow. If only the sun shown, but no rain came all the trees of the forest and all the grass of the field would die. The earth would dry up and all the trees would die. If all the trees died, then we would suffocate, because the leaves of those trees create all the oxygen we breathe everyday through a process called photosynthesis. We breathe out carbon dioxide and trees take the carbon dioxide and convert it back to oxygen for us to breathe. If the trees stopped producing carbon dioxide for one day our very lives would be at stake.

Did you wake up this morning thanking God for the sun and his wonderful placement of it, the rain that has come in plenty, and for the sun and rain that has worked in an artful, mysterious dance to provide all of our crops and all of our food and that without God gracious hand and deep love that we would be nothing more than dust?

Have you received the gifts that God has given you this day as precious and wonderfully mysterious gift, or have you begun to expect them and therefore don’t give God credit for what he has so artfully and mysteriously created and given to you and to me as a magnificent, glorious, gift.

We don’t express gratitude for things we’ve come to expect.

As we see and understand God’s love and the wonderful ways in which he blesses us richly and in abundance, it ought to drive us to our knees in gratitude and adoration for our God who is so good to us.

Worship is an expression of gratitude to God for how he serves us in love.

Worship is our response to the costly, underserved gifts that God gives us every single day. The level of our gratitude, passion, and worship toward God is directly related to how much we see and receive the unconditional love and goodness that God bestows upon us each day.

When we have a box full of expectation toward God, it robs us of opportunities to see the ways in which God serves us in unconditional love.

If I have an expectation that the sun is going to rise today, then how much credit does God get for providing this amazing and awe inspiring act for us? None, because he just met my expectation of him.

As soon as I have expectations of anybody, including God, then I squeeze out the opportunity to receive the service and love that is given. Love can only be given as a gift. God gives us millions of gifts each day, but if we don’t receive them as undeserved, unearned, unconditional good gifts that God bless us with, then we will miss those opportunities for our hearts to soar with joy and gratitude toward God for how Good he is.

Gratitude is noticing the fact that someone, and today we’re talking about God, has given to us the most precious and priceless commodity in the world, which of course is unconditional love. Unconditional love cannot be bought, it cannot be earned, it must be given from the heart as a gift.

Love is the most costly gift that God or any human being can give, because as human beings we were created to be filled with great amounts of unconditional love. We cannot become who God created us to be without it. We cannot be filled with joy without large amounts of unconditional love.

So, here’s the bottom line. We don’t express gratitude for things we’ve come to expect. On the other hand, Gratitude is expressed when we see the precious, costly gifts that we’ve been given.

Let’s take some time to express our gratitude to God the precious gifts that he has given us through a time or worship.