TLP 191: Family Worship, Part 1 | God’s definition of family worship

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That's another reason I think it's confusing to refer to worshiping a thing. We may very well value an object, but the more important question is why we value the object so much.

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Welcome to Truth. Love. Parents. Where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents.

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Here's your host, A .M. Brewster. Before we dive into today's topic, I have some very exciting news.

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Now, honestly, I'm torn about sharing things like this because I don't like it really being about TLP. You know, we try so hard to make it about God that I don't ever really want it to just be about us.

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But at the same time, there are some really encouraging things going on. So let's frame it this way. We are praising

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God that He's choosing to extend our reach and glorify Himself through our ministry. Recently, Feedspot voted

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Truth. Love. Parent one of the top 15 websites you need to follow in 2018. And that's really cool.

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No doubt some of you may be even listening to us right now because you saw us in that post. Praise God and thank you for joining us.

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Also, I had the opportunity to talk with Curtis Solomon, the director of the Biblical Counseling Coalition. He invited me onto their podcast, 1514, and we had a great time talking about how

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God's at work at Victory Academy for Boys and TLP. You can check out that interview on our website.

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And lastly, I want to apologize for not telling you this sooner. It's kind of funny that the people on 1514 heard it before you did.

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But the exciting news is that I have accepted the position of director at Victory Academy for Boys. The former director, my friend

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Mark Massey, took on a new role as the executive director of Victory Family Ministries, kind of the parent ministry for Victory Academy.

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And I've taken on many of the roles and responsibilities that he had. Currently, I'm actually kind of doing double duty until we hire someone to take my place as residence manager of the house program.

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I'm directing the ministry while I facilitate the daily running of the home, but I'm really excited to be doing it. It's stretching me, but it's a really good experience.

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On that note, we are looking to hire a couple to take over the running of the house program. If you perhaps are interested or know someone who is, if you'd like to learn more, just please feel free to send me an email.

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You can connect with me at ambruster at vafb .org.

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I'd be happy to tell you more about the opportunity to serve God and hurting families at Victory Academy for Boys.

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All of this to say that God is opening more doors and windows for service. News is spreading, and we are doing our best to share

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God's truth about parenting as far and wide as we can. So thank you very much for your prayers and support and for listening and subscribing.

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Thank you for sharing us with your friends. Thank you for your reviews and your ratings. You guys are great, and I love that we are unified in serving

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God and ministering to our families together. Okay. If this is your first time with us,

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I welcome you and pray that this new series will be a blessing to you, but don't forget to check out our previous series.

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This time around, we're talking about family worship, but we're looking at it in a different way than most people do.

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So let's jump in. First, let's talk about what we're not talking about. I think when most people use the words family worship, they're referring to a time that the whole family's gathered together studying

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God's Word. It may be at a church or during a devotional time at home, but it's definitely a deliberately spiritual time with the whole family.

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I'm not talking about that. Now, that type of thing is definitely part of the larger concept.

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It totally fits in this discussion, and there will be many truths we can draw out and apply to our family devotional times, but I just wanted to set the stage that we're not talking about family devotional times on this series.

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Secondly, we're not talking specifically about singing or playing music. I think too many people in the modern church age associate the word worship with the song service at their local church.

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We use the terms praise and worship so tightly that some people don't see worship as being anything other than singing to God.

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But is that really what worship is? Again, I'd say it's part of the much, much larger subject, but it's only a part.

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There will be applications from this study that can be made for our music, no doubt, but that's not the focus of this series.

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So what is the focus of this series, you ask? Well, let's start by defining worship. Until we do that, we're all going to be imagining different things.

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Once we're on the same page, then we can discuss what kind of worship pleases the Lord and what kind doesn't. So here's my plan for this series.

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Number one, today we're going to define family worship. We're going to use God's understanding of worship in order to know

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Him better and see ourselves through His eyes. We're going to strive to let Him interpret our reality.

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Number two, next time, we're going to talk about failed family worship. After that, we're going to look at split family worship.

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And then lastly, we're going to end with a discussion concerning unified family worship. This conversation is so important, and I'm very glad that you'll be joining me for it.

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And if you haven't subscribed to Truth Love Parent, I encourage you to do so. You can subscribe on iTunes or whatever your favorite podcast host is.

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You can even subscribe to our RSS feed by visiting truthloveparent .com. Okay, so what does

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God think worship is? Well, the English word worship shows up over 120 times in the

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Bible, and each of those instances can help us better understand what God means when He uses the word. But as many of you know,

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I also believe that when God inspired the Bible, He chose to use the Hebrew and Greek and Aramaic for a reason.

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I'm not saying those languages are better, but God didn't wait until English was invented before writing the Bible. Therefore, good

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Bible translation is going to find the best English word to communicate the word in the original language. However, sometimes it's hard to find an

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English equivalent that does the original word justice. And with the way our English words are changing so often, it's hard for it to remain consistent.

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Now we did a seven -part study on biblical love simply because the concept of biblical love cannot be summed up in the

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English word love. So let's begin by looking at some of the original words. In Genesis 22, 5,

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Abraham told his servants, stay here with the donkey, I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.

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The word he used gave the picture of something being depressed, pushed down, bowed over, prostrated, falling down flat.

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Now the connotative imagery reveals that people only prostrate themselves before things they believe are superior to them.

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It's really the most humbling physical stance to take. You're on the dirt. You're completely at the mercy because you're indefensible.

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And the act is designed to communicate that I submit to you in one way or another. It can be an act of divine worship or it can be just a respectful greeting.

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And we see many uses of this word in Scripture. And for the most part, bowing down in many different cultures still communicates the same idea today.

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Now there are also a couple Greek words of note. One of them doesn't necessarily refer to bowing down as it does any number of religious ceremonies.

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That one is used four times in the New Testament. But there's another word that's used 60 times and has more in common with the

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Hebrew word at which we just looked. This word has the idea of falling, crouching, prostrating oneself in homage to another.

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It also refers to kissing another's hand and any other act that showed reverence and respect. Of course, we also have to acknowledge that the

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English word worship is a derivative of an early word which many of you know as worthship.

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The English Oxford Dictionary defines worthship as the condition of being worthy or deserving.

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Worship communicates worth. In a way, we could say that any time we place value in something, we're worshiping it.

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Whether I'm prostrating myself before a tribal warlord who I'm hoping is not going to kill me, or I'm dedicating hours to washing and waxing my sports car,

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I'm communicating value. If I will watch a sporting event for hours and hours but complain that the sermon went past 12 o 'clock,

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I'm communicating how much value those things have for me. Now I've said this a lot on the show, but Ken Collier's observation that there are just two choices on the shelf, pleasing

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God or pleasing self, is at the crux of this idea and this issue of worship. Back in episode 114, we asked the question, how to know if your child is addicted?

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I think that would be a great follow -up to today's topic, but I'll sum the show up this way. Your child is addicted, period.

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And so are you. And so am I. We're addicted to ourselves. Now I'm not going to take the time right now to support that claim, you'll have to listen to the other episode, but let's continue on for now as if it's true.

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You know, because it is. If I'm addicted to my own pleasure and satisfaction, then it would be less accurate to say that I worship ice cream than it is to say that I worship myself via too much ice cream.

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I think this is the hang -up that modern American Christians have with sermons that warn us against worshiping sports and money and popularity and sex and the like.

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We picture ourselves bowing down to stone and wood images and it seems preposterous and silly to think of ourselves bowing down before a shrine that had a car sitting on it.

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But the reality is that the people who bow down before idols are doing the exact same thing as the people who are addicted to drugs or fame or money.

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They're communicating to everyone around them that the idol or the car or the sport is valuable to them.

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But we need to take this a step further. They're also communicating that those things are valuable to them for a higher reason.

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The idol really isn't the end -all to end -all. The car and the sex and the good grades aren't really the

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God being served. The God being served is self. The popularity and control and the perfect body and the beautiful house and the religious rituals were actually the sacrifices these people offered to themselves.

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Those were the things that made them happy because their God was themselves. In Philippians 4 we read,

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Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.

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For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ.

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Their end is destruction. Their God is their belly, and they glory in their shame with minds set on earthly things.

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I once encountered a man who told me that he struggled with pornography and adultery because he worshipped the female form.

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I had to tell him that he was mistaken. What he was actually doing was offering the female form as a sacrifice to his own flesh.

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Now instead, let's consider a popular passage, Romans 12, 1 -2. I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

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God is saying that our spiritual worship is that we offer ourselves, all that we are, have, say, do, and feel, to God as a sacrifice.

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We shouldn't be sacrificing anything to ourselves. We're nothing more than a sacrifice ourselves. And we should be offering ourselves to God.

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That is our reasonable act of worship concerning what He's done for us. But then verse 2 tells us what this daily sacrifice looks like.

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Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

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Our sacrifice is supposed to look like our conformity to the will of God. Then the rest of the chapter talks about spiritual gifts and the marks of a true

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Christian, and it doesn't limit those marks to the religious ceremonies we do during a service. The things in our lives that prove we're offering ourselves on the altar to God are love, righteousness, zeal, rejoicing, patience, prayer, hospitality, generosity, blessing, harmony, wisdom, kindness, and the list goes on and on.

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My friends, here's the point, and I took a long time getting to it because I didn't want there to be a shred of doubt in our minds.

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Everything we do is worship, everything. Everything we say is an act of worship to God or self.

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Everything we buy is an act of worship to God or self. Everything we listen to, everywhere we go, every thought we have, every desire, everything we do is an act of worship to God or an act of worship to self.

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Now in order to determine what we're worshiping with these things, we have to decide whether we're glorifying

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God by doing what we're doing or whether we're glorifying self. Now, this is admittedly where it gets difficult. I've mentioned a number of times that we can worship ourselves with our cars.

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When we invest heavily in our vehicles, we may be doing it because we enjoy the satisfaction we receive from the vehicle, or we may be doing it because we're trying to be good stewards of the gifts

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God has given to us. That's another reason I think it's confusing to refer to worshiping a thing.

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We may very well value an object, but the more important question is why we value the object so much.

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Some people value their children as a blessing and stewardship from God. Others value their children as a status symbol or guarantee of future care.

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It would be inappropriate to say you shouldn't take care of your car or value your children, but the real question ends up being why are you doing these things?

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It's not the fact that a person believes their food has value. The question is where are they investing that value?

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Are they placing their food on the altar to God and for His glory and His honor, or are they investing in their own pleasure and satisfaction?

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Now we're all sinful people, and that means that every day we're going to worship ourselves. It's not an excuse, it's just a reality.

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But assuming that we are true followers of God, the question isn't whether or not we worship God or self, but what percentage of the time we're worshiping

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God or self. Now let's ask that same question concerning your family as a whole. Everyone in your family at every point of the day is either worshiping themselves or God.

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So what percentage of the day do you think does your family worship self versus God? Now that's the family worship about which we're talking.

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We at Truth Love Parent want each member of your family to spend more time worshiping God than self, and we're committed to equipping you, the parent, to analyze and address your family's worship.

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In a way, that's really why we publish every episode we publish. So let's review. Worship is everything we do, because everything we do shows what we value.

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So with all that said, here's our goal for this series. Next time we're going to look at the books of Kings and Chronicles to learn what failed worship is.

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Then we're going to talk about a family that has split worship. This type of worship may seem better, but the end result is often the same as failed worship.

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And then I'd like to finish off creating a plan for us to have unified worship in our families. The type of lifestyle where we can say that our families are worshiping

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God more often than self. Now guess what? Your friends are worshiping something too, and so are their kids.

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And God desperately wants them to understand worship and give it all to Him. So please share this episode with your friends.

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You can share it directly to social media, you can email it, or you could even post it on your blog or website. And we also have free episode notes on our blog,

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Taking Back the Family. I recommend you go to truthloveparent .com and join the TLP family. That way you'll receive an email anytime we post something new to our blog.

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And you can always reach us at counselor at truthloveparent .com if you have any specific questions about issues and concerns in your family.

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Listen, your family is going to worship something today. Right now they're worshiping something. What's it going to be?

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And what can you do about it? To that end, I'll see you next time. Truth. Love.

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Parents. Is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you become an intentional premeditated parent.

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Join us next time as we search God's Word for the truth your family needs today.