MAY 5 2019 | Accelerate S1E6 | Worship: A Journey Into Reality

Sea Change Church · Accelerate · "Worship: A Journey Into Reality" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · May 5, 2019
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Good morning church. My name is Tony. I'm a volunteer here and married to my beautiful wife, Drea, who is also up here. Today I'm going to be reading Revelations 4, 1 through 11. After this I looked and there before me was a door standing, standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, come up here and I will show you what must take place after this. At once I was in the spirit and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it.

And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and ruby, a rainbow that shone like an emerald encircled the throne. Surrounding the throne were 24 other thrones and seated on them were 24 elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads. From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumbling and peals of thunder. In front of the throne seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God.

Also in front of the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal. In the center around the throne were four living creatures. And they were covered with eyes in front and in back. The first living creature was like a lion. The second was like an ox. The third had a face like a man. And the fourth was like a flying eagle. Each at the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with all eyes around, even under its wings.

Day and night they never stopped saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come. Whenever the living creatures giving glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives forever and ever, the 24 elders fall down before him who sits on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say, You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power.

For you created all things and by your will they were created and have their beings. This is the word of the Lord. Thank you, Tony. I told the first service that Tony got a job with Delta as a mechanic. Super stoked. So a lot of prayer went into like just finding that open door. And super stoked. Really good man there. So I hope you get to know Tony. It's awesome. The other half of Drea, who was up here a moment ago.

We are continuing on in the Accelerate series, getting your faith out of the starting blocks. And it's really easy to get stuck in a rut in our faith. Or to just live rhythmically, but without any dynamic motion. And not that you have to live in some constant spiritual euphoria. That's not really reality. But there are times where you feel you've gotten in touch with something a little deeper than what is surface level.

You plumb the depths in a new way. And you have a new reality. And you see that God meets you in a way that is very personal. This happens to John here. Now you're probably not going to have the same experience as John had. Obviously, God had a reason for him to take him up into the heavens. Some would say it would be called the third heaven. And give him a revelation. That would be written down and eventually become the Bible.

Or part of the Bible that other people would go to. But he does speak about a place in heaven that through the spirit of God, we now have access to. He goes to the throne of God. And as believers now, the scripture is very clear that it says you can come boldly. Where? Before the throne of God. And he's talking about this throne. I guess the big question, the big elephant in the room is how do we get to the throne? Well, first of all, if you've expressed faith in Jesus, you've let Jesus know that you want to follow him.

And you believe in faith that he died on the cross and was resurrected. And is coming back again. And believe that his blood and his work on the cross saved you from your sins. Well, you have immediate access. Because then the spirit of God indwells you through faith. And the spirit of God is making that journey on a regular basis between dwelling within you, a living temple of God. And also present before the throne of God.

And there's a connection. It isn't like he leaves one and goes to the other. But there's a connection there. And the question is, how do we access that connection in a way that actually manifests the reality? Because that reality exists if you follow Christ. But there's a lot of believers who are stuck and have never experienced all that that offers you. All that heaven has to offer you. And one of the things that I really want to do as a church is become, I don't really want to be the biggest church.

I don't want to be the most, you know, popular or whatever. But what I really want to do is be a practical church. I want to be very practical. And I think the word of God is practical. And I want you to be able to leave on a Sunday or if you come to a group or you're part of our small groups. That every week when you are part of something, that you leave and you have practical tools to allow you to experience God in a deeper and more meaningful way.

To let your relationships be healed. To let your identity come into fruition. To make it very practical. And so this Accelerate series is about that. And we are in episode, I believe, five or six. And the last few, I think, are key. If you have not heard them, you've missed, you can go online and catch up. But there's one on the word of God. There's one on prayer. And then the Easter and the Palm Sunday services as well.

But these four messages of the last, of the six, the last four, including this one. If you just listen to those about reading the word of God and that Harry spoke on. About your access to prayer, which was last week. And this one on worship. Those are kind of the, I mean, there's a lot. I don't want to say it's the big three. You go to Africa, they have the big five. You know, the game. It's like the lion, I think. And the giraffe and the water buffalo or something like that.

It's like a big five. I would say if faith had a big five. And please don't quote me. I'm sure I'm missing one. But obviously prayer would be right up there in the top five. The word of God. And worship. Have God, I mean, I'm not sure what else would compete with them. Although there's a lot of things, obviously, in faith. But if you are regularly on your flywheel, have prayer, regular prayer, regular reading or exposing yourself to God's truth through his word.

And regularly taking time to slow down and worship God in spirit and in truth. I got to say you're on the right track. If you're only doing those three things, those three things will probably lead you to all the other things. The word of God, prayer, and worship. And I'm sure there's other components. Somebody will come to me afterwards. What about baptism? And you have all these other things. But let me just say to be very practical that those are the three.

And I would say, I would try. I don't want to be dogmatic or too definitive. But it's a really good idea to have all three of those components as best you can into every part of your, into every day. And if you are taking the time to take a serious practical stop in the day where you mark out some spiritual geography in your life, some territory where this is off limits. We know about what it's like to have times that are off limits.

There are certain sporting events. I DVR them now. And there will just be a time where now it's, you know, you can set it up. But on Sunday at 2, the family is going to go out. And I just, this is going to be my time. Or whatever it is. You have these times that are off limits. Do you have sacred time with God? And what we are trying to do is build a culture of secrecy around our life. If you grew up in the Catholic Church in the back, as you'd go in the back, they have a closet.

And on the closet, I mean, they have a word that says the secrecy. And it's where all the holy things are kept. And if you're an altar boy, you would, you know, go there and they had all these different things. What we want to do now is we don't need to keep that anywhere but in your own heart. And to build the secrecy of your heart. John is having a moment now where the Spirit of God is leading him. And he is experiencing the, a level of intimacy and knowledge with God that is beyond the common.

And I want to say, while you might not have John's experience, God wants to meet you beyond the common. He wants to, to take the things of heaven. And this is, this is what we're trying to do as believers, is access and resource the culture of heaven. Which the scripture is replete over and over again saying that we have access to. The gifts, the fruit, the power. We have ways to access this, to access it and then to implement it and steep those things like a teabag into our life.

So you have a stronger and stronger effect of the culture of heaven invading your life. And this is called the kingdom of God on earth. And Jesus talks about it in his sermon on the mount in Matthew. We're going to look through this area now today of worship. And in being very practical, in looking at worship, the importance of it, what I want to say. If you walk out here today, this is what I want to say. Because you, we can, you can talk about all different types of worship.

There's meditative worship. There's the Westminster Confession basically just says, you know, is talking about living your life as worship to God. So just the way you work is worship. You know, if you look, read the monastics of the Middle Ages. Just, you know, they would clean the ceramic, you know, pots and things like that. And as they did it, it would be worship. There's many ways to worship. But what I want to say beyond that, that you will walk out today, is however you decide to do worship.

Whether it's read the Psalms and worship God in the Psalms. Or take a silent walk. Or meditate on scripture. However you are listening to worship. Or go put some Hillsong on your, you know, in your new earbuds that you have. Or on Spotify. Whatever it is. That when you do that, you are exposing yourself to absolute truth. That worship exposes you to truth. And one of the core, primary reasons that God, or one of the, I wouldn't say it's reasons.

But one of the results of exposing ourselves to God in worship. Is that we come in contact with truth. And when you praise God for who he is, you are living in a straight line between what you are saying and who God truly is. And that truth will shine light back on you. So you will understand truth not only for your own life, but in the world around you. Now, I talked last week about when we lie, we, our person we are injuring is ourselves.

I was a phenomenal liar. I was, I was, actually I wasn't. I got kicked out of five high schools. I wasn't great at it, but I did it a lot. Let's just say I was proficient. Never got kicked out of a public school. Just the private and the Christian ones. So, got kicked out of Christian high twice. Once for skating the pool, which I shouldn't have done. They were fixing the pool and I went and skated it. Which I thought was kind of a cool reason to get kicked out of school.

Because I was skating the pool. But nonetheless. The, where was I? Chris, where was I? Yeah, lying. There you go. Thank you, Glenda. I appreciate it. So, one of the things I realized is when you lie, you actually lose sense of reality. You, you, you no longer know what's true for yourself either. And if a person lies a lot, they don't know what lies they've told and what lies they haven't told. The interesting thing about truth is it tends to solidify itself in our minds.

When we lie, we lose the ability to understand truth. But when you get in touch with telling, with experiencing God and acknowledging God for who he truly is, you get in this pipeline of truth. And that truth comes and falls upon you and actually creates truth in your life. Jesus says, and we'll see in a moment in John chapter 4, that the new worshipers, the true worshipers, will worship the Father, which is super important, in spirit and what?

Truth. So, when we worship, you are hopefully turning your, the keys over to the spirit. You are showing up. You are making yourself available, pliable, willing. You take time. You stake geography in your day at whatever it looks like at lunch. You take time to sit and say, I'm going to put all my attention on God. I'm going to focus on God. And in this moment, spirit, I give you control to lead me into this worship.

You might be singing hymns. You might, whatever it is. You might be dancing a dance in your house. Or whatever it is. However you experience God. The spirit takes over and it leads you into truth. It says, we will worship in spirit and in truth. And so, there is a huge connection between spirit and worship and truth. If you want to know truth. If you are living and battling lies in your life every single day. If you want to know the truth of who you are and who God is.

One of the best ways to do it is through worship. When I was struggling with anxiety, I brought it up many times. But when I was, worship was an incredible, incredible prescription to give me peace. Worship brought truth. And it told me that thing that is so catastrophic. Because one of the problems with depression, anxiety, and these different things. Is one of the elements of it is catastrophic thinking. Every little thing is bigger than it is.

That's one of the issues. And so, if you have catastrophic thinking. One of the things we want to do is get things back into reality. And when I worship God. God would begin to say, hey, I've got this. You're my boy. You are my son. Come here. And all of a sudden it puts perspective on everything. If you are struggling with perspective. Worship God. And the spirit will lead you into truth. If you are struggling with understanding what God has for your life.

Or who you are. Worship. This is why I think worship is going to be so key for generations Y or Z. Whichever one it is that is coming. The ones that are after the millennials. Because we are getting to a place, as you'll see in your notes. Where two plus two no longer equals four. I don't know if you know that. But we are getting to a place in society. Where we're living in a world where two plus two no longer equals four.

And where your truth. Your personal truth. Supersedes absolute truth. There actually is an attack on absolute truth. I don't know if you know this. With personal truth becoming more important. I recently heard someone speaking. And they said, I don't want empirical data. I know what I feel. And I know what I believe. And that's what matters. That's my truth. Now that can be a very interesting place to live. And I get my truth.

So here's a truth that works. It's my truth. I love macaroni and cheese, right? That is my truth. I want you to know that that is personally my truth. But there are other absolute truths that I cannot change or affect. That are absolute truths. And there is a tension, as you'll see today, being lived. Now here's why I'm telling you this. We are seeing that, especially with generation Y or Z. We'll call it. I think it's Z.

There's an argument of whether it's Y or Z. But we'll call it Z. With this generation that is seeing that their personal experience is what validates truth for them. Now what the church has tried to do for the last 30 years, I believe, or actually a lot longer than that, but for a very long time, is move into the realm of empirical data. That we can show you that God's word, and I think you can prove this. I think God's truths will be proved out with empirical data.

But we can use empirical data to show you why you should believe in God. What I am saying is people are no longer, especially these new generations, are no longer accepting that. And why I also think that the fruit of an incredible harvest, which I think most believers are missing this. Most believers are terrified right now. Many. Not most. Not you, of course. But many are terrified. The world is ending. No one accepts truth.

What are we doing? Ah, where, you know. And they're freaking out. If you have a generation coming up who values experiential as their basis for truth, when it comes to experiential, the church is pretty well set to provide that. And this is why young people, especially, you know, some of the young people are flocking. If there is a lot of 20-somethings, 30-somethings, and younger coming, a lot of them come through the churches that provide really heavy worship experiences.

Because they go to places like Bethel. They go to places like Hillsong. I went to Hillsong in 1999. I think there was 2,000 people at the conference. It was pretty small back then. I think they were still just in Australia. And something happened in that where God showed up. And I couldn't deny it. And all of a sudden, it became reality because I experienced it. This is faith. Do you understand that having an experience like Abraham had, like Moses had, and I'm not saying we become an experience-seeking church where we're just constantly looking for the next experience.

I've served in the Pentecostal church. I've served in the charismatic church. I could go back to those churches and feel like I could serve very well. But that's not how I feel like God has told me to lead a church. But in those settings, I have experienced incredible things. But one of the things I also experienced is that people get addicted to experience. And they constantly want more and more experience. Back to what I'm saying, back to worship, putting you in touch with truth.

The church is perfectly set to provide an experiential platform where people that are 10 years old to 18 years old right now can come and experience something and come in contact with the living God. This is what we do best. This is what we should do best. You can experience it through prayer. You could experience it. You've been prayed for. Perhaps you've been prayed for and you've experienced a change in this. There's a spirit.

Something is changing here in the way you feel. You've experienced that in prayer. Or perhaps as people have preached the word of God. Look at Billy Graham. How many people? Thousands of people would come forward. Why? Because when the speaking of the word came, they experienced something in the truth. There was an experiential. Or in worship. Worship is one of the primary ways that we can experience God. And I'm not saying that you need to roll around on the floor and do all kinds of whatever.

You might want to do that on your own. You can go for it. I say, hey, you know, explore the space. But let me just give you a word of hope. That this generation Y, and I just read about 10-year-old girls, that the amount of cutting between 10-year-old girls where they cut themselves because they're in so much pain is up 128%. It was at 4% in 2010. They don't know why, but they look. That's when Facebook became available to everybody and social media became available.

And you can go into, you can look and read that. There's a book right now called The Coddling of the American Mind. I suggest you read it. Talks a lot about this in these statistics. But these generations that are having so much pain, and their truth is you are no good. You are ugly. You don't meet up. And going into things like self-harm to have an experience that validates what their feelings are. We, as a church, FYI, and please, let's live in hope and not, oh, it's the end of the world.

If it's the end of the world, great, because Jesus is coming back. We are in a place right now, and especially through worship, and this is what John is experiencing here, where if we can provide a platform where people can come in, and actually we present a very concentrated, pure, organic experience to come to know God. But Kristen, that song you were singing, I mean, I had tears in my eyes, because I know her experience, and I know what's going on behind the scenes.

She doesn't tell people. But the fact that she was able to get up there and sing those words today was actually really dynamic. It was super powerful. And the fact that you can even get up there, and I know they're coming from really deep places. I won't go anymore, but that's super powerful. And you have to have had an experience of some kind to have different things going on in your life that you're dealing with, and then be able to live a reality from within that doesn't face the battle situation on the ground.

Worship helps us do that. Worship helps us get in alignment with truth. Quickly going to go through this now, and just say, as we look in the scripture, after this, the scripture, I looked, and before me I saw a door standing open. After this, what do we mean? John has been taken into heaven for a revelation, and God has spoken to him about seven different churches. There's a few other things that have happened, but he has spoken about churches.

Seven churches. Now, this is Asia Minor, and there wasn't a lot of churches in the day, because this is early on. But God had a specific report card, so to speak, for lack of a better word, of the seven major churches in the area. And I believe that God still understands each church's personality, and different churches are more faithful than other churches. And I want you to know that I believe that it's not just these seven churches.

That God knows us as a congregation, and he's uniquely interested in how we profess faith, how we hold on to truth, how we give compassion, how we care for the poor, and how we do that congregationally. And there will be blessings. And if you read those seven churches, there's some pretty strong words. And I believe that God has strong words for us as well. And I ask him as I pray over our church, God, what are the words you have for our church?

He comes. And so after this, whenever you see after this, this is what is happening. John is caught up in this revelation, and this is what has just happened. And then this radical thing happens. He says, I looked, and before me there was a door standing open in heaven. Circle door. I'm reading this, and I'm preparing for this on worship. I always, when I start reading the scripture, I try to just come in. I don't use any commentaries or any, I just read it.

And whatever thing just hits me right away, I just circle it. And the question I ask myself is, why is there a door in heaven? What's the purpose? Why not just say, and I looked to my left, and there was a throne? For some reason, and there's many doors and ladders and spatial differences, for some reason, the writer or God as he led John through this revelation, decided that there needed to be an opening that you could either walk into or out that created a spatial difference between one reality and another.

In John 10, if you look at this, and Google verses in the Bible on doors. Just Google that. If you Google, always put verses. Any question you have, put verses, and Bible verses come up on Google. You can look at all the history of, like, the doors and how doors are in heaven. The point of this, I think, is key, and it's really key for worship. In John 10, it is said that Jesus says, I am the what? I'm the door. Jesus shows himself as a gate.

And so maybe this door represents Jesus. I don't know. I'm not going to get into all the minutia of that. But what I do want to say is that there is a spatial difference, and that we have the ability to, in our spirit, because the Spirit of God is before the throne of God, with Jesus, and the Spirit of God dwells within us, to enter in that door, this very door. Because it says you can come to the throne of God what?

Boldly. Which means you have the ability to go through this door. Now, why does it use a door? I believe because God wants to show that different realities exist. Now, it's really interesting. If you watch anything in Hollywood right now, there's all this time travel, right? My wife loves time travel. Anything about time travel. She just loves any wormhole, black hole, into the other side. Like, you know, I come out, I'm four years old, now I'm 28.

You know, if you look at Marvel comics, no spoilers, but, you know, there's a lot of time travel and all kinds of things happening. Hollywood is fascinated with this dimensional travel, and everyone's into it. If you're a pastor, and you get up, and somebody comes into church, and atheists are skeptical, and they say, and they look around, and they hear me saying, well, there's this dimension, and there's another dimension that God lives in, and then there's this dimension, and we're trying to go through a portal to get to this dimension, to get the stuff that's in heaven, and bring it through the portal, through the Spirit of God.

And I start talking about that. They're going to go, in Australia, when I lived there, and I said this last week, they say you're a nutter. I mean, literally, they'll walk out and go, are you serious? I went through there, what a bunch of hocus pocus. The pastor's talking about third dimension, and God lives in the third dimension. But, if you go to UCSD, and you go to a class right now on quantum physics, and they begin to tell you from the lectern about string theory, and quantum effects, and black holes, and third dimensions, and second dimensions, you know what they're going to say?

Mind blown. Oh my gosh, that is like truth. That is revelation. What we are seeing once again, over and over again, is that science is proving what the Bible's been saying for a very, very, very long time. Back to this idea of worship, we want to do as much as we can to put ourselves in a pliable place. This is your job. To put yourself in a pliable place where you can experience and walk through that door. Now, obviously, you're already there because the Spirit of God, like I said, lives there and makes a connection.

It says the Spirit, which knows the minds of God and the hearts of men, that makes a connection between those two. It's already happening. But there is the ability, when we slow down enough, especially in worship, if you take the time to slow down, to have a more realized experience of that reality, where all of a sudden God takes over and you will be, what it says right in here, in the Spirit. If you go to verse two, at once I was what?

In the Spirit. What in the Spirit basically means is that you are no longer operating on your own senses. Not that you're giving up your senses. Not that you're giving up your mind. You're not turning yourself over into some zombie that just gets led around because as you see, John is fully cognizant as he's being led in the Spirit. He's having a conversation. He's talking. He's asking questions. He's fully there. But at the same time, something has changed to where his reality is being a Spirit-led reality that is outside of his own understanding.

This is what it means to be in the Spirit. It basically means that you have put yourself in a place to ask the Spirit, will you come in a deeper way upon me? And some of the ways this happens is in the Word of God. When you read the Word of God, you are opening yourself up to the Spirit. And I heard a story just out the back. Somebody said that they had a, you know, they opened up the Scripture, really hard time, and boom, the Scripture appeared and it was like perfect and they felt this emotive response and all of a sudden they experience God in the Scripture.

This can happen in prayer. This can happen in worship. But what it means is you've kind of given the keys to your understanding, to your reality, over to the Spirit. This is part of faith. This is one of the hardest things of faith. It's letting go of our own understanding and it says believing in things that cannot be seen. Faith is what allows us to do this. And anytime you worship, you are worshiping in faith because oftentimes, you know, most of the time, you're not going to be able to see God.

And you are worshiping in faith, but you are worshiping in ultimate reality. Now going on into your notes. How do we know truth? Talked a little bit about it. I just want to read that Scripture I mentioned a second ago. It's John 4. Go to verse 24. It says, God is spirit and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. And so one of the ways we know truth is we encounter it. When you worship, you are putting yourself in front of God.

You are speaking the truth of who he is. And you are encountering truth. And that truth has the ability to change your own reality and understanding. So back to the 10-year-old girl with the cutting who comes to an event like the unveiling event that we have for young girls and teenagers who are struggling with these things. And Rondi, they're one of our partners. I hope you've checked them out and what they're doing.

They come to that and all of a sudden, they believe, they sit in here and they begin to worship and sing a song and they don't even know what they're doing, but the song says, I have a good, good father. Maybe they've had an abusive father. That's why fathers are so important. They've had an abusive father, but they begin to sing, I've had a good, good father. And all of a sudden, something in the spirit as they begin to sing the words, which is an act of faith, they begin to enter in because when you sing, you're entering into God.

It's keys. It's saying, okay, here I go. Here you go. All of a sudden, the spirit takes over and all of a sudden, a deep, meaningful thing happens. When my mom in 1979 went to church and I came out for the first time from, we would have gone to Catholic church, but after the divorce, she went back to a Protestant church and I came out and my mom was crying. I've told this story multiple times and at Catholic church, we don't really cry at church, you know, so that was a weird thing for me.

And I walked out and I asked, I remember if I asked her how she told me, but basically she said that pastor spoke about having a father who loved me. You know her story of her abusive father? That was a powerful moment and the spirit of God took over to a place where there was an emotive response that changed her entire reality. As a matter of fact, that moment is probably, I mean, God can do different things different ways, but it's in large part why I'm here, standing here, because of that reality.

And her getting in her car and driving to a place of faith and saying, I'm gonna go in there and try that again. That's what worship does. It opens a door. What the challenge is today to you is to open the door, to begin to reinsert. If you're not, if you don't have worship in your life, I don't know what it looks like. Maybe it's hymns. Maybe you love hymns. Maybe you just wanna get silent. Maybe it's sitting and meditating.

One of the things I would do is I would sit and take this revelation of heaven in chapter 22 or in the Bible. I would read it and then I would visualize it in my head. I would visualize and meditate upon the scripture and say, God, speak to me. And God would begin to give me understandings that were beyond myself, where the spirit would take over. That's what we want. We want regularly to live with the spirit taking over.

But one of the things we see over and over again is when the spirit takes over, you still have cognizance. You are still there and you still are part of that reality working in tandem with the spirit over and over again. If you turn your notes over as we come in for a landing, worship transports us dimensionally into a perfect state of true reality. After, verse one says, after this I looked up and there before me was a door standing open in heaven.

Revelation talks about these doors that we open, that we open through worship. It says, I know your deeds. See, I've placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I love that. Some of you are looking for open doors. I talked about Tony today with that new job. We felt like that was an open door. God opened a door. Jesus says, you know, he actually says, I stand at the door and knock. But he also says, ask, seek, and knock and you will what?

Find. We need to put ourselves in worship if we want to understand truth. Now, why does God need worship? God doesn't need worship. I was talking to an atheist or a very skeptical friend. They're like, oh, God's just up there. He's so, you know, emotionally fragile. He needs us all to go around and just like worship him. Ooh, I wanted to go do that. Be to worship an emotionally fragile God. You know, I'm like, okay. I had something I was going to say, but a little snarky.

God doesn't need worship. He doesn't need worship. Worship happens because it's due him. And we'll talk about this next week. Why do the elders worship? Because it, when you see God, it just flows out of you. Let me give you an example. I don't know if you remember the eclipse we just had, right? We just had the eclipse. And somewhere like in the center of Nebraska or somewhere was like this focal point of the eclipse.

And people were taking road trips to like Nebraska, right? And I don't know if you saw the videos on TV, but people were there and it started coming and then pretty soon, or you saw it on YouTube. Go watch them. People start tripping out. They're free. They're like, oh, this is amazing. Oh, can you believe this? Oh, it was, it was, go watch the videos. People are absolutely going crazy. What is happening is they are seeing something that is awesome to the point, and it looked pretty rad.

Even on YouTube, it looked pretty rad. Kind of wish I would have gone to Nebraska because I experienced a lot of stuff partying, but I never experienced what they were doing there. Next time there's one, I'm going because that looked awesome. It was almost like, maybe you've walked out and seen a sunset and gone like this. Have you ever had a reaction where your body reacts to the truth that you see, but you didn't try to do it?

It was just, boom, it happened. That's what worship is because when God is there, when you get in touch with God, when the angels or the elders see God, what they are doing is they are just expressing the truth of what they see. God is like, you know, oh, I need to be worshiped because I've been feeling pretty fragile lately. I really, just tell me, just tell me I'm awesome. You know, that isn't how it is. God is. God is.

And when you put yourself in reality, it brings truth to him. It brings truth to you, excuse me. And when you slow down, all of a sudden, when the spirit takes over, you will begin to have realities. And I want to say that God has a personal journey for you that is your truth, that he has a journey for you that he wants you to experience him and take away the lies. There are so many lies in this culture. I got to say, the lies that I lived under, you know, there was a term that was in my family.

It was called baser boop. Okay, it's a funny word. I don't know what the, I guess it was a German word. I could be wrong. But it meant bad boy. And I remember until I was like 45, so I'm 50 this year, I kind of had in the back of my mind, you're kind of a bad boy. You know, it's kind of a bad boy. It just was there. It was this entrenched, rooted thought. And I went up to this, this thing called restoring the foundations and we talked about the truths and the things that you believe about yourself and I was going through this like cathartic thing and it was awesome.

And the lady and the man who were working with it, she focused in on this because I mentioned it and she says, what if you're not a bad boy? And it was like, like have you ever had that reality? Where like you've been living under this light, like you're no good, you're worthless, you're whatever, the labels you've been called, all these different things, you've lived under it and all of a sudden God's like, it's like when Thanos clicks his fingers in Marvel, you know, in Infinity World or whatever it's called, Super Infinity Marvel World, whatever they call it.

It's like, God, if you get in front of God and worship, I want to tell you, layers upon layers of lies will fall off your life. And if you struggle with emotional or mental disorders of any kind, worship God. I want to say, there's a lot of other things you can do, but one of the primary things you can do to get healing and to get wholeness is to worship God in spirit and in truth. So the challenge is to you, will you open the door this week?

Do you want to know what's behind that door? Do you, are you, do you have the courage to maybe set your alarm like I used to do? And I was too stupid not, you know, to believe that this wouldn't work and I would set my alarm for three in the morning and I'd wake up because I wanted those night watch prayers back in the day. It talks about the night watches. I thought there might be something special there. Let's go, let's go like check that out for a while.

So I'd set the alarm at three in the morning and I went up, I remember we had this prayer room in Australia and the guys would show up and so we'd set our alarms and we'd go show up at three in the morning and pray. It sounds crazy, right? And I'd walk up there in the middle of the night and there's something about three in the morning that's just a trip and we'd go up there. I remember one time the guy's like, we're gonna pray for you, we're gonna pour some oil on you and anoint you and I'm like, yeah man, let's do this thing because I was too stupid like to not believe that maybe that doesn't work or whatever and so I was like, let's pour some oil on me.

He has a thing of Wesson, all right? And he goes, oh, and I'm just like bathed in oil like a Thanksgiving turkey, you know? But I gotta tell you, it was crazy. Crazy good. I'm not telling you to do it, I'm not doing it here on a Tuesday at three, I'm not doing that but it was just a group of us in a sacred space just who trusted each other. I just gotta say though, I had revelations in that room, prayer in prayer that I still lean on today for my own personal sanity, hope, future, things that God told me about my wife, my marriage, my children, it's been phenomenal and I just gotta say, I just opened the door.

The thing is, here's what I want to challenge you with, go 1% more than you're comfortable with. 1% more. I don't know what that means for you. It might be asking someone in public, hey, can I pray for you right now? That might be 1%. Go 1% more. Open the door in the word of God. Memorize, try memorizing scripture. Try worshiping God. Take an hour and worship God. Maybe 30 minutes is a lot. Go 31. Open the door. You give God an inch, he'll take an eternity.

Do you want to know what's behind the door? Because there is an experience and Revelation says that God has a stone and that stone has your name on it. It's a secret name the scripture says. Look it up. Google the white stone of Revelations. Google it. And it has a name and it says only people who are gonna know what your true name is because you might have a name right now but it isn't your true name. And the only one that is gonna know is God the Father, Jesus the Spirit, the Trinity, and you.

And God's going to come give it to you and he's gonna say this is who you are and for the first time ever you will fully know who you are. I gotta say that worship is gonna get you closer to that true reality. Open the door. Amen? Let's stand. We're gonna have a time of communion right now. Amen? Amen?