Thursday Show
Jeff Deyo (Sonic Flood) / Worship Leading / Thursday Training
Leading Worship - God's Way
What God Says About Worship
The Authentic Worshiper
Ever sat down, put pen to paper, and designed a detailed strategy concerning all it would take for you to become a 100% complete phony? Ha! We’ve all been pushed to adopt some audacious goals for ourselves in the New Year, but this might take the cake.
Have you ever made a New Year’s resolution to be Luke warm? You know, where you were really committed to working at it this time?Ever decided to set a goal to avoid at all costs practicing what you preach? With the hopes of fooling everyone around you into thinking you’re super spiritual, evident by your super spiritual lingo?Before you were married, did you concoct a wild scheme to stay married for 25 years, have 3.5 kids, a dog, and a white picket fence, and then leave them all for a young lover?
Ever set out to be a Pharisee? Not likely. Nobody sets out to be any of these things. To be unauthentic, to be fake, to be religious, to fall away from God, to have an affair, to become an addict, or to lose their faith. Yet somehow some of us still arrive at these places.Frustrating right? This is the human condition. Without God.So… what can we do to guard against these things in our lives? Since no one ever plans for these things, it seems we’d better make a plan to stand against them before we fall victim to the same old schemes.It should, of course, come as no surprise that we aren’t the only ones who don’t particularly enjoy this human tendency to talk the talk without walking the walk. God is in full agreement. Like us, he is looking for those who will love and walk with him with all of their heart. With actions and with words. Actually, with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
John 4:23 is a prime example. “But the time is coming and is already here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for anyone who will worship him that way.
”That little four-letter word before the word worshipers says it all. Just think, Jesus didn’t have to use that word in this sentence. He could have just said, “But the time is coming and is already here when worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.” But he realized something that is still true today.
The people of his time had a skewed understanding of what worship is. The word worshipall by itself was not enough. He was forced to add a qualifier to keep them (and us) from assuming they knew what he was talking about, when he knew they really didn’t.When he adds the word true to the word worshipers, it changes the meaning entirely—or at least makes it much more precise.
Adding true suggests a couple of things.
One. That this is very important to God—authenticity. It says this literally in the second half of the verse. That authentic worship is something God is “looking for”. Something he is seeking. Something that is foundational to his relationship with us.
Second. It suggests that there is more than one type of worshiper. We can assume if there are true worshipers, there must also be false worshipers. Here again, as always, Jesus is pushing our buttons. He isn’t giving us the easy out. He’s choosing to make us uncomfortable.But surely he isn’t saying we are not true worshipers? Surely he isn’t suggesting we are a bunch of fakes? Certainly he isn’t questioning our integrity? Hmm. Then again, maybe he is asking us to consider questioning ourselves.
Some people get super freaked when someone starts looking under their hood. As soon as we take a peek at what’s beneath the surface, they start screaming, “Who died and made you my judge?” But of course, Jesus is our ultimate judge (John 5:27). And yet, he isn’t pushing our buttons to tick us off. He is attempting the important work of helping us grow into beautiful sons and daughters as part of his Body. To him, becoming an authentic worshiper—an authentic follower of Christ, in and out of the public eye—is one of the most foundational issues in the Kingdom.
Solomon wisely asserts in Ecclesiastes 5:1, “As you enter the house of God, keep your ears open and your mouth shut. Don’t be a fool who doesn’t realize that mindless offerings to God are evil.Mindless offerings? Woah.Do we do this? Do we offer worship to God without thought, without meaning, at times? Rashly, without contemplating its true significance? Flippantly, in the tradition of man rather than to cultivate genuine relationship with God?It is true. In fact, one of the great frustrations of our God concerning his people is that we honor him with our lips but not with our lives. “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far away. Their worship is a farce, for they replace God’s commands with their own man made teachings.” Matthew 15:8-9I heard someone say once, “Christians don’t tell lies. They sing them.” Ouch.
This is a little scary, honestly. How often do we sing, “You’re all I need,” or “Nothing compares to you, Lord?” All the while we cozy up to our little vices that satisfy so temporarily.We are not so unlike the Israelites. In fact, we are them. The stories. The scripture verses. They’re all about us. They aren’t tales of some far off rebellious people we cannot relate to. They are tales of our people. Our families. Our friends. Our rebellion. And they do reveal our desperate need for a Savior.
It’s not that Israel needed saving. Those people. The ones in the ancient Bible stories. It’s that we need saving. For without God, we, like the Israelites, are destined to repeat every corrupt act. We need God to save us from ourselves. From our rebellion. From our traitorous hearts.
How is it that seemingly five minutes after Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt—delivering them from the most hellish bondage—they were already melting down gold jewelry and molding it into a calf to worship, declaring it to be the god who delivered them? Exodus 32.How is it that five minutes after a powerful Sunday church service we are so quickly engulfed in gluttony, sinful anger, and worldly pleasures? Are we so different when left to ourselves?Psalm 78:36-37 sums it up. “But they followed him only with their words; they lied to him with their tongues. Their hearts were not loyal to him. They did not keep his covenant.”
In his book, The Air I Breathe, Louie Giglio reminds us that the words we speak are very important to God. “But God isn’t honored by words alone. Like any of us, He’s moved by words that are authenticated by actions. When it comes to worship, it’s the total package that matters—what you say, how you say it, and whether you mean it. And our words mean most when they’re amplified by the way we choose to live our lives…”Isaiah 1:12-17 takes it up a notch by condemning not only Israel’s false tongue but also their false religious activity. “Why do you keep parading through my courts with your worthless sacrifices?” for it is God Who is all the while effectually at work in you , both to will and to work for His good pleasure and satisfaction and delight.” (Amplified Bible, Classic Edition) Amazing.
God is working inside us—as we allow him to—reworking things in our lives so that we now have both the desire and the strength to bring God pleasure through obedience. This is what it means to be a new creation in Christ.
God clearly recognized our inability to become the authentic worshipers he designed for us to be, yet he has now made a way for us to be that which we could not be in our own strength, through the supernatural power and work of his Spirit.
So now we no longer need be afraid when God declares in Amos 5:23, “Away with your hymns of praise! They are only noise to my ears. I will not listen to your music, no matter how lovely it is.” For we know that the way we live our lives sings much louder than all of the songs we could ever sing in church combined.
Does God hate music? Is he opposed to worship songs? Church meetings? Solemn assemblies? No. But he knows what we often miss. That singing lovely songs alone won’t produce for us the godly lives we are meant to live, but that living godly lives—lived by faith, in the power of the Spirit—will produce the most beautiful songs that we as authentic, true followers of Christ, could ever sing.
Guest Bio
Jeff Deyo (@jeffdeyo) is a worship leader, author, recording artist, songwriter, speaker, and professor who could eat Mexican food for every meal. He is known internationally as the former lead singer of the Grammy-nominated, Dove Award-winning group, Sonicflood, and lives to help people grow closer to God. He recently released his first book, Awakening Pure Worship, worldwide through Destiny Image Publishers and is the creator of the Pure Worship Podcast and the Pure Worship Institute, a refreshing worship conference designed to equip and empower singers and musicians. Jeff holds the high honor of being a professor at North Central University in Minneapolis, MN and travels extensively leading worship, speaking, and coaching worship teams. He has been happily married to his college sweetheart, Martha, since 1992. Together, they have four beautiful children, Roman, Evan, Channing, and Clara as well as two pet leopard geckos.
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