While most churches will not confess to not being God-centered, the sad fact is that our worship can often be centered on other things - often ourselves. Moving to God-centeredness in worship is not necessarily about doing new things, but having our perspective shifted to focusing on God in what we do. For instance, do we preach doctrine? Or do we preach God doctrinally? Is our singing focused on God? Our prayers? If we are to truly have God honoring worship then we must move from simply affirming God-centeredness in our slogans, but actual center our worship - and our lives - on God himself.

The National Center for Family Integrated Churches presents Worship, a message given by John Snyder at the Power of the Gospel Conference. Praise. If you have your Bibles turn to the book of Job, last chapter of the book of Job. Job really is one of those books that Offers us some of some of the clearest views of God And all the ups and downs of Job's experiences all the questions of why and the whole issue of Job learning patience by turning his heart, seeing the Lord again. In the midst of all of that, really, underneath it, all around it, above it, is God unveiling Himself.

One time speaking in the church, I said that I didn't really think the book of Job was a book on patience. It certainly ought to help us with patience, but it's not primarily a book that explains patience. I got everybody in the church angry at me. They had just done a Sunday school class on Job as the book of patience. But I still disagree with them.

But Job 42, let's just read verse 1 through verse 6. Now, the context, starting in chapter 38, God kind of interrupts this dialogue between Job and his well-meaning friends. And now all this talk about God ends and God Himself takes center stage. And God calls Job and He says to him, basically, I want to take you for a walk, Job. So tighten up your belt.

You and I are gonna go for a walk, and I'm gonna ask you questions. You've been asking me a lot of questions. I'm gonna ask you questions, and I want you to answer me. And so in chapters 38 and 39, God gives Job a series of questions that really the whole purpose of the questions in that section is to reveal to Job that he is nothing, not nearly as big as he thinks he is, and God is much bigger than Job thinks he is, and there's a great gap between the two of them. Then in chapter 40 and 41, God does it again.

In chapter 40, he says, I'm going to take you for a walk, Job. I want you to listen, and I'm going to ask you some questions and I want you to answer me. And so, again, we have a series of questions that reveal to Job that he is mighty small. Then in chapter 42, we come to the result of this whole thing. Then Job answered the Lord and he said, I know that you can do everything and that no purpose of yours can be withheld from you.

You asked, who is this who hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. Listen, please, and let me speak. You said, I will question you and you will answer me. I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.

Therefore, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." Well, that's the great goal, seeing God again and bringing us to a place where we can see ourselves honestly. Well, this morning, really, I feel like this is a very formal setting. I wish it wasn't quite so formal, especially those of you in the back. I can't even see you. So if you had a question, you're going to have to really scream.

But at the end, if we have some time, we'll open for some questions. I want us to talk about the trend of God-centeredness in churches. Certainly there's application to us as individuals and as families, but the whole fashion, the trend, I suppose most of us have lived long enough to know that there are fashions, religious fashions, and things become fashionable, and then there's a great rush of books about that topic, and everyone talks about that topic, everyone preaches about that topic, and then that goes on for a number of years and then it passes and another trend comes in its place. I would say over the last 20 years the most distinct trend that we've watched is the trend of God-centeredness. And I think that's a wonderful concept, that the church would be centered around God.

I mean, it does seem like a no-brainer, but it's not as simple as it might seem. But I am afraid that over the last 20 years, what we've seen is that God-centeredness has been more often a slogan for our website advertisements. Go to Christchurch.org or Christchurchnewobeny.org and the church where I'm a pastor with others. You'll find a website, and so we can put on our website what we want you to think about us. This is what we're about.

And so if we want you to think we're God-centered, we talk about being God-centered. But that doesn't mean we're God-centered. I really can't find any church that says we're not God-centered. One man showed me a video clip of a music director, a music minister, and he was sending in this video clip of a worship service that he did, and he was sending it to a bigger urban church because it was his resume. So they were looking for a music minister.

This was a really cool hipster church. So he sends this in. This is a man that would think that he is definitely God-centered and that his music is God-centered and what he is doing in worship is God-centered. But I was really amazed. I mean I don't get shocked at too much, but I was quite shocked at this.

So there's the fella and he's playing his guitar on stage and you know it's kind of a real contemporary setting. And someone showed this to me, and I said, well, that's not exactly shocking. We see that all the time. But he's looking off into the distance as he leads the group in music, and he's playing his guitar, and he's looking up, and I think he's contemplating God, but he's not contemplating God because as the camera pans here, there is a rope suspended. This is kind of a multi-purpose building like a gymnasium.

There's a rope suspended from the top of the gymnasium and there is a young lady doing a rope dance on the rope while he's singing the song. And I suppose she felt that that was a version of expressive dance, a way of worshiping God. That would be considered God-centered. There's a lot of confusion about what God-centered is. What is God-centeredness and what is required if we're going to be God-centered?

And I think right off from the beginning we have to understand it will require more than changing the externals. You can change the way you dress. You can go from very culturally cool to very conservative and that does not make you God centered. Your church can go from one exterior to the next. It does not make us God centered if we change the exteriors.

I think that many of us when we think of being God centered, it's like we change the blankets on our bed. But if we haven't dealt with the fact that there is a false lover in bed with us, then How has it done us any good? Really, we do need what has been called a spiritual Copernican revolution. Copernicus looks out into the stars. He realizes as he studies that the earth is not the center of the universe, of the solar system, the sun is the center of the solar system.

Quite a radical idea, caused a lot of trouble. There is a more radical idea that we need to get a hold of, and that is that we're not the center of the universe, that God is. And so, a spiritual Copernican revolution would be this. When we come together as believers, it is not us. It is not humanity that is the center of religion.

It's God. And in order to have this revolution, it's not that we need to add necessarily a lot of new things to our religion to become God-centered. It may be that we do the same things that we're already doing, but we do them in a very different way. To have this revolution, there needs to be a new gravity in the church. I don't mean just a seriousness, but I mean there needs to be a new central point that carries such weight, such spiritual mass, that it pulls everything into its orbit.

So instead of us being the center where we feel that we have such spiritual importance, that Everything ought to orbit us, our children, the sermon, the songs, the prayer meeting, the fellowship times, the ministries of the church. They ought to all be for me. What do I need? What do I want? Because I'm that significant.

Instead, we rethink things until God is the weighty one, and all things are pulled into the orbit of God. And so how we sing, how we preach, how we do church business meetings, how we do fellowships, weddings, baby showers, everything is by nature of the spiritual realities, everything is pulled in progressively to God. Not because we have a new rule that says everything has to be God's center, but because as our understanding of God is enlarging, then he begins to acquire that spiritual mass in our thinking that he really does have, and everything just kind of naturally orbits Him. Now, let me give you some examples of what I mean, and then some kind of...some things I think that are important general principles. So here's some examples.

What do we mean when we talk about being God centered? Well, what about God centered in doctrine? Obviously, there's no way to be God centered. If as a church or if as a family or if as an individual, then you're not God centered in doctrine. God centered in doctrine would require that the content of our doctrine often needs to be changed.

And the things we're talking about this weekend really lie at the heart of that. God-centered doctrine is that God Himself is the beginning point of all our doctrine. Or God Himself is the hub, the central point, and every doctrine then flows out of Him. When I was a part of the church plant 15 years ago of the church that I pastor now in North Mississippi. I met with a group of hungry people and they asked a lot of questions about what church would be like and one of the questions they said is, They said, so are you going to teach a lot of doctrine?

And they said, I bet you will. So I said, really, no, I'm not really interested in preaching a lot of doctrine. I think if we approach doctrine in that way where we have to get all of our doctrine straight, We end up having these enormous heads, you know, and frail little bodies. Instead of preaching doctrine, we preach Christ, but we preach Christ doctrinally. And someone said, well, what kind of doctrine?

What do you mean? God is the beginning of every doctrine. God is the goal of every doctrine. God is supporting and at the heart of every doctrine. So if we look at justification, If we look at the doctrine of the church, we come at it and like we talked about last night, because we love God then we love the truths that are attached to His glory.

So every doctrine is God-centered. So really whether we're talking about election or whether we're talking about sanctification or whether we're talking about family or whether we're talking about church, really, we're really talking about God the whole time. It's God that's the attraction in each of those doctrines. God-centered doctrine, The content may have to be changed, but the why has to be changed. There are many people that have their favorite doctrine, and they love that doctrine for some reason.

It fits them, but they don't love it for love of God. You don't see the other things that go alongside love of God attending their love of that doctrine. God-centered doctrine. Let me give you a second category, God-centered in our worship. If we were to simply define worship as seeing or viewing together the worth of God and then responding to that worth by expressing it back to God, And there would be a lot of ways that we do that, wouldn't there?

There would be the prayer times, there are times where we sing to the Lord as Protestants. Most of the time, if we're not the preacher, Our job is to have an open Bible. We're listening. But even that is an act of worship. We're hearing about the worth of God.

We're seeing the worth of God in scripture. And we are taking what it says seriously. And we're expressing back to God something of his worth by the way we apply it. So worship. Now the guide of our worship has to be the who of worship.

Who he is affects how we do all that. Let me give two practical applications. One is the whole issue of song in worship and one is prayer. Many times when we think of worship, we think of it as synonymous with the singing part of the service, which I think would be a mistake. How do you choose music in a way that is God centered?

I mean, that's not easy. And I certainly don't have a list of 10 things that your music has to look this way. I mean, if I did, you wouldn't listen to me anyway. But I don't have that, all right? I want us to deal with the principles.

How do we seeing who God is, and as He grows in our understanding and acquires that spiritual mass that he ought to have as he gets bigger and everything starts getting pulled out of the orbit of us and of humanity and it starts getting pulled into the orbit of God, how would that change the way we do song in our worship service? Well, two things that I think of right off. We would choose things to sing that present the highest views of God. We want to choose hymns or choruses, or whatever, that present the clearest and most biblical views of God. But second, we want to choose hymns or songs that also present the most honest expression of the Christian life.

And now, this is where we tend to find choruses break down. I'm not against choruses. Choruses and hymns, they're good hymns and bad ones. The ones that we have today that are hundreds of years old tend to be the very best of hymns. There were a lot of bad hymns written.

In the 18th century, Charles Wesley, one of the great hymn writers of the West, Wesley wrote a lot of hymns to attack Calvinists. We don't have those hymns in our hymn books nowadays because those weren't his best hymns. And choruses today, they're good choruses and not so good choruses. So I'm not talking about that distinction. But in choruses where we, that reflect our culture, We tend to sing things that exaggerate our devotion to God.

So we sing things like this, God, I just live to worship you, and we repeat that over and over. Is that really an accurate view of the Christian life? Is that your life? I'd like to meet you if it is. Charles Wesley wrote a hymn.

I wish I'd brought my hymn book from our church because I can't remember, I can't quote it. But he talks about, he's pleading with the Lord. He says, oh God, when will my life? He says, you know, I ache, I labor to prove the value of your dying love. And he's complaining to God, God, your love is so big, it's so immense, it's so worthy, and my response is so small.

There needs to be that, there needs to be in our worship services an honesty about the Christian life. We do not need to sing things that aren't true. So music that, songs that present the highest view of God and honest views of our walk with the Lord. That would be one application. When God grows in our estimation, another thing that we would expect is that the prayer meeting would be different.

Now, first of all, that there would be a prayer meeting. Let me ask you to raise your hand just for my curiosity's sake. How many of you belong to a church where there is a meeting, a regular weekly meeting in the church where the whole church meets together? Now I'm not saying the question of whether you have a nursery or not, alright? I'm just talking about that the whole church meets for a prayer meeting.

Raise your hand. Alright. If we were to be God-centered, a prayer meeting, a significant prayer meeting, would certainly be one of the effects. I do know that churches, some churches will have prayer meetings where you'll have six options, you know, so on Wednesday night especially we have our choir practice, we have this and this and this, and then if you don't fit into any of these categories, you can go to the prayer meeting, which is usually where the older Christian ladies go because they feel that they don't fit any of the new things. Now, I'm not saying That's the church you go to.

Prayer meetings. I'm amazed that Reformed-ish churches, churches that talk about the sovereignty of God, rarely have prayer meetings. One reason is that the pastor cannot control the doctrine in a prayer meeting. It's not easy. If you're the preacher, you get to control what's said.

I mean, every preacher after their sermon sits down and thinks, why did I say that? You know, I'm thinking about the Kermit the Frog comment last night. Why did I tell that? But I am in some control of what's going on, what doctrine is presented. Now, if your pastor is serious about theology, it may be a temptation for him not to open up the church for a corporate prayer meeting, because what is a corporate prayer meeting?

It's a group of little children running up to their father, one after the next, kind of clamoring, pushing their way up to the front, saying, Father, pouring out their hearts. Now, when your children run around your feet and when you get home, dads, or if you've been going on a trip, and they all want to tell you something, I mean, do they all say it in the right way? Do they all stand in line? I mean, you know, are you like the Von Trapps? Do you whistle at them and they line up and they're perfect?

I mean, children don't act that way. And so in prayer meetings, There are times where our heart gets ahead of our theology, and rarely, but at times, the pastor has to kind of guide things back. But of all people, if we say that we believe that God is sovereign, certainly we ought to be the ones with the prayer meetings. But think about a God-centered prayer meeting and not a man-centered prayer meeting. A God-centered prayer meeting is primarily a vertical event, not a horizontal event.

Most prayer meetings in churches are horizontal events. Do you understand what I mean? This is a typical prayer meeting. The pastor stands up and says, well, I visited so-and-so this week, she's doing better. I visited so-and-so this week, he's out of the hospital.

I visited so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so. Do we have any other prayer requests?" And so then there's about a 10 or 15 minute time of people raising their hands saying, pray for a person I work with, their son is sick or something. So that lasts a good long time. And then the preacher says, well, let's pray, brother so and so, you voice our prayer. And maybe there's five, maybe 10 minutes of prayers.

Oftentimes it's just the deacon that's asked to pray. And then there's a Bible study that follows. That's not really what I'm talking about. What if a prayer meeting were a vertical event? Now, I'm not saying that personal needs are not important, physical needs, but we can pray for those at other times.

Where I pastor, on Sunday morning what we do, and this is just what we do, The first hour we're together we have the prayer meeting and then the second hour we're together we have the Preaching and teaching and what we think of as a worship service So on Sunday mornings at 10 o'clock I Go into the pulpit. I read a passage of scripture with just a few comments, we've sung a hymn, and then we start praying. A vertical prayer meeting, treating the corporate prayer meeting as a big group quiet time where we are seeking the face of God. We want Him, so we cry out to Him. We focus on Him.

It doesn't mean that we don't think about the lost. It doesn't mean we don't think about the needy, but it's primarily a vertical thing. It's like a quiet time, seeking the face of God together. Now, how do you motivate people to pray? There are many that say, I wish my church had a prayer meeting, but I don't know how to get them to do that.

And I've tried both ways. I've tried ways where we motivate people to pray by doing studies on prayer, and then I've tried what I think is a more helpful way. If you give a person a book on prayer, it may teach them a lot about prayer, but it won't necessarily motivate them to pray. What is required for people to pray in motivation? You must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those that seek Him.

You must believe that He is all-sufficient, and you are absolutely dependent. If in your mind there is a union of those two realities. God is sufficient and willing and I am helpless and needy. If those two things can be held in your mind, you will be a prayer if you're a Christian. So when the church gathers together for a corporate prayer meeting, I tried to promote the prayer meeting by focusing on those two things.

How great God is, how sufficient, how shockingly willing he is to receive us. And on the other hand, how desperately needy and helpless we are. As a Christian, do you think of yourself as growing less and less dependent upon the Lord? I hope you don't. We are today as dependent upon God.

We are beggars this morning, just like we were the first day you cried out to the Lord. We have not become independent of our Father. The problem is, of course, that most of us don't really believe that. We feel that we're doing pretty well, and while we do want the help of God, we're not really beggars. An early American pastor named Edward Payson, early 1800s, a leader in the second great awakening in our country, great pastor, you can find his three volume works.

Edward Payson said that He noticed in his church that you couldn't get people to pray unless they felt like they were beggars. And then he gave this illustration. He said, imagine a man in town who's a banker, but he also has a flair for acting. And so he joins the local acting group. We have one in my town.

And I'm not in it. I just can't imagine. And imagine the banker joins the acting group and in this play, he has the part of a beggar. And so he really works at his part. And the play comes out and everybody in town goes to see and they're your friends, they're playing their parts.

And the wealthiest man in town is playing the beggar, so he's dressed the part and he's there and he's crying out for food or whatever. Edward Payson said this, a rich man can pretend to beg, but no matter how well he pretends, he will never beg like a dying man. We have a lot of people who attend church who don't feel they're beggars, but they know they're supposed to act like beggars, and so they dress themselves externally in their words as if they're beggars, and they say their prayers when it's prayer time, but you just can't get them to beg. I would say that the root problem with prayerless churches is not that we don't understand prayer, it's this. We don't understand how big he is, we don't understand how needy we are, and it is impossible to get people to really pray until those two things come together.

You can have a prayer meeting, but you won't pray. You just say stuff. So God-centered worship would include a prayer meeting that's vertical, seeking Him. And it flows out of the motivation of his greatness and our need. Let me give you another.

Church service, I don't mean the church service Sunday morning, but deeds of service. If we want to be God centered, then as we focus on Him, how we reach out to the community and do Christian deeds of kindness ought to be as distinct from humanitarian efforts as the humanitarian efforts are from the lazy self-indulgent people. How are we any different than the United Way? How are we any different than other people who give and who reach out? It's the same sacrificial service, it's the same kindness.

There must be something distinctly Christian about what we do. We cannot do it for the same motives that the humanitarian does. The humanitarian sees humanity as the center of everything. That's not what the church does. The church sees God as the center of everything.

Because of who God is, because of what God has done in us, we reach out with acts of kindness in the community, not so they will join our church, but so that God will be honored. Not even so that they will be rescued, though we want them to be rescued. But there's no guarantee they'll be rescued. You may pour your heart out, reaching out to a neighbor, and the neighbor never ever really comes to Christ. Are you going to be angry with the Lord?

You may do it because you want to feel good about yourself, but a God-centered service is where God is at the heart. Now let me give you one illustration of a God-centered activity in the church, a deed of kindness within the church. Think of wedding showers and baby showers. I don't know what your church does. But many churches, especially if we're small churches, it'd be hard if you're a thousand people, but many churches, if someone is going to have a baby, then we have a little baby shower for them.

And either their friends do it or the church does it officially. What we do is that the Church does an official baby shower for every baby. Now that gets busy if we have lots of babies. And we do wedding showers. Now I leave this to the ladies, alright, because I'm not allowed to attend.

All that good food, I'm not allowed to attend. So the ladies handle it. But this is how they do it. This is how our ladies handle wedding showers. They come to me and they say, you know, so-and-so's going to have a baby.

I want us to have a shower. And I said, sounds like a good idea. And they say, what about this date? That looks good, right? I said, yep, I don't think there's anything going on.

The church isn't doing anything that day. And they say, I want someone to talk to the ladies about Christ. Who do you suggest? And so me or one of the other elders in the church will say, well what about Mrs. Sunso?

She really walks with the Lord and I don't think she's spoken at one of these in a long time. Now without me telling the ladies, you have to be really religious when you do wedding showers. This is what they do. They throw a magnificent spread. It looks like it is professionally catered.

Then they get together and all the family of the person who the party is for, all their lost family members are there, other friends from other churches, Our ladies get together and without any preacher telling them what to do, they get the hymn books out, they sing, they pray, then one of the ladies will stand up and talk to the ladies about some aspect of Christ and then they eat and open the presents. It's such a wonderful thing. People don't know what to make of it. If the preacher did it, they understand. Well, you pay him to be religious.

But when your friends, who are just normal moms, are interested in God like that, it really is a great witness. Evangelism has to be God-centered. If we start with people, we say, well, this is where people are at in our culture, and so we have to ask ourselves, how do we reach people who are here? Then I think that generally we get off track. And our methodology gets crazy.

But if we start with the king, we say, okay, we're being sent by a king of love to a people, we're being sent by ambassadors, what kind of a king do you belong to? What is he like? And what he is like controls how we represent him. If you begin with the sinner and you say, well, that has to be the thing that guides my methodology, then ultimately anything goes in evangelism as long as the sinner accepts Jesus Christ. But that's not the biblical pattern.

We start with who He is. He is the great evangelist. And that flavors how we reach out in love to those who are around us. Jesus warned that the Pharisees who traveled around the world to make proselytes to Judaism, they were actually making them twice the sons of hell that they were before the Pharisees met them. And that has really been, in many ways, the story of American evangelicalism in the last century.

We go to people, we tell them God doesn't want them to be in hell. If they would just say these words, they'll be in heaven and never doubt it. As a young man, I prayed the prayer and I remember the pastor, you know, signing the Bible. This date, you ask Jesus into your heart. And I remember seeing children in church.

They would come forward and the preacher would have a little prayer with them and then he would, the service would end with the preacher saying Johnny here has asked Jesus into his heart. He's a Christian. He said Johnny, where's Jesus right now? And Johnny's got stage fright, you know, he's just standing there and he says, well, did you ask him into your heart? And so the kid says, yes, sir.

And so where is he? Is he in your heart? Yes, sir. Never doubt that. From age nine to age 20, I lived an uninterruptedly self-centered life And no one ever stopped me and said, you know that prayer you did at age nine?

Whatever it was, it wasn't the Lord rescuing you. Our evangelism has to be God-centered. I mean you would think it has to be man-centered, but it doesn't. What about holiness? Holy living has to be God-centered.

There's a tightrope we walk and I'm really looking forward to the session this afternoon on sanctification. We have the antinomianism, you know, we're free in Christ, live whatever way you want, that's the most honoring thing. I'm not guessing you're tempted toward that. The other is because we've been saved, we need to be holy because God is holy and that means here is a long list of rules. Holiness.

How do you keep between those two extremes, between legalism and lawlessness? We think that the guide is often a matter of degree. Don't be too strict or you become legalistic. Don't be too free or you become licentious. But the guide is not to try to keep yourself on track by measuring the degree of your strictness or the degree of your freedom.

Here's a much better way. The guide, the safe guide in holiness is to be person-oriented rather than to be rule-oriented. There are rules, but it's a person. So the shepherd is there, and the sheep migrate toward him. The shepherd is holy.

We draw near to him each day. We are drawing near to him. And what He is like affects how I live, what I desire, what I think about when I don't have anything I'm supposed to be thinking about and my leisure thoughts can drift wherever they want. How I talk to my family when I'm not remembering the list of things that a dad ought to do But it's just a knee-jerk reaction. Is is it holy?

To be person oriented I want to walk near him keeps me from the extremes of the licentiousness and the legalism. Well let me give you some basic principles that I think help us. Those are just some examples, but let me give you some basic principles. The first is this, there's a very big difference and a very important difference between being radical and being extreme. Now extreme is a popular word, extreme Christianity, extreme prayer life.

I mean, it just doesn't seem that it's even worth getting out of bed if you're not going to be extreme today. But that is a 20-year-old fad, isn't it? I mean, when you're in your 40s and 50s and 60s, being extreme just isn't nearly as attractive as it would have been. What's the difference between being extreme as Christians and being radical? Extreme is a measure of degree.

How far are you going? Radical deals with roots. I mean, that's what the words really mean. Radical is root level. We don't need to be extreme.

We need to be radical. That is, we need to change things that lie at the root of life, and then let the fruit come from that. We don't need to start with the fruit, with the externals and say, folks, we got to change everything here and suddenly it's all different. But the roots are untouched. It's a definite order in scripture.

Look at the book of Ephesians 1, 2, and 3, chapters 1, 2, and 3. It's all root stuff, 4, 5, and 6, it's fruit stuff. You cannot turn Ephesians backwards. So God-centeredness is a radical thing, not an extreme thing. We deal with the roots, rethinking God, rethinking you, rethinking sin, rethinking salvation.

But it has to be in that order. Years ago, a young pastor of my age when I was younger, and he came to me and he said, we had lunch together, we were pastoring churches in the same town. I said, how's it going? He said, ah, it's a little church, only a few families. And so when you only have a few families, everybody's a chief, you know.

I mean, there's like 30 bosses and nobody's a follower. And he said, the problem is though that we have two main men in the church, two main families. These men are deacons. One has a son who's an adult, you know, in his 20s. One has a daughter.

She's in her 20s and they're shacked up together. And everybody in the church knows that there's only 25 of us. Everybody knows they're living together. And they show up at church and no one ever says anything. He said, so I'm going to handle it.

I said, oh, so tell me how you're going to handle it. He said, well, I'm going to preach on 1 Corinthians because that deals with this issue. I said, you don't think they already know 1 Corinthians? They know that it's wrong. They know what God says.

The problem is not the externals. It's not that they don't know the rules. The problem is they have a view of God that is so small they don't think that it's really worth listening to him. And so when you tell them what God says about this, I don't think you can expect a very favorable response. So he ignored me and he preached a year on 1 Corinthians.

At the end of the year we had another lunch. I said, how did it go? He said, well they came to me every week and said thank you preacher. I hadn't considered that. Thank you.

You know, we've learned so much but nothing changed They had a weightless God in their mind and so the laws of God were weightless laws the rule of God the the loving path that God lays for us. It was all a weightless thing to them. He tried to deal with the externals. We got to think about Christianity correctly here. We have to think about sexuality correctly.

We have to think about morality correctly, but he should have started here. We have to think about God correctly, and then it would have flowed, or he would have been kicked out, but he got kicked out anyway. Second general principle, We have to know the difference between radical and extreme, but second is this. I think that the healthiest version of a God-centered church is an organic, not a mechanical approach. Now, I am not an overly organized person, alright, that's my nice way of describing me.

I think that church organization is a necessary evil and I keep it at a minimum. But I do have friends that are very organized. I mean every sermon is PowerPoint, every sermon has the bullets, everything is org- everything. They have their sermons planned out for the next two years and they have it printed in multicolor pamphlets for everybody and I'm thinking, how do you have time to do that? But I don't think this is a personality issue.

Organic, when the ladies in the church want the baby shower to be centered around Christ, because they themselves have become people who are centered around Christ, I'm so happy. I would much rather it be that way than the mechanical way, where as a pastor I come to them and say, ladies, we really need to start centering that baby shower stuff around Christ. And they say, well, you are the pastor and we'll try. So much better. In the home, day after day, we show our children who God is in the scripture and instead of them merely towing the line for us, we see organically in the heart, they begin to catch this picture of God and it changes things.

Organic, that's our goal. Third principle, The connectedness of things in a church can add great weight to what we're saying about God. Same thing with the family. And the disconnectedness can take away the weight of what we're saying about God. So for instance, if the preacher pre- I'll use Ridgecrest as an example.

Years ago I was here at Ridgecrest as a counselor for a youth group. All right, you can stone me later, but anyway. And I would have rather been stoned than been the counselor at that trip. They had a young man preaching. He was in his 20s and he was very capable and his topic was holiness.

So we had about 800 kids here from all around, all youth groups, okay? And the guy is preaching on holiness. Now that was every night was a sermon on holiness, but listen, every morning we got up for what they called morning celebration. Now morning celebration is where we all went to the gymnasium And everybody sat down on the floor, so he had 700 teenagers. And I mean, really, they should have renamed it the love camp, you know, and I don't blame them, you know, they're meeting each other.

And we all sat down first thing in the morning before breakfast and a big movie style screen dropped out of the ceiling and Christian rock videos came on the big screen and then the lights went out. So here I am sitting on the floor, wishing I really weren't the counselor to camp, and all the rock things going and the kids start standing up and you can't see anything except the black silhouettes of all the people in front of you and all these young people are standing up and they're all dancing and I thought, Why are we doing this? Then every Bible study during the day that was taught, the theme was basically you can have as much fun as the world. You don't have to be different than the world. That's what the devil tells you.

Don't worry, Jesus is fun. You can be cool, etc. You know, except a cleaned up version. Then at night this young man would preach wonderful sermons on holiness now look There was a disconnect there wasn't there all day long you don't have to really be different then at night you have to be different The sermon said one thing every activity said a different thing and nobody believes a sermon when every activity says a different thing. So the young man's good sermons were made weightless by the poor choices.

But it happens in churches too. If your business meeting doesn't reflect the same view of God that your preacher has been preaching, then everyone at that business meeting secretly thinks to themselves, I know the preacher's paid to talk that way, but I don't think that God really is the way the preacher says because when it comes down to real life it doesn't it doesn't affect that anything else what we sing ought to be the same thing as we're teaching in the pulpit How we talk at our fellowship gatherings ought to reflect the realities that are said in the pulpit. Everything ought to be connected. If we connect everything, then every life, every Christian in the church is like a weight or a magnifying lens that magnifies what the preacher's been talking about. It's wonderful.

If everything's disconnected in the church, then all this God-centered talk becomes weightless. And after a while, people look for a new fad, and that's exactly what's happening today. The new fad is gospel-centered. So, connectedness. Let me give you one last general principle.

You can only pass on a God-centeredness that you have yourself. Where do you start? Well years ago I tell you where I tried to start and I haven't, I don't feel like I've arrived, I feel like I've failed many more times than I've done well. But I've started with my Bible and I've opened it up and said to God, I want to know who you are. I don't want to know how to do a church.

I don't want to know how to pray better. I mean I do want to know those things, but I don't want to know how am I going to fix my children? Those are good, but primarily I want to know who are you and So I began to look at the Bible and mark every passage where somebody described God Who knew him or where God described himself And then I would go back and just begin to look at that in its context and begin to meditate. And every time you find one of those descriptions, you ask yourself, what does it say about God? And number two, why does He say this about Himself at this particular time in the lives of these people.

Why does he say to Abraham, I am the Lord God Almighty? There's a very particular reason. Why does he say to Moses, I am the I am. Why is that the thing Moses needs to know right before he goes to Pharaoh? So we just stop and soak in that you don't need a shower You need a long soak in those passages where God describes himself And the goal is to be like Job.

At the end of these long walks with the Lord, we say to him, God, let me just say something here. I've said a lot of stuff about you, but now I'm gonna put my hand over my mouth. Because I said a lot of things I didn't know what I was talking about. But God, by your kindness, through these passages, I have seen you with the seeing of the eye. Everything I knew about you before, it was just like a rumor, it was things I heard, but now it's like I see you.

Job was a very godly man. But at the end of this book, we find him saying, I know you now in a way that is like seeing you. And compared to that, everything before was just a rumor. So long soak in those passages. There are also some helpful books.

Let me give you three authors. A.W. Tozer's book, The Knowledge of the Holy. How many have read that book? Okay, that's a really good book.

Second, A.W. Pink's book, The Attributes of God. How many have read that? Oh, we have. We're showing our colors.

More pinks than tozers. Alright. I think Pink's book is very helpful. Attributes of God. Very biblical.

Tozers is a bit more philosophical. Ah, now. Ready? Hold on, I've got to check my pocket again. All the money in my pocket.

How many of you read, have read the book by a Puritan named Stephen Charnock? It's spelled Charnock, but I believe you pronounced it Charnock. Stephen Charnock on the existence and attributes of God. How many have read the entire book? It's 900 pages, all right.

Listen, I'm not joking. It's the best. It's long. In the year 2015, you could say, you know, I plan to read this in my Bible, but I also want to read a little each night from this book by Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God. He covers 10, I think about 10 attributes of God, about 100 pages on each attribute.

It's so warm, It's so biblical. You'll find him talking about Bible passages that you've read through your Bible so many times and you think, I don't remember that even being in there. And you go back to Ezekiel, you go back to Job, whatever, and you think, there it is. Read the old writers who knew God best and let them help you. They become like these lifelong companions.

It's you and God and the Scripture, yes, so that you have something to pass on to your children, you have something to pass on to people at church, you have something to pass on to people you work with, and it is not just all hearsay. But take the old writers with you, they become lifelong friends. For more messages, articles, and videos on the subject of conforming the Church and the family to the Word of God, and for more information about the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, where you can search our online network to find family integrated churches in your area, log on to our website ncfic.org. You