Turning Points: The Importance of Authentic Worship

Devotional

Day 1: Recognizing Life's Turning Points

Description: Turning points in life often come unexpectedly and can significantly alter our life's trajectory. These moments can be influenced by various factors such as people, experiences, or decisions, leading us to question, "How did I get here?" Recognizing these moments is crucial as they can help us understand God's plan and purpose for our lives. By reflecting on these pivotal moments, we can gain insight into how God has been working in our lives and how we can align ourselves more closely with His will. [02:46]

Isaiah 30:21 (ESV): "And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left."

Reflection: Think of a recent turning point in your life. How did it change your perspective or direction? Can you see God's hand in that moment, and how might you respond to His guidance today?

Day 2: The Essence of Authentic Worship

Description: Authentic worship is the central organizing principle of our lives. It involves genuine attraction, admiration, affection, and adoration for God. When we lose this authentic worship, we lose our moral compass, leading to self-destructive behaviors and a depraved mind. Authentic worship is not merely a ritual but a heartfelt response to God's love and majesty. It requires us to engage with God on a deep, personal level, allowing His presence to transform our hearts and minds. [14:24]

Psalm 29:2 (ESV): "Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness."

Reflection: Reflect on your current worship practices. Are they truly heartfelt and genuine, or have they become routine? What steps can you take to deepen your worship experience and make it more authentic?

Day 3: Maintaining Moral Sanity

Description: Moral sanity requires a God-enlightened and God-energized spirit. Without authentic worship, our moral faculties weaken, making us susceptible to self-destructive behaviors. Our conscience and imagination must be calibrated to God's word to maintain moral sanity. This involves regularly immersing ourselves in Scripture, prayer, and fellowship with other believers to keep our moral compass aligned with God's truth. [21:50]

Proverbs 4:23 (ESV): "Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life."

Reflection: Consider an area of your life where you struggle with moral clarity. How can you invite God's word and spirit into that area to strengthen your moral faculties and make better choices?

Day 4: The Gradual Loss of Personal Freedom

Description: The loss of personal freedom happens gradually and often goes unnoticed until it becomes dramatic and catastrophic. This loss is a result of rejecting God's word and will, leading to enslavement by various sins and addictions. By staying vigilant and rooted in God's word, we can prevent this gradual decline and maintain our personal freedom. It's essential to regularly examine our lives and ensure that we are not unknowingly enslaved to sin. [28:10]

Galatians 5:1 (ESV): "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery."

Reflection: Identify a habit or behavior that may be subtly enslaving you. How can you take steps today to break free from it and reclaim your personal freedom in Christ?

Day 5: Embracing God's Mercy and Restoration

Description: Despite our failures and the consequences of our actions, God is always merciful and ready to restore us. We must be willing to cry out to Him in our misery, trust in His word, and allow His spirit to work in our lives to regain our freedom and moral sanity. God's mercy is boundless, and He desires to bring us back into a right relationship with Him, no matter how far we have strayed. [38:38]

Lamentations 3:22-23 (ESV): "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness."

Reflection: Reflect on a time when you experienced God's mercy and restoration. How can you extend that same mercy to others in your life today, and how can you remain open to God's ongoing work of restoration in your own life?

Sermon Summary

### Summary

In today's sermon, we explored the concept of "Turning Points" in our lives—those pivotal moments that change our life's trajectory, often without our immediate awareness. We delved into the story of Israel, focusing on the period after King Solomon's reign when the kingdom split into two. The northern tribes, led by Jeroboam, created a false religious system, leading to their eventual downfall and exile by the Assyrians. This historical account serves as a cautionary tale about the consequences of losing authentic worship, moral sanity, and personal freedom.

We examined how the Israelites' rejection of God's word and their adoption of idolatry led to their moral and spiritual decline. Authentic worship, we learned, is not just a ritual but the central organizing principle of our lives. It involves genuine attraction, admiration, affection, and adoration for God. When we lose this authentic worship, we also lose our moral sanity, leading to self-destructive behaviors and ultimately, the loss of personal freedom.

The sermon emphasized that nations don't get corrupted by policies but by the cumulative corruption of individuals. This corruption starts with the loss of authentic worship, which weakens our moral faculties and leads to a depraved mind. Without God's word and spirit guiding us, we lack the self-restraint and self-control necessary to live righteously.

We also discussed the slow but inevitable loss of personal freedom that follows moral decline. This loss often goes unnoticed until it becomes dramatic and catastrophic. The Israelites' story serves as a warning that we must heed God's word and maintain authentic worship to avoid similar fates.

In conclusion, the sermon called for self-examination to ensure that our worship is genuine and that we are not unknowingly enslaved to sin. It reminded us that God is always merciful and ready to restore us if we turn back to Him in humility and trust.

###

Key Takeaways

1. destructive behaviors and a depraved mind. [14:24]
3. Moral Sanity: Moral sanity requires a God-enlightened and God-energized spirit. Without authentic worship, our moral faculties weaken, making us susceptible to self-destructive behaviors. Our conscience and imagination must be calibrated to God's word to maintain moral sanity.

4. Loss of Personal Freedom: The loss of personal freedom happens gradually and often goes unnoticed until it becomes dramatic and catastrophic. This loss is a result of rejecting God's word and will, leading to enslavement by various sins and addictions.

5. God's Mercy and Restoration: Despite our failures and the consequences of our actions, God is always merciful and ready to restore us. We must be willing to cry out to Him in our misery, trust in His word, and allow His spirit to work in our lives to regain our freedom and moral sanity.

### [14:24]

Youtube Chapters

[00:00] - Welcome
[02:02] - Introduction: Turning Points
[02:46] - How Did I Get Here?
[03:43] - Israel's Turning Point
[04:24] - Jeroboam's False Religion
[05:07] - Assyrian Captivity
[06:32] - God's Patience and Warnings
[07:46] - Rejection of God's Decrees
[08:24] - Worship and Worthlessness
[10:34] - The Cycle of Nations
[11:59] - Loss of Authentic Worship
[13:23] - What is Worship?
[14:24] - Attributes of Real Worship
[19:50] - Loss of Moral Sanity
[21:50] - Depraved Mind Explained
[28:10] - Loss of Personal Freedom
[30:05] - Enslavement to Sin
[34:11] - Freedom Through Christ
[38:38] - God's Mercy in Our Misery
[40:59] - Closing Prayer

Bible Study Guide

Observation Questions

What were the main reasons for the downfall of the northern kingdom of Israel according to 2 Kings 17:5-23?
How does Jesus describe true worship in John 4:23-24?
What does Romans 1:28 say about the state of a depraved mind?

Interpretation Questions

How did the Israelites' rejection of God's word lead to their moral and spiritual decline? ([07:46])
What does it mean to worship God "in spirit and in truth" as mentioned in John 4:23-24? ([16:32])
How does the loss of authentic worship weaken our moral faculties and lead to a depraved mind? ([21:50])
What are the implications of losing personal freedom gradually and then dramatically, as discussed in the sermon? ([28:10])

Application Questions

Reflect on a turning point in your life. How did it change your life's trajectory, and what role did your faith play in that moment? ([02:46])
Evaluate your current worship practices. Are they genuinely rooted in attraction, admiration, affection, and adoration for God? How can you make your worship more authentic? ([14:24])
Have you experienced a loss of moral sanity in any area of your life? What steps can you take to recalibrate your conscience and imagination to God's word? ([21:50])
Think about a time when you felt a gradual loss of personal freedom. What were the warning signs, and how did you respond? ([28:10])
In what ways have you experienced God's mercy and restoration in your life? How can you extend that same mercy to others? ([38:38])
Identify one area in your life where you might be unknowingly enslaved to sin. What practical steps can you take this week to break free from that enslavement? ([32:50])
How can you ensure that your worship remains the central organizing principle of your life, guiding your beliefs, values, priorities, and practices? ([13:23])

Sermon Clips

### Quotes for Outreach

1. "When we most of the time have that experience and we say, How did I get here? How did things get like this? The truth is, it's most of the time an expression of frustration. It is not an honest expression of bewilderment. What am I saying? I'm saying the truth is, if we wanted to, if we really wanted to, we could trace our steps. Exactly how we got where we're at and why we're getting what we got." [02:46] (31 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)

2. "Everyone worships something or someone. Everyone. The only thing is some people don't know that they're worshiping and they don't know what they're worshiping and they don't know the repercussions. So let me give you kind of a quick perusal of worship. Worship first of all it is not just something that people choose arbitrarily it is the central organizing principle in our lives." [13:23] (25 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)

3. "Worship determines our beliefs, our values, our priorities, and our practices. It goes on. Worship is rooted in authentic attraction, admiration, affection, and adoration. There's a spontaneity about it. You can't fake it. Worship is grounded in trust and energized by love. So you and I would do well to pause and ask ourselves who or what we really worship." [14:24] (30 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)

4. "We lose freedom really slow and then really fast. Let me say that again. We lose freedom really slow, and it's unnoticed. But then we lose it. We lose it dramatically, catastrophically, really fast. All you've got to do is think of somebody that you've known that's been in any kind of an addiction cycle. The addiction cycle starts out rather slow. It might take a year. It might take a few years to develop it, but it usually ends up rather dramatic and catastrophic." [29:05] (29 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)

5. "A loving God wants to save you, me, though we deserve it not, from our troubles. We have to be willing to cry out to him in our misery. And that means we're going to be trusting, broken, willing to learn his ways, his will, through his word." [40:59] (18 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)

### Quotes for Members

1. "Nations don't get corrupted by policy. Nations get corrupted little by little because more and more individuals become corrupted. I can be corrupted. You can be corrupted. That's the first truth perhaps we need to let soak into our soul." [11:59] (16 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)

2. "What we actually worship is what we follow. What we follow is what we actually worship. They followed worthless idols and themselves, what does it say? Became worthless. What we worship, knowingly or unknowingly, molds, shapes, starts to show itself in our lifestyle and in our character." [07:46] (22 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)

3. "The loss of authentic worship weakens our moral faculties to the point that we don't have the strength to say no to things we should say. To say no to, and to say yes to things we should say yes to. Unless we're vitally connected with God through authentic worship, our spiritual faculties are not charged, they're not energized, they're not calibrated with his word, and his spirit can't really work in us, through us, to empower us to have self-control, which is a critical component of God expressing his life through us." [25:39] (39 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)

4. "When we exclude God and when we're not authentically worshiping God as he really is, we then fall into this cycle of desperation. We have no meaning. We have no purpose, so we create a meaning. We create a purpose. It might be that I'm just going to seek all the pleasure I can for as long as I can because I don't know when I'm going to die. It could happen at any time. So I get into this desperation cycle, and I just experience, and I experiment with everything that's available to me that I think will give me pleasure, power, prestige, possessions, whatever it is I'm pursuing." [20:23] (26 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)

5. "A loving God always always makes it incredibly easy for we human beings to return to him to reconnect with him so that he can then reconstruct our spirit soul and body and our lives the way he always wanted to be he's so patient he's so merciful he's so patient he's so loving he's so good like i said he he's the best the safest most beautiful best person in the universe he's the one we should always run toward regardless of what our condition is never run away." [37:08] (32 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)

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Transcript

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