Due to impacts from the storm, our Sunday Worship Service will be at 10:15 a.m. at The Avion Event Center at 1733 E Northrop Blvd Chandler, AZ 85286. Childcare will be provided for ages 0-3. There will be no Equipping Hour. Evening Service and Student Ministries will meet at 6pm at the Avion Center.

True Worship (Student Ministries 8/19/24)

Jacob Hantla August 19, 2024

Originally emailed to Student Ministries families on 2024-08-19. Event dates and schedules below refer to that time.

Dear Student Ministry Parents, 

Student Ministries meets every Sunday from 6-7:30pm on our campus at Grace Bible Church. If you have a student in 6th to 12th grade, your elders believe that the benefit to your student will be well worth the effort. You will be able to attend evening service and join in the sweet post-service fellowship. If you have any questions or concerns about Student Ministries and whether your student should be a part, please reach out to me. 

Yesterday's Sermon: True Worship

Yesterday, we built upon what we learned from Romans 12, where we learned that the proper response of faith to the gospel is to present our entire self as a living sacrifice, which is…worship.
 

Kris Drent joined us to teach the first of a two-part series on worship. You can listen to and watch the message on our webpage or YouTube. We are striving to make a recording available after each week. This way parents can review what is being taught and your student can listen in on any missed week. 

Here is the outline Kris taught from:

Three lives to consider as we learn about worship:

1. The Woman At the Well, John 4:7-26
Observations: 
  • The Father is seeking true worshipers.
  • Isolated “acts of worship” do not make us worshipers of God.
  • Unsaved people with broken, messy, sinful lives can become true worshipers by responding to the message of salvation in Jesus Christ.  
2. King David, Psalm 51
Observations:
  • No “acts of worship” are pleasing or acceptable to God without first offering their whole life in worship. 
  • Believers who stumble into sin and withhold an area of their life from God have broken fellowship with God.
  • God is gracious to restore believers who repent from sin and offer their whole life to God in worship.
3. Your life
    • Evaluate: Am I true worshiper of Christ?
    • Recognize: No acts of worship can save you.

Followup Discussion

Also, you can find the discussion guide, which was prepared for the discussion group leaders. This outline has questions to maximize the discussion group time. We aim to focus in each discussion group on: 

  1. What was taught? If the student can't repeat the main points of what was taught, accurate application will be impossible. This will be the same necessary first step I will be teaching about reading God's word in a few weeks. 

  2. How must this affect me? Just like when we read the Bible, it is not sufficient to understand what was taught. But we must go away, through the Holy Spirit, appropriately affected by what we learned. Similarly, we seek to model that the proper response to a sermon heard is a life affected. 

So before groups, after the sermon, I encouraged the students that discussion groups is a time for transparency. As Kris taught, the gospel is uncomfortable. We do not do ourselves any favors if we do not share honestly, refuse to confess sins, refuse to make specific plans for obedience, or speak in vague generalities to make ourselves look good. If we refuse to be genuinely transparent, we rob our brothers and sisters of the opportunity to genuinely care. God promises forgiveness and cleansing from unrighteousness to those who confess their sins, not to those who minimize them (1 John 1:9-10). 

I was so encouraged by the report from the discussion group leaders on how the students worked hard to make sure that they were properly affected by the lesson. 

My goal–and the goal of the many selfless servants in Student Ministries–is to support you in your parenting, in your discipleship and evangelism of your student. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me or your student's leader if there is a way we can help you better in this aim.  I hope the following questions are helpful as your followup on what we learned last night. 

What was taught
  1. Though God had commanded  “Acts of Worship” (such as sacrifices, burnt offerings, praying, singing), why were there times when God despised these things and did not want them from his people? (Such as David in Psalm 51)
  2. Can you describe the difference between doing “Acts of Worship” and living a “Sacrificial life of Worship?” 
How must this affect me?
  1. Am I, and do I desire to be a true worshiper of God?
  2. Are there things in my life that I love to worship more than God? If so, how must I shepherd my heart to grow in worship of God?
  3. What are areas of my life where I tend to not worship God as a living sacrifice? Or, what are areas of my life where:
    1. I tend to want to keep for my own purposes, rather than live for God’s glory?
    2. I don’t really know how to honor the Lord?
  4. What changes do I need to make in my heart and my habits to grow as a worshiper of God in my whole life?
Kris Drent will be back this Sunday for part 2.

Sincerely, your servant for His glory, 
-Jacob Hantla