Worship

Earl McClellan urges us to embrace the Holy Spirit, living out God’s purpose and uniting believers for His glory.

Finally, the answer to the question "why are we all here?"

Dan Watson joins us to share a message from Judges 6 about the importance of worshipping and trusting God. Though we are all broken jars, God can use His light to shine through us, and we can celebrate His victory with trumpets.

Have you ever been confronted with the reality of God’s wrath, which scared you away from desiring to know Him intimately? As Louie Giglio digs deep into Revelation 6-8, we see how grace and wrath coexist.

Louie Giglio joins us for another week of All Consuming Fire. Through studying Revelation 5, we see that the only one worthy of all of our worship and praise is the One who is and is to come.

Louie Giglio continues another week of All Consuming Fire, a collection diving deeper into the book of Revelation. In this talk, he focuses on the throne, the Trinity, perpetual worship, and the throne as our anchor through the study of Revelation 4.

A few summers ago, we were on a family vacation at the beach. Lauren set up on the shore with a chair, umbrella, and book while the kids and I ran into the water to take advantage of some good-sized waves. We had a few boogie boards and got some pretty epic rides in. Every ten to fifteen minutes, I’d look to the shore to find Lauren, only not to be able to find her. In just ten to fifteen minutes, the currents had swept us far enough down the shoreline that I’d completely lost sight of her. This is what happens to all of us if we’re not careful. The winds and waves of this fallen world will pull us along without us hardly feeling it, and we will look up and no longer be able to find where we started. John Calvin famously said, “Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.” This means you and I are prone to set up our own little thrones and seek from them what only the one true throne can provide. Think of how destructive and painful this can be. How could the most common idols of self, others, and the world possibly strengthen us and comfort us at the deepest level of our being? They can give us momentary pleasure or escape, but each has betrayed us, failed us, and lied to us. So much of our fear and anxiety comes from having our worship centered around the wrong throne. When I write the word worship, I’m not talking about simply singing, although that is a common expression of worship. I’m talking about attention! One theologian I know puts it this way: “Worship is an act of attention to the living God who rules, speaks and reveals, creates and redeems, orders and blesses.” My question for you, especially if you feel stuck or afraid or abandoned or forgotten, is this: Where is your attention? Where is your worship? Fortunately for the apostle John and for us, one of the elders around the throne said to John, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals” (Revelation 5:5). John turned and saw “a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain” (Revelation 5:6). The Lion is the Lamb. Jesus is worthy to open the scroll and its seals. Jesus unlocks the meaning of history. Jesus brings salvation and judgment to the world. Jesus administers mercy and justice, forgiveness and redemption. Jesus brings holiness and righteousness, wrath and peace. Jesus brings everything into focus. That’s why our eyes need to be fixed on Him and this throne. Why must we fight to focus our attention on His reign and rule over and above everything else? If not, we will drift. We’ll gather around smaller, weaker thrones, and we’ll despair, lose heart, and fade. God has more for you, though. He sees you, loves you, hasn’t abandoned you, and calls you back out to where the action is. This is an excerpt from Matt Chandler’s The Overcomers. To grab a copy of this resource, click here. “The Overcomers: How to Thrive in a Culture of Anxiety andOutrage,” by Matt Chandler. Copyright ©202 by att handler. Used bypermission of Thomas Nelson.

This talk concludes our “Anchor” series that has been taking us on a deeper dive into what holds our house together theologically. Jon Harkey teaches us about the extravagant worship of God and how it relates to His glory, radical grace, and our lives.

This talk kicks off a series taking a closer look at the three theological anchors of Passion City Church DC. Landon Lacy will start us out by giving us an overview of the glory of God, radical grace, and extravagant worship that define who we are as a people in this city.

So do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink or wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them…Are you not much more valuable than they?…But seek first the kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Matthew 6:25-26, 33-34 It is so easy to worry about our future or how we will meet our daily needs. In Matthew 6, Jesus talks about a mind-blowing reality: God is our Father in Heaven. This thought would have been revolutionary to the listeners of His sermon. They knew God was “The God who provides,” but a Father? And what’s more, He’s our Father? They knew the story of Abraham and Isaac, how God would ask Abraham to sacrifice his only son, only to stop him and provide a ram in the thicket instead. They had heard how Abraham responded by building an altar to God there on Mount Moriah, calling Him for the first time in Scripture “Jehovah Jireh” or “The-God-Who-Provides” because He provided a sacrifice and spared Abraham’s son.  But those listening to Jesus didn’t know then what we know now: That God was giving us a picture of redemption—and ultimately, He would not hold back when it came to His own son. He would offer him as the perfect sacrifice. Romans 8:32 says this about the way God provided for us: “He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all—how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?” He has made a way back to a relationship with our Heavenly Father through Jesus Christ. The same intimate relationship Jesus has with His Father is now available to us by His life, death, and resurrection. We are now children of the God of the universe! As if it weren’t enough for the rest of our lives, how will He not, along with all that, give us our daily needs?  Remember and believe today that you can ask your Father for whatever you need. He not only gives us what we need, He himself is what we need, and when we have Him, we lack nothing.  Prayer: Father, when I am tempted to look to my own abilities to provide for myself, help me remember today that you are the ultimate source of everything I need. I entrust every circumstance into your able hands. Amen.

Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.Hebrews 4:16 O Come All Ye Faithful has forever been one of my favorite Christmas songs! While every self-respecting musician has recorded their own rendition, I wanted to know the origins of the earliest hymn. It was written in Latin by John Francis Wade, a music copyist, and later adapted to English by Frederick Oakeley, an Anglican minister. Oakeley’s first attempt at an English title was, “Ye Faithful, Approach Ye.” While the original title didn’t stick around, the word “approach” stuck with me. It’s a word full of invitation and desire. It’s a request for our presence. It says, “Come near.” And it’s a reminder that God is not far off. He is not distant or hiding himself from us. And that is the story and miracle of Christmas. “And the angel said unto them, ‘Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.’” Luke 2:10-11 After four hundred years of silence, hope of our redemption was birthed once more. “Word of the Father now in flesh appearing.” Jesus came from Heaven to Earth to close the gap between God and man, to pay the price for our sin so that we might approach His throne of grace with confidence. Because He knows it’s at His throne that we “receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). The invitation for us today is to come adore the one who bought our healing, our wholeness and our peace with God. Come, encounter the compassion, comfort and kindness of our Savior. Come, approach with our heartache and our brokenness, with our wounds and our scars. Come, joyful and triumphant for our victor over sin, hurt and pain has arrived! -Melodie Malone

“Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God, your functional savior.”—Martin Luther When we think about the word ‘idolatry,’ it’s hard not to bring to mind thoughts of the Old Testament, the Law, or maybe even the golden calf that Aaron and the people of Israel forged from their Egyptian gold at the foot of Mount Sinai. After all, idolatry was largely introduced through the Mosaic Law and the 10 Commandments. Though idolatry had been present from the moment sin entered the world, it was codified as the second commandment in Exodus 20:4-5, You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God… If you’ve grown up in or even around Church, you likely have a vague sense that idolatry is wrong. But like most of the other 10 Commandments, idolatry can feel distant and far off, an ancient word for an old-fashioned practice that doesn’t really apply to our advanced and more educated society. After all, we aren’t smelting ores or carving wooden statues in the likeness of otherwise invisible gods, right? Idolatry, by all biblical definitions, is certainly the practice of making and worshipping physical images and icons. But it’s also more than that. It’s the very misdirection of our worship.  It’s our hearts clinging and confiding in that which does not or cannot bring us peace or security. It is the elevation and glorification of anything other than God, which eventually leads to personal emptiness and separation from true life.  Idolatry is the raising to ultimate authority and value that which is not capable or worthy of holding that position. It is giving more credence and affection to something that is created as opposed to the Creator. What Are Our Modern-Day Idols? Idolatry may be an ancient word, but it is still a temptation and tactic that is very much at work in the hearts and minds of people today. As followers of Jesus, we must be vigilant to recognize our modern-day forms of idolatry and then quickly and decisively move to root out or “lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely.”  Our faith and very lives might depend on this vigilance. John Piper defines an idol as “anything that we come to rely on for some blessing, or help, or guidance in the place of a wholehearted reliance on the true and living God.” Less like a graven image or a golden calf, our idols today are often that which most capture our heart’s affection instead of God. This means the possibilities are rather wide and the specificity is rather personal. Often, our affections are aimed at good things. Our jobs. Our marriages or friendships. Our impact and significance in the world. It’s okay to enjoy or even love things like these, but where we go off track or wander into error is when our love for these things starts to climb above our love for God.  If our theology of idolatry and modern-day idols is truly built on a Biblical foundation centering around the worship of God, then counter to what culture would have us believe, there are no socially-acceptable idols. You can’t align with God’s view of worship if you’re living with a Jesus + __________ lifestyle. Jesus + enough money to make me comfortable. Jesus + my political party so I fit in with my peers. Jesus + a high enough title at work to where I feel significant.  That’s what Paul means when he wrote in Philippians 3:8-9:  Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him… We are invited to enjoy the things around us, soak in the laughter and intimacy of good friendships, cheer for our favorite teams, and be good parents, spouses, sons, or daughters. We’re invited to love what we get to do with our skills or talents and to love things that are random, eccentric, or eclectically you.  Recognizing our idols doesn’t mean we have to immediately diminish and destroy anything that brings us joy. We just need to be wise and willing to accurately (by the Spirit and by the Scripture) define where our true affections are being directed. We don’t need to get rid of every rock that has found a place in our hearts. Instead, we should aim to take those rocks, your passions, your desires, your joys, and your loves, and build altars of worship to the God who is worthy of every affection.  How Do We Identify Our Idols? Because idolatry is misguided worship and an idol is a faulty ordering of ultimate affection, there are a thousand different nuances of what idols take priority for each of us personally. Which means you have to do the intentional work of recognizing what you may be idolizing. You’ll be hard-pressed to remove what you don’t recognize, so identifying and naming your idols is crucial to your fight for freedom. How do we identify and know when an idol is taking up vast real estate in our hearts and minds? We spend time gauging how we are interacting with our passions and desires. We ask intentional questions and surround ourselves with Godly community that can walk with us and know our hearts. To see three practical ways to identify your idols as outlined in Scripture, turn to 1 John 2:15-17: Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. Take note that the passage begins with a mandate to guard our affections. If we want to walk free from idolatry, we’ll need to not give our affections to the world or its things. John then goes on to describe what some of these worldly things, or idols, are: The desires of the flesh. The desires of the eyes. The pride of life. Let’s take these three phrases out of the general and move each into the specific. What are the desires of the flesh? We can read Paul’s description of this in Galatians 5:16-21. It’s the words, actions, or behaviors that gratify our sinful nature more than our Spirit-led nature. Said another way, what are you doing physically that isn’t aligned with the worship of God?  What are the desires of the eyes? Namely, those things that you don’t currently possess but are wanting or wishing to. Maybe it’s comparison. Jealousy or covetousness. Maybe it’s the judgment we enjoy passing on others or the fears and anxieties we assume when we feel our sense of control slipping away. What are you looking at and what is consuming your field of vision? Lastly, John mentions the pride of life. This is fairly self-evident, but these idols are connected to our thinking we are _____ -er than others and even God. Stronger. Smarter. Better Holier. One of the most common modern-day idols is our elevation of self and our own merits and abilities. If we are not careful, we’ll spend our short window on this earth trying to protect and promote a version of our lives that Jesus has already died for. These idols, the desires of the flesh and eyes and the pride of life, are not from the Father, but from the world. But the hope and truth of the gospel is that we do not have to live like we are of this world. We can stand assured on the words and prayers of Jesus, as we read in John 17:15-16, I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.  We don’t find our ultimate victory over idolatry by removing ourselves from all things that are of this world. The good things we love aren’t bad things, they just were never meant to be ultimate things. Rather, we are meant to find our ultimate victory through the protection of the Father and the provision of the Son, King Jesus. Read part two of our The Idols In Our Lives series, How to Dethrone Our Idols and Live Free.