Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 149

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Today we are going to talk about worship. Now this is something that

00:00:07.680 a lot of you guys have asked me about specifically in relation to worship songs. How do I decide

00:00:13.900 which worship songs to listen to? Are there worship songs that are not okay to listen to?

00:00:18.040 Worship songs that are okay to listen to? But we're really going to start about talking about

00:00:23.600 worship in general and what it is according to God's word. We will get into how that relates to

00:00:31.340 worship songs specifically, but we need to define worship according to God's word before we can get

00:00:38.000 into that because that will kind of set up our premise for the discussion about worship music.

00:00:44.140 So worship, as you guys already know, means to give honor to, to admire, to revere, to bow down to,

00:00:52.160 to love something a lot, to be consumed by something probably even more accurately.

00:00:59.300 For example, when I was eight years old, I worshipped the Backstreet Boys. I did. In a lot

00:01:05.200 of ways, I hate to say it, I worshipped the Backstreet Boys. I mean, I listened to every

00:01:09.980 album. I would go into a room and just listen to their Millennium album and be like, I think that

00:01:16.300 my life will be over if I do not meet the Backstreet Boys. Well, I still haven't met the Backstreet Boys.

00:01:22.560 Life turned out great. So I wish I could go back to my eight-year-old self and tell her,

00:01:27.840 you know what, it's going to be okay. But I worshipped them. I had their posters. I had a

00:01:33.160 nightgown with the Backstreet Boys on it. I loved the Backstreet Boys way over NSYNC, way over 98

00:01:40.040 degrees. I will still go to the mat on this one, by the way. But I worshipped them. If you look at

00:01:45.100 people going to a concert of any artists that they really love, it is a form of worship. Everyone

00:01:51.840 worships something. Everyone worships someone. There is not a person in the world. I don't care

00:01:57.360 if they're atheist, agnostic, whatever they are, whatever they say their belief system is,

00:02:02.480 everyone worships something. They put their hope in something. They're consumed by something,

00:02:08.500 whether it's their own body. And so they're consumed by working out and how they eat, whether

00:02:14.480 it is their kids, whether it's their spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, job, everyone worships

00:02:20.280 something. Everyone has a kind of center of their universe that is pulling them towards the next

00:02:26.660 thing that they do. And for Christians, of course, we know that that center, we know that that object of

00:02:32.320 worship or that person of worship is to be God and God alone. We are called to worship God. We are

00:02:38.540 called to worship no one else. We are to put, as the Bible says, no other gods before him, meaning we

00:02:45.400 are to make nothing and no one else our God or our object of worship except for the God of Scripture,

00:02:52.640 which means our worship belongs to him alone. Our obsession, our admiration, or our adoration belongs

00:02:59.880 to the God of the Bible. Now, this doesn't mean that we don't have hobbies. This doesn't mean that we

00:03:05.300 don't have affections. Of course, I love my husband very much. I love my job. I love Chick-fil-A. I love

00:03:12.700 a lot of things in life, but none of these things are the center of my world, pulling me into its orbit

00:03:19.940 and demanding my time and my energy and my worship except for the God of the universe. The call to follow

00:03:28.160 Jesus for Christians is a call to come and die, nothing less. It is not a call to come and just

00:03:35.760 change a bit of your behavior. It's not a call to just come and listen to some worship music or to go

00:03:40.580 to church on Sundays. Jesus said it is a call to come and die, to take up your cross, a form of brutal

00:03:47.500 crucifixion, to deny yourself and to follow him. We deny the things that we want. We deny our flesh.

00:03:56.980 We deny our old selves in pursuit of Christ. It is a call to self-sacrifice and it is all-consuming.

00:04:05.540 It is a life dedicated to worship. Romans 12.1 says, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the

00:04:12.980 mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your

00:04:20.520 spiritual worship. So what does that mean? Spiritual worship. If you have, I think it's the NIV might say

00:04:27.220 a spiritual act of worship. That's how I first knew this first growing up. So what does that mean?

00:04:33.800 Well, verse two tells us, uh, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of

00:04:41.900 your mind. So this spiritual worship or the spiritual act of worship is to not be conformed

00:04:55.760 to this world, but to be transformed in the renewal of our mind, uh, that we might follow God

00:05:02.680 in knowing what is good and acceptable and perfect. So this means that worship, biblical,

00:05:08.460 godly worship is not something we do for 20 minutes on a Sunday. It's not something we just do

00:05:14.300 in our quiet times, our reading of the Bible every morning, but our worship is our entire life. It's our

00:05:22.020 entire mind. It is a transformation from what we were to who we are now because of Christ. It is

00:05:29.060 an about face of the heart from sin to a life of Christ likeness and purity made possible by the power

00:05:36.620 of the Holy spirit. Um, our worship is a dedication of our entire lives to God. Uh, Matthew 15, eight

00:05:47.140 through nine states, this people, uh, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far

00:05:52.620 from me in vain. Do they worship me? Which means it is possible to pay lip service to God. It is possible

00:05:59.900 to sing songs on Sunday. It is possible to memorize verses and to read our Bible, say that we're worshiping

00:06:06.100 and not actually be worshiping because our lives are not dedicated or dedicated to the adoration and

00:06:12.520 the glory of God, which he says is worship. We make a mistake when we categorize our worship as

00:06:20.260 something we only do on Sunday mornings. In reality, the Bible tells us that our bodies, our lives are

00:06:27.020 spiritual acts of worship, meaning that the God of the Bible is consuming every aspect of our being.

00:06:34.180 First Corinthians one 31. So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of

00:06:40.640 God. Uh, Matthew 22, 47 says, and he said to them, you shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart

00:06:47.900 and with all your soul and with all your mind. And why should we do this? Why do we dedicate every

00:06:54.760 single part of who we are to the glory and the honor and the praise and the worship of God as

00:07:00.120 Christians? Revelation 4 11 says, worthy are you our Lord and God to receive glory and honor and power

00:07:08.920 for you created all things. And by your will, they existed and were created. So we worship, we dedicate

00:07:18.520 our lives to the worship of God. We dedicate our hearts and our minds and our spirits and our bodies to

00:07:24.460 the worship of God because his glory demands it because it is all consuming, uh, nothing else except,

00:07:32.600 uh, full fledged, fully committed self-sacrificial worship of the Holy God of the universe will do.

00:07:41.180 We worship him because his own glory compels us to, uh, because he is worthy. John Piper puts it this

00:07:50.660 way. True worship is a valuing or a treasuring of God above all things. It is a valuing and it is a

00:07:59.660 treasuring God above all things. And, uh, seeing, seeing, uh, worship this way, seeing worship as

00:08:09.220 a full dedication of your body and of your mind to the glory of Christ makes sin and makes the thought

00:08:18.920 of sin, the thought of disobedience that much more heartbreaking. I mean, I think about the sins

00:08:25.500 that I've committed while I've been a Christian. And I think about the things that I've done in

00:08:30.340 disobedience while I've been a Christian. And when you think about, well, my body is supposed to be

00:08:35.020 a living sacrifice to God. My life is supposed to be an act of spiritual worship to God. My mind is

00:08:41.020 supposed to belong to God. And I've misused that not to honor God, but to honor myself and to do what I

00:08:47.100 want to do. It just breaks your heart. It moves you to this, uh, what Paul calls a godly guilt that

00:08:53.380 leads you to repentance. Uh, when you think that worship is just this compartmentalized thing,

00:08:59.240 or this thing that you can put into compartments on Sunday morning, um, it's really hard, I think,

00:09:04.360 to take sin seriously from Monday to Saturday. But when we think that, when we think about the fact

00:09:11.260 that our entire lives and our entire bodies are supposed to be immersed in this worship of God,

00:09:17.100 well, we realize that whenever we deter or whenever we, uh, detour away from that, whenever we

00:09:23.280 misuse our bodies that are meant to be, um, vessels of worship to God, how egregious of a mistake that

00:09:30.860 this really is and how much of a misuse this is of who we are in Christ. Um, God does not need our

00:09:40.520 worship. He does not need our worship. This is another important characteristic of worship to point

00:09:46.420 out for the Christian. He does not need our praise. He does not need our gratitude. He is self-sustaining.

00:09:53.120 He is self-sufficient. He is glory and honor and praise in and of himself. He does not need us. This

00:10:00.840 is not something that we have to do because, uh, he is desperate for it in the sense that he needs it to

00:10:08.980 be, uh, made to feel better about himself. No, he is self-sustaining, uh, in Christ, our very soul

00:10:17.200 yearns to worship, uh, the God who redeemed our souls. And so we worship because he exists and

00:10:24.520 because his glory demands it, not because he needs it and not just to make ourselves feel better.

00:10:30.200 As C.S. Lewis stated, a man can do, can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship him

00:10:36.240 than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word darkness on the walls of his cell.

00:10:42.720 So God does not need your worship to be who he is. He is self-sufficient. He is self-sustaining,

00:10:51.160 but he created us to be vessels of worship. And time and again, throughout the Bible,

00:10:57.120 uh, we see the command to worship him, to give thanks to him, to honor him, to submit to him.

00:11:02.940 He created us to reflect his glory. And really, whether or not you're a Christian,

00:11:07.880 you do reflect his glory. You can't even get away from that. That's the thing that drives

00:11:12.940 and that can drive an atheist mad is when you tell them whether you like it or not,

00:11:18.380 you reflect the glory of God because you are made in the image of God. You can't get away from that.

00:11:24.180 Even if you, even if you wanted to now, of course, an atheist is not going to believe that,

00:11:28.600 but that's the reality. Whether or not someone chooses to worship, uh, God, they reflect the

00:11:33.600 glory of God because they are made in the image of God. And we are made all the more satisfied

00:11:39.160 when we, uh, fulfill the purpose of dedicating our lives to worshiping and glorifying him. Uh,

00:11:46.600 the awesome part that really is the awesome part about, uh, about worship is that we actually are

00:11:55.680 beneficiaries of very good things. When we fulfill that purpose of glorifying God, uh, through obedience

00:12:01.940 and holiness and adoration, we are also beneficiaries of peace and joy and assurance. And again,

00:12:07.220 we don't worship because of what we get out of it, but because God's presence, God's presence

00:12:12.000 actually demands that worship, but we do get beautiful things out of it because God's glory

00:12:16.880 for the Christian, uh, is our good. Now there are a couple things, uh, to remember about worship.

00:12:24.220 In addition to that, our worship, or really, this is just one thing we already listed. The other thing

00:12:29.040 our worship is based on truth. It is based on biblical truth. Uh, as we've said before,

00:12:35.600 it is impossible to know God intimately unless you know God accurately. So if we are worshiping a God

00:12:44.440 whose character is not in alignment, uh, with who he says he is in his own word, then we are not

00:12:51.060 worshiping God at all. So if we are thinking thoughts about God, praying to a God, like he's a

00:12:56.480 genie in a bottle or attributing characteristics to God in our heads that are not reflected, uh, in

00:13:02.600 scripture, we are not actually worshiping God at all. We are worshiping who we want God to be,

00:13:07.880 which means in essence, we are worshiping our own imaginations, our own feelings, which in essence

00:13:12.840 means we are worshiping ourselves. Uh, that is why an essential part of worship is knowing our Bibles

00:13:20.500 is reading our Bibles. Uh, I did an episode back in May. I think it was episode 117 called reading your

00:13:28.860 Bible about why reading your Bible is important and how to read the Bible if you're a beginner.

00:13:33.880 So I encourage you to go back and listen to that. If that's something that you're curious about,

00:13:38.200 um, if we are to live lives as Romans 12, one says that are defined and, and one through two,

00:13:45.460 that are defined by the kind of worship to which God calls us, uh, we have to live lives that are based

00:13:51.420 on truth and the whole of truth, the way of holiness, the path of righteousness is found in

00:13:58.580 God's word. Uh, so do not expect, you cannot expect to know how to worship rightly. If you do

00:14:06.920 not spend time in God's word, worship is not a feeling. It's not just a state of mind. It's not

00:14:14.200 just a spiritual experience. A lot of times people are very concerned with what they feel when they

00:14:19.820 worship, how they look when they worship. Do I look like I'm into this enough? Am I crying? Is my

00:14:25.280 hand up or my eyes closed? There's nothing wrong with any of those things, but they're not measures

00:14:29.320 of worship. They're not measures of sincerity of worship, especially today in this age where people

00:14:35.120 are fascinated with a charismatic arm of Christianity, which not all parts of charismatic parts of

00:14:41.300 Christianity are wrong. Certainly not. But people in that realm can, uh, can often get caught up in the

00:14:48.600 spiritual experience of Sunday worship and of singing and of these outward expressions of the

00:14:55.460 Holy Spirit being made manifest in their lives. Well, that's not necessarily any sign of genuine or

00:15:02.440 sincere, uh, worship. It's not just a feeling, uh, worshiping sincerely and genuinely is, as Romans says,

00:15:12.200 a renewal of the mind. It is a dedication of our life to God.

00:15:16.700 And that is predicated on the knowledge of truth that through the Holy Spirit, we have the ability

00:15:22.900 to obtain through scripture. Uh, John 4, 23, 24 says this, this is Jesus. The hour is coming and is

00:15:30.680 now here when the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and in truth for the father is

00:15:36.480 seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and

00:15:43.880 in truth. So we already know for moments 12, what it means to worship God in spirit. It means life

00:15:49.860 consuming obedience. And Jesus also says that we have to worship him in truth. Well, Jesus tells us

00:15:56.080 what truth is in John 17, which when he says, sanctify him in truth, your word is true. So knowing your

00:16:03.880 Bible, knowing truth is vital specifically, specifically in regards to worship songs that we sing,

00:16:10.440 uh, the songs that we sing in church, in our car, at home, wherever have to be based on scripture

00:16:16.660 for us to be able to say that we are worshiping both in spirit and in truth. Because again, if we

00:16:22.480 find ourselves singing about a God whose character is not reflected in his own word, we are no longer

00:16:29.300 worshiping him. We are worshiping our own feelings. And consequently we are worshiping ourselves. We are

00:16:34.480 worshiping, uh, what we would like God to be, which is actually idolatry. A big controversy, uh, was

00:16:42.480 about the song. It's centered on the song, reckless love that came out over a year ago. I'm not even

00:16:48.440 sure. Maybe more than that two years, a year and a half ago. I'm not sure. So there's a lot of

00:16:53.240 controversy around this song. Uh, of course it was a song that became very popular. I have sang it at

00:16:59.740 church before, uh, or it was sung at church at one point before in the past. Uh, but a lot of people

00:17:05.620 said, okay, well, this is a problem. Hang on a second because is God's love reckless? Is that

00:17:13.720 an accurate biblical description of God's love? Reckless means to do something without thinking

00:17:20.820 of the consequences. Um, and a lot of people said, well, okay, God can't be reckless. Nothing he does

00:17:27.440 is reckless because he is sovereign. The consequences of something are never out of God's

00:17:32.580 knowledge. They're never out of God's control. He is calculated in all that he does because he is in

00:17:37.880 control of all that he does and everything that happens. There is nothing, not even a sparrow drops

00:17:43.500 out of the sky, uh, without his knowledge and without his control, he knows exactly the cost of his love

00:17:49.720 and he still chooses to give it. That does not make him reckless. That makes him extremely deliberate.

00:17:55.400 And it's the deliberateness of that love that we should be worshiping and glorifying. Um, there's

00:18:02.120 a lot of people that were making that argument. I happen to agree with that. Now let me give a little

00:18:07.180 bit of credence to the other side. I don't think that everyone who has ever sang this song or even

00:18:11.320 the person who wrote this song is, uh, has these terrible intentions because I do see, I do totally see

00:18:19.480 where this is coming from. And honestly, I sang the song for a while, not even really thinking about it.

00:18:23.820 It's a very catchy, beautiful song that I do think contains some truth. Um, but I remember when I sang

00:18:30.080 it one Sunday at church, the pastor actually came up and said, now I like that song, but look, God is

00:18:35.120 not reckless. And he was absolutely right to make that correction. Uh, I do see the side of people

00:18:40.740 who like this song. Maybe the person who wrote the song, I don't know the person. Um, I've not talked

00:18:45.820 to him personally. I think probably what they were trying to communicate with this song is that, um,

00:18:53.680 God in his own terms is not reckless, but in human terms, we don't have the proper terminology for just

00:19:00.860 how radical and just how all consuming and how unconditional, uh, God's love is. So it might not

00:19:07.940 be literally reckless, but it feels reckless to humans because he loves us and perfect people so

00:19:15.360 completely, so fully, so unconditionally that it seems something like reckless to us. He loves

00:19:22.260 Christians. When we fail, when we fall down, uh, when we shake our fist at him in anger, he still

00:19:27.220 loves us. His love covers our deepest and our darkest sins. His love for us, uh, sent his sinless

00:19:32.860 son on a cross so that we might be righteous despite and because of how undeserving we were

00:19:39.100 that feels reckless to us. And so I think that was probably the intention of the song. However,

00:19:45.660 it's important for thoughtful Christians to, to think about this, that recklessness is not

00:19:52.340 according to the Bible, a true characteristic of the God of the universe, the God who created

00:19:57.100 everything, who was in control of everything. Uh, it's not the best word choice for the song

00:20:02.300 because it's not reflected in God's word. Now, again, I think it's possible to sing that song

00:20:07.420 and still have probably a right understanding of who God is and just kind of have some confusion

00:20:13.560 there and maybe didn't think about it that hard. I totally understand that. So I'm not condemning

00:20:19.180 you if you sang the song, but I do think it's important for us as Christians who are striving

00:20:23.620 to worship as God says in spirit and in truth to make sure that we are checking the songs that

00:20:29.080 we are singing, uh, with scripture, uh, with scripture, which is our source of truth. The word

00:20:34.420 of God has to be our guide, uh, that, uh, any, any song, any song that portrays God as some sort of

00:20:42.320 genie as a portray who portrays God, uh, as someone who just exists to make you happy or exists to tell

00:20:51.860 you how great you are is not a biblical worship song. Now that doesn't mean that songs can't include

00:20:58.680 us and can't include our relationship with him. Uh, they do. David throughout the Psalms certainly

00:21:03.920 talked about his own feelings, his own fears, his own struggles, and how God is going to deliver him.

00:21:09.700 And, uh, he talked about his own concerns. He was very vulnerable in that. Um, he turned his

00:21:15.920 mourning into praise and into worship of God, but the task for our worship and the task for our worship

00:21:22.240 song specifically is whether or not this is glorifying God by reflecting his true character

00:21:28.940 rather than reflecting the things that we feel. Again, there is unfortunately just kind of this,

00:21:36.300 I don't want to say a movement, but a segment of Christianity who genuinely believes that feelings

00:21:42.220 are the Holy spirit and that you should follow your heart and it's going to lead you into a right

00:21:47.060 relationship with God. Well, the Bible says that our hearts are desperately wicked,

00:21:51.340 that we can't even understand them. Like we can't even understand our own hearts. And everyone

00:21:56.060 who has ever tried to follow their heart can tell you that that's true. Like how many times in your life

00:22:01.540 can you, can you count that your heart misled you or your feelings misled you or what you thought were

00:22:07.280 your instincts misled you. And I'm, I'm talking to someone who is a pretty intuitive person. I have been

00:22:13.200 able to discern things using of course the Holy spirit, but a sense of intuition pretty well,

00:22:21.160 but I can think of about 10,000 times in my life where I thought I was right on something, or I just

00:22:26.880 had a feeling about something, or maybe I, you know, didn't feel convicted about a certain area of my

00:22:31.920 life. So I kept going into whatever where I was wrong. Why? Because my heart apart from Christ, your heart

00:22:38.880 apart from Christ is desperately wicked. We cannot understand it. It's not something that is worth

00:22:44.340 following. It's the same thing in worship. Uh, just because you have a feeling about who you want God

00:22:50.060 to be and what you want God to do does not mean that's who he is. And we don't have to guess at who

00:22:55.200 he is. I mean, in a lot of ways, he's always going to be a mystery to us because we're finite and he's

00:22:59.700 infinite. We're fallible. He's infallible. We are temporary, at least our bodies. Well, okay. Maybe

00:23:05.740 that's not even accurate. We're temporary in some ways, but God is eternal. And that we have a limited

00:23:10.620 time on this physical earth, but he is suspended in the eternal now. And so we're not going to be

00:23:16.620 able to fully understand him. Uh, but we can know what we can know about God's character. Yes. Using

00:23:24.880 our own experience, but first and foremost, and fundamentally under everything, uh, is the word

00:23:30.440 of God. So to worship with our lives in spirit and in truth, we have to know our Bibles and we have

00:23:36.240 to be able to judge, uh, judge our worship based on what scripture says. This is one reason why hymns

00:23:43.520 are so classic, why they don't go out of style and why you can, uh, you can sing a hymn that was

00:23:50.820 written hundreds of years ago. And still you can be brought to tears because the truth of God does

00:23:56.300 not change. It doesn't need to be made, uh, trendy in order to be relevant. No, it is ever relevant

00:24:02.520 because God is ever relevant because he does not change in our need for him does not change. Now

00:24:09.240 I'm not against modern worship songs at all. I, there are a ton of songs by Shane and Shane,

00:24:13.700 for example, that I think are amazing. And they do a really good job. I think of, of, uh, basing their

00:24:20.420 songs, at least the songs that I've heard on scripture. And so I have nothing wrong whatsoever

00:24:26.180 with a lot of modern worship. I think it's great. I'm not one of those people that say, no, no,

00:24:30.480 we only have to sing hymns. I'm not saying that at all, but there is something to the classicness

00:24:38.160 and the tradition of hymns that I personally think shouldn't be messed with. Now this,

00:24:43.920 what I'm about to say is just a personal preference. This is not basing anything off

00:24:48.160 scripture. I personally don't like it when we mess with worship songs by adding a repetitive chorus.

00:24:55.460 Like whenever I'm at church and I'm like singing a worship song and, or when I'm singing to him and

00:25:00.940 I'm just so excited that we're singing this hymn. And then all of a sudden I realize in the middle

00:25:05.900 of it, that we're about to break out into a 2011 chorus. I'm like, dang it. And I thought that we

00:25:11.660 were sticking with the hymn. I was really excited about the next stanza, but then we go into some

00:25:16.540 kind of, there's nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that, but it's just not my personal

00:25:21.520 preference. But like I said, as long as we are basing our worship on what the word of God actually

00:25:28.300 says on what scripture actually says, um, then we can assure ourselves that we are worshiping

00:25:35.620 in spirit and in truth. And of course, this is true in all things, whether it is, um, acts of

00:25:42.060 obedience, whether it's how we are reading our Bibles, how we're speaking to people, what kind of movies

00:25:47.380 and TV shows we're watching, which is something that we're going to talk about soon. Um, everything

00:25:52.420 goes back to the word of God and the power of the Holy spirit helps us to persevere in

00:25:57.800 that. It gives us wisdom. It gives us a discernment of that. And we're going to fail. Uh, we're going

00:26:03.200 to mess up. We're not going to be perfect, but, uh, thankfully, thankfully he gives us grace

00:26:09.840 and he gives us the ability to discern these things. Now we have a few minutes left and a lot

00:26:16.180 of you have asked me specifically about like certain songs that I am for in certain songs

00:26:22.320 that I'm against. And I don't really want to get into all of that because we could take like 30

00:26:27.760 minutes to break down these songs and to say, okay, yes, uh, this is founded in scripture. This is not

00:26:35.240 founded in scripture. This takes a decontextualized verse and makes it mean this when it doesn't really

00:26:41.460 mean this. There's really no point in that. And the same thing about bands. I would just

00:26:45.980 be discerning as we are in everything. Uh, also I do want to say like, there are some people

00:26:51.860 who say, you know, I just am not, I'm not a singing person. Like I like to listen to instruments

00:26:57.600 or I like to read to worship or I like to go outside to worship. Well, as we said, worship

00:27:03.260 is our entire lives as Christians. It is, we are a living sacrifice. The Bible says. And so

00:27:09.620 everything we do, whether we eat or drink, it is for the glory of the Lord. So it's not just

00:27:16.220 singing songs. So I do think that that's fine. Now, uh, there is a call to, there is a call.

00:27:22.960 It seems like to have kind of concentrated times of worship or concentrated, uh, concentrated moments

00:27:31.380 or whatever you want to call it. Especially if we look throughout the Psalms of giving thanks to

00:27:36.220 the Lord. You don't have to be a singer. I don't think in order to do that. Now, there are a lot of

00:27:40.700 people who, because of these things are like really dejected and are really disheartened by the kind

00:27:48.000 of, uh, worship that they have at their church. I would, unless it is a matter of scripture,

00:27:53.980 I would not worry too much about the style, uh, of worship that you have in your church. Now that said,

00:28:02.860 let me give a caveat on that. Like I'm just talking about, say you're an older person and you

00:28:07.300 absolutely hate anytime they do any contemporary music, or you're a younger person. You absolutely

00:28:12.040 hate anytime they're doing hymns. That's what I'm talking about. I'm saying that that shouldn't be

00:28:16.200 a deal breaker for you if you're like trying to switch churches. But of course, if you are going

00:28:21.340 to a church and the worship is unbiblical, or you think that it's just a concert, I went to a church

00:28:25.900 that was singing. It's a very popular church, by the way, if I said it, everyone would know that sings

00:28:31.020 secular songs, sing secular songs. And this is like really part of the like heart of that church.

00:28:37.160 Like they believe they need to be like a seeker friendly church. And so it'll warm people up if

00:28:42.120 they seek some secular or if they sing some secular songs, there's no need for us to do that. Like

00:28:46.900 there's no need for us to try to quote, redeem secular songs that were not Christian in nature.

00:28:53.840 There's just so much good stuff that's based on scripture out there. There's just no need for that.

00:28:58.640 So if you are going to a church that you feel like the specific time of worship, the singing of worship

00:29:03.080 is not based on biblical truth, and it's more about the people who are on stage, or it's more

00:29:08.280 about themselves, or it's more about making non churchgoers or non Christians feel like, wow,

00:29:14.740 this is so awesome and cool. Then that may be a reason for you to examine just the mission of your

00:29:21.380 church in general, because it might speak to some other theological theological issues in the church.

00:29:26.660 Do they believe in the supremacy of scripture? Are they preaching God's word? Are they preaching

00:29:30.920 the true gospel? Are they just existent to make people feel good? Because remember, as we have

00:29:37.420 talked about, and as we've heard people say on this show before, the kind of message that Jesus

00:29:44.100 was preaching and the kind of message that the apostles were preaching was not a seeker friendly

00:29:48.700 message. It was a call to come and die. It was not a popular message. And so I do think that is

00:29:53.560 probably something to think about when we're thinking about the worship at our churches. But

00:29:58.040 I also don't think that we can be like, oh, I don't like that person's voice, or I hate when he

00:30:02.780 sings Chris Tomlin, or something like that, for that to be a reason to leave your church.

00:30:07.580 In all things, we have to be discerning using the word of God. That means worship. And that means,

00:30:12.820 of course, every part of our church, most importantly, the doctrines. And so I just wanted to add that one

00:30:17.720 part. I feel like worship is something that people are, it's such a contentious subject sometimes when

00:30:22.740 we talk about the kind of church that you're going to. Sometimes I think people are too picky.

00:30:27.560 Sometimes people aren't picky enough. As long as you're basing it on scripture, I think that you're

00:30:32.260 going to be good. Okay, that's it for today. I hope that you have a great day, and we will talk soon.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - August 12, 2019

Ep 149 ｜ Worship Music

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