Worship Is Life - Louie Giglio

We're in this collection called Altar Call. And the most powerful thing about it is we've made space in every gathering and we will do that again in just a few minutes for anyone to come to the altar. I know it feels old school, but that's what life is about. Life is about responding to God. And there is no special sauce down here at the front of this platform. It's just a symbol of us moving toward God. And for somebody in this gathering, it's gonna be coming back to God. Coming back to that place where he's first in your life. For somebody today, it's gonna be coming to God. It's gonna be realizing, even maybe through here at 515, the stories we just heard in baptism. Wow, I can come to God. If they can come to God, I can come to God. Anyone can come to God. And today's your day to come to God. Or it may just be that you need prayer. You want someone to put a hand on your shoulder and speak life over you today. But the altar is open. And so in this whole collection, I thought it would be good if we stopped for a moment and talked about the altar for a few minutes. Not this altar, not the altar in the front of Cumberland today, not the front of a stage,

but the place where sacrifice is made. Because that's what altars are for. Altars are not simply for commitment. Altars are for sacrifice. And so we're gonna see that unfold in the text. We have three theological anchors at our church. If you're a part of our family, been around for a while, you should know these. Anybody know the three theological anchors of our church? I almost didn't wanna ask that because I thought I might get that response. So if you've been here for a long time or you're brand new, you probably don't know these. So let's go over our three theological anchors. They are the glory of God, radical grace, and extravagant worship. And they go together. And those three theological truths underpin our church. The glory of God simply means he's first and foremost in everything. But when we say the glory of God, we're speaking of the holiness of God, the majesty of God, the awe of God. And when you see the holiness, majesty, and awe of God, it puts you in a predicament in your own sin. And so that's why we understand the grace of God. And we understand that it's not a little bit of grace, it's radical grace that takes people who are rebels and turns them into sons and daughters

of the king of kings. It takes people who are running from God and turns them into worshipers of God. And it's not dispensed with an eyedropper, it's radical grace for our entire life that saves us where we are and brings us from death to life forevermore. The way you get to a holy God is because of the radical grace that is offered through Jesus Christ. And that's why we preach radical grace at this church. We're not pushing works aside. We walk by faith and then our faith works itself out in the good things that God has prepared beforehand that we should do. But we do not earn salvation. It is a free gift through the grace of God given to us in Jesus Christ and it cannot be earned. And once you receive it, you know what happens? You get lit on fire. And your worship becomes extravagant. You don't dole out 10% of your life to God. You don't measure out with a teaspoon. Oh God, I love you. I'll do this much or that much or that much. You go, you dispensed it with a truckload. I'm gonna respond with everything I've got. And that's what church is all about. It's about the glory of God, radical grace and extravagant worship.

And when you see those things pumping in a church, you know the gospel has taken root in the heart of its people. And I want us to be a church that the gospel has captured and captivated our hearts and animated us into motion. We see this in a story that if you've been around Passion City Church, I've said that four times today. If you've been around our church, you're gonna know this story. It is our DNA. If you've not been around our church, I want you to know this story because it is our DNA. And it helps us unpack all of this. There was an altar always in the story of God in the Old Testament. In the tent of meeting, in the tabernacle, and in the temple, there was always an altar because there was always a sacrifice because there was always a recognition that God is holy and we are not. But the ultimate sacrifice. was on the cross of Jesus Christ. Where the cross became an altar, and this is mind-blowing, but the high priest himself, Jesus Christ, offered his own perfect life as the sacrifice for the sins of the world on the altar of a cross made by cruel men, but designed by God to redeem you and me

and wash us clean. So there is no more sacrifice for sin, amen? No more. So you'll never hear anyone at this church say, you need to come down and you need to pay for your sin. You can't pay for your sin in the first place, and it's already been paid for in the second place. So you'll never hear it in this church, hey, you need to do this to pay for your transgressions. Jesus, on the cross, on that altar, put his life down as the one-time final sacrifice for the sins of all humanity. But there's still an altar, there's still an altar, not for a sacrifice of death, but for a sacrifice of life, a living sacrifice. Let's go back to the Old Testament and track our way to the cross. We'll do it really quickly. In 2 Samuel 4 is where we're gonna jump in. Actually, chapter two, if you have your scripture, you can turn there. But in this time, Israel was led by a prophet, and the prophet was Eli. And Eli had two sons, and I love this, just studying this this week, it was pretty crazy seeing this verse, but in 1 Samuel 2, verse 12, Eli's sons were scoundrels. Can you believe that word's in the Bible? They were scoundrels, and they had no regard for the Lord.

And that was a problem because they were in charge of the worship of the people of God. They were in charge of the house of God. And the scripture tells us in these chapters all the crazy stuff they did. Wicked guys running the church, if you will. And they got into a conflict with the Philistines. Now you know the Philistines, the dreaded Philistines, Israel Philistines are always going at each other, these idol worshipers and these God fearers who had lost the fear of God in the days of Eli's sons, Hophni and Phinehas, and they get into battle with the Philistines, they go to battle, I'll speed up the story, and 4,000 Israelites are killed. And they're thinking, wow, how is this possible? We're the good guys, they're the bad guys, we lost 4,000 people, and God is saying, because you have turned away from me. And so Eli and Hophni have this brilliant idea that they're gonna go to Shiloh, that's the holy place for the people of God. And that's where the Ark of the Covenant is. Let's go get the Ark of the Covenant because it has got power on it, and let's bring it down here to the battle, and then let's see what happens. So they go get the Ark of the Covenant, they bring it to their camp, a roar goes up in their camp. When the Philistines hear it, they're shaking in their boots,

they're like, what is going on in their camp? It sounds like the God has come down. And then they said, oh my goodness, here they come into battle, and they're bringing the Ark of the Covenant of God into the fight. And the Philistines said, man, we better fight like we have never fought before, or we will be their servants for the rest of our lives. And they did, and 30,000 Israelites died in the battle. But that's not the worst thing that happened, that Philistines, these blasphemers of God, captured the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant was the presence of God on earth among his people. It was the holiness of God captured and encased in one spot. And the Philistines have captured the Ark. A messenger ran from the battlefield to give the word to Eli of what had happened. But our first lesson we learned today, and there are gonna be six of them in this talk, our first lesson we learn is this. Be careful not to take the Lord's name in vain. Now, when we think don't take the Lord's name in vain, we're thinking don't say that phrase, God, and then the other curse word with it. And that's not a good idea to say that. But that's really, at its heart, not what God was thinking when he said

don't take the Lord's name in vain. What God was thinking was more about Hophni and Phinehas and what they were prone to do, which is to treat God like a trinket and like a rabbit's foot in the time of need. We don't love him, we're not honoring him. In fact, we are wicked men scoundrels, according to the text, but we're in a tough spot right now. So let's get the glory of God. and insert the glory of God into the story and see if we can change the outcome. Do not take the Lord's name in vain because he is not someone to be put on a string and treated like a trinket. And it will never work out for us. We all have the tendency to do it. I don't honor him. I don't know him. I'm not an extravagant worshiper of him, but I need him now. So I'm gonna go get God and I'm gonna call on God and I'm gonna ask my friend to call on God. I'm telling you, we've got to have more reverence for the holy name of God than even to say to a friend, will you pray about this situation when you know in your heart, you're not even praying about it. Just trying to get God into the story. Well, the messenger came back to Eli.

This story's got a bunch of twists and turns, so I gotta go fast. The messenger comes back to Eli who's 98 years old. He's blind. And he says to him, you're not gonna believe what happened. We lost 4,000. They went and got the ark and brought it, took it down there. We lost 30,000 and your two sons got killed also. Hophni and Phinehas are gone. And on top of that, Eli, the Philistines captured the ark of the covenant. And when he heard that, not that his sons had died, when he heard that the ark of the covenant of God had been captured, he fell over in his chair and broke his neck and died. Phinehas, his wife, was having a baby and she went into labor. And in labor, she died. And just before she died, the nurse said to her, good news, at least it's a boy. That's a blessing in this time. And she said, she named, this is up to chapter four, the boy Ichabod. Man, what a great moment for that kid. Saying, what does it mean, Ichabod? It means the glory of God has departed from Israel.

So the banner now over the people of God is not just that they had forsaken God, it's that the glory of God has departed because of the capture of the ark of God and the death of her father-in-law and her husband. And she said, the glory of God has departed from Israel for the ark of God has been captured. Wow. Well, the Philistines, you wanna know what they did? They had this brilliant idea that they were gonna take the ark of the covenant on a victory tour through their land. So they first took it to Ashdod. That's where the temple was of their God, an idol named Dagon. That was the God they worship, an idol made of stone. Dagon was the God, little g, of gods. He was a fierce God among the little g gods. And they thought, let's take the ark of the covenant and put it in Dagon's temple as a way of just showing everybody there's no more power in this thing. There's no glory in this thing. There's nothing to fear about this ark anymore. So let's just stick it in there. They did. They went to dinner, celebrated their victory, came back the next day and Dagon had fallen over. You know the story, right?

And so they had to get ropes and pulleys and pull Dagon back up again. They were like, man, that was weird. Must've been a tremor in the holy land. And so they went to dinner that night. They came back the next day and Dagon had fallen over again, but this time his head and his hands had been cut off. Stone head, stone hands cut off and set on the threshold of the temple. So when they came to the temple the second day, they had to step over the head and the hands of their God to get into the temple. To put the torso of their God back up again. Hmm. Second point of our journey today. If you have to keep propping up your God, you need a better God. If you have to keep convincing yourself or convincing your friends or family that this other person that's in the story now is really better than everybody knows that they are, you need a better God. If you've kind of lost the plot on one of these online sports betting things and somehow you have to keep doubling up to see if you can get back to even, you need a better God. If somehow whatever's in the pill bottle isn't really touching what's happening

deep down in the heart, you need a better God. And God's giving us the chance today to come back to him, to come to the altar of God. Plague broke out among the Philistines. They got tumors and then there was a plague of rats. I mean, wow, double whammy. And so they said to themselves, let's get rid of this ark. So they sent it to another town called Gath. They sent it from there to Ekron and everywhere it went, plague broke out. People were dying left and right. So they said, let's send this thing back to Israel. And they did. They built a cart, put the ark on it, got two cows who had never been in a yoke together, put them in a yoke together, put them on the road, said, we'll just let them go wherever they're gonna go. And they did. And they ended up going back to the Israel's land. They went to a place called Beth Shemesh and they ended up rocking up to Joshua's field. And the Israelites saw them. They were thrilled. The glory of God's coming back to the people of God. This is what we've been longing for and praying for seven months in the Philistines land, but now back with the people of God. And they sent parting gifts. They sent a little box that had tumors and rats made out of gold in it as parting gifts

to say, we're really sorry that we took the ark. And so they got the thing. They looked in the box. They saw the little gold things in the box. And then they thought, hmm, I wonder if everything's still in the ark. So they looked in the ark. What did Moses tell the people that God had said, do not touch this ark or you will die. And as soon as they took the top off of the ark, 70 people of Beth Shemesh died in that moment. When the cart had come, interestingly, don't want to miss this part. The people chopped up the wood of the cart and sacrifice. Can you say that with me? They sacrifice the cows. Thank you, cows. They didn't know what was going on, but now they're the burnt offering to the Lord. They made an altar right there in the middle of Joshua's field because the glory of God had come back. But then unfortunately they forgot about the holiness of God. And they looked in the ark and 70 men of Beth Shemesh died right there. And they said, these people, after this happened, they said, look in verse 20. And the people of Beth Shemesh asked who can stand in the presence of the Lord, this holy God,

to whom will the ark go up from here? In other words, we're getting it now. He's glorious. He's majestic. He's holy. He's not like us, but how can we possibly be in relationship with a holy God like this? And so they decided that the men of Kiriath-Jerim would come down and they would take the ark of the Lord. And they brought it to Abinadab's house. Don't you know, he felt great about that. On the hill, and they consecrated Eleazar, his son, to guard the ark of the Lord. And the ark remained at Kiriath-Jerim a long time, 20 years in all. Then all the people of Israel turned back to the Lord. So there's a big gap here in time before the people are gonna give their hearts back to God. In all this time, the glory of God is in Abinadab's house. Something like 12 miles down the road from Jerusalem. And life had just gone on. If you look in your scripture, and you don't need to turn to all these right now, but this is all happening in chapter five and chapter six of 1 Samuel. Chapter seven, it says that Samuel subdues the Philistines. And then the next chapter, Israel asks for a king. And then the next one, Samuel anoints Saul.

And then Saul is made king. And then Saul rescues the city of Jabesh. Samuel's farewell speech. And then you just keep going. Samuel rebukes Saul. Israel's without weapons. Jonathan attacks the Philistines. Israel routes the Philistines. Jonathan eats honey. The Lord rejects Saul as king. As life's going on over here. Samuel anoints David. Here he comes. David is in Saul's service. David kills Goliath. Yes, love that part. And it keeps going. Saul's jealousy toward David. Saul tries to kill David. We're rolling on. Chapter 20, David and Jonathan. We're rolling on. David at Nob. We're rolling on. David at Adullam. Saul kills the priest of Nob. David saves Caelia. Saul persecutes David. David spares Saul's life. We're just rolling.

We're rolling. We're rolling through life. And nobody seems to be bothered by the fact that the glory of God is in Abinadab's house. We're just doing life. We'd like to get a king. We don't like that. King. We got to fight the Philistines again. Now David and Saul are going to go at it. And life goes on for 20 years. The glory of God is not in the midst of the people of God. And that grabbed a hold of me. And I think we should let it grab a hold of us. Because what it is saying to us today is, it's possible to stay with the program without the glorious presence of God. It's possible to go through the motions of being a Christian without experiencing the glorious presence of God. And a lot of people just can't be bothered. David, fortunately, was not one of them. And as soon as David became the king, he set out for the glory of God. David again brought together all the able young men of Israel. Stay with me just a couple more turns and we're done. 30,000. And he and all his men went to Bala and Judah to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the name. This is crazy, by the way, this definition of the ark, which is called by the name, the name of the Lord Almighty who is enthroned between the cherubim on the ark. They set the ark of God on a new cart and brought it from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab, were guiding the new cart with the ark of God on it. And Ahio was walking in front of it. David and all of Israel were celebrating with all their might before the Lord with castanets. That's, that's amazing. Harps, lyres, timbrels, cistrums, and cymbals. So now here we go. We got the ark, the first cart that the Philistine sent. We chopped it up and killed the cows and made an altar and had a sacrifice. So we got to build a new cart, got the ark on the new cart. Here comes Abinadab's kids, Uzzah and Ahio, and they're all coming together now. And here comes the glory of God. And they said, let's party hard and celebrate. As we go to Jerusalem, they said, get the castanets. Don't you love that? That's what I think about when I think about having a big celebration. They get the castanets and they get the harps and the lyres and the timbrels and the cistrums and the cymbals and they're

coming down the road in celebration. But then, oh my goodness, the breaks go on again. When they came to the threshing floor of Nakhon, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God because the oxen stumbled. The Lord's anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act. Therefore, God struck him down and he died there beside the ark of God. Now, this is just a footnote. God isn't impatient and angry, but he is holy. And if he tells you don't touch the ark of the covenant, it's better to let it fall off the cart and to honor him by saying, I was going to stop it from falling off the cart, but you asked me not to do that. So, and he's like, wow, thank you for appreciating that that's the holiness of God. But Uzzah dies, party's over, the castanets go back in the bag. And David was angry because of the Lord's wrath. And David was afraid of the Lord that day. And he said, this is so much needs to be our heart. How can the ark of the Lord ever come to me? I came for it, but how's it going to come to me? I want God's glory. I'm not 20 years into just doing life as usual. I want God's presence. I want God's glory. I want the ark of the covenant to be in the city of God with the people of God. But how is it going to happen? He was just foreshadowing our great need for extravagant, for radical grace in our lives. And so he was not willing to take the ark of the Lord to be with him in the city of David. Instead, he took it to the house of Obed. Edom the Gittite. Now don't you know this guy was happy when they came knocking on his door. That 4,000 people died, 30,000 people died, two sons died, their dad died, one of their wives died, 70 people died, now us has died, now we're just gonna put this at your house. And the ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed Edom the Gittite for three months. And what happened? Nobody died. The Lord blessed him and blessed his entire household. Do you know why?

Because they didn't touch the ark of the covenant. They just let it dwell in their midst. So David was told the Lord has blessed the household of Obed Edom and everything he has because of the ark of God. So David went to bring up the ark of God from the house of Obed Edom to the city of David with rejoicing. When those who were carrying the ark of the Lord had taken six steps, he sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf, and then wearing a linen ephod, David was dancing before the Lord with all his might while he and all Israel were bringing up the ark of the Lord with shouts and with the sounds of trumpets. Wow. So the fourth point in this talk today is that we need to be careful not to do God's things man's way. This is so powerful in this story. This is the whole point of the talk, by the way, today. God didn't tell them to put the ark of the covenant on a cart. That was the Philistines' plan. They built the cart. They put the ark on the cart. They got the two cows. They sent them down the road. They said the Lord will lead them wherever he wants them to go. Then when David comes down to Obed Edom's house,

they think, oh, it came on a cart. Let's get a cart. But God never said cart. It's possible that you and I can watch the world do what the world does and then we can do what God wants to do in the same way the world is doing what they do. And it is imperative to us in the church that we make sure that we keep inquiring of God. Are we doing this the way you wanna do it or are we just doing it the way the world does it? Are we living out our faith like you are asking us or are we just copying what the world's doing and pasting into that the spiritual life on top of the template that the world has so easily delivered to you and me? Here's what happened. Look at 1 Chronicles 15. We're flipping over to another view of this same story. It was because you, the Levites, that's the worship leaders, this is David speaking, did not bring it up the first time that the Lord broke out in anger against us. We did not, what does it say? We did not inquire of him about how to do it in a prescribed way. So I'm just asking all of us today, are we inquiring of God? God, am I living out my faith the way that you want me to? So the priests and the Levites consecrated themselves

in order to bring up the ark of the Lord, the God of Israel, and the Levites, here it comes, carried, no cart, they carried the ark of God with the poles on their shoulders as Moses had commanded in accordance with the word of the Lord. They remembered, oh, the rings on the ark of the covenant that the acacia poles that are covered with gold slide into, and then the Levites and the priest pick up the poles and carry the ark. No one touches the ark. They reverently carry it from place to place. So you go back to this passage that we're looking at in 2 Samuel 6. When those who were carrying the ark had taken six steps, he, David, sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf. This moment captivated us, riveted us, seeing this text and trying to feel that moment. Can you put yourself in that space just for a moment? Okay, we need some Levites and some worship leaders up here. Okay, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you. Now, get ready, everybody, and lift up the ark. Now let's go to Jerusalem. It's gonna be a minute, but we're gonna get there. And then they took one step. Can you imagine that moment? All of these people had died and the whole story was everybody who's tried to bring this thing to the city has died.

And they took one step. Can you imagine what that felt like? To be like, oh, dear God, thank you God. Oh, wow, David's like, let's keep going. Help us, God, help us, Lord. Wow. We're still alive. We're still alive in the presence of a holy God. We're still alive. And when they had taken six steps, David said, put it down. And they built an altar and they put on it the fattened calf, the forerunner of the one that the father was gonna kill the night the wayward son had come home and the forerunner of the ultimate one who was gonna go onto the altar of the cross. And they killed another animal and on the altar, they sacrificed to God. They took six steps and they stopped and they had a worship service and they sacrificed to God. What is this saying to us today? It's saying to us that mercy never leads us far without giving God praise. You cannot go from Sunday to Sunday. You certainly can't go from your 7 a.m., have my Spotify playlist on till 10 o'clock at night. You surely can't go from your 10.30 class

to your 3.30 class. You surely can't go from that business meeting you had in Chicago to when your flight landed back in Atlanta at 7.20 you can't go six steps led by the grace of God, the radical grace of God without stopping right where you are and saying, I gotta praise God right here. That's right. You're like, Louie, if you praise God every six steps, you'd just be living a life of praise. You would turn life into worship. And what would I praise him for? Man. Some theologians believe that every six steps to the city, they put the ark down and built an altar. That's a lot of fatted calves. That's a lot of sacrifice. A lot of gratitude, a lot of recognition of the fact that we're breathing the very air of Almighty God and we are still alive. You see that in your mind? This crowd coming down the road, it says about David that he was wearing a linen ephod. That's kind of an undergarment, if you will, not underwear, but an under layer. And he was dancing before the Lord with all his might. King. You know, this is the one where he got home and he got busted pretty hard by his wife, Michael. Oh, wow, the king was quite out there today coming up the road, and he said,

listen, I'll be even more undignified than what you saw today. That's extravagant worship. The last thing I want us to carry away is that all worship involves sacrifice. It may not involve emotion, but it does involve sacrifice. In other words, you may not feel it, but you have to feel it. This is the way Paul wrote it. Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, that's this radical grace that we're talking about, to offer your bodies as, hello, living sacrifices. And I want you to know that God's mercy Don't need any more dead sacrifices. That's all done at the cross of Jesus, but we do need living sacrifices. Now, let me just flip it around a different way. He's saying, I don't encourage you to try to be a living sacrifice if you haven't seen the mercy of God. That will be a train wreck. That's called religion. But if you've seen the mercy of God, if the mercy of God is in your view, then here is what I'm encouraging you to do. I'm encouraging you to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. Please hear this footnote,

not offer your song as your sacrifice. He loves songs. But you have to put all this in perspective. We're called to sing. We write music here. I write music. We're gonna sing for the rest of our lives and into eternity. But can you imagine how many songs God's hearing right now? So we strike up, you know, here we come. All my life you have been faithful. He's like, man, that sounds awesome. You and the 46,229,000 people that are singing that right now. And you're competing with Cece because she's singing it somewhere right now. You understand what I'm saying? What will move him more in that song is you on the altar. I'll bring you more than a song because a song in itself is not what you have desired. You search much deeper within. You're looking into my heart. The sacrifice means that I worship him when I don't feel it. It means that I worship him when I do feel it. It means that I worship him in the good times and I worship him in the hard. It means that I worship him in life and I worship him in death. It means I worship him when I can see what he's doing and I worship him when I can't see what he's doing.

It is a sacrifice of worship for me and I bring it to God every six steps whether those six steps took me exactly where I thought I was gonna go or took me somewhere else. I still, I'm gonna put down my life and I'm gonna build up an altar and I'm gonna say to Almighty God, I'm not at the sixth step I wanted to be at but I got a good God who loves me and is in charge of my life. And I choose to praise you right here and right now I will worship you. I will never forget, my dad spent so many weeks and months in the hospital, near death, disability, coma, all of it. I will never forget going to Piedmont Hospital one day, walking out of my dad's room and everything was going wrong. The pain level was unbearable. He was suffering and nobody would do anything. You ever been there? And walking into that elevator and the doors closing and when they closed, I don't know how the Holy Spirit helped me and I said to the doors of the elevator, I don't know what's going on right now but I will praise my God anyway. He is a good God and a faithful God and a loving God and a holy God and a glorious God and a mighty God and a majestic God and I'm gonna praise him.

We're living in the land of the living. What kind of world are we living in? Are you saved? Are you saved? And what kind of world are we living in? Shelly and I were watching Roland Garros yesterday and it's a tennis, it's the French Open and we were remembering being there with a friend who's a major champion and another friend from our city, from Atlanta and we'd gotten to know through them a French champion former of the French Open and that person was very kind to us because they pretty much have carte blanche at Roland Garros and they had gotten us the all access, all access wrist thingy. We could go anywhere, including the players lounge. Now it may not be a big deal to you but I'm a tennis geek so having lunch sitting next to John McEnroe is a pretty big deal and the match ended at the men's final and Rafael Nadal won. And so everybody, you know, this is not just us. This is coaches and teams and other players and other people who are way more important than us. And so there's people all in this players lounge and Shelly and I are standing there. And I say to her, I'm going to go to the restroom. And so I go to the restroom. When I come out, she says, well,

Rafael Nadal just walked right by here. And I was like, whatever. And then one of our friends standing there said, and he also kissed Shelly on the cheek. It's like, where is he? You know, like, it was a celebratory thing. He was kissing everybody. He just won the French open. He was, he's a nice guy, but we were right in there. I've since talked to him about it. It won't happen again. But I mean, it was like, it was a moment. And Shelly and I literally said the words, what world are we living in? Well, can I amp that up for us infinitely for a second? What world are we living in? That we wouldn't want to grasp the idea and the title of this talk, which is worship is life. Worship is all of me on the altar, surrender to the God who gave it all for me. And it is morning and evening. It is noontime and harvest. It is planting and reaping. It is in the laughing and in the weeping. My life for your glory, because of your grace, my life for your glory, my life is worship to you. I don't know what world I'm living in, but today I woke up, hallelujah. Hallelujah. Did you wake up?

Did you say hallelujah? I was breathing, hallelujah. What world are we living in? Brush my teeth, hallelujah. Get ready for work, hallelujah. I have a job, hallelujah. God helps me even though I don't always like my job, hallelujah. I'm a light at my job, hallelujah. I stopped at Starbucks, hallelujah. I got no bucks, hallelujah. I don't like Starbucks, hallelujah. I went to the land of a thousand hills, hallelujah. I went to East Pole, hallelujah. I go to Foxtail, hallelujah. I go to Brash, hallelujah. I went to men, coffee and goods, hallelujah. I go to Reed Shop in Vinings, double hallelujah, best hallelujah, triple hallelujah for Reed. Books in Vinings. I don't like coffee, hallelujah. I got a matcha, hallelujah. I drank the free coffee at work today, hallelujah. I had a way to work, hallelujah. Crazy, I had to take the bus, hallelujah. Hallelujah, only time that's ever been spoken in the history of Marta, by the way, right here and right now. Marta, hallelujah. I got family, hallelujah.

I got friends, hallelujah. I can see, hallelujah. I'm not dead, hallelujah. I know God, hallelujah. I've got a purpose in my life, hallelujah. I have been called son or daughter of the king, hallelujah. I'm a part of a kingdom. I have the eternal word of God in all of its power. I am filled with the spirit of God through the word of God, hallelujah. I am born again, hallelujah. Wash clean, hallelujah. Forgiven, hallelujah. Made new, hallelujah. Raised up, hallelujah. I'm healed, hallelujah. I'm a brand new person in Christ, hallelujah. I've got something to praise him for and I can't go six steps without sacrificing him. I'll close with this really fast. 2002, after one day, 2000, we knew we wanted to form a record label. We were signed as Passion to a record label, but we wanted to form our own record label. So we asked the people who had signed us if they would become our partner, start a new label. And they said, yes. And we signed three young worship leaders, a guy named Charlie Hall, a guy named Chris Tomlin,

and a guy named David Crowder. And we started with Passion, signed Passion. With those four artists, we started Six Steps Records. And every song that comes out of this house and out of our movement comes out on a label called Six Steps Records. Yeah, we have a partner, Worship Together. We have a partner, Capitol Records, but our label is Six Steps Records. Our logo is intentionally designed. I even drew the logo wrong at 9.30, so that was fun. But it's intentionally drawn with six dots that get smaller as they go. Because we weren't about making superstars. We already had one. And we embraced, I wanna decrease so he can increase. We still have to tell people this all the time, it's all lowercase. And it's all one word. You get all that. It's a we. And the lowercase just lets people understand that we've seen glory and we've seen grace. I want to live the Six Steps life.