Pathway to Victory

Speaker 1

Hey podcast listeners, thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Pathway to Victory is a nonprofit ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress. Our mission is to pierce the darkness with the light of God's Word through the most effective media available, like this podcast.

To support Pathway to Victory, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes.

Now here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Speaker 2

Hi, this is Robert Jeffress and I'm.

Speaker 3

Glad to study God's Word with you every day.

Speaker 2

This Bible teaching program on today's edition.

Speaker 3

Of Pathway to Victory, God is actively seeking those who will worship Him.

Worship ought to be the priority of every one of us, and while it's something we can certainly and should do individually, it's an activity that is best performed in a community of believers.

Speaker 1

Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. You know, as Christians, we know that worship is an essential part of our spiritual lives.

So how can we incorporate worship into everyday living? And how does worship bring us closer to God?

Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress explains how we can experience the power of the Holy Spirit through worship.

Now here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message.

Speaker 2

Dr. Jeffress thanks David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. We've been sending listeners all across America a popular resource called the Jesus Map, and if you haven't requested your copy yet, there are only a few days left for you to do so. The Jesus Map is a beautifully illustrated reference tool that traces the footsteps of Jesus through his earthly ministry. It's printed accordion style and unfolds into a large, colorful map of Israel from biblical times, and it highlights 52 key events in chronological order that took place in the life and ministry of Jesus, and it shows you where these events actually occurred.

The Jesus Map is my gift to you simply for contacting us today at ptv.org. In addition to the map, I'd also like to send you a copy of my bestselling book, I Want More. So many Christians are missing out on the fullness and satisfaction they long for in their spiritual walk. In my book, I'll explain how you can experience God's presence in your life like never before. My book honestly documents my own spiritual journey from a lackluster faith to being on fire for the gospel, and it also gives you the practical biblical tips I discovered along the way.

A copy of my book called I Want More can be yours today when you give a generous gift to support the growing Ministry of Pathway to Victory. I'll say more about these opportunities later, but right now let's open our Bibles again to Acts Chapter two as we discover two ways to get actively engaged in worship. I've titled today's message "Up with Worship."

Speaker 3

The church is the body of Christ. The church is God's representative here on earth. But the church is also a channel or a conduit through which the Holy Spirit pours His power into your life. You will never experience the power of God without, first of all, being connected to the people of God, the church. And that's the truth we're going to see in today's passage. If you have your Bibles, turn to Acts chapter two.

In our series Unleashed, we're discovering how to experience the power of the Holy Spirit in our everyday lives. We've seen that there are really four channels, four conduits through which the Holy Spirit's power is generated into our life. First of all, through the Word of God, that is the Bible. Secondly, through conversation with God, that is through prayer. Today and next time, we're going to look at that third channel through which the Spirit's power flows into your life, and that is through the people of God, that is the church. Without a vital connection to a local church, you're kind of like a severed limb from a body. You will never experience the power of God in your life unless you are vitally connected to the people of God, that is the church.

How does God pour His power into our life through the church? Well, look at Acts chapter two. The setting in Acts two is just a day after Christ's ascension back into heaven. Remember, as soon as that occurred, a few days later, God sent His Holy Spirit to baptize every believer into the body of Christ. For with one Spirit, we have all been baptized into one body. The result of the baptism with the Holy Spirit is that Christians were not only joined together with the head of the body, Jesus Christ, but we are also joined together with other believers in the body. It is through those other believers, as well as the head, that God pours His life, His energy into our life.

Now look at verse 46. Day by day, continuing with one mind in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. The result, look at verse 47: And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.

As I look at what the early church did, I find four activities, four priorities that the early church had through which God poured His energy into the lives of other believers. What did that early church do? First of all, notice they were focused on worship. There needs to be a time every week when we shift our focus. Instead of looking at those up-close and personal problems, we need to look away from them and let God regain His proper perspective in our life. See God for who He really is. And that's what worship does for us. When we worship God, we are focusing on God rather than our problems. We're thinking about His bigness, His power, His wisdom, His forgiveness.

Here's the interesting phenomenon: the larger God is, the smaller our problems become. What is genuine worship? What does it mean to truly worship God? Let me share with you three characteristics of genuine worship. First of all, genuine worship centers on God, not on us. Remember, the purpose of genuine worship is to express to God how much we appreciate Him and how indebted we are to Him. It's expressing to Him our commitment to following Him. That means every song, every message, every prayer that is uttered should magnify God, not the person delivering them.

Secondly, genuine worship is corporate, not only individual. It's like somebody said, we Christians are like a bunch of little lights scattered throughout the community, illuminating the gospel of Jesus Christ. But there comes a time when all the little lights need to come together to form one giant floodlight illuminating the greatness, the glory of our God. Genuine worship is corporate as well as individual.

A third characteristic of genuine worship is that it is active, not passive. Now the question is, how do we pull that off today? How do we make our worship active rather than passive? We need to be careful here to avoid the extremes. There are some churches that have decided to completely overhaul their worship services. They've said, we don't want to do just presentational worship where it's the pastor and the choir director and the choir doing everything and everybody else just sits out there. Instead of having presentational worship, we want to have participatory worship. Because after all, what if a layman has a message he wants to stand up and give? Isn't his message just as valid as the pastor's message? Why not let everybody participate?

So they've gone away from presentational worship to participatory worship. I think you'll find this interesting. When our architects were planning our new worship center and they sat down with me, they said, now, Pastor, we need to know before we design this thing, is your style in worship going to be presentational or is it going to be participatory? Because that affects how we design this auditorium. You know, in the old days, church sanctuaries had what was called a shotgun style of architecture. Imagine this sanctuary without anything on the sides, just these two sections here. You see a lot of churches like this today. It's a shotgun; it's like you're looking down the barrel of a shotgun at the pulpit and the choir. Those are for highly presentational churches. The focus is up here.

But notice in our church we have a little bit of room over here and a little bit of room over here. Not just so you can see me, but so you can see other people as well. There are churches that are more in the round to not only focus on the pulpit but to focus on one another as well. Well, what should we be, presentational or participatory? Well, the answer is both. We are both. There is a time once a week when we need to come and hear the word of God presented. Ephesians 4 says God has given every church a pastor-teacher for the equipping of the saints, for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.

Those of you listening today by radio and television, if you're in a local church, God has given your church a pastor, and that pastor's job is to equip you to do the work of ministry. But just because we have a presentation, it doesn't mean we shouldn't participate as well. There ought to be a time when people get to participate in worship. How do we do that? Let me share with you two ways that you can actively participate in worship.

First of all, become a part of a Sunday school class or a small group. There needs to be a time when you, as a church member, can share what God is doing in your life. There needs to be a time when you can share prayer requests. There needs to be a time when other people can pray for you. But there's nothing that says that has to be at 11 o'clock on Sunday morning. In the early church, they didn't split up these different functions. Instead, they would all meet together. Paul says in First Corinthians 12:26 that they would have a time where the apostles would teach for an extended period of time. Then they had a time of sharing where people would share prayer requests and what God was doing in their life. They would finish with the Lord's Supper every week, and their services might go two, three, or four hours.

There was one service a week for the early church, and there are some churches that have done that today. I've been in services like that where the service would go two, three, and four hours, and all of those things took place, both presentation and participation. Now, in our particular church and culture, a two, three, or four-hour service probably wouldn't go over very big. So what we've done is we've split it up. We've said, okay, we're going to assemble together on Sunday mornings in the sanctuary for the presentation that comes from the pastor, for a time of music, for a time for us to focus on our admiration and appreciation for God. Then the participation is going to take place in our small groups, our Sunday school class.

If you're not a part of a Sunday school, you're missing out on a vital function of the church, and you're missing out on a way that the Holy Spirit wants to energize you and encourage you. Now, I'm going to make some people mad by saying this, but I'm going to say it anyway. Unfortunately, some of our Sunday school classes are not functioning like they were designed to function. Instead of allowing participation and for this flow of the energy from the Spirit to come into their lives, they've turned Sunday school into a second worship service. You go to a lot of Sunday school classes, and it's just like a church service. They have 20 minutes of singing, and then they haul in somebody to do special music, and then they have a guy stand up and teach for 30 or 40 minutes. Then the director says, whoops, out of time, gotta go. There hasn't been any participation.

You don't need two worship services on Sunday morning, okay? What you need is a time to be together in this worship center and then a time to participate in the lives of other believers. Frankly, that's a lot of reason a lot of churches have done away with Sunday school, and they've gone to small groups. They say Sunday school just doesn't provide enough time. It doesn't provide the atmosphere where Christians can really get to know one another on a deeper level, where there can be that sharing and that encouragement. As you know, a lot of churches don't have Sunday school anymore. Instead, they have small group fellowships that meet throughout the community. Maybe once a week, several times a month, they'll meet in somebody's home, have dinner together, get to know one another, pray for one another, and have instruction from God's Word. It's a way to deepen that koinonia that was present in the early church.

I've had people ask me, Pastor, do you think we'll always have Sunday school at First Baptist Dallas? Do you ever see a time that we might move away from the Sunday school model and go to this small group model? When I was on staff here, I don't think I've ever told you this, Walter. Dr. Criswell was toying with that idea of small groups and these home fellowships. He sent me to a Southern Baptist church, a well-known church in our convention that had gone away from Sunday school and started doing these small groups. He wanted me to go out, investigate, and come back to him and bring a report on it. I came back and made the report. I said, Dr. Criswell, that church used to run thousands; now they're running hundreds because they did away with the Sunday school.

In fact, I still believe Sunday school is the best way to do small groups. A lot of these churches that have small groups, you ask them, well, what percent of your membership is involved in these small groups? They think they're doing great if they can get 30 or 40% of their people involved in small groups. That is a huge success to them. In our church, we have 95% of our people involved in Sunday school. It's a lot more convenient for people to have Sunday school the same day that they're having church. We're all in the same place anyway. Why not have Sunday school now?

But there are still some limitations with the Sunday school. There really isn't that time to develop those relationships like we're talking about here. A time for participation, the kind of body life that was part of the first-century church. You look at our church right now; some of the fastest-growing Sunday school classes are those that have Sunday school on Sunday. But out of that Sunday school department, they have formed small groups to meet in various locations around the city several times a month. It's not in place of Sunday school; it is in addition to Sunday school. Those small groups are a way of deepening the fellowship among believers and also expanding the outreach of our church into those communities.

I really believe that as our church continues to grow, this is a model we ought to look at: continuing our Sunday school, continuing to strengthen it, but encouraging out of those Sunday school departments for these small group fellowships to meet in various locations in those communities. Now, that's just one way. The Bible says one way that we can participate in worship is to become a part of a small group. But there's a second way to be a part actively in worship, and that is to actively participate in corporate worship. Even in a service like this, it is possible for you to be actively, rather than passively involved.

You know how to actively participate in the worship service of the church. First of all, prepare yourself physically and spiritually for worship. Too many Christians spend Saturday trying to cram all the relaxation they can into Saturday. They drag themselves into bed Saturday night at some ungodly hour, midnight, one o'clock in the morning, and then the alarm goes off on Sunday morning. They think, oh no, I've got to go to church. They drag themselves out of bed, come down here, sit in the pews, and I'm looking at you right now. Some of you look like you're in the third stage of anesthesia, trying to keep those eyelids open. After the service, you drag out of here and say, well, I didn't get much out of the message today. Well, duh, why not? Of course, you didn't get anything out of the message.

No, you have to be ready. You have to prepare yourself physically for worship. For the Jews, their worship day was not Saturday morning; it didn't begin on Saturday morning. It began on the Friday evening before (Leviticus 23:32). They began the Sabbath the evening before. I just want to encourage you, come in at a decent hour on Saturday night. Be sure you get plenty of rest. Be sure your kids get plenty of rest so that they're awake and alert and ready to hear God speak to them. Prepare yourself physically, and also prepare yourself spiritually.

If the last thing you dwell on before you go to sleep on Saturday night is a skit from Saturday Night Live on television, you're not going to be thinking holy thoughts, okay? Instead of letting the last thing in your mind on Saturday night be some movie, television show, novel, or something else you're doing, just take a few minutes before you go to bed. Read a chapter from God's Word. Maybe it's a chapter that is the center of what I'm going to be preaching on. Maybe it's a study you're going through. Read a chapter of the Bible and then ask God, as you drift off to sleep, to speak to you the next morning to really tell you what He wants you to change in your life. We need to prepare ourselves spiritually and physically for worship.

Secondly, make sure that your mind is in drive rather than neutral throughout the service. There was a book that came out years ago entitled Worship is a Verb. That's so true. Worship is an action; it's something we do. That means our minds have to stay in drive rather than in neutral. Let me illustrate what I mean. When Duran or Ron are up here praying, we need to make sure we're praying the very same thing that they're praying. There's something powerful when God's people join together praying for the same thing that is being verbalized. When the music is going on and you see those words on the screen, the reason we put those words up there is not so you can catch any typos that might be up there. We put them up there so that you can sing.

Unfortunately, I look around sometimes and see people just standing there, staring at the screen. This is a time for you to worship. It's a time for you to voice your appreciation and praise to God. Use those words of those songs as your prayer to God. When the pastor is preaching, the reason we provide those outlines for you is not so you can make your grocery list for the next day, okay? The reason we give you those outlines is so that you can stay involved in what the pastor is preaching, asking God to give you insight from His Word.

Make sure that your mind is in drive rather than in neutral. In the worship service, it was Kierkegaard who said, in genuine worship, God is the audience, the congregation is the actor, and the pastor is simply the prompter off to the side, reminding the congregation of their lines. Do you remember what Jesus said in John 4:23? He was talking to the woman at the well. He said, there is one thing God is actively looking for. God is actively seeking those who will worship Him. God is looking right now for men and women, boys and girls, who are so appreciative of Him, who are so grateful for all He has done in their lives that their number one heart response is to want to express that appreciation, that admiration to God. Worship ought to be the priority of every one of us.

While it's something we can certainly and should do individually, it's an activity that is best performed in a community of believers. Next time, we're going to look at the three other priorities of the early church that unleashed the power of God in the lives of its members.

Let's bow together in a word of prayer. Today I have been speaking to Christians already. But today I also realize here in this sanctuary or watching by radio and television, there may be some of you who have never trusted in Jesus Christ as your Savior. While becoming a part of a local church certainly should be the result of becoming a Christian, it is not the means by which you become a Christian. The way you are saved is not by signing a card; it is by trusting in Jesus Christ to be your Savior. It is by saying to God, God, I know I've sinned. I know I have fallen short of your plan for my life. But I believe that you sent Jesus to die in my place, to take the punishment that I deserve for my sins. Today I'm trusting in Jesus and Jesus alone to save me from my sins.

Father, how we thank you that you've not left us in this world as orphans. You have sent us your Holy Spirit, but you've also given us other believers through whom we can receive encouragement and power in our lives. Father, how we thank you that there is power in the name of Jesus. He is able to save us from all of our sins. Father, I believe you're speaking to some right now who need to come and trust in the Lord Jesus for salvation. Father, I pray no one would resist the invitation of your Holy Spirit, for it's in the saving name of Christ we pray. Amen.

Speaker 2

I'm so glad you chose to listen to Pathway to Victory today. At this very moment, heaven is rejoicing as men and women all across our country respond to the Holy Spirit's leading and decide to trust in Christ as their Savior. And if you're among them, would you be sure to contact Pathway to Victory and let us know?

Then let me encourage our financial partners by saying, it's your investment in Pathway to Victory that allows these spiritual moments to occur that transform the lives of people for all eternity. Recently, Carmen from Ohio wrote to us and said, "Pastor, I listened to Pathway to Victory every morning when I'm getting ready for work. There are mornings when the sermons bring me to tears because it is exactly what I need to face a problem I'm dealing with. I run and grab a pen and paper to write down the important points and keep them with me during the day. It helps me remember that there is nothing too big for my God to handle."

When you give to Pathway to Victory, God is using your gift to reach men and women like Carmen who desperately need a word from God. And today, to say thanks for your generous gift, I'll send you a copy of my bestselling book called *I Want More*. My book will help you satisfy that longing in your spiritual walk for more—more joy, more peace, more daily victories.

Thank you again for your partnership in this ministry as together we pierce the darkness with the light of God's word. And now, here's David to give you our contact information.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Dr. Jeffress. Today, when you invest in the ministry of Pathway to Victory by giving a generous gift, we'll say thanks by sending you the book titled *I Want More*. Call 866-999-2965 or visit our website at ptv.org, and when your investment is $75 or more, we'll also send you the complete, unedited CD and DVD teaching set for *Unleashed*. That's the series from Dr. Jeffress about experiencing the power of the Holy Spirit. To request both resources, call 866-999-2965 or go to ptv.org. You could write to us. Here's that mailing address: P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222. Again, that's P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, TX 75222.

Now, one last thing. Dr. Jeffress is working on a new teaching series about miracles. If you have a story about God's supernatural intervention in your life, you can share it with Dr. Jeffress by emailing miracles@ptv.org.

Welcome to PTV.org! I'm David J. Mullins. Every Christian knows that they're supposed to go to church, but why is church attendance so vitally important? Discover how God uses the church to empower our lives when you join us Monday on Pathway to Victory.

Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a Pathway Partner. Your monthly gift will empower Pathway to Victory to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in His Word. To become a Pathway Partner, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes.

We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.