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Watch 2022-2023 online sermons » Robert Morris » Robert Morris - Wise Men Still Worship

Robert Morris - Wise Men Still Worship


Robert Morris - Wise Men Still Worship
TOPICS: Christmas

What a moving testimony of seeing the grace of God in action to a person. Didn't that move you, what we just saw? I just want to say thank you to you, you're the best people in the world to pastor, every campus, every Gathering. You know people love to help people, but sometimes we just need to be told how we can do it. And so one thing years ago, I just have to say this, 'cause you might say, well, I'd love to help someone in need like that. One thing we do, we started years ago, almost 20 years ago, I would think, we just started asking people to, at Christmas time, just whatever your budget is, when you're out shopping at Target or Nordstrom's, whatever your budget is, just buy an extra gift card, and just drop it in the offering box when you come to church. Or you can somehow get it to us, if you're not attending in person at this point, and we just distribute those to single parents during this time, and help them, you know.

One of the things that we do, too, and the more I talk to you, I realize the more I'm shortening my message, but this is important for you to know. Again, years ago we just started this, and so we would tell the moms, if you need food or clothes, we'll take care of that. These gift cards are to be able to buy your kids toys at Christmas. And so we'll take care, you need food and clothes, the church is going to take care of that, we've got the budget for that. But we want you to be able to give, as well, and we want your children to remember Christmas, and go back to school that they were able to celebrate the birth of Christ, the same way that other families are celebrating. And so we told the moms, you bring your kids to the church, and we're going to to take care of them, then we'll take you to some stores where you have these gift cards and you can use them.

What the mothers didn't know is that we set up a store here, at the church and we let the kids go in and pick out presents for their moms. And then we let them wrap them, some of the best wrapping jobs you've ever seen. But on Christmas morning, these children that didn't have the means, were sitting there waiting for their mother to open their gift, you know. And so we've been doing things like this for a long time now. So I just want you to know you could get in on this. So if you want to give, I can remember the very first guy that came, stopped me after church, one time and said, "I really don't do the Christmas shopping, and I don't want to go buy a gift card, but I want to help. And so can I just give a check, to whatever you call this, the Single-parent Christmas Fund or whatever"? And I said, "Yeah, that'd be fine". And he handed me a check for $10,000. And I thought, "Well, okay. It's not the same as a gift card, but if that's all you have and that's according to your budget". So I'm just saying, you can get in on this. Is that exciting? I mean, we can all do something at this time of year, so. But do whatever you feel led to do.

Alright. I want to let you know, this week has been difficult for a family in our church. If you haven't already heard, Marcus Lamb went to be with the Lord this week. I have a picture just to remind you. I know you've seen Marcus and Joni on television, Marcus and Joni, all of their sons and daughters, they're grown. And when I say sons and daughters, they're like mine, married and grown. They're members of Gateway Church, been members of Gateway Church, but they've been close friends of ours. Debbie and I have been very close with them for many years. They have aired our First Conference, and their airtime cost money. And they've paid for that themselves. They've aired Pink Impact, they've aired so many things. Daystar is all over the world.

And so I just want you to know we'll be hosting the service this weekend. We'll be doing the service here, I'll be a part of it. Pastor Jimmy Evans will be a part. He's a great friend of ours, and has helped us for many years. Pastor Joel Osteen, Jentezen Franklin, Bishop T.D. Jakes, John Hagee, will all have a small part in the service. And then over 200 VIP leaders are coming in. And when I say VIP, I don't mean, this guy asked me, he said to me a while back, "You're a VIP, aren't you"? I said, "Yes, I am a very impatient person". But 200 Christian leaders, I mean profound, that have profound ministries, just to just show how Marcus Lamb had such an impact. He and Joni founded Daystar, and it's now in every country of the world. And so I would like to ask you to pray for the Lamb family, and not just for this week but as the Lord reminds you, or as you flip the TV on, and see Daystar six months from now.

Let's continue praying, because most of us here have lost someone close to us. And so it's with a heavy heart that we say goodbye for now, to Marcus. Also, I just wanted to say we have some special VIPs here, not impatient, but important people. We started a partnership during COVID with Baylor-Grapevine, and helping the healthcare workers. And I just wanted to show you a video. They asked if they could just say, thank you. We said, we're saying thank you to you. They said, yeah, but we want to say, thank you to you, and so what watch this video.

So, these are people that have served us, and we want to say thank you to them. We have over a hundred team members from Baylor-Grapevine. Would you guys please just stand, and let us say thank you to you. We really do appreciate you. And Chris, the President, Chris York is here with the team. And he's been such a joy to work with, and so we're so grateful. And so let's continue to pray for our healthcare workers, our first responders, our police officers, our firefighters, all the men and women who lay their lives down for us on a regular basis. Let me give you a little bit of the month of December. There's four weekends in the month of December. So this is an advent to Christmas. The word advent simply means arrival. And it means we're looking forward to celebrating the arrival of the birth of Christ. Of course he's already come, but we celebrate that every year at this time.

And so four weekends, so this weekend I'll be preaching a Christmas message, probably be the best Christmas message you've ever heard in your life. But next weekend is our Christmas production, but when I say weekend, it starts Wednesday. So the first performance will be Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, multiple Saturday, multiple Sunday, eight performances in all, at the Southlake campus. At our other campuses, there'll be different service times, so you need to check. And so you're welcome to attend any campus, but I'd really like to encourage you, to come to one of the live performances, and to bring someone. It is amazing, I can remember bringing someone a while back that as far as I know, does not attend church anywhere and he was so moved to tears after the production. And it's a Broadway-style production. It's brand new this year, and it's a comedy. And it's called "The Other Other Wisemen". And so starts Wednesday, that'll be next weekend, but it'll start on Wednesday.

The next weekend is our candlelight service. And we have some special guest artists with us, CeCe Winans, Natalie Grant, Danny Gokey and of course, Michael Bethany and Rebecca Hart will be here. So that's a powerful time, as well. And everyone we want you to join us online, if you're not able to attend in person, we want you to join us online. The next weekend is Christmas weekend. And so Saturday, that Saturday is Christmas. We made a decision to have all of our services online that weekend. Now we did it for two reasons. One is, it takes hundreds of volunteers to do our services and many of them have unchurched family in that weekend, and they leave their family to come volunteer at church. And we want to see unchurched family members come to Christ. That's very important to us. And through COVID, we learned a lot about having an online church experience.

So we decided to do it online only that weekend, the weekend of Christmas, but it will begin on Friday. So from Friday, on Christmas Eve, Saturday, and Sunday, at any time, it's on-demand. So it's as good as Fios, or any of the other, Netflix, any of them, it's on-demand. And so, if you want to watch church, now here's the great thing. When you have family members in, and you say we're going to church, and they don't normally go to church, they'll come up with an excuse not to go. "Well, I have a headache" or, "I need to wash my hair". Whatever it is. And so you go to church and they get to stay home. This way, you simply say, "Well, we'll watch it when you're available". And so you can gather your family, this is one of the reasons. Some people say, why would you not do that? Almost like it was sacrilegious. It's not sacrilegious to be able to say, let's do it where the most amount of people can join in with these services.

Can you imagine, you could have someone sitting there, that's been away from God for many, many years, and his or her heart touched by sitting in your living room and may be in his pajamas, and he hears the message of Christ, see. So that weekend only, will be online only, no in-person services. So does everyone get that? And then in the first week of January, which will actually be New Year's Day, on that Saturday, I'll start back. I'll be doing the whole month of January. And I'm trying to see quite where I'm going, and what the Lord is saying to me during that time, okay. So that's the month of December, everybody got it? Okay, and you can go online, to be reminded of any of those details. And I think it's gatewaychristmas.com. Is that right? Okay, so you can ask your grandkids, they can help you how to get there. I'm going to tell you a grandchild story, it has nothing to do with the message, but it's just cute.

So James and Bridget, Bridget was at the Southlake campus leading us in communion today. James and Bridget have three children, Parker who's nine, Mitchell who's seven, Brae who's four. And Brae's our little princess, you know. She wears princess dresses just about everywhere. And so I was on the back porch, and she came out, and she had two stuffed animals, Bunny and Lammy, okay. So obviously, Bunny's a rabbit and Lammy's a lamb. Okay, alright. She's got Bunny and Lammy, and she was very serious. And she said, "Papaw, I wanted to let you know that I've made a decision". And so I said, "Okay Brae, what decision did you make"? She said, "I'm going to release Bunny back into the wild". And so I said, "Well, I think that's good, Sugar". I said, "What about Lammy"? And she went like this, "Ah, Papaw, Lammy's never lived in the wild before". So nothing to do with Christmas, I just thought it's funny, alright.

Here's the title of the message, "Wise Men Still Worship". Wise men. We know they were men who came, but wise people. Wise people still worship. So I want to read you the story and I'll make a few comments. I've preached whole messages on this before, so I'm not going to dwell too much on this. I'm going to make an application with it after we read it. Matthew 2:1. "Now after Jesus was born". First of all you need to know that they did not come until after Jesus was born. They were not at the stable, the wise men. So don't go home and throw your wise men out from your nativity scene. I think it's great. I love nativity scenes. But the wise men weren't there. Okay. "Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem". Notice they didn't come to Bethlehem, they came to Jerusalem, "saying, 'Where is He...'"

So they didn't know what city he was born in. "'Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him'". Wise men still worship. "When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled," now here's another phrase you might never have seen, "and all Jerusalem with him". Most theologians believe that they spent two or three weeks, and possibly two or three months in Jerusalem, because that would just be the custom. They came from Persia, it was a thousand mile journey, took six to nine months. So they were resting some. But it says all Jerusalem was troubled. So the word got around, okay. And verse four, "And when he had gathered the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he inquired of them," this is talking about Herod, "inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. So they said to him," now they're quoting Micah 5:2, "'In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet: "But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not the least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you shall come a Ruler who will shepherd My people Israel".' Then Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men".

Now remember, all Jerusalem was troubled, but he does this secretly now. "When he had secretly called the wise men, determined from them what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, 'Go and search carefully for the young Child.'" Not the babe. The angel told the shepherds, "You will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes". They were at the stable. The wise men were now looking for a young child. "Go and search carefully for the young Child, and when you have found Him, bring back word to me, that I may come and worship Him also.'" Obviously, that was not Herod's motive, we know, because he killed all of the male children two years old and under, which gives us a little bit of clue of how old Jesus was. "When they heard the king, they departed; and behold, the star which they had seen in the East went before them".

Now, I just want you to know that it's very possible, the first star they saw, which would have been about two years before, could've been a natural phenomenon. That doesn't take away from a miracle, it being a miracle because God would have aligned the planets. But we know from science that the planets aligned about the time Jesus was born. That could've been what they saw. This, though, is a supernatural phenomenon because it says the star went before them. If you didn't know this; stars don't "went". So this is supernatural, what's happening now. Of course, I'm not saying the other wasn't. I'm just saying something's happened where this star is moving, okay. "When they heard the king, they departed; and behold, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came and stood over..."

Okay, stars don't also stand over houses. This one did though. I'm not saying it didn't; it did, but somehow God did this. "...where the young Child was". That's the second time we've seen the words, young Child. It's three times in the verses I'm going to read, which are verses one through 12. It's nine times in chapter two. Never calls him a baby in Matthew 2, only in Luke 2, alright. The young Child. "When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. And when they had come into the house". Notice the word house, not stable. "When they'd come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down," those are two very important words, which we'll come back to, "and worshiped Him. And when they had opened their treasures," those are important words because many people don't know about that they had a treasury with them. "...they presented gifts to Him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Then, being divinely warned in a dream," Obviously, divine means it was God. God spoke to them in a dream. "...that they should not return to Herod, they departed for their own country another way".

Just a little trivia here. Gold represented his royalty; frankincense, his divinity; myrrh, his humanity. In other words, gold represented that he was the King of kings; frankincense, we offer, the prayers of the saints are like incense that represent his divinity, we pray to God. Humanity is what you anoint a body with after it dies. They brought myrrh to anoint Jesus's body, John 19, after he died. So that represented his humanity. His royalty. These are the three gifts, what they represent: royalty, divinity, and humanity. Alright. When we think about this, I just want to zoom in on the words that they fell down and worshiped him. Now again, most theologians believe He would've been 18 months to two years old. Some believe he could've been two years and six months because it said all those two years old and under, it doesn't mean on the birthday of the two. He could've been, he wasn't three yet. So He could've been in his twos. So he's a toddler.

So I want to ask you a question, it's not a trick question, it's just a normal question. Doesn't it seem a little weird that wise, wealthy (they were very wealthy) and honored men would bow down to a two-year-old? I mean, in the natural, in the natural, there's a two-year-old playing with his train set or whatever. If it was today, he would be downloading an app. But, okay. Doesn't it seem a little strange that wise ... These were the wealthy intelligentsia of the day. And they bow down to a toddler. Doesn't that seem a little strange? Yes it is. But was it wrong? No. And here's the other question? Was it appropriate? Yes. It was totally appropriate because they were bowing down to the King of kings, to the Lord of lords, to the One that actually created the worlds and holds the universe in the palm of his hand. So they expressed their worship.

Now I'm not talking about, I'm talking about expressive worship. I'm not talking about distracting worship. Alright? But I do want you to express your worship. And I want you to know it's not wrong to express your worship. But again, I'm not talking about distracting worship. I'm not talking about while we're sitting here, someone gets up and starts yelling and runs around the sanctuary. That's weird. That's the Greek word weirdos, okay. That's weird. I'm not talking about being weird. By the way, there's a scientific study that was done on, I don't know if you've heard about it, one in three people are weird. So let's just do a little study here. Look at the person on your left. Just look at them. Now, look at the person on your right. Okay, if they don't look weird, then you're the weird one. Actually that's not a scientific study, it's just a joke. Theologically, three in three are weird. We're all weird. Would you agree? We're all a little strange.

So I'm not talking about being strange in your worship. I'm not talking about going outside of your personality either. Okay? I'm not talking about that. But when the Cowboys make a touchdown, some of you men, who just stand in church all cool like, you're not cool when the Cowboys make a touchdown. You express your joy, right? And some of you ladies, when Nordstrom has a 50% sale... And I don't mean to stereotype, it may be backward in your home. I really don't, I don't mean that wrong. You express your joy. If you can express your joy over a sale or a touchdown, you should be able to express your joy over being redeemed from eternal hell to eternal heaven. You should be able to express your joy. That's all I want us to talk about today is that the wise men expressed their worship. They didn't just worship. They expressed their worship. And they didn't go outside of their personality.

Again, I talked about Brae, Parker, and Mitchell, these are three of our nine grandchildren. Isn't it amazing that you can see personalities in young kids? So, Parker, Mitchell, Brae. So Mitchell has, has a personality. They all do, but okay, you know what I mean. So a while back, they were at our house this summer and they were swimming, and the parents were date day or whatever. So Arianna, the lady that stays with them, was over helping us because it's Debbie and I and three of them. We're outnumbered. We figured that out a long time ago. So we have to have help, and we pay for it. And we paid double the rate sometime. We just, "Please get us some help. We're too old for this". So Arianna said to Mitchell, the middle child, said, "Start packing your things up, it's time to go". And he went, "Yes, ma'am".

And Parker, his older brother went like this. And he said, "Mitchell, when did you start saying 'Yes, ma'am' to Arianna"? And Mitchell said, "Just now, try to keep up". So I'm not talking today about you going outside your comfort level of your personality. I'm not saying I want you to change your personality. I'm just saying, I want you to express what's in your heart to God. So I want to give you five, 'cause they're normally three, but five, so I'll do them quickly each, biblical expressions of worship.

Alright. Five biblical expressions of worship. Number one is clapping. That's not a Pentecostal expression. That's a biblical expression. Psalm 27:1, "Oh, clap your hands, all you peoples"! How many of you are peoples? Then you're included. You're included. Clapping is for... We clap for performances. I've been in movie theaters where we clap at the end of a movie. We clap for football games. Again, we clap for all sorts of things. Why can't we clap for the King of kings and the Lord of lords? Clapping is an expression of joy. But I want to adjust us a little bit on something. Okay? This is not correction, it's just instruction. There are times when we don't need to clap. And I, I just want you to kind of ... It's been a while since I've ... I've never actually shared what I'm about share. It's been a while since I've preached a series on worship, but there's praise and worship. Praise is kind of the outer court and worship is the inner court. When you come into the inner court, it's not always appropriate to worship, I mean, to clap. We read Psalm 47:1, "clap your hands all you people".

Let me show you the two verses right before that. Very famous, you'll recognize them, this one verse, just the one verse that's two verses before it. Psalm 46:10, "Be still, and know that I am God". There's a time to be still. Here's what I want to say. I've noticed that sometimes even when we're in a time of worship, that the worship team will finish and we'll clap. And I'm not rebuking us, I'm simply saying that I want to give you the reason we clap. We're clapping to rejoice according to the Bible, that's why we clap, and we also clap for victory over the enemy. But when we clap at the end of a song, we are not clapping because the person who sang it or the band did a good job. I just want you to know that. Anytime we clap, we are clapping for the Lord. But there are times when we don't need to clap.

I have worship music all the time going on in my, when my times of worship are quiet times, we call them: Gateway Worship, Hillsong, Bethel, Chris Tomlin. I was talking with Chris Tomlin one time, and I said, "I just want to tell you, thank you because you've been in a lot of my quiet times with the Lord. And sometimes it's just you and me and God". But there are some times in my quiet times, I'm going to show you something I do that's, you might have this image and think, "I don't know about that". But there's some times when I just take my fingers and close my ears like this and just close my eyes, and will take just three or four minutes in the presence of God. And there's something to me about kind of shutting out the world. It's, "Be still and know I'm God". So I just want you to know clapping is a biblical expression, but we don't have to do it all the time, and we don't have to do it after every song. Okay?

Here's the number two, shouting. Same verse, I'm just going to read the second part of it as well. Psalm 47:1, "Oh, clap your hands, all you peoples! Shout to God with the voice of triumph"! We clap and shout when our team wins. They shouted when they laid the foundation of the temple. They shouted for the walls of Jericho to fall down. You remember that? Which brings me to an interesting question. Should we shout before the victory sometimes? Should we shout in faith sometimes? I'm going to read you a Scripture that's a quote from Isaiah 54, but it's in the New Testament. Galatians 4:27 says, "For it is written:" it's written in Isaiah 54:1, "Rejoice, O barren, you who do not bear! Break forth and shout, you who are not in labor"!

Of course you shout when you find out you're pregnant. And just my experience, when you're in labor, they shout too. But it might be a little different. Y'all really can back me up on that part there, so. But what if you're trying to conceive? This says those of you who are not in labor and haven't borne yet, you need to shout. And again, that's not a rebuke I'm just giving you maybe a key, go ahead and rejoice now. Rejoice in faith. When we were building this building, it was in the recession of 2009. And we had commitments and we had money in the bank and we had a bank loan to make up the rest, which we paid off years ago. But the bank wanted us to get another loan for $20 million to cover just in case the commitments that were some of the commitments that were made, we had commitments for 45 million, but just in case some of them didn't come in because of the economy. We didn't know what was going to happen. And we didn't know where else to go. And I went to the shore of Grapevine Lake, and I prayed. And I said, "God, what do we do? What do we do"?

And I just felt like God reminding me this, "Shout". And I started shouting, "Thank you, God. Thank you, God," I just started shouting. I don't know how long I shouted, but when I started my vehicle up to leave, I got a phone call on my cell phone. And one of our members said, "Pastor Robert, my wife and I were praying. How much money do you need? You mentioned to the congregation, 'We have to borrow some more to be able to cover it,'" which, again, we paid that off very quickly too, but "'we have to borrow some more.' How much do you need"? And I said, "$20 million". The person on the phone was Marcus Lamb. And he said, "Daystar would like to loan Gateway Church that money". It was after I shouted, and God spoke. I just want to tell you that these are biblical expressions of worship. Don't be afraid of something like this, alright?

Here's the third one. I just looked at the clock and realized I've gotten through two of five, so we're going to go quickly. Singing. Numbers 21:16-17. "From there they went to Beer". Now let me just let you know, this is not pronounced beer. I just don't want any of you men to go home and say, "See, it's in the Bible. Beer is in the Bible". This is where a well was that was dry, "Which is the well where the Lord said to Moses, 'Gather the people together, and I will give them water.' Then Israel sang this song: 'Spring up, O well! All of you sing to it.' And the well sprung up". Okay, same thing. They had to sing before the well gave water. So do you have some dry wells in your life, or some barren wounds, or some tall walls? And you need to sing to them. And I just want to address one thing on that. What if you don't feel like it? Well, there are probably some times you don't feel like paying your bills, but you better do it anyway. Or going to the doctor, but you better do it anyway. Or maybe you don't feel like eating a bowl of Blue Bell before you go to bed, but you ought to do it anyway.

Alright, number four: bowing. This is a biblical expression. Psalm 95:6, "Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker". There's an expression of worship. Now, we know the three temptations that we have listed of Satan to Jesus. "Throw yourself off the temple, turn these stones to bread, and worship me". What you might not know is that one about worship. Matthew 4:9, "And he said to Him, 'All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.'" See, even Satan knew that true worship is always expressed. Let me give you one other little insight on this, and then we move to the last point and we'll do it quickly. The wise men came to Jerusalem and said, "Where is He"? And the scribes got the Bible out and read the Bible and said, "Oh, the Bible says in Bethlehem," then they went to Bethlehem. Once they worshiped though, it says that God spoke to them in a dream. If you don't get anything out of this message, listen to this. Before they expressed their worship to God, they had to have other people explain the Bible to them. But once they expressed their worship to God, God spoke directly to them. If that's not a good reason to express your worship to God, I don't know what else is.

And here's number five: lifting. Psalm 130, just in case you ever wondered, well, there's no verse in the Bible that says to lift your hands in church, Psalm 134:2, "Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the Lord". That's pretty clear. "Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the Lord". By the way, remember we talked about bowing a while ago. There's a willing bowing and an unwilling bowing. Let me remind you, every knee will bow. So you can bow willingly now, but you will bow one day. There's the same way, there's an unwilling lifting of your hands, and we've seen it a hundred times in movies, and it normally is proceeded by the words, "Stick them up". And we lift our hands.

I remember a pastor telling me over 20 years ago, we were talking about it, he said, "A whole bunch of people in my church are starting to lift their hands". He said, "But I'll never do it. I'll never lift my hands in church". And we didn't really have time to talk about it, but I just remember, we got in worship, and man, the presence of God was so strong and nearly the whole church was lifting their hands except him. And I just remember thinking, "I feel so bad for this guy, because if he does get held up sometime, he's going to get shot. I mean, they're going to shoot him, you know".

Alright, here's my closing illustration. Years ago, I heard a lady teach on worship from New Zealand. And she loved the queen. She just loved the queen. I know many people have been watching series on the queen and the royal family and all now, but I mean, this was years ago. So she heard the queen was coming to her city. And she's very short in stature. And she wanted to see the queen, so she got down there early, but the street was already full. She tried and tried and tried. Finally, she saw a trash dumpster, and she climbed up on that trash dumpster. And when the queen came by, she shouted and she jumped up and down and she whistled and she waved her arms and she danced. And she said, when she told this, she said, "Now, if the queen had not been passing by, I would have looked pretty foolish doing that on a trash dumpster. But because the queen was passing by, what I was doing was completely appropriate".

My question for you today is, What are you going to do when the King passes by? And not just the King, but the King of kings who gave his life for you. It is completely appropriate and scriptural to express your worship to him. Wise people still worship. I want you to bow your heads and close your eyes. And every weekend we just ask the Holy Spirit, Lord, what are you saying to me? We want to personalize it. What are you saying to me? Maybe you grew up in a church where expressive worship just, it just wasn't a part of it, worship. And you kind of feel like that's just, that that's kind of, "I don't mind people who do that, but that's not what I think of with church. I think of it being quiet and reverent and things". Maybe that's part of it. Maybe the Lord is speaking to you about, it's okay. Maybe your personality is, "I'm not as expressive. And so maybe my worship wouldn't be as expressive as someone else". That's okay, too. But could you express it some?

Like we talked about lifting our hands. Think about how a parent or a grandparent feels when we walk in a room and the child, a child lifts his hands to us. That's the way the Lord feels. It blesses the Lord. "Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the Lord". That word blessed means makes happy. It makes him happy. And maybe you grew up in a church where the expression of worship was over the top, and it almost seemed fake. And so now you kind of backed off from it and the Lord's speaking. So I don't know what he's speaking to you, but let the Holy Spirit speak to you.

Lord, I want to tell you, thank you. As we enter this Christmas Advent season, preparing our hearts to celebrate the arrival of Christ, I pray, Lord, that you will remind us that it is completely appropriate to express our worship to the King of kings. In Jesus' name, amen.

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