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Elements City Church

More Than a Song: Living a Life of Worship - I Surrender Half

More Than a Song: Living a Life of Worship - I Surrender Half

If worship is the proper response to the revelation of God’s nature, we need to learn what response God desires from us. He is worthy of our worship — something many of us are quick to say, but do our calendars and bank statements reflect this truth? As followers of Jesus we must orient our lives and our wills in such a way as to give Him the worship He desires.

Locations & Times

Elements City Church

1825 N Alvernon Way, Tucson, AZ 85712, USA

Sunday 5:00 PM

Welcome to church!

Whether you're on-site or online, we are praying that tonight will be an encouragement to you! If you're new and want to get connected, we'd love to hep you do so! Click the link below to fill out our Connection Card.
https://connect-card.com/yr4Y0g8VLBSqzKXeubjb

How can we pray for you this week?

If you have a prayer request you'd like our Elders and Prayer Team to pray for, click the link below to share it with us.
https://share.fluro.io/form/6329f633da0feb00250cbd5f
What is worship?
Nowhere is it actually defined biblically.

Worship = Worth-ship

While the method may change throughout different periods of time, there are some consistent aspects to worship in Scripture: grateful surrender, service, and reverence are central concepts to biblical worship.
Worship is the recognition of God’s true worth, and what we are to do in response to the revelation of God.
Worship that is honoring to the Lord leads to obedience and praise in every area of life — both in the home and in the communal gathering of believers.
The Book of Leviticus is a central text on worship in the Old Testament.

To sum up the book in a sentence, it is about the priest's role in helping the people of God approach God in holiness.
The book of Hebrews is the New Testament’s answer to Leviticus. Hebrews walks through the ways Jesus laid down His life as the perfect sacrifice — made once, for all — in order that we might approach the Father in worship.
God cares how we approach Him in worship.

Worship without obedience is actually offensive to the Lord.
We come before God the Father in worship by the cleansing blood of Jesus.
God loves to dwell in prepared places.

When we take time to prepare our hearts and prepare our minds, He often shows up and inhabits those places for extended periods of time.

We prepare:
- in prayer
- in times of singing praise
- in reading God’s Word
- in meditating on Scripture
- in confessing & repenting of sin

We cannot cram for it the way we do an exam.
How often do we find ourselves trying to approach the Lord the way we want to, as opposed to approaching Him the way He desires?
Simply put, we can show God how much He is worth to us (again worship is worth-ship) by laying before Him the things we value most, which ultimately shows God that He has our heart. . .
. . . and that’s really what He wants.
If we want to approach God rightly, that means we approach Him in obedience, in holiness, and we lay our whole life down before Him to use as He wishes.
But if we want to live a life of worship in our current American culture we have to learn to submit two things to Jesus:
1. Our Time
2. Our Money
You cannot give what you do not have.
You will not have much of something if you cannot manage it.
The call on the life of every follower of Jesus is to surrender it all to Jesus.
Sometimes that will mean you have to let the Lord interrupt your daily routine so you can step in and worship Him by ministering to someone else, whether that means you sacrifice your time or your money.

Sometimes that will mean actively denying your flesh to worship Jesus and show Him He’s worthy of the pursuit of holiness.
Jesus didn’t sacrifice Himself on the cross for us to merely surrender half of our hearts to Him.
We have to stop watering down what it means to walk with Jesus, and start recognizing the true cost of discipleship.

Is it easy? No!
Is it worth it? Yes!

The beauty of it is when we get it right, we get more Jesus.
And that's enough for the true worshipper because, when we understand what worship really is, we already see Jesus is our greatest treasure!

Thank you for giving to the church!

Thank you for giving your tithes and offerings. They enable us to be the church, and they help fuel the mission of Elements City Church. Our capacity to function as a church on a daily basis is directly impacted by your support, and we are so grateful for it! You can give online at the link below, or through the Elements City Church app.
http://elementscitychurch.org/give
We are so glad you chose to worship with us tonight!

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there!

Here's what's coming up this month:
- If you're registered for the Marriage Retreat in August, the remainder of your balance is due by June 30th.
- Also on June 30th: Join us after service as we celebrate the 4th of July with hot dogs and ice cream. See you there!