Training Our Hearts to Love Worship

Transcript

Good evening, church family. Please turn with me, if you will, in your copy of God's Word to the Book of Romans, chapter 12. Our sermon text this evening will be a very familiar passage of Scripture to us, Romans, chapter 12, verses 1 through 2. Romans 12, 1 through 2. Hear now the Word of the Living God.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated.

And I ask that you join me now in prayer at this time. Father in heaven, we love you. We do thank you for the wonderful opportunity that we have to gather again this evening in corporate worship. And Father, I simply ask that you would bless us now in your grace to make the most of this opportunity that we have. Please mold and shape us in your truth to love you more and more.

And please send us out here from this place this evening into a new week with your name stamped upon us that we might be known as those who live the entirety of our lives unto you in true spiritual worship. Father, we love you and we ask all of this in Christ's holy name. Amen. Well, it is a joy to come and to continue in our corporate worship series this evening. And the subject that I'll be covering in this sermon is how to train our hearts to love worship.

We just read Romans twelve one and two and those verses are excellent at addressing how we can do that as we'll see here in just a few minutes. But before we dive into that text, I want to explain why exactly I'm covering this subject. The reason really is simple enough because I want each and every one of us to love worship. I want us to cherish worship because of what is happening when we gather for worship. I want us to treasure worship because of the sweet communion that we experience with God and with one another in worship.

And I want each of us to love and prioritize corporate worship because we understand that it truly is the most important thing that we will ever do in our lives on this side of heaven. And I trust that all the scripture we've covered so far in this series, especially from that passage that has been referenced probably a hundred times at this point. Hebrews twelve is, of course, true. And I trust that all of that all of that scripture together has proven that point to be true. But I'm also aware of a common issue that many Christians can fall into.

And I want to go out of my way to make sure that none of us make that same mistake. And that is this mistake, the mistake of knowing the right doctrine of corporate worship and knowing what to do and what not to do in corporate worship, all the while not necessarily being engaged by faith and not having our affection shaped in corporate worship. Let me say that again for emphasis. I don't want any of us to make the mistake of knowing the right doctrine of corporate worship and knowing what to do and what not to do in corporate worship without being engaged by faith and having our affection shaped by what's happening in worship. And the reason this matters so much is because if we go through the motions of biblically regulated corporate worship without being engaged by faith and allowing that to shape our affections towards God, then ultimately corporate worship will not benefit us at all.

And of course, we as your pastors greatly desire for corporate worship that it would benefit all of us. But in order for that to happen, we must know what it means to faithfully engage and how that directly relates to our hearts and to our affections. So this subject matter is ultimately a matter of the heart. It's a matter of making sure that our hearts are correctly engaged and oriented towards God in a proper way during our worship. And to ensure that we are doing that, we have to know how to train our hearts to love worship.

So my prayer and even my confidence this evening is that God would use his word here in Romans 12 to make it clear to us how exactly we can go about doing that. Now, as we turn to look to the text, I want us to see two basic commands, one coming to us in verse 1 and the other coming to us in verse 2. And of course, we'll address each in turn. But I also want us to pay careful attention to how these commands relate to one another. Because when we see and understand how they connect and how they relate, we'll see how these two verses work together to display a complete picture of a transformed life of worship given over to God as a living sacrifice.

And of course, that should be every one of our goals as born again believers, right? All of us should be striving for that. So with that in mind, look with me now to the text and let's look first to verse 1. Verse 1 reads this way, "I appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." This first central command that we find in this passage is caught up in the phrase "present your bodies as a living sacrifice." That is what God commands each of us to do, to present our bodies as a living sacrifice to Him which is our spiritual worship. But of course, as soon as we see that in the text and we understand that that's what the command is, then we have to ask the fairly obvious question, what exactly does that mean?

Perhaps you had the same experience that I did as a young boy. I remember reading this passage for the very first time and trying to think through it critically. And I remember thinking, well, in verse 1 it seems that Paul is telling us how we should honor God with our bodies. And then in verse 2, he's telling us how we should honor God with our minds. And of course, that is true.

We should honor God with our bodies and with our minds. But sometimes when we're reading through the text quickly, it can be easy to think that what Paul is talking about by presenting our bodies in verse 1 is only talking about how we worship God in our physical external makeup. But that's not really what Paul is saying. The phrase "present your bodies" is not merely limited to our physical makeup, but it actually refers to the entirety of who we are in our bodies, in our minds, and also in our hearts. Daniel Doriani in his commentary on this passage is very helpful in explaining this.

He writes this, quote, "One might expect Paul to tell the Romans to present their hearts or present their minds to God. All three, the heart, mind, and body, can represent the whole person. But the phrase "present your bodies" is more concrete and less likely to become spiritual jargon. So then, if we give the body to God, we dedicate the whole person. Let me say that again.

If we give the body to God, we dedicate the whole person. The point is this. The command includes our presenting our physical bodies to God in spiritual worship. Yes, but that's not all that the command entails. It also requires that we present all of our bodies and all of our minds and all of our hearts properly before God.

And that is our spiritual worship. If any of those elements are missing, then we are falling short of what God desires for us in true spiritual worship. Keep this also in mind. This is important to remember contextually. This letter that Paul wrote to the Romans would have been read to all of the Roman saints as they were gathered together in corporate worship.

And he appeals to the brothers, plural, verse 1, to the collective church. The context here establishes that he is instructing a corporately gathered body about how they are to spiritually worship. So this incredible verse, Romans 12.1, which is so familiar to us, it really does directly speak to how we should approach corporate worship. It, of course, also applies to our individual worship that we engage in throughout the week, but it also can and must speak to how we engage in corporate worship. So brothers and sisters, know this.

When we come to corporate worship, every part of who we are, our whole bodies, our physical self, our mental self, and our hearts should be engaged. I've said this already, but I'll say it again. If any of those parts is not engaged, then we're falling short of what God desires for us in true worship. This is why we frequently hear Pastor Matt say during the morning announcements and before the call to worship, he'll repeatedly say these words. We've heard him say this hundreds of times.

He'll say, "As we prepare our hearts, minds, and bodies for worship," and then he'll read scripture. Church family, there's a reason he's doing that. It's not just fanciful theological church language. He's saying that because our hearts, minds, and bodies must be engaged. If we are to properly love God and love corporate worship.

So we understand straight from this text of scripture that this is a vitally important command. This is the standard and this is the expectation of what our true worship should be. But once we're settled in that, and once we're settled in what all of that command entails and places upon us, we then have to move on to the next important and really most obvious question, which is this. How do we do that? Okay, so we know what we're supposed to do, present our entire selves, heart, mind, and body to God.

That's true spiritual worship, but how exactly do we do it? Well, this is where verse 2 enters into the equation and actually is very helpful in answering that exact question. Verse 2 reads this way, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." Now, for us to understand that verse, I want us to see three important elements that flow right out of that verse, and it's really just three phrases, but each of them deserve our careful attention. The first important element and the first phrase comes to us like this. Paul writes, "Do not be conformed to this world." That word "world" in the original Greek is actually the word "aion," which is the same word that's translated many other places in the New Testament, not as "world." That word is most often "cosmos." This word is most often translated as "age." So the idea here is simply this, "Do not be conformed to this age." And what age is that?

Well, it's the same age that the apostle Paul is talking about over in Galatians chapter 1 where he writes this. That Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age. This age that Paul is talking about in Romans 12 and this present evil age that he writes of in Galatians chapter 1 is the exact same. This age, this present evil age is the summation of the entire sinful world system that rejects God's truth and lives in direct rebellion to his will. And Paul is simply saying, "Don't be conformed to that.

Don't fit into that mold. Don't think like those who only belong to this evil age. Don't act like those who only belong to this present evil age. And don't have affections like those who only belong to this present evil age." Instead, flowing right into the second element and second key phrase of the verse, Paul then says, "Be transformed by the renewal of your mind." And this is the second major command that we get in the entire section. And this is a command of formation.

Verse 1 was essentially giving us a command of presentation, how we present our whole selves to God in worship. Verse 2 is about formation. In other words, do not be formed or conformed unto sinfulness, unto unrighteousness like the rest of this world and this age, but instead be transformed by the renewal of your mind. Then comes the third element and the third phrase, "That by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." And when we put all of that together, here's basically how the logic of these two verses flow and work together. Number 1, verse 1 says this, "Present your whole self, heart, mind and body to God in worship." How do we do that?

Verse 2, "By the transformation and renewal of your mind so that you can know what is good and acceptable and perfect." And then of course by implication, and then we see this fleshed out in the next three chapters of the book, the implication is that we would identify that which is good and acceptable and perfect and then live according to those things. And when we live according to God's will in faith by acknowledging what is good and acceptable and perfect and by living according to those things, we will prove that we are those who really are presenting our whole selves to God in spiritual worship. Do you see how that works? It's really quite beautiful, isn't it? It's just two simple verses but it really does work to picture this whole complete idea of what an individual looks like who is fully given over to God in spiritual worship.

So brothers and sisters know this, we do not have to wonder how to train our hearts for worship. We don't have to wonder how we should go about doing that. Romans 12, 1 and 2 tells us right here how we should do that. The answer comes right to us in verse 2, "We must be transformed by the renewal of our minds." So in the exact same way that we have a moral obligation towards obedience and the command that we receive in verse 1, we have an exact same and likewise moral obligation to obey God's command in verse 2. We must be transformed by the renewal of our minds.

This is not optional for us. We must give ourselves to this work and to this process of sanctification. And when we do this, it will inevitably shape our bodies and our minds and also our hearts. You may hear all of that and you say, "Pastor Dylan, that sounds great and that makes sense and I'm tracking with you." But that just ultimately begs the exact same question that you already asked before moving into verse 2, which is how exactly do you do that? I mean, again, the command of verse 1, present your whole bodies.

Okay, fine. How do you do that? By transforming your minds, okay? How do you do that? How do we do that?

Well, for the rest of our time together, I want to give you three simple ways from Scripture of how we can actually do that. Three simple biblical ways for how we can have our minds transformed and renewed so that our hearts would be affected and shaped to love God more and to love corporate worship. So this is three ways that our minds are transformed and renewed so that our hearts also might be fully engaged and transformed as well. The first way is this. The first and most obvious way that our minds and our hearts are transformed, this may shock you, the gospel.

Did you think it was going to be something crazy or other than that? It's just the gospel. Our minds and therefore our hearts have always been, from the very moment we were saved, renewed and positively shaped by the gospel. And we can even see that directly here in the text. You say, "Where do you see that in the text?" We'll look back to verse 1.

Look at what Paul writes in verse 1. He says, "I appeal to you, therefore, brothers," now pay attention to this phrase, "by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice." The appeal is for them to present their entire selves to God. And how is that? By the mercies of God. Brothers and sisters, what is the mercies of God?

It's the gospel. It's everything that Paul has been writing about in the book leading up to the start of chapter 12. The mercies of God is everything that Paul has fleshed out in Romans chapter 1 through the very end of Romans chapter 11, which the big theme is the gospel. That's what Paul means when he says, "I appeal to you by the mercies of God." So you can just as easily read that and say, "I appeal to you, brothers, by the gospel of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice." It would have the exact same meaning and the exact same effect. The mind transformation and renewal that you and I desperately need cannot take place outside of the gospel.

The good news for us who are in Christ is that in God's Word we have access to the gospel in abundance. So we have no excuse to not always be preaching the gospel to ourselves every single day. And by the way, if you're not in the habit of doing that, I would strongly encourage you to start. The moment that you wake up, put your phone or your alarm or whatever it is on your Bible so that as soon as you wake up, your hands and therefore your mind and therefore your heart can go straight to the gospel. We need it the moment we wake up.

We need it throughout our day. We need it the moment that we fall asleep. And if we don't have it, we will fall. The gospel is not only for our salvation, it is for our sanctification as well. And because we have it in abundance, that is encouraging to us.

That should cause us to love God more for the promises of His gospel that He gives us over and over again in Scripture. That's great news. Here's the bad news. If you're here this evening and you've been carefully paying attention up to this point and you're hearing this and you say, "Wow, that sounds great." Mind transformation that leads to heart transformation so that I can experience what's happening in corporate worship. If you've heard all that and you're saying, "I'd love to be a part of that," but if you're honest, you're not a Christian, this is actually impossible for you to do.

You actually don't have the ability to do it. The only way this actually happens is through the mercy of God that comes in the gospel. And so with that in mind, especially thinking of the many young people here that we have in the life of our church that may not yet be in Christ, know that we as pastors always want to preach to the adults and to the families, yes, but to the children as well. You heard Pastor Scott do that well this morning in his sermon. So children, hear this.

If you're here this morning and you are not yet in Christ, what in the world are you waiting for? Turn away from your sins. Place your faith and trust in Christ Jesus. Be made new in Him. Receive the gift of eternal life so that all of this wonderful stuff that we're talking about, you can actually have and you can actually experience.

And know that the moment that you, by God's grace, become a Christian, there may be a temptation in you to try to move past the gospel for a way in which you can grow in your love for God, but it will never work. The tool that God gives us for us to be transformed in our hearts and in our minds to love Him more and to love what we are doing in worship more is always based in the gospel. We will never outgrow it and we must never forget this. This is the first way that we can have our hearts and minds transformed to love God more and be trained to love worship. The second way our minds are transformed and therefore our hearts are transformed as well is through our ongoing communion with God.

Let me say that again. The second way that our minds are transformed and therefore our hearts are transformed as well is through our ongoing communion with God. And we can argue that clearly from this text, specifically focusing on one word. Look back to verse 2. Paul writes in verse 2, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be," and then here's the word, "transformed by the renewal of your mind." That word transformed is very, very important.

The Greek word there in the text is the Greek word metamorpho. It's where we get our English word metamorphosis from. And what's interesting about this particular word is that this same Greek word only appears in three other places in the entirety of the New Testament. Twice it appears in reference to the Lord Jesus at the Mount of Transfiguration. Once in Matthew chapter 17 and once in Mark chapter 9, speaking to how he was transformed in showing his glory.

But other than that, and other than this text, the only other place that this same Greek word shows up in the entirety of the New Testament is in another familiar passage that has been referenced many times already in this series. And that is 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 18. Perhaps you'll recall what Paul says there because it was preached one time and it's been referenced many times in the series. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3, 18, "And we all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord our being," and then here's that word, "transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another." And if you recall the context of that passage, you'll remember that Paul is drawing on the imagery of Moses going into the tent of meaning and communing with God on a regular basis with unveiled face. And Paul's point is this, "In the same way that the Israelites could tell that something was different about Moses after he would commune with God in this way, so too we as Christians can know that we are likewise being transformed when we with unveiled face behold the glory of the Lord." And that happens when we are saved in Christ and when we commune with him, which of course we know we can all do individually.

We all have access to God through Christ as individuals throughout our week. But we also in a very unique and special way commune with God in corporate worship in a heightened spiritual sense. The only difference between us and Moses is that when we walk out of here tonight, our faces will not be glowing. For Moses it did, but for us it won't be that way. But just because we don't see any sort of immediate physical change in our body doesn't mean that we have not been transformed.

We have in corporate worship. We are communing with God. We are seeing God. We're seeing him in his glory through his word with unveiled face. And the point is, in the same way as Moses did this continually and it changed him, it transformed him, so too when you and I give ourselves to corporate worship this way, we too will be changed and transformed.

That will change our minds and therefore it will likewise change our hearts. That's how we can train our hearts to love God more and to love corporate worship more by faithfully engaging in what we're doing, knowing that we really are communing with God. Now a third and final way, and I will confess to you from the beginning, I struggled this week in writing this sermon in a lot of different ways, but my biggest struggle was trying to figure out where to place this point. I started writing earlier this week and I initially had this point at the beginning of my sermon and then I had it in the middle of my sermon and then literally this afternoon I put it to the end of my sermon. This has been the one I'm most excited about.

So if it seems like I'm kind of nerding out theologically, I am and I hope that you'll do that with me. The third and final point of how our minds can be transformed and renewed so that our hearts are molded and shaped in a positive way is to carefully cultivate what theologians refer to as our moral imagination, to carefully cultivate what theologians refer to as our moral imagination. Now, if you're not familiar with what that phrase means, then let me just explain it to you like this. The following analogy that I'm going to give you is really, really helpful to understanding this and I'll give credit where credit is due. This comes directly from Brother David de Brains, very, very helpful book, The Conservative Church, and if some of you have not read that, I would strongly encourage you to read that book.

It's very, very helpful. But this analogy comes straight from that book and it's excellent at explaining what exactly a moral imagination is. So imagine this. Imagine, if you will, a young boy who grows up in the city of Las Vegas. And imagine that he lives right next to a McDonald's and right next to a venue that is well known in the city for shotgun weddings.

For this young boy's entire life, his only concept of weddings is basically just watching drunk people act foolish. And his only mental concept for a feast is watching people casually eat at McDonald's. But now imagine that that same young boy picks up a Bible for the very first time and decides he wants to read through the book of Revelation. And then he comes to Revelation chapter 19 and he reads that excellent passage of scripture of the marriage supper of the Lamb. Now, you and I know that text.

We know that scene. We know that picture. And even as we think of it, our hearts are immediately full of joy. That will be the amazing moment when Christ, the groom, communes with his bride, the church. That's what all of us are longing for.

And we think of God's feasting and communing with his people in such a special way. This is a beautiful scene. What an amazing moment that will be for all of us when we finally get to experience that. But this young boy from Las Vegas has no mental framework to even begin picturing that. He has never seen a beautiful, reverent, God-honoring wedding.

And he's probably never seen a beautiful, reverent, family-focused feast. He will read this passage in Revelation chapter 19 and will be confused because he doesn't have a moral imagination that helps him to properly understand it. That's what our moral imagination is. It is our moral worldview that helps our heart either properly or improperly assign a value to something that we engage with that's either good or bad. And as such, our moral imagination, this moral worldview that we have, can either greatly help us or it can greatly hurt us.

And that analogy and that understanding of what a moral imagination is, it should help us to understand how our hearts' affections are always being shaped and trained through what is happening in our mind through everything that we do. Let me say that again because that is very, very important. This should help us to understand and know that our hearts' affections are always being shaped and trained through what is happening in our minds through everything that we do. So you see, church, our hearts' affections are directly related by what's happening in our mind. And our mind is always being influenced by what is shaping us in the culture and the environment around us.

This means that the sights and the sounds and the smells and the commonly shared experiences of our day-to-day lives all affect our mind and therefore they affect our hearts. For example, how we speak to others and how they speak to us, progressively over time, that molds and shapes us. Daily habits like drinking lots of water, physical exercise and getting good sleep, progressively over time, that molds and shapes us. The art forms that we engage with in entertainment or in music, progressively over time, mold and shape us. And yes, how we either faithfully engage or do not faithfully engage in corporate worship will progressively over time, mold and shape us.

It will either deform our minds and therefore deform our hearts or it will positively transform our minds and therefore positively transform our hearts. So with that concept in mind, hopefully you see how that's biblically tied together with what we see here in Romans 12 verse 2 going back into verse 1. But with that in mind, knowing that to be true from Scripture seen in Romans 12, I want to ask you this question. What is your moral imagination towards corporate worship? When you hear the phrase corporate worship, what do you think?

What do you envision? What sights do you see in your mind? What sounds do you hear? How does your thoughts on a regular basis as you think about corporate worship affect all that you are and naturally, of course, affect your heart? As we close, just in fleshing out this concept and how important it is, I want to share with you all my moral imagination towards corporate worship.

And I do mean specifically mine. Some of this is general and hopefully is shared by all of us. Some of it is uniquely specific to me. And I want to show you how this has been very, very transformational in a biblical and good way in my life. When I think of corporate worship, I immediately understand a sense of gravity toward what we're doing.

I feel a weightiness when I think about corporate worship, because week after week after week, by faithfully engaging in what we do here in corporate worship, I'm reminded that we are not showing up to hang out. And though we do fellowship, we're fellowshipping with one another as we join the universal church in communing with God. Brothers and sisters, I ask you this question, what could possibly be more important than that? What could weigh more than that? What carries more gravity than that in our own lives?

That comes into my mind when I think about corporate worship. And when I think of corporate worship, I think of our liturgy and I think of our structure of worship and how it's designed in the shape of the gospel, which is not something that we as pastors have come up with. It's actually just modeling what we see in scripture. And it begins to amaze me that God and his sovereignty would shape all of the examples of corporate worship, like the gospel, because the gospel is what we need to be built up in the truth and to be sanctified. So I'm not just communing with God.

We are communing with God and we are not just communing with God. We are communing with our loving and gracious and covenantal God who actually wants to love and transform us by the gospel. Does that give you any joy at all? To know that this is not just a habit of us putting something on our calendar every week, but when we show up on the Lord's Day, God is meeting with us and he's loving us and he's transforming us. Does that picture into how you envision corporate worship?

It should. And when I personally think of corporate worship, praise the Lord, I do not envision the sound of me singing. Praise the Lord. When I envision corporate worship, I hear the sound of us singing. And it's beautiful.

It's absolutely beautiful. I promise you, my singing is not, but collectively ours is. And when I think of the sights and the visions and the sounds that I personally experience in corporate worship, even when I close my eyes, I always know every worship service for years, the Heidebranks are supposed to sit behind me and Casey Conrad and the Hesters are always supposed to sit in front of me. I know that. And if that ever changes, I'm going to be upset about it.

And that's a good thing because I need to know that they're there and I need to see them worshiping and I need to hear them singing. That's a good thing. And when I think of corporate worship, I hear the sounds of children moving and sometimes laughing and yes, sometimes crying. And that's a good thing. It's a good thing that shapes my moral imagination towards worship.

And it reminds me that as we are gathered as a covenantal community, it's not just about me, but it's about me modeling mature corporate worship for my children. And my children need to see Tommy Hester and Laura Hester and Casey Conrad and Logan Lamar worshiping with maturity. They need to see that. That is a part of how I envision corporate worship. And when I think of corporate worship, I think of the benediction and how God blesses us with His word and even with His name.

So that I know at the end of every service that myself and every other Christian in this church that we belong to God. He is our God and we are His people. That is what I envision in corporate worship. And because of God sanctifying grace in the gospel and in His word and how that's trained me to be faithfully engaged week after week after week after week after week. Not instantaneously, not after one week and not after two weeks, but after a few weeks and after a few months, I do slowly but surely see how God is molding and shaping my affections through corporate worship.

And it's gorgeous and it's beautiful and it's sanctifying and it's encouraging and it gives me the mindset that as soon as I am done with worship on Sunday, I'm already looking forward to doing it again next week. Congregation, my question for you is this. What is your moral imagination of corporate worship? Do you love corporate worship? And not just love it conceptually, not just understand its doctrine, do you faithfully engage in every element of corporate worship?

Do you prepare for worship in such a way that when you come and one of us as pastor stands up and says grace to you and we start reading scripture, you know that God is actually speaking to you. When you hear God's law read, do you faithfully know in that moment, God is speaking to me that I might know His will for my life and yes, I fail. I don't ever keep His law perfectly, but praise the Lord that points me to the gospel. And then I confess my sins and we confess our sins and then by faith, we hear the assurance of pardon and we're reminded that we have peace with God. And then we hear God's word exposited and preach to us and we know that God is speaking to us and then we respond with prayer and we respond with song and on Sunday mornings we worship at the Lord's table.

Sometimes we see baptisms, but we always get to a benediction and we hear God bless us with His word, place His name upon us and over and over and over and over again, that shapes us. But listen, here's the whole point of the sermon. If we're not engaging with that by faith, it will not benefit us. It won't help us if we're just here and all we do is understand it mentally and we just stand up and sit down and we know it's true, but we don't really engage in it. It will not mold and shape us.

It will only mold and shape us if we engage by faith and doing so over and over and over again will transform our minds. And when it transforms our minds, it will transform our hearts. And when it transform our hearts, we will be sanctified by God's grace to discern what is good and acceptable and perfect. And when we know that, then we can present our bodies before Him, both individually but especially in corporate worship as the entirety of ourselves being given to Him in true spiritual worship. What is your moral imagination towards corporate worship?

Do you faithfully engage on a weekly basis? If the answer to that question is yes, press on. Keep doing it. If your answer to that question is honestly, pastor, sometimes I don't. Start.

Train yourself that way. Train yourself daily to be renewed in the gospel. Train yourself daily to remember what God's word says about corporate worship. Train yourself daily by praying and asking God to prepare your heart and your mind and your body to faithfully engage in corporate worship and mold and shape the entirety of your life. With everything that comes into your mind to help train you for that.

And if you would answer that question, I've never worshiped that way at all, then praise God for His gospel that He is still in the business of saving sinners. And He can still transform you salvifically even now if you will turn away from your sin and place your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. If you're here tonight and you're not in Christ, I pray by God's grace, would you please do that? And for the rest of us who are already made new in Christ, we need the gospel just as well. To mold and shape our minds so that our hearts would be shaped as well.

May God give us grace to do so daily and every Lord's day that comes to pass before our Lord returns or He calls us home. Let's pray. Father, we love you and we thank you for this evening. We thank you for the chance to be reminded of these vitally important principles from Holy Scripture. Lord, help us to always be mindful of the fact that you demand that our bodies and our hearts and our minds be completely and totally given over to you.

Help us to remember, Lord, that the way that our hearts can be molded and shaped is through our minds and through our moral imaginations. So, Father, please give us moral imaginations that are rooted in your word. Fill our minds with your word daily. And as you do so, Father, help us to love your gospel more and more and help us to love corporate worship more and more so that as we give ourselves to it by faith, we will see progressively over time how you are preserving and molding and shaping our hearts to love you more. Father, bless us towards that end and we ask all of this in Christ's holy name.

Amen.