Expressive Worship | Practice Makes Perfect | Twin Rivers Church

I'm excited to get into our new series. We have a new series that we're starting today. The new series is Practice Makes Perfect. If you've ever wondered why we do what we do, well, this series is for you. Practice Makes Perfect, this is the series in which we're gonna dive deeper into spiritual practices that help to perfect our faith. And so, today we're gonna address expressive worship. Expressive worship, so we're gonna need some assistance throughout the day on this one. As many of you guys know that I'm personally, I'm not from St. Louis. I'm actually from California. But my wife, she's a St. Louis gal. Yes, she is, she's fully St. Lou. And she had to show me everything, all things St. Louis. She's the one who introduced me to Red Hot Riplets. Delicious. She introduced me to Emo's Pizza. Hey. Yes, Lord. She even told me what to order on it. She's like, no, you gotta order this, this, and this. And where to order it from. So, y'all St. Louis people know which Emo's to go to. So, she showed me Red Hot Riplets, she showed me Emo's Pizza, and she introduced me to IKEA. Now, I know IKEA is not a St. Louis staple, but to me, it was the first time

I was ever introduced to IKEA was here. And the time that we went, it had been a long day. And I was kind of concerned, because I was like, I've never been to IKEA. I thought IKEA was just a huge furniture store where they sold Swedish couches. Like, I didn't know what to expect. So, when we got there, it had been a long day, and I just remember, I just wanted to sit in the car. I was like, I'm good, I don't even want to go in. And she was like, okay. I was like, oh, that's different. And she was like, okay. And then she volunteered to take the kids in. And she took the kids in, and she just went into IKEA. And I'm like, oh, okay. And I sat in that car, and I waited, and I was expecting the text message to come in. You know, the text message that says, come get these kids before I lose my salvation. That text, I never got that. So, I said, okay, let me text. Let me find out what's going on. I'm like, hey, honey, you all right? And she's like, yeah, we're fine. I'm like, oh, okay. She's like, you really should come in here. It's really nice. And I'm like, okay. And she's like, you know, I'm about to go upstairs,

and I'm gonna be here for a while. And I'm like, oh, okay. And I'm thinking to myself, all right, if I stay in this car long enough, she's gonna buy something I know we're not gonna be able to afford. So, maybe I need to go in there. And then I'm thinking, the kids are in there, too. So, they're probably rearranging the place, and I know I can't afford that. So, let me just go ahead and go in. And as soon as I walked into Ikea, I heard my son's voice say, hey, Dad. And I looked over. Y'all, do you know Ikea has a childcare center? I was like, what? And then he said, bye, Dad, and ran and dove off into a ball pit, like an Olympic swimmer. I was like, okay. I knew right then and there, oh, this was going to be a different experience. This is not your average furniture store. I finally met up with my wife, and when I met up with her, I started to enjoy myself. I just didn't want to tell her. But I felt like we were walking through an HGTV museum. You know, we would go into different areas, and I was like, oh, this is the form house setting.

Oh, this is nice. Oh, look, a cityscape. Beachfront, ooh, this is nice. I'll stay right here. But what changed it for me is when we went upstairs, Ikea has a cafe. Oh, my goodness. Those sweetest meatballs, life-changing. As soon as I got the sweetest meatballs, I was in. I was walking around that store with Skittles, like popping these into a point and stuff. Oh, yeah, we should get that, we should get that. We had a great time. We left there, we bought a few tables. We had a great price on the tables. I was like, oh, why are these so cheap? Found out I had to put it together when I got home. That was the part I didn't know about. I'm like, okay. But at the end of the day, we left there. The kids had ice cream. I mean, we left there, and the kids were like, can we come back to Ikea next week? And I'm like, sure. We treated it like it was an amusement park. I mean, I had a great experience, and I thought about, man, I could have missed out on that entire experience by sitting out in the car. I say that to you because I feel like many people. will treat worship like I treated Ikea.

They'll come to church, they'll sit in worship, and yet physically they'll be here, but spiritually they'll still be in the car. They'll come, they'll see everybody else have an experience with God, but yet they won't experience God for themselves. They won't engage. And that's an issue because you're missing out on so much. God is warning us to experience him in a deeper manner. In worship, worship is not to be a spectated experience. You know, in Psalms 100, it says, enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. That tells me that you don't fully experience worship until you go from being a spectator to a participator. And God is wanting us to get into a place of participating because when you enter into worship and you don't express, it's not because God isn't moving, it's because maybe you're not moving. And God is warning us to move with him because he wants to take us into a deeper dimension of worship. You know, most of us start out our worship experience and relationship with the Lord by seeking him for something. And that's all right, there's nothing wrong with that. If you've just now started with your journeys with the Lord and you come in and you seek God for something, it's okay because sometimes, you know, pain will push you into prayer. There's some of us that would have never prayed if we would have stayed comfortable. But because God put us into a predicament where we were forced

to kind of pray, it developed a prayer life. Worry will introduce you to worship because you can get to a place where your heart becomes heavy and your thoughts become too loud, that worship ends up being your music of choice. I play worship music all day long to silence the noise of the world. You see, sometimes you have to get to a place where you need and you seek after God and there's nothing wrong with that. I understand there's people right now that's in this room and you're seeking God. You're seeking God right now for a healing. You're seeking God for some peace, for some comfort right now. You're seeking God for maybe even some provision in your life. And my prayer is that God meets you right here and now in your place of need. You see, God has no problem with meeting you where you're seeking him at. But I want to introduce you to a deeper dimension of worship. There's a deeper place in worship in which you don't have to seek him for what he has, you can seek him for who he is. That's the place where the Lord is desiring to take us. God wants to see you develop as a worshiper where you get to a place where not only do you stop seeking him when you come into worship, but yet he starts to seek you. You can get to the place where God actually seeks you. It says in John 4 and 23, it says, but the hour is coming and now is when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking.

Somebody say seeking. Seeking such to worship him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth. I like that. Can you imagine that for a moment? God, the one who made heaven and earth, he's seeking something. God, who hung the stars in the sky. God, who told the oceans where to stop. God is seeking something. What in the world could he be seeking? He's seeking one thing, worshipers. My question today is, if he was to seek in this room right now, would he find worshipers? Where are the worshipers that's not ashamed of my name? Where are the worshipers that's not afraid to lift their hands? If he was seeking for worshipers in here, would he find any? God's like, where are my worshipers that's not afraid to lift their voice? And my thought is that when God does... find true worshipers, the response, because he's seeking. So when he sees someone and they're lifting their hands to worship him, he's like, I see you. When he comes into this place and he's seeking worshipers and somebody lifts their voice, he's like, I hear you. See, my question to you this morning is, can you get his attention? When is the last time your worship got God's attention? When is the last time they made him stop and say, look, I found one.

You see, God is seeking. He's seeking those that's seeking him. When you worship, you can actually get God's attention. Your worship is what gets his attention. Your worship can get his attention. It's not your request that always gets his attention. It's not your complaints that always get his attention. It's not even your biblical social media post that gets his attention. You end up taking that thing down when you don't get enough attention. And my question is, are you focused on the attention of God or are you focused on the attention of others? You know, there is a difference between worship that seeks God's attention and worship that seeks the attention of man. Because the Bible says that he is seeking true worshipers. I believe God knew that there would be people that would sing loud but yet in their hearts be so insincere. I think he knew that there would be people that wanted to get noticed by others but not be noticed by him. They want others to notice their voice so they sing so loud. They want others to notice their talents, notice their movement and how they twirl. I love the twirl phrase because the twirl phrase always seems to twirl up front. They don't never twirl in the back.

They always twirl right up front so everybody can see them spin their ponytail. Sometimes I want them to twirl right back into their seat but I'm not trying to limit anybody. I'm not trying to limit nobody in their worship. All I'm saying is that there's some people here that want to focus on Jesus and they don't want to focus on you. And if you ever get to a place where your worship becomes self-promoting, well then you've missed the whole purpose of worship. Worship is not meant to be intentionally put on you. If we intentionally take the glory and seek to put the attention on us instead of put the attention on whom it deserves to go to, who's the Lord, well then again, we've missed the whole reason for worship. And God is trying to get us to a place where we can worship freely. And I can understand that there are reasons why you might struggle to express your worship. Maybe you grew up in a church that didn't worship loudly or maybe they were more quiet and reserved in their worship as you grew up. And I get that. Maybe you feel awkward expressing your emotions publicly. I get that. Or maybe you're afraid of what others might think. I don't get that. I don't get that because these are the same people

that if I took them to a ball game, they will lose their entire mind. I see people go to a baseball game and they'll jump up and down. They'll scream until they lose their voice. They'll high five every stranger around them. But as soon as they come in church, they become shy. In St. Louis, y'all know we are the worst. Or should I say we're the best because we got the craziest fans. I just watched on the news, we got a whole movement taking place called the Tarps Off Movement. These guys will come into the Bush Stadium, take over a whole section of the stadium and start swinging their shirts over their heads shirtless. They just. And I'm like, man, they'll do all that for a baseball game. But will they do that? Same thing for the Lord. Don't get no ideas, though. I come up here next week and got a whole tarps off section. It's going to be a problem. The action team is going to be in full action. Don't do that here, okay? Take that to West County. Y'all are going to get me in trouble, I'm just saying. Now, listen, listen, no shirt, no shoes, no service at any of the campuses, okay? It tells me something, though. It tells me a lot about your expression, because expression follows passion, and passion

follows what you value. And you don't have to coach anybody to celebrate what they care about. So why is it such a struggle for you when you come in week in and week out and we have to coach you to sing? Put your hands together and clap. It kind of tells a lot. It shows what you value, or should I say, who you value. Because if you really valued the Lord, that wouldn't be such a struggle. That would be something in which it would be easy to do. And I know it's not always easy to worship, but God is desiring for our hearts to be open in those areas, because I don't understand how you can come into a room that's full of worship and not actually worship. It's like going to the gym and not working out. Your presence alone does not produce transformation. Your participation does. And all I'm trying to say today is that your participation matters. And again, I know it's not always easy to worship, but the real question that I have for you is, is can you worship when things aren't going so well? Because it's easy to worship when things are going good, but what do you do when life starts lifing? Yeah, what do you do when you're tired and exhausted? When you're confused? When you're disappointed? Maybe you're disappointed in people or maybe you're disappointed in God, because things didn't turn out the way you expected. Can you still worship? Can you still worship Him in your disappointment? You see, those are the questions where it becomes a little bit more difficult, and that's why I wanted us to take a closer look at Paul and Silas. You see, Paul and Silas had found themselves beaten and imprisoned, and yet they were still

able to worship God. In Acts 16, it says that they were severely beaten, and then they were thrown into prison, and the jailers were ordered to make sure they didn't escape. The enemy always wants to make sure you don't escape. So the jailers put them into the inner dungeon and clamped their feet into stocks, and around midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening. And then it says, suddenly, somebody say, suddenly, suddenly, there was a massive earthquake, and the prisons were shaken to its foundation, and all the doors immediately flew open, and the chains of every prisoner fell off. Man, that's powerful. It's some powerful things that we can learn here about worship, and the first thing that we can learn here is that worship is commanded. Psalms 150 says it like this, let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Congratulations, if you're breathing in this place, you're required to praise the Lord. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. That doesn't sound like a suggestion. That sounds like a command. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord, and yet some people treat worship like it's optional, like I'll worship if I feel like it. I'll worship if I'm in the mood. I'll worship if I like the song. Worship is not your Sunday morning mini concert. Worship was never designed to be consumed. It was always designed to be offered. have to get to a place where we offer our worship to the Lord. Psalms 134 says, lift up your hands in the sanctuary and praise the Lord. Again, this is a reminder that worship is expected from the believer.

I don't know if you guys know who Gennaro is. Gennaro is one of our worship leaders here. I love Gennaro. One of the things about him is that he is called all over the country to sing the national anthem, and he doesn't sing the national anthem for like small events. I'm talking about Major League Baseball games, NBA games, NFL playoffs, and like when I see him, I get excited. I'm like, whoa, look, he go to my church. They're like, who? I'm like him, the one that's in the Navy uniform standing next to Little John. He go to my church. He's not doing a halftime show. Little John's doing a halftime show. Be quiet. He's doing a national anthem, and every time they do the national anthem, they always say, please rise for the singing of the national anthem, and people don't feel like it. They don't want to, but I always notice that people end up standing up. They'll stand up to honor because honor demands a response. And it gets me because we'll stand and we'll honor a song that represents our country, but we struggle to worship or we struggle when we have a song that represents our Savior. Now, how is that? How is it that we struggle with one and not with the other? And oftentimes, we don't enter into worship because, well, it's inconvenient, and it might cost us something,

but worship is meant to be costly. Worship, it's costly because it's meant to be sacrificial. A sacrifice means it costs you something. If it doesn't cost you anything, well, then, it's probably not very valuable. Romans 12 tells us this. Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, and pleasing to God. That's powerful. This is your true and proper worship. Now, how in the world can you offer yourself as a living sacrifice? Well, you offer yourself as a living sacrifice when you come in and you don't feel like singing and you sing anyway. When you don't feel like lifting your hands, but you lift your hands anyway. When you're tired and frustrated, you push past all that and you praise God anyway. That's presenting yourself as a living sacrifice. Did you know that worship can please God to the place where it becomes ministry unto the Lord? It says when we worship, it's pleasing to God. You can worship to the point where you please him and you can minister to him. Now, that's powerful because it's one thing to worship. I'm sorry, it's one thing to minister to people. It's a whole other thing to minister unto God. It's the Lord who made heaven and earth and yet he can be ministered to.

I don't know, that kind of blew my mind because the Lord, he can have anything. He can create anything. What do you give someone that has everything? You give them praise. You acknowledge what he already has done. What do you do? You give him what he desires, which is the praise of your lips. That's how we worship and minister unto God and it's pleasing unto him. Many of you know the evangelist Billy Graham. Billy Graham, he preached the gospel all over the world and he preached the gospel for years and he was not at home very often and he was away. From his wife and oftentimes he would buy gifts and jewelry and souvenirs and he would bring it home to his wife Her name was Ruth and one day his wife came to him and she said Billy I Love the gifts, but there's something else that I need from you. I Need your words See what she was saying was that I don't need what comes from your hands I need what comes from your heart And She was desiring for his appreciation and admiration and his love expressed She didn't just want his presence and Billy Graham said that changed his whole mindset Every time he would come off the road. He would give his wife what she desired, which is his words And I believe that this is a beautiful example of worship Because God like mrs. Graham desires for your appreciation your admiration and your love expressed

The Lord wants more than just your presence You see she wanted she was talking about physical presence But but what I'm saying is that it is a difference between you showing up and you offering up Because worship what worship is offered so that tells me that worship is a choice And you can tell that Paul and Silas Well, they had a personal pride of personal worship life. You could tell because they were ministering unto God They didn't need instruments. They didn't need a band. They didn't even need music. They just became worship themselves And I love this because they chose to worship in their pain in their chains and being locked down It didn't matter to them. They were going to worship the Lord anyway, I Want you to picture this Picture this with me. They're in a first century jail, and I know we have our ER DCC guys watching and I know that you are in a tough predicament in a tough situation, but You are nothing compared to what Paul and Silas was going through at this moment because they didn't even have a floor They were in the mud in the dirt in the dark There was no electricity There was no HVAC system. No heating no air and if you think Missouri is hot go to the Middle East And that's not even to bring up what they were going through physically They had just been beaten bruised They were bleeding possibly bandaged up, baby broken bones, maybe and Yet they still chose to praise the Lord It was their choice See we got to get to that point And here's the beautiful thing it says that the other prisoners were listening Which tells me that your worship can become your witness Because others are listening your children are listening. Your friends are listening. Your family is listening Other people are watching And also your spiritual enemy is watching as well

And also your spiritual enemy is watching as well Because he wants to steal your praise And I believe that you need to be able to turn your praise into a weapon See anything that the enemy throws your way you could praise your way out Some of us need to get a whole slogan for this year and say no matter what you throw my way I'm gonna praise the Lord anyway So no matter what comes my way i'm gonna praise God anyway Praise can become your weapon You can start using it even today Because when you praise God your circumstances Change which brings me to my last point worship changes circumstances Circumstances Worship has a way of changing circumstances because when you worship things happen Paul and Silas they were worshiping and then it says suddenly Suddenly there was an earthquake Suddenly the prison was shaken the doors flew open and all the chains fell off And I love this because the chains didn't just fall off of them. It fell off everyone around them Worship changes the entire atmosphere Because because psalms 22 says that the Lord inhabits the praises of his people. That means that when you worship, he comes in and dwells there. And when he comes and dwells, things begin to change. Isaiah 61 says that he'll end up turning your beauty to ashes. He says that he'll give you a garment of praise for despair. You see, when you allow God to enter into your worship, he begins to shift the atmosphere because you're magnifying him. Psalms 34 says, oh, magnify the Lord with me

and let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord and he heard me and delivered me from all of my fears. Worship has a way of focusing everything back to God. And when you focus things back on the Lord, he becomes bigger and everything around you becomes smaller. And you have to be able to worship and magnify God to the point where he becomes so big that everything around you becomes so small that it's basically not seen. Worship your way out. Worship to the point where you don't even have any issues around you that you have to focus on because I'm focused on the Lord. And I know that we're not Paul and Silas in here, but I do believe that there are some that are in bondage. You're in bondage of fear, fear of man. You've allowed the fear of man to hold your worship captive. You've allowed for your worship to be held hostage. And I believe heaven right now is saying, I got this place surrounded. And today you're gonna have to surrender. I got this place surrounded, come out with your hands up. Come out of bondage. Come out with your hands up, you're surrounded. Surrender. You've been held in bondage for far too long. You need to come out worshiping. Come out with your hands up. Come out of oppression.

Come out of depression. Come out of every attack that the enemy has thrown your way. Come out with your hands up. Some of you are about to come out with your hands up and you're about to get arrested. You're about to get arrested by the spirit of God. So I need you to stop resisting because you're about to get hit with a resisting arrest. And God is trying to get you to a place where you let your worship go. It's been held captive for far too long. You gotta let it go. Today's your day to come out with your hands up because God wants you free. Free to worship him. Free to give him the glory. You've been holding on for far too long and this is your day of freedom.