Awestruck

This is the message given in the Wheatland Parish Sunday, February 24.  The Bible verses are Exodus 3:1-6 and Romans 11:33-12:2.

Even though it's still pretty cold here, there are places in this country, like Florida and Arizona, where the weather is warm. At this time of year, baseball players gather for spring training to get ready for the upcoming baseball season.

The baseball season is a long one. It starts at the end of March and goes through the end of September, the end of October if you get to the World Series. You can go for three weeks without getting a day off. A player cannot just walk in on the first day of the season and be ready to handle that. 

That's why spring training was invented: to get players ready for a long season of baseball. Players do all sorts of things at spring training. They go through exercises to get themselves in physical shape. They go through a variety of training drills to work on the specific skills they need to play baseball. They also get themselves mentally ready to be able to stand up to the rigors of a long season.

In honor of that, and because I'm a baseball fan, we're starting a new sermon series today called “Spring Training”. You see, it seems to me that, just as a ballplayer needs to train to get ready for a long season, Christians need to go into training, too. Life can be hard. Life can throw us a lot of curve balls. If we're not in spiritual shape, we won't be able to handle it. But if we are, we'll feel better, just like getting into physical shape makes us feel better. We'll be able to handle those curve balls life throws at us, because we'll have gotten ourselves ready to handle them.

So, we're going to look at some of the exercises we can do as Christians to get ourselves into shape. The classic term for these exercises is “spiritual disciplines.” There are a lot of them, more than we have time to talk about in this sermon series. If you want to know more about them, come talk to me sometime. To start us off, today we're going to talk about the spiritual discipline of worship.

Now, some of you may be thinking, well, I'm already doing that. After all, I'm here in church. This is a worship service. Therefore, I must be worshiping. I've got that one covered.

Well, not necessarily. I say that for a couple of reasons. First, no exercise works very well if we only do it once a week. Think about it: can we exercise once a week and get ourselves into good physical shape? I mean, I'd love it if I could. If all it took to get into shape was exercising once a week, I'd sign up for that right away.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. To get into good physical shape, we need to exercise every day. And to get into good spiritual shape, we need to practice the spiritual discipline of worship every day, too.

The other reason coming to church does not cover the spiritual discipline of worship is that it's entirely possible to come to church and not worship God. The chances are, most of us have done that. I have. It's not because we're bad people, but sometimes we come to church feeling tired. Sometimes we come to church feeling stressed out. Sometimes we come to church feeling distracted. We may have the best of intentions, but all this other stuff in life gets in our way. No matter how much we might want to worship God in church, sometimes it just does not work out that way.

That's why, again, this worship of God needs to be an every day thing, so that it becomes a habit. That's the only way I can get myself to do physical exercise at all—if it becomes a habit. If I have to make a separate decision every day to get physical exercise, I won't do it. I'll put it off. I'll think of other things to do. I'll decide, well, I skip exercising, just for today. And then one day becomes two days, and then three, and then a week, and pretty soon I'm out of the habit of it entirely. Getting physical exercise is just not something I do any more. The only way I'll stick at exercising is if it's so much a habit that I don't have to think about doing it in any more.

It can work the same way with worship. We need to make worship of God a habit. We need to make worship something we do automatically, without having to think about it. If we don't, we're likely to start putting it off, “just for today”, until one day becomes two days, then three, then a week, and pretty soon worshiping God is just not something we do any more.

So, we've said that worship is an important spiritual discipline, something we need to keep ourselves in spiritual shape. We've also said it's something we need to do every day, so it becomes a habit. However, we've not yet come to the most important question: what is worship? What does it mean for us to practice the spiritual discipline of worship?

Well, “worship”, according to the dictionary, means reverent honor paid to God. “Reverence” means an attitude of deep respect tinged with awe. So, to worship God means feeling an attitude of deep respect toward God. It means feeling in awe of God.

Now, I suspect that a lot of us, when we think about it, do feel respect toward God. Maybe, when we think of God's power and the incredible beauty of God's creation, we even feel in awe of God.

But the thing is, we only feel that respect and awe when we think about it. How many times, during the course of our average day, do we actually think about God?

I don't know the answer to that. Maybe you think about God a lot, I don't know. But remember, we're talking about this in the context of worship. For what we're doing to be worship, it's not enough just think about God in passing. It's not enough to just say a quick prayer for ourselves or someone we care about. There's nothing wrong with doing those things, of course. It's just that doing them is not practicing the spiritual discipline of worship.

For what we're doing to be worship, we need to take some time. We need to really think about who God is. We need to really think about what God does. Not question it, not criticize it, just think about it.

Because if we think about it, we'll be amazed by it. We'll marvel at it. The incredible wonder of God's creation is all around us, if we just stop and look at it. And God has really helped us with that around here, because this incredible area has so much of the beauty of God's creation to see.

I see it all the time on the drive between Onida and Gettysburg, if I take the time to look at it. The deer. The pheasants. Sometimes eagles. The sunrises. The sunsets. Even the moonsets, if moonset is a word. The endless horizon, where it seems like you can see forever. It truly is amazing. It truly is incredible. When we see that, and think about the creation of it, we almost have to feel awe at the God who made it all.

But as incredible as that is, that's not the most amazing thing about God. The most amazing thing about God is that a God who can do that, a God who can create such incredible beauty out of nothing, loves me. And loves you. And loves all of us.

That's what really should give us that feeling of awe. Because, when we think about it, why should God love us? What does God get out of it? We can see the benefits on our side, but what's the benefit to God in loving us?

After all, there's really nothing we can do for God that God cannot do without us. God created us, created the earth, created the universe. God does not need us to do anything. In fact, I suspect an awful lot of the time we disappoint God. We frustrate God. We even make God angry—if you read the Old Testament, especially, there are a lot of times God is angry with us human beings. And yet, each time we read that, we read about God never giving up on us, God giving us another chance, God forgiving us. Why? Why would God do that?

The most amazing thing about God is that God is love. God is love, and so God wants someone to love. God created us, really, for the sole purpose of loving us. God does not need us, but God wants us. God wants to love us, and so God does love us. Period.

Think about who we are, about how disappointing and frustrating and downright disobedient to God we can be. Then think about who God is, about how powerful and good and perfect God is. And then think about how this powerful and good and perfect God loves each of us disappointing and frustrating and downright disobedient people.

It's amazing, right? It's incredible. It leaves me in awe of God every time I think about it, that the God who created the universe and who does not need me for anything still loves me and always will, no matter what.

So, if you want to practice the spiritual discipline of worship, think about that. Think about who God is, and think about who we are. Think about it every day. Be in awe that God loves you, no matter what. Feeling that awe will get us into spiritual shape. It'll get us feeling better, just like getting into physical shape makes us feel better. Then, we'll be able to handle the curve balls that life throws at us.