Spiritual Disciplines Ep. 7: Worship

Ask the Pastor with J.D. Greear

J.D. Greear

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.9 • 624 Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2024

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Show Notes:

MATT: J.D., our next spiritual discipline is worship. What do we mean by the “discipline of worship?”

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J.D.: Matt, good question. I’m excited to talk about this one because I think it’s perhaps the least-understood spiritual discipline. When I say “worship,” what’s the first thing that pops into your head? Probably the 3 or 4 “worship songs” we sing when we gather at church—or even just the genre of the music itself. But Jesus said the Greatest Commandment was to love God with all our hearts and souls and minds, and this is the heart of everything else we do. This is worship, and it’s the center of the Christian life. The center of the Christian’s life, plain and simple, is worship. The center of our discipleship is not community or mission or evangelism or justice work; it’s worship.

And that’s because we were created for God. One of my favorite devotional writers, Chris Tiegreen, said: “Worship is not part of the Christian life; IT IS the Christian life.” You could be really busy with all the other stuff, but if it doesn’t come out of a heart of passionate love for God, it’s all just dry, dead, religious formality
At TSC, we attach two important disciplines to the identity of ‘worshiper’: 1. weekly, corporate worship (as in, coming to church each weekend, just like Jesus commanded--he says in Hebrews, “Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together”); the second is daily personal worship (a daily time where you meet with God, like we see exemplified in the life of Jesus). I hope you practice both.

MATT: From Dalton: “What is the importance of worshiping together instead of online?”

Listen, I get it. Sometimes health considerations keep you at home. And if you’re sick, please, skip a week. But I think of it like this; sometimes when I’m sick, I will quarantine in my room so I don’t get the rest of my family sick. And I’ve even FaceTimed into family dinner so I could be a part! That’s like “Super Dad.”
But if every night, even when I’m healthy, I go up to my room and FaceTime into dinner for a few minutes, then you would be right to suspect my commitment to our family. Be in person.
You can’t follow Jesus and not be connected with his family.

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Matt: Next week, we'll continue our series on the spiritual disciplines by recapping everything we've talked about and answering a few new questions, too! Don’t miss it next week.
We're now on YouTube; subscribe to @J.D.Greear.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody. Welcome to Ask the Pastor. I'm here with J.D. Greer. I am your humble host, Matt Love. Probably not as humble as you should be host.
0:15.5	I really appreciate you enunciating the K and Ask the Pastor. I feel like that's an important, yes. Yeah, I, you know,
0:24.0	I take allocution very seriously, and it's part of the reason I got this job, I think.
0:28.6	And I take interlocution very seriously, which is why I'm doing this. So what a vocabulary
0:34.4	day we owe each other a dollar because we bet each other that we couldn't use those words in the podcast. So good for us. We break even there. All right, J.D., we're in our last week of an eight-week series, this kind of series we've been doing on spiritual disciplines. It's been unbelievable. It's just been, I think, really, really helpful, really, really practical, great way to start the year. And so now we're talking about our last discipline is the spiritual discipline of worship.
0:59.5	So, J.D., what does that mean, the discipline of worship?
1:02.2	Is that the discipline of listening to, you know, your elevation mix when you have your time with God?
1:09.4	Is it, you know, you only listen to Christian rap? What is the
1:12.2	discipline of worship? Help us understand that. Only listen to Christian rap. I've never heard that
1:17.4	as a prescription for, well, that was most of the questions were Toby Mac related. So I just
1:24.1	wanted to make sure that got in there. So, you know, I'm actually excited to
1:28.4	talk about this one because I do think this might be one of the least understood spiritual
1:32.4	disciplines. You know, when you say worship, the first thing that pops in people's head is usually,
1:37.9	you know, the three or four worship songs we sing when we gather at church or maybe you even think
1:42.1	the genre of the music itself. But Jesus said
1:45.2	that the great commandment, the great commandment was that we love the Lord, our God with all our
1:49.5	hearts, souls, and minds. That's the first one. And that is the heart of everything else that we do.
1:55.9	That's worship. It's not just something we can, you know, boil down to an hour that we do together on Sundays.
2:03.6	It really is supposed to be our entire life.
2:05.6	That is not to downplay the importance of that corporate time of worship.
2:10.6	It's just to say that, you know, Paul says whether we eat or drink or whatever we do,
2:14.6	we should do it all as an act of worship with the glory of God.
	...

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