Central Lutheran Church - Elk River
Central Lutheran Church - Elk River
Rhythm: Worship with Pastor Ryan Braley
Have we lost our breath in the modern world? In this profound exploration of worship, we discover that for ancient peoples, worship wasn't a scheduled event but as natural and necessary as breathing itself. It was woven into the fabric of their daily existence, punctuating their lives through prayers, celebrations, and sacred rituals.
The word "worship" derives from "worth-ship" – showing something its true worth and value. When we worship, we turn our whole being toward something, recognizing its beauty and worthiness. This raises the crucial question that shapes our entire existence: what sits on the throne of your life? What receives your primary attention, resources, and devotion?
Our culture offers countless substitutes for authentic worship. We build our lives around sports, social media, work, intellect, appearance, or wealth. Yet despite living in an increasingly secular age, humans remain fundamentally religious beings with deep longings for transcendence and connection to something greater than ourselves. We seek these experiences in nature, at concerts, even through modern wellness practices – all echoing ancient ritual patterns because we hunger for the sacred.
As David Foster Wallace profoundly observed, "There's no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship." The danger comes when we center our lives around things that cannot sustain us, that ultimately rob us of life rather than giving it. This is why proper worship matters – it's about putting things back in their right order.
Whether you're reconnecting with practices of worship or exploring them for the first time, you're invited to awaken to the longing deep in your soul – to experience awe, wonder, and mystery in a world that tries to flatten everything into materialist explanations. Through body prayers, intercession, confession, scripture meditation, art, or simply attentive presence, discover what happens when you center your life on the divine source of all breath.
What will you choose to place at the center of your life? Your answer shapes everything.
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this morning. God, we give you thanks this morning for your presence here and we do, god, just take a minute to acknowledge that you are here with us in this time and place, that you, the creator of the whole world, the sustainer of the universe, the one who allows the breath to flow in and out of our lungs, the one who ignites the world to have life, the ground of all being, you, god, you are here and in some way, for some reason, you want to know us and for us to know you as much as it's possible. So we pray this morning, we would turn our hearts towards you, god, would you captivate us again with awe and wonder? Help us to be people who have our eyes wide open, our ears attuned to your voice and the things you might want to tell us. May our eyes see you at work in the world. May we recognize the sacredness of this moment. So here we are, we gather for worship, and may you show us your presence here in our midst. In Jesus' name. Amen, you can be seated. Good morning everyone. Amen, you can be seated. Good morning everyone. One second Almost forgot something here. Yeah, ooh, yeah, Admire the chair. Is that centered? Okay, good, okay, good, excellent. Yeah, that's good. Okay, you should have also gotten a sheet of paper when you came in. If you did not get a sheet of paper, would you raise your hand? You're gonna need it later on, so raise your hand high and proud, loud and proud. Keep it up high. Ushers, could you, gary, could you? Thank you, todd, can I get some ushers to come? Just pass some of these out. Thank you, heidi. Sorry, I didn't give them a heads up, but keep them up. You're going to need it. And, yeah, once you get it, you can put your hand down, but just keep it up in the meantime. Thank you everybody. Now you, now you can. Probably many of you already cheated and looked at that sheet. That's fine, but later we're going to use it. I'm going to invite you to try one of these prayer stations out. You don't have to move around a whole lot, you can, but we'll get into it. But I want you to try something maybe a bit new this morning or something that will stretch you, that you've never done before, and so we'll see what happens. You never know. So we'll see what happens. You never know. Okay, great, thank you. Thank you, keep them up if you don't have one yet, and if you haven't looked at it yet, don't look at it. It's kind of more fun to just see what happens. We'll see what emerges. I'm going to test. Okay, perfect, we're good to go there.
Speaker 1:So we are in the middle of our rhythm gathering, our rhythm series, and we're talking about the rhythms that shape our lives. Aristotle said that we are people. What we do shapes who we are, and so we know that the rhythms we have, our habits, our actions, the more we do them, they can change our neurology, our neurobiology, they change our physical biology, they can change all kinds of things about us. They impact our and if we're not divided beings, if we're holistic beings, they impact our body, mind, soul and spirit. So the things we do matter and the rhythms we have shape us, and so you should be mindful, then, of what are the things that you're doing on a repeated basis, because they will shape who you are. In fact, I would argue they shape the things that you desire and your love. So be careful of the rhythms you have.
Speaker 1:This morning, and we're engaging in all these ancient christian practices that christians have been using for many years. Everyone got one Raise your hand. If you didn't get one, still Perfect, and so I want to encourage you to try them all out that following week as well. So this morning we're going to talk about worship, but before I do, I want to talk about breath. So you might know this already, but you don't have to remind a relatively healthy person to breathe. They don't need a reminder, they just breathe.
Speaker 1:Breathing, for most of us, is this natural thing that happens all the time and we breathe constantly. It's actually the center of our life. With no breath, there's no life, and so we breathe all the time. We breathe while we're laughing, in case you hadn't noticed, you don't have to remind yourself to breathe while you're laughing. Maybe you do if you're laughing really hard. When you're walking around, when you're talking, when you're sleeping, your body just breathes on its own. You don't have to tell yourself or remind yourself to breathe. For most of us who are healthy, you don't even notice that you're breathing. You probably didn't notice it until I said it just now, because breathing is like life, it's just a natural part of the rhythm of our life. In fact, the only time you really notice that you're breathing is when you're not breathing, like when you're underwater. You suddenly realize, oh my gosh, I need air and I need it quickly, because you're underwater and you can't breathe. Or if you're winded, like after a long run, or whatever you do that winds you, it's like you've got to breathe. Or if you're nervous or anxious or afraid, you've got to remember to breathe. Hey, breathe, breathe. But for most of us, it's just this natural part of life. This is what worship was.
Speaker 1:For the ancient people In the ancient world, worship was like breathing. It was a natural part of the fundamental pieces of life. They just did it. It was like everything in their life was surrounded by worship. They worshiped through the seasons. They had rituals that were like seasonal and they worshiped all the time. They had prayers that were very much a natural part of their lives. They had liturgies, things that they did that were just very much a natural part of their life. It was like breathing for most of these ancient people, and so that was what it was like. It was that they didn't even notice it, that their whole lives were built around this thing that we might call worship. It was a part of the rhythm of their life. It wasn't just something they did once a week. Their lives were worship. It was just like breathing for them. They had rituals and seasons and celebrations and suffering, and all these things were sort of encompassed and woven into their fabric of their worship. Their lives were punctuated by prayers and collective songs and celebrations and all these kinds of things. They didn't attend worship, they lived worship. Worship was like breathing for them. In fact you could say it this way Worship was like breath for them. They just did it.
Speaker 1:I'm kind of afraid that in the modern world, which is 100,000 miles an hour, with distractions all around us and anything we want at our fingertips, I'm afraid that many of us have lost our breath. And don't blame us all the while or all the time. I just think we're sort of a part of this fabric, of this system that has just sort of lost its collective breath, think we're sort of a part of this fabric, of this system that has just sort of lost its collective breath and we've lost the sense of the sacred or of worship or religion in its purest forms. Here's what I mean by worship. So worship comes from this old English word, which really means worth-ship. So worship means to show something, whatever it is, its worth or its value or its beauty or grandeur or worthiness. This is what it means to worship, to show its worthship.
Speaker 1:One scholar defines it like this this is worship. It's an intentional act although I would argue it might sometimes be accidental but of turning our whole being towards something our heart, our mind, our soul, our strength and to recognize its worth Our heart, our mind, our soul, our strength and to recognize its worth, its beauty, its majesty. So you could say it's like having your life center around something. This is worship, like centering your whole life around something, like giving your attention to it, building your life around it, maybe throwing resources at it, what you give your money to, maybe how you shape your calendar and how you raise your kids, or things you talk about, how you organize your life, what things are at the top of the list, what things get cut. This is considered worship. It's what you sort of put at the middle of your life, or, you could say, on the throne of your life, which raises the question then what are you worshiping? What's at the center of your life? What do you give your life to? What do you give your heart and soul to? Your attention, your resources, your calendar? What do you give it to?
Speaker 1:Now, maybe for many of us, we think it's hopefully I don't know Jesus, and so we center our lives around Jesusesus and we build it into our calendar and everything goes around that and like breathing, we just sort of live and move and. But maybe it's not always the case for many of us, maybe it's some other things, like maybe I don't know, but don't get mad, don't get mad. This is signed by the greatest quarterback of all time, john elway. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, don't get mad. I would have had a. I would have had a vikings helmet, but I only allow championship teams in my house, so we didn't do the. Uh, just kidding, just kidding, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's sports that you kind of revolve your life around. Maybe it's watching these sports. You know, you ever been to a football game? It's kind of like a religious experience, raising our hands and cheering in unison. Maybe it's not sports, maybe it's something else. Maybe it's something like this oh yeah, this is. Am I getting warmer? Yeah, maybe it's constant work. Maybe it's social media likes and videos and reels or doom scrolling or other things, or binge watching.
Speaker 1:Maybe that's sort of the center of your life and you sort of shape everything in your life around it. Or maybe it's something else. Maybe it's like just this incessant need or desire to work and to prove your value and your worth, because you just know that if you work a little bit more and a little bit harder and have your life put together around your work, then you'll be a valuable person and a contributor to society. I mean, we're good Protestants here in this country, so we like to show off our work ethic. Maybe not that. Maybe it's something else. Maybe it's something like this that your life is centered and shaped around. Maybe you're just a very intelligent person and you just want to sort of let everyone know. Or you want to shape your own life around reading big, fancy, heavy books like this one. Look at that fancy book, am I right? And maybe your intellect or your education is so important to you it's actually become the center of your very life and everything is sort of shaped around that. Or maybe not that. Maybe it's something else, like this one here Don't worry, it's communion wine. Actually it's not. This is barefoot fruscato peach. This is not mine, that's low-hanging fruit, but right.
Speaker 1:Maybe your life has sort of become built around whatever your addiction is, that sort of numbs the pain of your life. By the way, no one's immune to these kinds of things, even myself. And these things are not inherently bad in and of themselves, of course not. They're just things. It's this relationship of centering my life around this thing, where I give all my attention, all my desires, all my resources, where I become sort of this thing on the throne of my life. Maybe that didn't resonate with you.
Speaker 1:Maybe, how about these ones here? I've got two more for you. Maybe it's just looking really good and buff and getting that pump going. This is a 50-pound weight, just so you know. Did I say 50? I meant 100. 98, 99. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Maybe image is your thing and your life is shaped around that. You gotta go to the gym or do one more yoga session or get out and get tan or whatever your things are. Or lastly, how about this one here? Yes, sir, these are all singles. By the way, don't come and rob me right now. I had to borrow these from my son, gavin. I don't carry cash anymore. Do you have any cash on you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe that's your thing, you know, and you just sort of that's at the center of your life. What is it? What's on the throne of your life. Actually, the modern problem is more like this I put myself on the throne of my own life. I'll be the God of my own life and I sort of shape everything around myself and my own ego and my ambitions, my own life. I'll be the God of my own life and I sort of shape everything around myself and my own ego and my ambitions, my desires, and I fulfill all my longings and my wishes and I become this self-absorbed person and that's my thing. But worship is this act of somehow turning your attention to this thing that's at the center of your life and carving out space just to show that thing. Whatever it is, it's worthship.
Speaker 1:I asked on my social media page, my Facebook account, because I'm an older person, you use Facebook still and I said hey, how do you define worship? And some friends of mine said this One person, a very wise young man who's very handsome as well. Where is he there? He is Jeremy Peterson. I didn't ask if I could quote him, but he said it's intentional, focused, honoring, directed at the highest priority. What is your highest priority? How about this one?
Speaker 1:One of my friends said you can worship anything and we worship lots of things. It's what you give your attention to the most and focus and love and adoration. Hopefully it's God, but maybe it's not. How about this one? My husband is very ill. She said I take care of him daily. I have deeply considered this to be my worship. Is that worship? How about this one? Awestruckness at the unfolding creativeness of Yahweh Is that worship? How about this one? Glorifying God in all that we do, whatever it is, it does not have to be music, but music is a great way to express ourselves to God. But it could be picking up trash, smiling at somebody because they're a child of God, loving your family or your husband when he's ill or when it's hard, crying out to God, just acknowledging him with everything that you do. You know one more here. How about this one? Worship this person said. One of my friends says it's our response to the gospel Worship. Yeah, today I want to invite us to worship, and to worship God this morning. This is a sermon about an invitation. We're going to practice it together.
Speaker 1:For the ancient people, worship. Their experience of life was fundamentally sacred and worshipful, or, you could say, religious. They were fundamentally religious people. They had a deep sense of the sacred, the divine. They had sacred places, so they had temples and altars and sacred mountains and rivers. It was very much a part of their ordinary lives. It was their breath. They didn't even notice it. This is how they organized their very lives. It was their breath. They didn't even notice it. This is how they organized their very lives. They had sacred time. Time was sacred. They had rituals that didn't just commemorate time or events, but it brought them back. It reconnected them to these events in the past.
Speaker 1:By the way, when we do communion, we do this. Communion, at least for us Lutherans, is not just bringing back to mind that Jesus died. That's fine and good. It somehow reconnects us to the story of Jesus dying on the cross. You know, I might say we remember it. By remembering ourselves to God, we actually bring back into, like the present moment, the death and resurrection of Jesus. It's this ritualistic thing we do to remember that time itself is sacred. This is how the ancients were. It was all about sacred time. They also had sacred stories. The Jews, for example, had this sacred story about God creating the world and then sort of the people being enslaved and then God liberating them through this wonderful man called Moses and his sister Miriam and his brother Aaron, and they're liberated, and then this covenant that God creates with his people. This is a sacred story for the people of God in the ancient world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because for them, worship was like breathing. It wasn't a belief system per se or a thing you did on Sunday mornings for an hour. It was a way of being in the world. It was a centering of one's life, giving all your attention, time and energy, resources, its worthiness, towards this one thing that you worship. That's what it was. It was a way of being in the world. It was just like breathing.
Speaker 1:One scholar says this. He says that, uh, people, in the ancient world, they didn't live in order to worship. They worshipped in order to live and live rightly. They knew they got this right. Everything else would flow out from that. That was worship. That was like breathing. If they got their, they knew if they got this right, everything else would flow out from that. That was worship. It was like breathing. If they got their breath right, if they had breath in their lungs, everything else would sort of fall into place and be just like it's supposed to do.
Speaker 1:Here's my fear, though as I mentioned, I fear in the modern world. We've lost the sense of the sacred and we've lost our breath. We sort of lack the words any longer, or the structures or the directions or like sort of the insight or the wisdom about how to do this kind of thing. But I wonder if it's uh, if it doesn't, well, it's this, I'd say. But also, at the same time that we've lost these handholds, I've realized that people still are inherently, fundamentally kind of religious people at our. We all have these deep longings for religious type experiences, you could say for the connection to the divine, that even though we've lost the language around the sacred or the holy or for God, we still are fundamentally religious type people, that we seek meaning and transcendence and sort of these connections to things that are bigger and larger than us. We have these longings in our soul. We're still religious people. I mean, you don't have to look that far to find alternatives to church.
Speaker 1:There's all kinds of religious gatherings around the world. You probably know this. There's the religion, the modern religion, of CrossFit. You know this. Right, you guys know CrossFit. Yeah, this is a modern religion. Here they have their own sort of liturgies, they have their own language. They call it the WOD. The WOD, the workout of the day. They have their own ritualistic dietary restrictions paleo or keto, only right. They have their own evangelists. You've got to try CrossFit. You've got to try, it's great. They have their own weekly Sabbath. It's called Leg Day.
Speaker 1:These are religious people gathering for sacred events. We also have this religion, the modern religion of politics, of the red and the blue and sometimes the beige. We have our daily worship gatherings at night on cable news TV, am I right? And we have our saints. These would be our former presidents. And we have a devil too. It's whoever that guy's president candidate is. That's the devil.
Speaker 1:Oh, no laughter on that one. I guess I hit a little too close to home, maybe for someone. Okay, fine, how about this one? How about the sacred ritual of the pumpkin spice latte? Are you with me? This is a sacred event here in our culture, especially. The first sip of this bad boy begins a new liturgical season. We call it basic autumnis. Thank you, that got a little bit more left than left. Yeah, cinnamon, be upon you. I don't have a slide for it because I thought about it this morning.
Speaker 1:But what about, uh, our worship at the, at the complex of the altar of youth sports. Oh, that one hit home, didn't it? Yeah, we gather at the sacred arena or field, the temple of the field, and our rituals include 5 am, optional practices and pilgrimages to the great tournament destinations that are exotic, such as Des Moines, iowa. And if my kid isn't recruited D1 by the time he's 12, have I even parented? You know what I mean? Yeah, we're still folks who long to worship and we have these gatherings, sort of these pseudo places of worship. But we still do it. We still long for worship, and those are joking ones.
Speaker 1:But here's something else the longing to worship is deep in our soul, because I believe it's actually human to want to worship. We have these longings as human beings, what it means to be human. Here's how I know that Many of us go outside into the woods and we go stand on mountains and we go to visit the ocean and we walk deep into the forest and we're sort of in awe and in wonder of what's going on. And we go out there not just for fun but to connect to something bigger and grander than ourselves. And when you're out there, bigger and grander than ourselves, and when you're out there, you can kind of feel it and sense it and even taste it. You get like an itch, you get like a feeling of it. What is this? Yeah, because deep in our souls, as humans, we long to be connected to the sacred and you get hints of it out in these places. It's beautiful. Or whenever you go to like a concert or a theater and you're with other people and you have like this transcendent experience, you're connected with all kinds of people and you're singing the same songs or you're laughing at the same joke in the theater, yeah, you're having this ritualistic connection with people and the divine in this incredible way. It's beautiful Because deep in our souls, this is what it means to be human. Or how about this one? I love this, this modern maybe modern kind of at least in the Western world sort of obsession with wellness and sort of meditation apps and cold plunges and yoga studios, and when we're there, we're actually reenacting or mirroring these ancient ritual practices from the ancient world, because we long to be connected to the divine and the sacred. That's what we long for as people of God. We long for it. It's sort of an itch in our soul.
Speaker 1:A couple of years ago, my son Gavin, who's here. He goes to a school called North Central College in Chicago, west of Chicago, and we went to a visit there when he was a senior in high school Went for a visit and it was late one night and our tour guy was a senior and he was a lacrosse player, because my son, gavin, plays lacrosse and so this guy's name is Tom. Super cool guy, very fun. But right from the jump I could tell that this guy was a lacrosse player. He was all lacrosse all the time and he was like very casual, just like you could just tell, like he loved lacrosse. He wanted to be an All-American that next year he practiced all the time he goes. Actually the only reason I'm here is for lacros half as he's touring us around Like this guy like loves lacrosse. And then at the end we come to this intersection on the road and there's a church there and Gavin goes oh, is there a church here? And Tom goes.
Speaker 1:I don't really know, I'm not very religious and I was like, uh, yeah, you are, thank you. It's just not God that you would have on this interview, but you're religious for sure, man, because we all are. That's what it means to be human. We all have these deep longings to connect to something bigger than ourselves. We're all religious, but what it means to be, fundamentally, I think, a human, yeah, Now, that means, then, that we're all trying in some ways to connect to the sacred.
Speaker 1:Last week, ben talked about the golden calf story. You might know this story and there's a part of me that wants to not blame them. Like I get it. Like they wanted to worship something so badly, deeply and I'm reading into the text but they wanted it so badly that they made a golden calf. And there's a part of me that's like, yeah, I totally get that. I get that that desire, that longing. It's not a bad thing, it's actually quite intuitive and it's actually quite fundamental to what it means to be a human being. They're trying to connect to the sacred.
Speaker 1:The problem is that we're displaced people. We've lost our connections and the language. In our modern society, people say, oh, I don't believe in God any longer, or churches are archaic and antiquated, so we've lost the structure, and I get it. There's all kinds of like the institutions have sort of in some ways have gotten defunct. I get that too, but we've sort of torn it all down. There's nothing left, and so we're people who are like wandering around blind, looking for handholds, longing for the divine and the sacred. But we have nowhere to go to find it, so we wander around displaced. But what if we need those experiences as humans? What if we need the connection to the divine and sacred spaces and times? And for someone like, hey, this is a sacred, holy moment. Let's just wait here. For just what if we need that? What if we need to worship? What if we're beings of worship?
Speaker 1:The great David Foster Wallace says this. He says there's no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships, even atheists worship their own rationalism sometimes. The only choice, he says, is what we get to worship, and the compelling reason for maybe choosing God is that pretty much anything else that you worship will eat you alive.
Speaker 1:You ever been around someone who just drinks all the time? They're not fun to be around. Or someone who worships money man, unless they're making you some money, it's not that fun to be around them, is it? Or someone who just worships at the throne of the computer screen, because those things will eat us alive. And I'm telling you, no one's immune to this, not even me. So these longings that we have, if we don't tend to them carefully, like the great Carl Jung once said, the gods will become diseases. These are problems for us, and so we live in a disease culture, worshiping all kinds of false gods.
Speaker 1:Yeah, All the while you and I are longing to breathe, we attach ourselves to all kinds of things that can't really give us breath or life in any way. Yeah, we're beings who worship. That's what it means to be a human being. This is why, then, the command goes to the people of Israel hey, you shall have no other gods before me. It's not like God's an egomaniac, he's like I'm deeply insecure. You better worship me, nobody else. No, he knew, if you don't worship me, you'll worship the profane. You'll worship things that rob life from you as opposed to giving it to you. Only I can give you life. We live in a culture where they're all worshiping something. It doesn't matter what is it, but all the things that they worship are generally robbing them of life.
Speaker 1:Jesus says it this way, but the same thing Worship the Lord, your God, and serve him only. This is why, now, how do we do this? We're going to practice now, so take out your sheet, because here's the thing behind the thing. Worship is just turning your attention, your heart, your mind, body, soul and spirit towards this thing. This morning I want to invite you to worship God with me together in this place. So we're going to turn our hearts towards God and you can do it in all kinds of ways, but as you do it, I want you to come awake to the longing deep in your soul to connect with God. So, if you're here, you're like I've never had that longing, I've never well start to notice it, like this desire in you to have meaning or purpose or transcendence, or an experience that's probably your longing to worship God. Or if you're here and you feel it often, yeah, yeah, foster that like water, that longing that can draw you to worship God, and then also then foster, then too, this, you know, this idea of awe and wonder. I shared about this a couple weeks ago. But the great Abraham Joshua Heschel I love this he says this.
Speaker 1:I'll read the first part of it. He says that there's neither worship nor ritual without a sense of mystery. So may we be people who foster mystery and awe and wonder, especially in this culture that wants us to just be materialist and kind of flatten everything out. May we experience awe and wonder and mystery. This is why, when we go out into the woods or out on the lake, we're filled with awe and wonder that can lead to faith. So foster that. And when we practice worshiping together this morning I'm going to sort of water that sense of awe and wonder and mystery. Now there's two kinds of ways generally to worship. I'm going to skip that. There's individual worship and there's collective worship.
Speaker 1:Now, individuals like just me, by myself, connecting to the divine, to God Now that can be in here, it could also be in a forest somewhere, it could be on a lake, it could be in a car driving, it could be at a coffee shop where I bring my full attention, my awareness to God and I begin to sort of like show God that he's worth my attention, my resources, my time, my energy. And I do that alone, by myself. That's fine, it's great. Then there's also this rhythm of gathering together collectively for worship. And when we do that here, something happens, something emerges. They call it an emergent phenomenon. When we're singing songs together and we're breathing in unison, we're saying the same words, that collectively we experience something divine and sacred. Because we're together, it's beautiful and if you didn't do it, you wouldn't experience it. So that's a rhythm of ours.
Speaker 1:Now, worship can happen on accident. You might be out in the woods one day like, oh my gosh, you're overcome with awe and wonder. Or it can be on purpose, where you just turn your attention towards God as a rhythm, in other ways fine. And then your response is worship. You might respond by raising your hands because you don't know what else to do. You might laugh, or you might dance, or you might just sit in the silence and the quiet. There's all kinds of ways to respond to the divine presence, the awareness, the awe and wonder of God. Does that make sense? Okay, so we're going to sing two songs and then we'll do a third one at the very end.
Speaker 1:We'll sing two songs and when we do, I want you to pick one of these ways to worship on that sheet of paper and that sheet has six ways. There's front and back. The first one is body prayers. So you know, for centuries people have used their body as worship. So you might fold your hands when you pray. The reason folks do that is because they're saying way back, when they first started in the early church, they were saying, hey, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to reach out and grab for anything else other than God. I'm going to fold my hands. Or when you raise your hands in worship, you might, or you know, anytime it's like I give up, I surrender, or like this is just sort of like you know, you're kind of humbling yourself and opening yourself to God. I'm open God. Or laying on the ground or kneeling these are body prayers or body worship. You can do that, okay.
Speaker 1:Number two you can intercede or pray for somebody. These are all prayers from the last gathering. There's post-it notes at the end of your pews. You can write a prayer out as worship to God and turn your heart, your attention to God as you're praying for that person. Then walk up during one of the two songs and slap it on the board as your prayer and your worship. Number three you can do confession. So you can write down I don't know, a sin, a thought, whatever on here somewhere, tear it off and come, bring it up to the front here and just throw it at the cross, which I'll put back. The cross got moved. But that's confession as worship, confession as worship.
Speaker 1:You can also meditate on scripture. Here's a great scripture verse from Mark, where Jesus is in the boat with the disciples and there's a storm and he says peace, be still. You can read this over and over and over again, slowly, and see what emerges for you as your worship. You're drawing your attention, your focus to God in this story and see what happens. You can also you can draw as worship. My daughter loves to draw during worship.
Speaker 1:You can draw down here as Mike and the band are playing a song, listen to the words and just draw whatever comes up as worship to God. You're drawing your attention, your focus, your awareness to God and just as a response which is what worship is, a response to God, draw whatever comes up and just let it be a sacred holy place. Or in the back there's a really cool artist named he Qi. There's a sacred holy place. Or in the back there's a really cool artist named he Qi. It's this painting called. Actually, the painting is called Peace, be Still. It goes with the Bible verse back here and you can just look at it and you can kind of reflect and meditate on this story. And there's the Bible verses in there too. You can look it up and read the story and just see what you notice about this story or about this drawing, this painting that was done by he Qi, and see what God might share with you through this artwork.
Speaker 1:Are there any questions? Wonderful, we're going to try it and my only encouragement would be as you do them. What you're doing is this is all you're doing when you're worshiping God and when you're sort of coming into this space. You're doing this Careful now. Careful, you're sort of just putting things back in proper order here and making sure that your life is centered and focused on the right things that can give you life. Whatever one jumps out at you, we're going to dim the lights and we're going to go for it. Whatever one jumped out, just try that one. Don't overthink it. They're all fine, anyone's good. So there's no right one or correct. Just whatever one you got, or the one that you're like I'm never gonna do that one. Try that one and see what happens. Or the one that will stretch you the most. Try that and let's see what happens. So, central as you turn your heart towards God, may you be overwhelmed with the awe and wonder of God, and we worship God together. Amen.
