If I haven't had the chance to meet you yet, my name's Danny. I am the director of our College of Ministry here and here this morning. I just feel really humbled and privileged to open up God's Word with you as we continue our series on worship. And if you have been here over the last few weeks, I really hope what you're starting to catch is the vision for how deeply important it is for you and for me and this church to get worship right. There might not be a more important thing in our life to get right. And honestly, the truth is we were designed and made to worship. Worship is not just a religion thing or a Christian thing. It is a human thing because every person was designed by God to worship God. The problem is, though, so many of us drift into worshiping other things and and everyone worships something. If you were here a couple weeks ago, you'll remember we defined worship as delighting in and displaying the worth of God above all things. And even though not everyone uses that word, God when they talk about what they worship, if you examine our lives, you'll see that we all lift up, delight in and say something is ultimately worthy of our time, our affection, our energy, and our worship. Maybe it's a significant other that you feel like man, you will give me the affirmation and love and worth I need. And so you lift them up. Maybe it's a higher tax bracket and the security and comfort and safety that comes with that. Maybe it's yourself and the freedom of feeling like I'm not tied down to anyone or anything. I'm my own master. But hear me, church, everyone always worships something. And here's the truth we're begging you to consider every week in this series. If we want to get life right, we have to get worship right. Cause our souls were ultimately made for one thing. And that is to worship our Creator, the one true God revealed in His Word. So to help us get worship right, what we've been doing is asking just a pretty simple question each Sunday as we've been working through this series. First we asked, what is worship? Good question to start with, where Michael gave us the definition we just looked at and talked about two weeks ago. We asked, why does God deserve to be worshiped? And we got to see the worthiness of our God and why it is good for us to glorify and worship Him. Then last week we asked, how does God desire to be worshiped? Or Jake gave us nine things God desires in worship. Super good for my heart. And this Week. This is the question we're asking today to set things up. What should our personal worship look like? Or here's another way I'd put it, what does it actually look like to exalt and lift up God? Not just here on Sunday morning while you sing, but on Monday through Saturday in the rest of your everyday life? And here's why I think this is a great question to answer. The call to personal worship can feel so broad sometimes that it can start to feel kind of vague and hard to understand how that actually translates to action in our lives if we are not careful. Here's what I mean. A phrase you'll likely hear if you're around Veritas long enough is this all of life is worship. Now, let me be clear. That is a biblical truth and a true idea. Look at one place with me where we see Paul get at the same idea. He says this in 1st Corinthians 10:31. Matthew actually already mentioned it. So whether you eat or drink or what, whatever you do, do all to the glory of God, all of life is worship. Paul's saying every decision you make in life should be made with the glory of God in view. So this is a good biblical truth. Here's my concern, though. If we only use phrases like this without taking time to explore what it actually looks like lived out in our personal lives, it might start to become meaningless and we won't be equipped to actually pursue concrete, tangible worship of God in our personal lives. Here's what this makes me think of. You know, this will make me seem old to some of you or young to some of you, but one of the first movies I remember seeing in the theaters was the Incredibles when I was five years old. And there's this scene in the movie where Dash's mom, she's Elastigirl. She's trying to keep Dash from relying on his power of super speed to make him feel special. And she everyone's special, Dash. And Dash is like picking at the window. And he says, which is another way of saying no one is. And here's my fear is that when we hear all of life is worship, everything is worship, we would feel like Dash and be like, if everything is worship, does that just kind of mean nothing is? Does the word worship when it comes to our personal lives just become meaningless? Cause it's so broad and not defined. And see, I know many of you, I know how much you have a desire to do all things for the glory of God in your everyday lives. But the problem is Once we step outside those doors and into the everyday realities of our lives with all their complexities, we can start to feel lost on, like, what does worship in my personal life actually look like? And that is a huge problem if our ultimate purpose in life and our whole design is to give God the glory and worship he deserves. So this is kind of the conundrum we find ourselves in. We know that all of our everyday life is worship, but we don't know how to worship in our everyday life at all. So back to our original question. Here's what God's Word is gonna help us answer. What does worshiping God look like not just on Sunday, but on Monday through Saturday? That's what we're gonna explore this morning. What does worship of God in our everyday lives look like? And as we do that, here's where we're gonna go to answer that question. We're actually gonna look at a few different moments together in the life of Jesus. And here's why, just to brush us up on a good theology of Jesus. Jesus is fully God. He's eternally been the Son of God, one essence with God the Father and God the Spirit. But at the exact same time, the miracle of Jesus taking on flesh is that he is also fully 100% man. And as a real man who lived a real human life with a real human nature, he actually displayed for us what perfect personal worship of God looks like lived out in a life. In fact, that's what Jesus kind of says in John 17 as he's praying to his Father in verse four, to God the Father. This is what he says. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. Paul is saying, do all for the glory of God. Jesus is saying, I glorified you on earth perfectly. Jesus perfectly worshiped the Father, perfectly exalted him, not just when he was sitting in a temple or a synagogue, but with every single thought, word and deed of his life. And so it's not a surprise that in several places of the New Testament, as the authors are trying to help people understand, what does the Christian like life look like? So often they call us to imitate Christ. Let me show you two places where we see this. Here's 1 Corinthians 11, 1 Paul says, this be imitators of me. But here's the important part of that phrase, as I am of Christ, pretty self explanatory. Here's 1 John 2:6. Whoever says he abides in him, that's Jesus ought to walk in the Same way he walked. So the New Testament writers are basically saying, do you know where I would point you? If you are asking what it looks like to worship God in the everyday, ordinary realities of your personal life. Look at the life of Jesus. Imitate Jesus walk as he walked. So as we examine a few moments in the life of Jesus, here's what we're going to get a glimpse into. We're going to get a glimpse into what I think are three important dimensions of personal worship. Three key dimensions that give shape to how Jesus honored, worshiped and exalted God the Father. And my hope is as we explore those, it'll start to flesh out how we can chase after the worship of God in our everyday lives. And here's the deal. If you were here last week, Jake gave us nine points. So I'm expecting you to lean in for just three. Sound good? Just a third of them. Cool. We're good. We're rolling. I love it. Here we go. We are gonna get our first dimension of what personal worship looks like in Luke 5. So if you have a Bible, turn there with me. And as you do, I wanna refresh you on what's going on in the story. Cause even though we're jumping around to some different passages, we wanna make sure we're never pulling the word of God out of its context or giving it a different meaning than it has. So here's what's going on in Luke 5. Jesus, he's come on the scene, he's preaching, he's healing. And in this chapter, Luke records three miracles Jesus performed. And what we're about to read together happens in between the second and third miracle. Jesus just finished healing a leper. And then look at what it says in verse 15 with me. But now even more, the report about him went abroad and great crowds gathered to hear him and be healed of their infirmities. So put really simply, Jesus ministry is taking off. People are hanging on his words, people are coming to him to be healed. Crowds are flocking to him. This is like deeply important, life changing activity going on and Jesus is at the center of it. He's the leader of it. So we would ask like, hey, what better use of his time and energy and action than this, right? Surely this is like he's worshiping God the Father here, right? Like, what else would be more important than that? And you'd expect him to go right from the second miracle to the third. But that's not what comes next. Actually what comes next is really subversive to our modern way of Thinking as we see Jesus do some encounter to what we'd naturally think would happen next. Look at verse 16 with me says but in spite of all of this, but he would withdraw to desolate places and pray. We can glance over this one nine word verse so quickly and jump into the next story. But Luke is making an important point here. Like think about how crazy it is that Jesus, the son of God, the Savior, who had a line of people to be healed to hear his words. In spite of all of that, Jesus would withdraw and found it deeply important to spend time with God. And he wouldn't just do this once in a while. The truth that Luke is portraying is that he would do this all the time. Like this was a rhythm of his life. We lose how clear that is in our English Bibles, you know. Cause the original New Testament was written in Koine Greek. But the verbs for withdraw and pray, when it says he would withdraw and pray, those verbs for withdraw and pray are in what's called the iterative imperfect tense in Greek. Mouthful of a phrase. But let me hear you say iterative imperfect. Awesome. A bunch of Greek scholars in the room. So it's a mouthful. Here's all it means. We like to give fancy words to all these things. It just means continuous repeated action. When a verb is in that phrase, it means it would happen over and over, repeatedly and often. So here's how you could rephrase Luke 5:16. But Jesus would often withdraw to desolate places and would often pray. Jesus was a man who pursued God's presence relentlessly. And he was a man who, while doing the most important work of God you could ever imagine, still found it deeply important to often pursue simply time alone in the presence of God. And this is how Luke portrays Jesus habits over and over. Look at one more place with me at Luke 6:12. In these days he went out to the mountain to pray and all night he continued in prayer to God. And this pops up. We could keep going. It pops up countless times in the Gospel of Luke. The truth you'd be seeing time and time again if you'd read Luke with that in mind is that Jesus was a man who relentlessly pursued the the presence of his God in everyday life. No matter how weary he was, no matter what other pressing issues surrounded him, he was drawn to his Father's presence. And that's what's compelled me about Jesus's pursuit of the Father, is how Luke portrays over and over, no matter what's happening in ministry, Jesus does something and then is compelled back to his Father's presence. I'd almost put it like this. It's like Jesus was like metal and his Father's presence was like a magnet. Like, just like a piece of iron can't help but fly to a magnet near it. Cause it's its very nature to be attracted to it. Jesus withdrew to the presence of his Father. Cause his very nature was to desire him and long to be with him. Here's the first dimension of personal worship Jesus is displaying for us. Jesus worshiped God the Father by pursuing time with God the Father. How did Jesus ascribe worth to God? The first thing we're seeing is by simply pursuing time with and in the exact same way as imitators of Christ. How do we ascribe worth to God by pursuing him with the most precious possession we have, our time. And now for a lot of us, this isn't a brand new idea. You're in church, course you're gonna be encouraged to spend time with God. But the thing I'm concerned about, if I'm just being honest, is that our motivation for pursuing time with God is often very different from Jesus. And when it drifts from Jesus motivation, it ceases to become worship. Because there's a few counterfeit reasons you could pursue time with God. Maybe you're motivated by God's approval. And you would never say this, you would never pray this out loud, but what you're kind of thinking is you're kind of striking a deal with God, right? God, if I pray and read my Bible every day, you'll forgive me for that thing I did last week, right? Like surely I can rack up some points with you this way. Or maybe you're honestly motivated more by the approval of others. You know, you read your Bible because you want other people to know you're the type of person who reads your Bible and prays and you want people to know you're a good Christian. You have the answers, you know the verses, you do what good Christians do. Or maybe if you're like me, you start to become motivated purely by a sense of duty, like God. I know you've called me to do this, so I'm going to buckle down, grit my teeth and do it like it's a trick. Now don't misunderstand me. Should we pursue time with God with imperfect motivations or even when we don't always desire to? Absolutely. But here's the question that we should ask is what motivated Jesus pursuit of his Father? Because if you stop and think about it logically, you're like, well, it wasn't the approval of his father. He already had it at his baptism. He was called God's beloved Son, with whom he was well pleased. So it wasn't that clearly wasn't man's approval. If you read any interaction Jesus has with the Pharisees, it's like he clearly didn't mind pushing other people's buttons. I don't think Jesus would have written how to win friends and influence people. Right. He wasn't interested in people pleasing. So what was it? I think we get a clear answer in another portion of Jesus prayer to the father in John 17. Look at verse five with me, he says this, and now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory I had with you before the world existed. This verse is profound. It's revealing something to us, really significant about Jesus relationship to his Father. It's revealing that it is Jesus very nature to love being in the presence of his Father. He's saying, it's what I've done all in eternity past. It's what I hunger for now. It is what I am looking for in the future. And Jesus is right now at the right hand of God. God enjoying his presence. So what motivated Jesus pursuit of time with his Father? Really simply, it was relational delight. That is the type of motivation we're after. And that is why when you think about it, the deepest agony Jesus experienced on the cross wasn't physical nails piercing his wrists. It wasn't the blood feeling his lungs every time he sunk down so he had to stretch himself back up. No, the deepest agony was experiencing God's face turn away from him as he bore the wrath of our sin. Jesus great desire was the presence of his Father. And this should be ours too. The presence of God. One of my favorite verses in the psalms, it's Psalm 27:8 because of how it captures this, just like pure longing for God with just a sweet simplicity. Look at what David says. He says, you have said, seek my face, my heart, this control center of my life, the seat of my affections, everything I love, my heart says to you. Your face, O Lord, do I seek. That is the heartbeat of a true worshiper of God. That is the longing of every true worshiper of God to be in the presence of the God we were made for to seek his face. So, couple questions. Have you ever thought about how your pursuit of time with God is an act of worship to God? And on the flip side, have you thought about what apathy about spending time with God says about how Much worth he actually has in your life and what you're really worshiping deep down. See Veritas. My hope for this church is that we would simply crave time in the presence of God. Not to fill a quota, not to earn anyone's approval, not even just because we know it's what we should do. Because we cannot bear the thought of sin staying away from him. My hope and prayer for this room is that we would be a magnetic people like that our souls would be like iron to a magnet, always feeling the strong pull towards God. Our true north, our refuge, our safe place, the one we are made to enjoy. The pursuit of time with God is a precious act of everyday worship to God when it's the overflow of your delight in God's presence. Now that being said, here's where I know practically a lot of us struggle. You're like, but what should my time with God actually look like once I try to sit down and do it? Danny. Like, I don't know, Jesus's time with God program. Like, do I just sit down and wait for something to happen? How do I know if I'm doing it right? What are key components to pursuing time in God's presence? And could be a whole sermon in and of itself. But I think it's worth taking just a brief moment to share with you what's been helpful for me and what I believe God's Word calls us to. And what I believe has been practiced by Christians throughout church history. That's flexible and practical for you to practice in your everyday life. So when you withdraw for time with God, when you come before the presence of God, whether it's an hour, cause you've got a lot of margin in your schedule or 10 minutes because you're a mom with four kids, here are three simple things I'd encourage you to include. And I even alliterated them for you so you'll remember them. This is the three components of a rhythm of time in God's presence. Read, reflect and relay. And I'm gonna explain what that means. Let's break that down. Read, reflect, relay. First, as simple as it sounds, read the Word of God deeply. Like a real encounter with the living God. It starts with hearing God's voice. And the miracle of the Bible is that God has tied his voice to His Word. It's by encountering God's Word that you're actually challenged, healed, renewed. Because the same God who brought life to the world by speaking brings life to you by speaking in His Word. So when you sit down to meet God, you need to have a plan of what you'll read. Like, our bookstore has tons of Bible reading plans. But know where you're going. Open your Bible and prepare your heart to be met with the voice of God. But after we read the Word of God, here's really the step or the missing link I think we miss so often, even those of us who've been Christians for decades, after we read the Word of God, we need to reflect on the Word of God and man. So often, if you're like me, we get in this habit of we read our Bible, we close it, we move on to what's next in our day. But the Word of God's supposed to stay in our minds and hearts long after it's been closed on our table. And it's here that I am convinced we are missing out on the joy of actually having a rich encounter with God. Because it's as you turn the words of God over and over and over in your head like a screw, just pondering what it means, how it applies, how it's good news for you that it starts to get tightened into the grooves of your actual life. We want to not just glance over the words of God, but treasure them enough to reflect on them and let them sink into our lives. And last, after you read and reflect on the Word of God, you relay the Word of God back to him in prayer. And I'm telling you, praying scripture back to God, that'll enrich your prayer life far more than you imagine. Because now it's making it a conversation where God speaks to you and then you respond and reply to him. You bring him what your heart's chewing on from His Word. If the passage is a rich promise, ask God to help you believe it in faith and think about what it means in your life and praise him for that. If the passage exposes sin, confess to God. If the passage is a description about the glory of God, just adore him, praise him and thank Him. And if this room was full of people that long to be in God's presence that way, to let God's Word dictate our time with Him. To read the Word of God, reflect on the Word of God, and, and relay the Word of God back to him, man, that would be a pure offering of worship to God. And like I said, we could spend a whole sermon on this. But man, we have to move on. Cause there's two other dimensions of our everyday lives where I'm convinced we need to imitate Jesus in offering personal worship To God. Look with me in John 4:31 34, where we're gonna see the second glimpse of what personal worship looks like. As we flip there, Let me catch you up on what's been going on. This passage comes right after Jesus's famous encounter with the woman at the well. So Jesus sits down, he's hungry, thirsty and tired. He asks for a drink from this woman. It becomes a life changing conversation with a lost sinful woman. It's worth reading if you haven't. But today all you need to know is it's right after this conversation Jesus had with the woman where he still hasn't eaten anything, still hasn't drinking anything, is still tired, that we jump into this verse where the disciples are like just trying to take care of their weary, tired master. Look at verse 31 with me says this. Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying rabbi, eat. Really simple request, but Jesus gives like a very Jesusy response. Look at verse 32. But he said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know about. Now Jesus, he's using the word food as a picture for something else to make a point. But in classic disciple fashion, like they miss it. Look with me at verse 33. The disciples said to one another, has anyone brought him something to eat? So Jesus like being like you clearly are not getting it explains what he means. And it's as he does, we get another glimpse of what our personal worship should look like. Look at verse 34 with me. Jesus said to them, this is profound. My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. See what Jesus is doing is he's using the word food as a symbol for obedience. And Jesus view of obedience, it is very different from the view of obedience we often have. Which becomes super clear if we camp out here for a second and think about why is Jesus comparing obedience to food? Like we should think about that. And when we think about all that Jesus is communicating with, when he compares obedience to food, it becomes incredibly profound. First, food nourishes us and we become weak without it. So for Jesus that means obedience to God was nourishing to him, like it fed his soul, it gave him strength. What a different view of obedience to God than we often have. But even more deeply, food sustains us. If you think about it, we could not live without it. So for Jesus, obedience to God was sustained. He's like, to not obey God would be to waste away, it would be to die. I can't live without obeying my Father. Different view of obedience than we often have. And just to add one more layer, food pleases us. We delight in the taste of it, especially when you are hungry and get what you crave. So here is what Jesus is saying to his disciples in a sentence. You think I'm weary and tired, but actually what nourishes, sustains and pleases me most is obeying my Father and doing my Father's work. This is the second dimension of personal worship we see in the life of Jesus. Jesus worshiped God the Father by obeying God the Father. Jesus worshiped his Father by loving to do his will. And veritas we need to understand in our everyday lives our obedience is an indispensable part of authentic worship. I believe you could go as far as saying there is no real worship without real obedience. And don't just take my word for it. Let me show you one place where this is explicitly displayed for us. Look at 1st Samuel 15:22 with me. All you need to know is right before this Saul, who was Israel's first king, he had disobeyed God's clear command to destroy the enemy he just conquered. But he was offering up like burnt offerings of animals. So he thought he was doing pretty good. And this is what the prophet Samuel proclaims to Saul and Samuel said, has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord. Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice and to listen than the fat of rams. Now, Samuel's not saying God doesn't desire people to sacrifice for him. In fact, see in a minute, there is a type of sacrifice God desires from us in our everyday lives. But this is what God is saying through Samuel. An external act of worship without an internal desire to obey God in our lives is hollow and blasphemous. There is no real worship without real obedience. But here's what this means on the flip side, one of the most precious things you could ever give to and offer to him is a heart that says, I want to please you so deeply. I'm going to walk in the way you've called me even when I don't understand. A life lived like that is precious and delightful in God's sight. And it is a sweeter offering of worship than you can imagine. And that's why Israel's next king David, a man after God's own heart, is very different from Saul where he says this. My soul is consumed with longing for your rules at all times. And so the question for you today is, are you closer to the heart of David and the perfect King Jesus? Or are you closer to the heart of Saul like take a look at our own hearts. Could you say my soul is consumed with longing for your rules, for your law, for obedience to you at all times. Do you crave obedience to God like you crave food when you're starving? Are you hungry for that? Does your stomach ache at the thought of not walking in line with God's will for your life as he's revealed in His Word church? Here's the question that's like fire that will test and reveal the durability and quality of your worship. Do you love that God is not just your Savior, but also your King? Cause that's a vital part of everyday worship. To have a heart that's hungry, to worship God not just with your lips or your hands on one morning out of the week, but every day in your life, in your actions as a student, an employee, a son or a daughter, a mom or a dad, or whatever it is to crave obedience to God like you crave food when you're starving. You know, when my little brother was really young, this honestly was one of his most consistent traits. How much he loved some of. You know, you've had little boys, they could eat seconds, thirds, fourths. Like I don't know how he fit so much food in his little 40 pound body. It like amazed me. But there's one story like my family still laughs at to this day. I think we were at the dinner table and my dad was mentioning how they had a new assistant at work. And my little five year old brother, he pipes in and says, I'll have an assistant. And my sister like looks at my brother, she's like, what are you even talking about? You're like five. Do you know what an assistant is? And he looks at her, he goes, no, but if it's food, I want it. So he just very much misunderstood what we can and cannot eat. We had to have that talk with him later. But guys, here's my point. My hope is that we in some ways are a church like my little brother, like this. I hope we're a church that says, I don't know what God's going to ask of me today, but if it's his will, I want it. I hope we say whatever you call me to God. I don't know what it is, but I want it because it's your will. I talked before about how I hope we as a church are magnetic people drawn back to God's presence. But I Also hope that we're an insatiable people. And usually that word's used as a negative. Someone who's greedy, someone who can't get enough, someone who's never full, never satisfied. But I do hope when it comes to our obedience to God, we are insatiable. Like, I hope you can never get full from doing God's will. I hope we cultivate the type of heart that wakes up every day saying, God, I am starving to obey you today. Give me chances to do your will. That's all I want. So where in your life are you out of step with God's commands? Where have you become more hungry for the scraps of sin than the meal of obedience God's laying before you? Veritas, this is hard. Like, to my own shame, this is what convicts me the most. Like, I am way more familiar with hunger pains for food than I am for obedience to God. And as I reflect, I'm like, how often do I crave obedience to God's word? That way it is woefully short of where it should be. But all I can do is stand here today and say, I want God's spirit to change me. Like, I want to experience a hunger to obey God. I want the beating purpose of my heart to say, God, where can I obey you and follow you and walk with you today? And I want want to crave doing the Father's will in my life. And I hope that you do too, because that is a sweet offering of personal worship to God in our everyday lives. But there's one more dimension of Jesus personal worship I want us to see this morning. And it might be the most challenging and convicting of all. Look with me at John 10, 15, 18. And Jesus is giving this long discourse about his mission in life. And this is he says, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep, and I have other sheep not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it up again. This charge, this mission I have received from my Father. Now, there's a certain phrase Jesus uses four times in these four verses. I hope you caught I lay my life down. And even though this phrase is in the present tense, what Jesus is Referring to is the laying down of his life for his people. That's about to happen on the cross. So what is the charge received from His Father? Why is his Father pleased with Jesus? Because he has accepted the Father's charge to be a sacrifice for the sins of the world, to lay his very life down. And Jesus said to his Father, not my will, but yours be done. Even when the Father's will was Jesus giving up heaven's glory, entering a world ravaged by sin, and bearing that sin in agony on the cross in our place. And that act of sacrifice on the cross, that of course is the pinnacle, that is the peak. But we need to understand that that is just culmination of a life of sacrifice. Like Jesus's life of sacrifice. It began when he took on flesh and it ended with sacrifice when he gave his life. From the womb to the tomb, from incarnation to resurrection, Jesus's life was indelibly marked by sacrifice. And this is the last and probably the most challenging dimension of personal worship we see in Jesus's life. Jesus worshiped God the Father by sacrificing for God the Father. Here's why this is so challenging. The very idea of sacrifice includes the idea of cost. I don't want to sugarcoat it. It will cost you something to worship God in your Monday to Saturday life. It means laying down your own interests. It means maybe not getting as far ahead in your workplace because other people don't honor God with the way they don't provide. Play by the rules. It might look like saying no to some of the most deep things you've craved for a long time. But there is also no more powerful way to offer personal worship to God than sacrifice. Because the very act of giving up something costly displays that you find God more precious than whatever you're giving up. That's what Paul spells out for us and the call he gives us in Romans 12:1. He just explains, explain the Gospel of Christ, all the mercies of God, and then this is what he says. He says, I appeal to you. Therefore, brothers, I beg you by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. So what does worship look like in the everyday life of a Christian? It looks like sacrifice. It looks like giving up what's good consistently for the sake of what's better. It looks like looking at your life choices and being able to say, I gave that up because I loved God more. Let me tell you one of the biggest reasons, like I love being in college Ministry just to brag on our students for a second is. Is that it? It just blows me away how willing they are to imitate Christ and lay down their lives for the King when their lives are changed by Him. Let me give you just a few examples. One of our students overseas right now, they were going to receive like a huge work bonus if they stayed home this summer. And it's probably more money than you're imagining in your head right now. And they looked at the thousands and thousands of dollars that were offered to them and they chose to give it up to share the gospel overseas with people because they cared more about God being known than getting paid. There's several young men in our ministry I know who are fighting not just to manage but ruthlessly kill porn in their lives because they know only God satisfies. They know that's not how God has called them to live and they want to lay it down. Several students in our ministry, they generously give to this church when honestly they have negative money because of the debt in their lives. But they still give cause they believe God is more valuable. And like I could go on and on and on, but do you see how sacrificial living like this puts the worthiness of God on display? There's no better way to exalt God in your own personal life. No way to ascribe worth to him, no better way to glorify him than by doing things costly for the one we think is priceless. And quite honestly, church, here's the truth. If we gave up everything to worship God, it still wouldn't be half of enough of what we owe Him. That's why in one of my favorite hymns, Isaac Watts says this. He says, were the whole realm of nature mine that were an offering far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all. Severitas. Can you look back and see evidence that you've sacrificed for God? Has there ever been something you've had to give up to follow Him? Has it cost you anything to take up your cross? Can I suggest to you this morning if you can't answer yes to those questions, like your worship of God in your own life is at best malnourished and at worst non existent. And maybe it's a sign the person you're ultimately worshiping isn't God. But you, like you're happy to let God give of himself for you, but the thought of God calling you to give of yourself for him is foreign to you. But that is not the life of Christ. We're called to follow. And veritas, I don't want that to be me. Like, I want my life to look like Christ. And one of my. The greatest agonies of my life is how often I pursue my own life instead of laying it down to follow him. But I want my life to look like Romans 12:1. Like, I want to be someone who follows Jesus up to the altar and stays there. Like, I want to start every day crawling to the altar, looking up to God and saying, I am a sacrifice for you today. Use me how you want to, especially when it costs me. And I want that type of life for you too. Because that is real worship. That is worship that God's pleased with a wife of sacrifice, laying down what you think is precious for the most precious one of all. So, church, we started by asking what worship looks like. Like, not just on Sundays, not just here this morning, but on the Mondays through Saturdays of our normal, everyday, ordinary lives. And then after surveying this life of Jesus, these are the three dimensions of everyday worship that I want to encourage you to see and to pursue and to chase after this morning. Personal worship. It looks like pursuing time with God, obedience to God and sacrifice for God. That is a life of personal worship, pursuing time with God, obedience to God and sacrifice for God. That is the life Jesus lived, that glorified his Father. And my prayer is that that would really be ours as well. That we'd be a magnetic people drawn to God's presence, that we'd be an insatiable people, never full of obeying God, and that we'd be people who live our lives on the altar, offering our lives as a sacrifice to our God. Now, with this in our minds, I want to take just a moment and show you how this understanding of personal worship, it helps give us a new lens to just see what everyday worship in our life could look like differently. How do these categories of time and obedience and sacrifice, how do they help us as we seek to worship God in our Mondays through Saturdays? And I think there's two ways. First, it helps us see the opportunity behind the ordinary. And here's what I mean by this. See, the exciting truth is every day comes with opportunities for you to pursue time with God, obedience to God and sacrifice for God, no matter what your life looks like. And if you start looking for opportunities to worship God given to you in this way, whether you're a student or a parent or an accountant, I promise you will find them. And church behind the ordinary, everyday rhythms of your life are everyday opportunities to pursue God's presence, to hunger for obedience to him and to sacrifice for Him. So the call is to take hold of those opportunities to believe. No matter where your life is at, you can offer God worship that is pleasing and precious to Him. You do not need to be a pastor to have God delight in your worship. You do not need to have a following to have God delight in your worship. You do not need to have a list of things you have done for God for Him to delight in your worship. You don't need a change in your life's circumstances to offer God worship that. Because right here, right now, you can pursue his presence, you can obey him, you can sacrifice for him, and you can do what you are made for in your everyday personal life to exalt and enjoy God. But here's the second way this survey of Christ's personal worship helps us see our worship differently. It helps us see the perfect worshiper that stands behind our imperfect worship. And that's important. Because if our restored relationship to God was based on our ability to offer him the worship he deserves, we would be lost. Because when we see all the opportunities to worship God in our lives that we've let slip through our fingers, the chances to pursue him, the chances to obey him, the chances to sacrifice him should become immediately obvious to us. God's plan Pleasure cannot ultimately be based on our worship. God's pleasure in us can't be based on the quality of our personal worship. But that's why there was one person who came and who worshiped God perfectly. One person who desired God's presence perfectly, one person who obeyed the will of God perfectly, one person whose life was marked by costly sacrifice for God. And that person isn't. It isn't me. That person is Jesus Christ. And the good news for you this morning, the good news of the gospel for you this morning, is that when you fail to worship God perfectly in your life, you are not condemned, even though we should be. Because Jesus has already perfectly worshiped God through His life in your place. And the perfect act of worship to the Father has already happened. And it happened on the cross. Cross. So if you believe the gospel that on the cross Jesus took your sin, he gave you his righteousness, his perfect obedience, his perfect sacrifice, his perfect pursuit of God, what that does is it sets us free to joyfully pursue him in our everyday lives. Because it's no longer about earning approval, but about gratitude, childlike love, and delight in the God who saved you. I want to end this morning with words from one of my favorite pastors Francis Schaeffer from his sermon called no Little People, no Little Places. This is what he says and this is what a vision of our lives in everyday worship to God looks like. He says to be wholly committed to God in the place where God wants him. This is the creature glorified. So here's the invitation. Do you want to experience glory? Do you want to know what it is like to be a person fully alive, flourishing in what you were made to be? And if you do, it comes from being a person wholly committed to God in the place God has you. Not committed on Sunday mornings from 11 to 12:30, not committed every other day of your life. Committed to God in the everyday place personal worship of your life. So my hope church is that we would be a magnetic people just pulled to the presence of God because we delight in Him. I hope we'll be an insatiable people hungry to do the will of God and obey Him. And I hope we're a people that live our lives on the altar, ready to sacrifice anything for the pursuit of God because He's the prize. Because if we were those things, I think we'd be people committed to God in the place God has for us. And that's what I want for us today, for his glory and our good. Pray with me. God, I am so thankful for your son. Because the worship that you call us to, the pursuit of your presence, the obedience we should have for you, the sacrifices we should make for you, we fall so woefully short in me more than anyone. God, I do not delight in your presence and the pursuit of you like I should. I don't delight in obeying you like I should. My body often hungers for other things more. God, I don't sacrifice and lay down things for you like I should. Lord, I could give youe and sacrifice everything and it would still be woefully short. But God, that's why we plead the perfect worship of Christ this morning. That's why as we take the bread and the cup that we remember, Christ's body was broken and his blood was shed. So we could still worship you imperfectly but truly, why we could still come into your presence. Why we could still be justified, made right with you. Because there is a perfect worshiper that stands behind our imperfect worshiping. But God, I pray for more than just salvation this morning. I pray for transformation in this room. Because when we are saved by you, you also dwell within us. We are in union with you. And that means you change us to look more like you. So God, I just beg you. Would change us to look more like Christ. To be more like him in our pursuit of you. To be more like you in our obedience to you, and more like you in our sacrifice. Lord, we love you. Accept this offering of worship now from your people that love you and want to give you the worship you deserve. In your name, Amen.