Worship isn’t Performance - Pastor Kristin Mockler Young

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, guys, this is Naim, and you've reached the Mosaic Church podcast. So excited that you're part of our listening community and love for you to be even more connected. [00:00:10] Speaker B: So check out our website. [00:00:11] Speaker A: There's more content there and there's more opportunities for you get connected in our ministries and events as well. Also, love for you to share this content. If this is blessed to you. I know that God wants to use you to bless other people with it, so share this podcast you will. Lastly, would you consider supporting this ministry? This is made possible by other people's generosity, and I'd love for you to pay it forward. Join us to reclaim the message and the movement of Jesus together. So would you consider giving to this ministry? I know that God is able to do immeasurably more through us when we come together. Thank you so much. God bless you. Enjoy. [00:00:55] Speaker B: It's a great Sunday to be here. Not just because it's a holiday weekend, but because it's always a great Sunday to be here. And you know, I mean it when I say that, because I've been here on Sunday for the last 20 years. Not exactly this very room. Actually, 20 years ago, Mosaic started in the AMC theaters over at Northlake Mall. And the very first service, Naim and Mosaic and the team made my dreams come true because they let me be a worship leader for Mosaic's first Service. So almost 20 years ago, it was very, very exciting. So we were there, and it was really big deal. Mosaic was a church like no other church that was in Charlotte at the time. And so the Charlotte observer came out and they did a cover story. And I actually have a photo. I have proof so that you can see that I was helping to lead worship for Mosaic's first service. Put that up there. And so, yes, yes. So there's the team. There was more of us. We had to cover the front of that movie theater. But what's interesting is that you see if you count from the left, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, all the way to the right. Do you see the person that does not have a face? That is me, guys. That is me. That is my face behind the guitar. And Naeem and Ashley can vouch for me and let you know that that really is me. I was on the worship team at Mosaic. Now, unfortunately, maybe that was, like, foreshadowing of a kind because I was not long for the worship team. What happened was that slowly, the person at the sound booths was directed to just turn my mic down a little bit and a little bit at a Time. I wish I was making that up. That is real. That really happened. So when you lead worship, I don't know if you know this, but one of the key vital skills that you need to have is staying on key consistently. So I was told, hey, we love your energy. You can do the thing that you do. We just don't wanna hear you when you're doing it. Apparently I can't be alone though, right? Surely I'm not the only one that's ever been in worship and been like, what are we supposed to be doing right now? Like, what is actually happening? Has anybody else ever been in worship and maybe you even think you're doing it right, and then you're singing and you're loud and all of a sudden the song drops and it gets quiet and you're like, how did you know that that was gonna happen? I didn't know that that was gonna happen. How can I be aware of this? Or you start clapping right when everybody else stops clapping. Right? Worship can be tricky because we don't always know what it is that we're supposed to be doing. The good news is that we are talking about worship today. We're talking about worship today. And I want you to know that it is not your pitch that matters. It is your posture. It is not your pitch that matters when it comes to worship. It is actually your posture. Worship is not about singing better. Hallelujah. It's not about singing better. It's not about knowing the right things to do. But worship is about showing up differently. Yes, in song, but also with our presence and in our lives. And so, as we end this series on Margin, where we're creating space for things that matter most, I wonder if you've ever considered creating margin for worship. In fact, I think that if you haven't considered that, it could be that worship is the thing that's keeping you stuck wherever you are right now. If you feel stuck as a Christian, like you're just going through the motions, trying to do the right things, worship could be the breakthrough for you. Maybe you feel like you're not getting the clarity that you're asking God for. Could it be that God is trying to give you that clarity through worship, but you're missing it somehow? A lack of margin for worship or space for worship could also be keeping you from seeing the peace and the joy and the goodness that does still exist, even when the world is hard and heavy. Now, typically, this is the place in my message where I put my teacher hat on and I explain to you Here is the root word of whatever it is, the thing that we're gonna study. And I'll teach you Hebrew, or I'll teach you the context, but with worship, it's not actually that simple. It's a little more complicated. There are actually seven different words in Hebrew for worship. And I do not have that much time up here to go through all of them. But the thing about having seven different words for worship does not mean that they contradict each other. It doesn't mean that we have to figure out, like, what is the right one. But it actually gives us a better picture of worship being very, very new, nuanced and multifaceted. Actually, Jesus talks about worship in John. He said, yet a time is coming and has now come, when true worshipers will worship the Father in two things. Help me out. They will worship the Father in the spirit and in the truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the spirit and. And in truth. So what Jesus is talking about here is our posture of worship, a posture of worship that recenters our entire lives around who God is and what God has done. Who God is and what God has done. And it's God's Holy Spirit in us, within us, that allows us to connect with God in a deep, relational, uniquely personal way, not just through music, but in all of the ways that we can actually worship him in our lives. And so we're gonna look at a couple of those today. And most commonly, when we worship or we think about worship, we think about worship as response. Worship is a response, like I said, to who God is and to what he has done in our lives. And there's all kinds of stories in the Bible where you will see people in scripture that were asked to serve or kneel or bow down to a different king or a different God. Maybe they were tempted to put their focus on money or power or reputation, but we can see in their stories that it was actually through worship that they were able to stay connected to God. If you have our Mosaic Charlotte app, we have a section in there for sermon notes. And so I'm gonna highlight three stories really, really quick that I do not have time to unpack for you. But they are there, and I would love for you to go back this week and to read them on your own and to ask Holy Spirit to show you what God wants you to know about worship from those stories. The first one is Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel. Anybody know that story or Rackshack and Benny from VeggieTales. Yeah, you guys are like, oh, right, the chocolate bunny. I got that one. That's the first one where we see Rack Shack. And Benny actually faced cultural pressure to align with a really narcissistic leader. And everyone around them was doing that. They were going and putting their devotion to this leader, but they responded by staying faithful to God. You can also read about Daniel in the lion's den, which is probably also in VeggieTales. You guys know that story, Daniel in the Lion's Den? So what happened with Daniel? He was thrown in there to begin with because a law was put in place that said you were only allowed to worship the king at the time. It was actually illegal. You were breaking the law if you were caught praying or giving devotion to any other God. Well, Daniel stayed praying to God three times a day, hence, broke the law and was put in the pit where he worshiped and continued to thank God. If we fast forward to the New Testament, we see Paul and Silas in acts, and they have been thrown into prison because they are healing people and casting out and doing things. That's actually messing up the income and what was happening for some of the people at the time. And so they are in really dire circumstances in jail. Everything seems hopeless. And instead of just surrendering to their unjust treatment and just saying, okay, well, I guess this is where we are now. Like, thanks a lot, God. Instead, they chose to have a worship service and they sang songs to still tell God who he is and how good and faithful he was so that the other people in the cells and the guards around them could hear. Now, these are really good, inspiring stories of what true worship can look like. But sometimes, I don't know about you, I also need stories of people that, like, maybe their humanity has a little bit of a stronger hold on them. They're maybe not quite so holy. And those stories are in scripture, too, because they can show us that when we don't feel like having a worship service in the middle of a cell or a pit of lions, it's not that we're failing. It's just maybe that we need to try differently. Maybe we need to have our eyes open to see what it is that's tempting us and what idol we're accidentally putting in God's place instead. Because it's really easy to go, well, I'm not building shrines. I'm not bowing down to any other God. So, like, check, I got this one. I'm not worshiping anything else besides God. But here's what it could potentially look like. Anytime that we are not giving God our first and best, we could be encroaching on idol worship. Whether that's our time, our devotion, our attention. That could be avoiding, like Rack, Shack and Benny. Maybe we avoid and don't do the hard things. We don't follow God into scary situations because we're afraid of anything that's a little bit sacrificial. So what we end up doing is giving our time to safety and comfort and worshiping the things that will provide that for us. Instead, maybe worship of a leader can come to play. And this can be a leader of a pastor, someone in your family, a boss, somebody in the somebody where you work. But if there is a leader who promises you something, whether it's power or protection, and you find yourself tempted to maybe trade the things that you are meant to do, trade the things that God has put for you or called you to in order to get some of that stuff from the person who is making you the promises. What we can end up doing then is worshiping, in a sense, self preservation. Whatever it is that is going to help us to get what we think we need and can control in getting on our own, maybe even in this room when we're worshiping, we can get too caught up in the eyes of other people where you start to think, what if I'm doing it wrong? What if the music does drop again and we become more focused on our pitch than our posture. See, I am a big worshiper right now. And by that I mean not only do I love worship, but like, I am a big worshiper. I need space. I need to be in the front, I need to be on an aisle, I need to be on the end. Like I'm gonna throw hands in a holy way and just let my body do whatever it's gonna do. Because that's how I worship now. But I was not always that way. Even though I've always loved music and singing, I used to be very, very self conscious and about what I looked like in worship. And it's partly because I came from a background where I was told that when we stand up with our hymnals, it's respectful to stand very, very still and to sing, but quietly. So I had to break out of that. And I know a lot of you probably do as well. But I was also self conscious. I would think about other people. I would let what I assumed were the opinions of other people pull me out. Because while not only do I not Stay on key super consistently. I was also not given the spiritual gift of rhythm. So while my body, like, wants to dance, it doesn't always know the right way to do it. I think those were, like, all in one big package. And God was like, I'm just gonna give this to the worship team. Like, we'll give you something else. But God showed me one day. He was like, hey, there's a disconnect here. And the problem is that you can't be singing these songs and claiming to be pouring it all out in worship for me while you are holding back and restraining what it is that my spirit is trying to do in and through you. And that was enough for me to go, okay, okay, God, like, if these people think that I am out of my mind or this was the harder one for me to let go of, honestly, if people around me think I'm doing this for attention, God, let me put that at your feet. Let me let go of that and just focus on how I am supposed to respond to your Holy Spirit in me. Because, remember, worship is not about our pitch or our presentation. It is about our what you remember. Our posture. Worship is about our posture. When we let comparison into our worship, it puts the focus on us instead of on who God is and what he's done. Now, like much else in Christianity, there is a tension to this, right? Because while I do want to invite you to worship freely and to follow Holy Spirit's leading, whatever that looks like for you, on your knees, in your seat, on the floor, with your hands up, I want you to be able to do that. But I am not implying that movement is an indication of true worship. That is not always a direct correlation. And in Matthew 15, Jesus actually warns us against the thinking that if we sing the right songs and perform all of the right motions, that that's enough for worship. He says, in Matthew, these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in what vain? They worship me in vain. Their teachings are merely human rules. So while it can be incredibly honoring, it can be very honoring when we choose to step out of our comfort zones and worship the Lord. It actually doesn't matter how it looks if when our hands go up, our hearts are not surrendered to God. It does not matter how it looks if our hands go up, if we say all the right things, if our faces are making the right expressions, if our hearts are not actually surrendered to God, if in the moment of worship, if our lives are just presenting as holy for the metrics of other people, then Jesus says our worship is in vain. That means our worship is for us. It is worship for us and not for God. It actually doesn't matter, in a sense, what we declare here with our heads bowed and our hands up, if it's not fulfilled out there by our actionable faith in the way that we live, the way that we live outside of Sunday morning is the fulfillment, it should be the fulfillment of all of the things that we declare and promise to God when we're in this room together, when we worship God in spirit and in truth, it can look a couple different ways. Maybe for you, it's. You take those Bible verses that you've memorized and tucked away into your heart or the ones that you've shared online on social media, and you actually sit with them a little bit longer until they penetrate your own heart and they penetrate your decision making so that you are out in the world actually acting justly, loving mercy and walking humbly with God. See, we solve that disconnect between our lips and our hearts when we are active as the church that Jesus called us to be. And it does mean that we sacrifice a little bit of time or effort or maybe even pride so that we can serve each other. Because if we don't do that, what we end up worshiping is we get sucked into this consumer mindset that says, I'm going to show up to church to receive whatever it is that God has for me, and I'm just gonna assume that somebody else is gonna take care of handling all the things that need to happen so that I can have the worship experience that I want. At Mosaic, we are volunteer run. And when I say that, what I mean is that services happen. You are here right now because of the volunteers, the people who have responded to who God is and what he's done in their lives by creating margin in their week to be here. You get to sing songs on the back wall because there's a volunteer back there. Eli's back there clicking through the slides for you. You get to be in here, some of you without your children, because there are volunteers that are keeping the babies and the toddlers and everybody happy so that you can come in here and have a moment to actually think and hear from God. All of this happens because of volunteers. So if you are not on a team, if you're new and you're visiting, we're so glad that you're here and checking out Mosaic. But if you've been coming for a while, if you consider Mosaic your home and you are not on a team. I just wonder if you considered serving and volunteering not as a task or another to do list item, but as worship. If that would change your response. If maybe instead you could worship God in gratitude by helping to provide the experience for someone else that you yourself have found so much meaning in here. We also worship God when we tithe caveat. If you are begrudgingly giving or you are like giving out of obligation, I would not call that worship. I would not say that it's worship with your finances. But when you choose to give generously, that is actually you responding to again who God is and what he's done in your life. And you can tell people about Mosaic all day long. I hope that you do. I love when you share our social media posts and you invite your friends and family and you bring people in. But tithing and committing to financially support Mosaic actually allows you to participate in what God is doing here. It actually provides the funds to make this happen so that as we grow, as you invite your friends and family and people start to come in, we can make sure that we're providing the same experience at a larger scale. Because yes, God does miracles. And also, how many of you know that the world that we live in takes money, right? Is there anything that we can do that does not require money? It takes money to replace the broken drum shield that made the drum so much quieter. That's why some of you are like, oh, that's what happened. Yeah, it's expensive. It's expensive. It takes money to buy the supplies for the care packs that we're going to pack as part of service so that you can provide and fulfill the needs of some people who are experiencing homelessness right here in our city. It takes a good bit of money to provide our livestream service so that people that live in different cities can join us when you're sick, when you can't make it in, so that you can tune in and watch and still be part of what's happening here. Proverbs 3, 9 says that we are to honor the Lord with your wealth and with the best part of everything you produce. The best part? The best part of everything you produce. Honor the Lord. Worship him with the best part. Have you ever stopped to ask yourself, what do I produce? Like, what is it that you produce? Is it an income? Is it time? Is there a skill that you have and are you using it to respond to God with the best parts of it? What if you considered taking the best parts of what you produce and giving that to God in worship. How would that change your worship? I also know that worship isn't always easy and there are times when life is really hard and bad things happen. And so worship in those moments is not choosing to just naively turn a blind eye and focus on like a positivity. When you can choose to worship when life is hard, it is actually a defiant hope. That kind of worship is resistance because you are choosing to still worship so that you can resist being sucked into the cynicism or the despair or anything else that the enemy is trying to distract you from and pull you down into. In Psalm 42, the writer is in distress and it's really interesting how they respond. It says, day and night I have only tears for food, while my enemies continually taunt me, saying, where is this God of yours? My heart is breaking as I remember how it used to be. I walked among the crowds of worshipers leading a great procession to the house of God, singing for joy and giving thanks amid of a great celebration. Like you can feel the psalmist's emotion here. You can feel that they feel distanced from God and they are longing for that presence and that connection again. But then in like a self awareness moment, it takes a really interesting turn. Then he writes, why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope, I will praise him again. My Savior and my God. His circumstances didn't change from like one verse to the next. His circumstances didn't change, but his posture did. He was like, I am in distress. This is all still very bad. I am still tempted to just wallow in my despair. And yet I will use worship to resist all of that and praise my good God. Friends, this is lament. This is worship as lament. When you choose to turn to God and say, I trust you enough to bring my pain and my conflict and my grief to you, rather than to shut you out and stop worshiping because it doesn't feel good right now. When Jesus said that we worship in spirit and in truth, he didn't mean that we worship in the truth of a good situation. He meant that we worship in the truth of a good God, and that truth is unchanging. Worship as resistance doesn't often look like singing and clapping and probably what you picture as worship in your mind. But it can look like pouring out tears. It can look like sounds that sound more like anguish than song. It's taking your honest emotion to God and telling him what is actually real, while also being able to separate his goodness from that choosing to worship when it's hard becomes a fight. Worship becomes the way that you can battle against any lies that the enemy is trying to tell you that God is absent, that God is powerless, or that God does not have any other good things for your future. Lament and worship as resistance, puts all. All of those things, despair, confusion and shame in their place at the foot of Jesus for him to deal with so that we can still stay focused on the truth and the goodness of who God is. Last month we kicked off, like Jeff mentioned, something called the Table, which are like these discipleship dinners where we come together and we have dinner and we dive deeper into topics that you guys have been asking for. This week we're talking about how to read the Bible and we would love for you to join us if you have not signed up yet. But last month we started with talking about different ways that people experience God. And so some people experience God in nature or in solitude. Some people experience God through education or service. And a lot of people in the room said that they experience God through worship. And I know that's the case for me as well. For me, worship is very experiential, which is why I need to a lot of space to feel it out. Worship can be a place that not only do you connect to God, but also that you hear from God. And that doesn't mean that you're necessarily gonna get this like audible voice in your head. I've pretty much never had that happen to me during worship. But I will say that I hear from God during worship because my body physically changes. Sometimes my heart will like do this weird heartbeat thing, or all of a sudden my breath will change and I'm breathing differently. I've gotten goosebumps for no reason. And these things only happen to me when I'm worshiping. So in my mind I'm like, okay, this is Holy Spirit trying to get my attention and tell me something. That's what God could be doing through you and in you when you are worshiping as well. God could be trying to tell you something. If you've ever been singing a song, maybe this has happened to you. And you sing a lyric, maybe it's a song you've sung like a hundred times. And you sing that lyric and all of a sudden it's as if, like, that was a confession that you didn't know needed to come out of your mouth. And then you're like, why is my face wet? Like, why am I crying? Because you have this reaction to something that happens in worship that you didn't expect that is God speaking to you in worship. That is God's spirit stirring up in you in worship. And that's because worship is also revelation. Worship opens our eyes to see the truest version of who God is. Have you ever gotten up really early? You guys are like, we're the 11 o' clock crowd. No. Have you ever gotten up really early and watched a sunrise or watched a video of it on your friend's phone? Maybe? Okay. When you go out to watch a sunrise, you know that you don't see the light break through the horizon until it does, until it crosses that line. Well, going out and sitting there and waiting for the sun to rise does not magically make the sun appear. Right. It was already there. The same is true when we worship. When we worship, we do not make God magically show up in this room. God is already here. God is already in you. So God is already present wherever you go. But when we worship, it helps us to see where God already was, just as the sun was already in place. Worship helps us to see God and for him to reveal himself in a very different way. If you are new in your faith, maybe you're checking church out for the first time or the first time in a long time. Maybe you're watching and listening online. I want you to know that is great, and being here is great, and reading your Bible is so good. And I know you're trying to probably figure out, like, what are all the right steps and the things that I have to do if I do want to be a good Christian with this Christianity thing. All of that stuff is good. But I don't want you to miss the power of worshiping together in a room like this where we can come together communally praising God all at the same time. When you worship with other people, there are people there to remind you that you are not alone in your stage of faith and your season of life and whatever it is. And they have hope that you can borrow. Especially in those times that worship is hard. If you're not new, maybe you've been in church your whole life or even coming to Mosaic for a long time. I would like to invite you if you tend to let the sermon do the heavy lifting for your spiritual growth and your spiritual development. I would like to invite you to come and be in the room and make margins so that you can be here at the start of worship next Sunday. Be in the room when worship starts. Because worshiping together, I'm gonna tell you what, God is gonna reveal himself to you in A way through worship that I don't think he does in other places. Not because he can't, but because this is the beauty of worshiping. In Revelation, John describes a vision of this happening where there are people coming together and worshiping together. And he describes this holy throne room that's in the presence of God. And I think God is really funny because Ben didn't know that I was using this passage. And we actually sang about this very thing earlier when we sang Worthy of it all. But he's describing these beings that are in a room, and they're praising God day and night, and they're saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, the One who always was the God, who always was, who is today right now, and who is still to come. And he writes that every time these beings say these words and praise God, that other people in the room join in by worshiping as well. Because when we worship God and His goodness, it reveals not only his goodness to us, but also to the people around us. Not only that, but because God is good. The gift that he gives us in return is that when we worship God for who he really is, he shows us who we really are in Him. That's why you can come in here sometimes, feeling one way and leaving, feeling like a weight was lifted, feeling like you don't know why and you can't explain it, but you have joy or hope or peace that you could not find before you decided to spend time with God. So if you find yourself feeling lost or confused, if you feel alone or stuck or you feel disappointed or rejected by people, worship could actually be the breakthrough that you're looking for. Worship could be the thing that you need to help you see that God is bigger than what you feel and that his power and sufficiency are always there when yours is not. Not only that, but God knows you, and he knows you by name. God calls you chosen and beloved, and that is what is true. You're not wandering around lost on your own. You are being shaped and led to by the Holy Spirit. So I want to give you a chance to practice this. The band is going to come out in just a second, and we're going to sing one more song. And I would love to challenge you just a little bit to be vulnerable this morning. Do the best that you can to not worry about the people around you, to take the to do lists and the plans and the problems you have to solve that are in your mind. Try to block those out, because there's probably still gonna be There after this anyway. And do what you can do to just let yourself get caught up in who God is and what he's done in your life. Because everything that you've read or heard or maybe believed or wanted to believe about how good God is is actually true. It's actually true. And if you haven't tapped into that experience of him before, I wanna pray that the Holy Spirit helps you to see what it is that is creating a block so that you can experience God in a brand new way through worship today. Can I pray that for you, God? We thank you for who you are, God. I thank you, Lord, right now for the people that are responding to you, God, that are. That are thanking you for who you are, that are even conjuring up in their memories, Lord, the things that you've done in their lives, God, you show up consistently and we can use those memories, Lord, when it's hard to find you, when it's hard to see you, to remember the truth of who you are and your unchanging goodness, God, I pray for the people who are wondering what their next step is in responding and how they can worship outside of maybe what they only ever considered to be worship through music or in church services. God, would you show them their next step? God, I pray for the people who are worshiping this morning as using it as resistance, God, to fight the enemy and to say that today is not the day that the enemy is gonna win over their minds or souls or hearts. God, thank you that you gave us worship as a battle for spiritual warfare that's happening, God, and that it's available to us because your spirit is within us, fighting as well. God, I thank you for the people who are asking to see a new version of you, God, for people that are worshiping this morning seeking new revelation of who you are, God, would you open their eyes to see you in a new way, not just in this next song, God, not just for today, Lord, but that in a way their eyes would be open, that they've never been open before and they could experience you in a brand new way that becomes the new way, God, that they can experience you going forward. We thank you, God, for worship, for your goodness and how good you are to give us this gift. In Jesus name, Amen. Thanks for listening to this message from Mosaic church in Charlotte, North Carolina. For more audio and video content, visit us at MosaicChurch TV.