James Greer: 00:02 Good morning Journey Church. Man, I’m so proud of our praise team. Amen? Let’s call it our worship team. Yeah? Wired for worship is so important that you understand that you are wired for worship because you know what? You’re going to worship something. You’re going to worship the creator who created you or you will worship the things that he created? So, let me give you some insight. First of all, let’s welcome the Alexandria Campus. Amen?

James Greer: 00:32 When you come in, be careful every Sunday morning when you get ready to worship. Don’t let your preferences rob God’s presence in your life. In other words, you’ve got to be careful. Sometimes maybe it can be the preference of the songs. It can be the preference of the lights. It can be the preference of the weather, it could be whatever the preference is. Don’t let your preference cause you to miss God’s presence. When you get on the grounds, when you start to come in. Say man, God, what I want is I want to come into your presence. I want to worship you. Listen for insights more than entertainment. Now listen, I like to laugh, you like to laugh, we all like to, but you need to be listening for insights because during the messages, almost every Sunday, God will give you an insider, a confirmation of what he would like to have you to learn today. So really tune in for insights. Engage in moments of spirituality, don’t detach. Well, what I mean by that is we all have things going on in our life. I have the, you have them, we’ve got emotional spiritual, financial, family problems. But when I try to, when I walk out of there and I walk into here, I try to detach from everything else and I say, God, I’m here with you. So just kind of leave it all out.

James Greer: 01:53 Pursue personal change. Yeah. Not Perfect content because it won’t happen here. If I had time, I won’t tell you, I won’t tell you all about an email I sent the other day that had some wrong spelling words. You all must not be reading them. I wanted to say, I can give you access. And I said something else. If you read it, you knew it. If you didn’t, don’t. So, when you come to worship, say, Hey, I’m coming here for personal change. Don’t, don’t say, man, I really knew somebody that needed that. My husband, I hope he got that. My kids. No you look for personal change in your life because the way you really come to church, you look for personal transformation, not just more teaching.

James Greer: 02:40 Don’t let fear rob your faith. If there’s one thing that happens, I believe on many, many Sundays. Almost every Sunday I think God calls you to have faith, to make a decision or to make a move or recommit your life or to make a move and you let fear rob that don’t do that. Don’t let that happen. The truth about worship is the Bible made it clear that we have to worship in spirit and truth. I started thinking, what is worship really? Is it when we sing? Is it the preaching? Is it dancing? Well, it wouldn’t be with me, that’s for sure. Is it clapping and is it giving? I don’t know. What worship is in the truest sense is, it’s divine honor. It’s praise. It’s adoring God in the simplest, simplest way you can put it. Just loving God. Our greatest purpose is to let God love us and our greatest, in return is we just love God.

James Greer: 03:35 In the truest sense, worship is the whole service. It’s when we come in, we use our words to express our love to God. When I preach, you’re preaching, you’re taking in God’s word, he’s speaking to you, and then we use our words, his word and our wealth. When we give, it’s one big circle. It’s the whole process of the service. It’s all worship. Amen? John 4:23 puts this way it says, but the hours coming in, it’s now is. This is it. This is the hour with true worshipers, they’re going to worship the father in spirit and truth. That that’s now. For the father is what? Seeking such worship from him. I love that, but it says God’s a spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit in true. Let me give you three quick insights into this and then I’ll give you three ways to worship him.

James Greer: 04:40 First insight is this. God wants us to worship him. I mean, I love that because it says he’s seeking us to worship him. I mean, there’s people say all of them, hey man, Brother James. If I just knew God’s will for my life, I would do it. Can I tell you something? Everybody here, it’s God’s will for you to worship him. And the more you know God’s word, the more you know God’s will and the more you know God’s word, the easier it is to worship God. So you can worship God through his word. I mean, some of my greatest worship times are not just here on Sunday, but these are some of my best times. Some of my best times it’s just me and God alone. Me and God in his word, and we worship. So you worship God, he wants you to do it. So you know it’s his will.

James Greer: 05:20 Second, we worship him in spirit and in truth, right? You’ve got to get the spirit in you. In essence, until you’re really saved, I don’t think you can truly completely worship him. Because when we truly worship him, we worship him in body, soul and spirit, were are at least tracheotomy. So you got to get the spirit in you to worship him in spirit and truth. So if you’re here today and you’ve never accepted Christ, the first step to you worshiping him is to make sure you get the spirit in you. Amen? Then we do it in soul. That’s our, our mind, our will and our emotion. And then we do it in our body. That’s our physical body. You’re here today physically to worship him. Sometimes. I mean we stand, sometimes we raise our hand.

James Greer: 06:33 Now, when I was raised, if you raised your hand, my mother would have broken it off. and if you laugh like that, she’d take a piece of my leg off. We just didn’t do that. We just sat, soured, and soaked. I thought that’s what church was all about. No wonder you didn’t want to go to church. You tried to look to see who could be the saddest. And we had a bunch of them. And if I laughed, oh, I was in trouble. I get in trouble at church, I get in trouble and got home. And there was no sitting somewhere else and hiding. I would have to sit right down there where you’re sitting, Tony. And My mother would sit next to me. Yeah. And if I laugh that loud, I was in trouble. But they didn’t tell any jokes either. Every single Sunday I thought I was dying and going to hell. I got saved every Sunday.

James Greer: 07:13 I did it over and over. Well look, what truth is this. You know, we would really come to worship, man. I wanted to love God. He’s a God that wanted to say me from Hell. Man. He was a god that loved me so much. He wanted me to have an abundant life too, and I wasn’t having an abundant life. And I’m telling you, there’s a God that loves you and he wants you to have a live. He wants you to have abundant life. He wants your worship. He wants you to worship in spirit. He wants you to worship in soul. He wants you to worship in body. You can raise your hands. You can clap. Not that David could dance and worship. If I dance, that would be anything but worship. I tried it. I’m the only person that got kicked out of dance class. I’m talking about after I’m grown.

James Greer: 07:59 It’s okay. Sometimes we clap. Sometimes we bow. But worship is this. It is this, you make a willful choice when you walk in the doors. God, I want to worship you today. It doesn’t matter how I feel. It doesn’t matter what I’m going through. It’s a willful choice. God, I want you in my life. I love you. I want to worship you. You make a willful choice. God, you’ve chosen me. I want to choose you.

James Greer: 08:22 Don’t let your preference rob your presence of God. So we know that he seeks us to worship him. We know that we have to have the spirit, but we know we do it in spirit and in truth. John 14:6 Jesus speaking, he said, Jesus said, I am the way, I am the truth and I am the life. No man comes to the father, but by me. See, there is some truth. There’s people trying to say there’s many ways to go to heaven. No there is not. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, the life, no man, come to the father, but by, so if you’re going to really worship God, you have got to do it in the truth. If you want to go to heaven, you only go through heaven, through Jesus Christ. And so when we worship, we worship him in the word and in the truth, the great aha moments is when you’re reading the word or the word is being preached and then the Holy Spirit confirms the word. And those are just aha moments. Those little special moments when God speaks to you, is when the truth, the word and the spirit come together. So those are insights about worship and what God has to say about it.

James Greer: 09:31 Let me, let me give you three ways to worship. Number 1, the first way we worship just with our words. Now when I say words, I say the words that we speak and the words that we sing. Now I cannot believe that the words I sing can be worshiped. I’m so glad it doesn’t say the way that we sing, it just said that we sing. Years ago when I was traveling and you all didn’t have recorders. Now. At one time I was traveling I had a tape recorder. And it was a little small thing that I used to record once. And I was driving and I recorded myself singing accidentally, and I played it back. And I say, God, that could not be worship. Matter of fact, God, that even scares me. But God sees it different.

James Greer: 09:56 God sees my heart. God is concerned about my heart. You say, God, how’s your heart? See, because our words come from our heart, but words are powerful. Proverbs 18:21 says, life and death are in the power of our words and our tongue. Do you understand how powerful your words are? Do you understand the power of God’s word? If you really, really want to understand power, if you ever understand the power of speaking God’s word, you ready? It can bring the life or death into any relationship, into any life. Be careful about the words that you speak.

James Greer: 11:00 1 Chronicles 16:4 puts it this way. David was probably one of the greatest worship people there ever was. I mean, David, he had pointed to some of the Levites. He said, listen some of you all’s job is to lead worship and to giving thanks and to praise the Lord and the Lord of Israel. He said, it is you all’s job. I want you to be a part of this great worship team. Some of you all are going play instruments. Some of you all are going to praise. Some of you all are going to sing. And sometimes our words. In other words, you know what I got out of that? You know I’ve got, I think worship, you are a participator or not just a spectator. I think you when you come to church, you participate. You don’t just, you’re not just a spectator. I mean you do it in different ways.

James Greer: 11:43 He, you say, hey man, I’m going to engage. I’m going to be a part of, sometimes you say amen. Even when you’re singing. Sometimes I don’t stand and sing because I wait until I get up here to stand. But I man, in my heart I’m saying, yes God, yes God. I was reading the words that was our first worship song that that the worship leaders sang, and you know what? I was enjoying worship more than even singing that time. I was just, I was reading the words and I was loving and saying, hey man, I just want to thank you God for who you are and what you’ve done and what you’ve done in my life and it brought us into worship. See, it’s because 1 Chronicles 16:8 talked about that. One of the ways we worship, we just started giving thanks to the Lord. We pray to him. We tell the nation’s all that he’s done. Man, we need to be telling people all that God’s done. We can sing to him. We can sing praises to. We can tell him about all the miracles. You say, God has never done a miracle. When you got saved, it was a miracle he saved you. I mean, man, we need every, do you realize that part of worship is telling people what God’s done for your life?

James Greer: 12:38 I was eating with a guy this week and he said, man, I’m actually practicing one of your messages. I said, praise God. I said, which one was it? He said, it’s about humility. It’s about when coming into a room I was often critical or I was self-conscious, so I decided when I go into a room from now on, when people there, I look to see what I can do to help them. So for the last two weeks I’d go into a room and I’m looking, I start saying I’m trying to help them. So this week they started saying, what’s going on with you? Like there was something wrong with me. And I said, well, I’m just trying to help. I said, yeah, there is something wrong with you, but it’s a good wrong and the good wrong is you know Jesus now and you didn’t before. They can’t figure out what’s going on with you. He said, and yet I’m even trying not to cuss like I used to. I said, yeah, I know it’s hard. And he said, yeah, but I’m trying. I said, Amen. He said, I’m not even sure if I’m saying it. I said, I think you are.

James Greer: 13:42 Because you changed and people are noticing the change. I mean, sometimes it’s the words that you speak. In fact, if you dropped down to verse 10 it said, be glad that you’re his. And isn’t that wonderful? If we don’t even glad that we belong to Jesus, we ought to be glad that we’re his. Let those who seek the Lord be what? You all ready for this? Listen, really close. Happiness is a byproduct of seeking Jesus Christ and finding him. No other way to find happiness. Happiness is a byproduct of seeking Jesus Christ. Happiness is a byproduct of repeating the right habits day after day. There’s no other way to have happiness. But man, I’m telling you what. I love it. It says hey, happiness. God wants us to be happy.

James Greer: 14:34 Depend on the Lord and his strength. Always go to him for help. I’m like, we’re going to talk about that again later. God wants us to do that. Hey, if you’re his, he said, then seek for my happiness. I love it because man, when I was young, I didn’t know you could be a Christian and be happy. Now that I’m a Christian, when I’m not happy, there’s probably something wrong with me. Amen? He said he wants us to be. Seek him, depend him, rely upon him. Did you know in James 1:17 says, every good and perfect gift that you have in your entire life came from God. Everything in your life that’s good came from God. And you tell me you don’t have things that you can tell good things to people that God’s done for you. Your health is good. Anything in your life is good. Came from the Lord. 1 Samuel 12:24 puts it this way, Trust in the Lord. Did you know trust in the Lord?

James Greer: 15:18 1 Samuel 12:24 puts it this way, Trust in the Lord. Did you know trust in the Lord is sincerely worship? Do you know trust in the Lord is one of the ways we worship him. I never saw trust as worship. It seems like we can trust in everything in the world, other than God. We were in the office this morning early, and Josh and Richie and Andrew came by and they said they wanted to pray before the service today and I was like good. And somehow they started talking about skydiving. I said, what does skydiving have to do with church? And Andrew said, I’d never do that. They said, you ever done that Reverend? I said, yeah, man, I did that. You did? Where’d you do it? I said, Las Vegas. They said, what were you doing in Las Vegas? They had all these signs, they say, why gamble with your money when you could gamble with your life? I said, honey, that’s cool. I said, I’m going to go try that.

James Greer: 16:04 She said, you’re not going do it. I said yes I am. She said, I’m not going to go watch you. I said, would you least go watch? She said, nope. I said, I’m going anyway. She said, well, that’s crazy. If you die, I’m not going to be there to watch. True story, and so I had to go by myself. Well, now everybody’s going. We go to that. I said, well, you know what you don’t know is before you go, you have to go through all this insurance stuff. It says we’re not responsible at man-made areas. It does all well, so by now they scare you to death. Now we’ve got about eight people. Everybody laughing and carry on. Then they’d go outside and they put this pack on you and you get ready to get in the plane and they strap you to somebody else and we’re all laughing here until we get in the plane. Then it gets 10,000 feet and my instructor says, nobody’s laughing. I can’t even speak. I go, Huh?

James Greer: 16:53 and I’m one of the first ones to go. And he said, you want to scoot out and look? Nope. Already a fourth of them quit. They wouldn’t get on a plane. Now if you go far enough to get the pack, you don’t get your money back. Now, up to then they said, you can quit, you can quit, you can quit. But once you get in there, you quit. About a fourth of them quit. And so he said, well at least put your legs out. And I put my legs out. He said, now, look up. I’ll look up. And he just pushed me. Now, once we got out and once it was out, I was okay, but I’m thinking the Bible says, trust in the Lord and sincerely worship him. Amen? This is a stupid, I’m going to trust some guy I don’t even know, and an airplane I don’t know how to fly, and a parachute I never packed. That’s stupid.

James Greer: 17:43 And then I have a little problem over here. Financial, emotional, spiritual, family problem worry problem, and I can’t trust God. God said, yeah, you’re slow. You see what I am saying? And God says, that’s why he wants us to trust him. I think I should trust God way more than I trust him. Then they said, you want to do it again? I said, I don’t know about that. I said, but you all keep saying you all do it at this place in Shreveport. Go down there and do it yourself. Nobody called.

James Greer: 18:10 You understand what I’m saying though? Trust in the Lord. You worship him. The reason I say that to you, this trust plus the truth equals worship. Whatever you’re going through in your life right now. Trust God. Find the truth about what you’re going through. Believe the truth and you can worship him. Because what happens today is we have trust plus tradition equals trouble.

James Greer: 18:42 You know it is. You would come to church plus tradition. We’ve always done it this way, we always spell it this way, we always act this way. So, so we come to church, we trusted, we come to church, we had tradition and it still equals worry, frustration, and fear. There’s something wrong with that problem. Amen? It doesn’t add, it doesn’t subtract the right way. Because we’re still living the same traditional way that we did when we came. That was never God’s intention. His intention for you is to come to him, to trust him, to get the truth of his word. And you go out with a peace and a power that surpasses all understanding. That’s what he meant. Amen? Alright, second way we worship, we got rock on here, we’re a little behind. Because you are all paying attention. Thank God. Amen? Whoo. You are all going to go skydiving.

James Greer: 19:35 Number two. We worship with his words. Did you know when I’m preaching and the way you’re paying attention, you’re taking it in. Did you all know that was a type of worship? Yeah, you’re his word, man. We worship through his word. We worshiped with ours. Now your worship with his word. And uh, Matthew 17:5 it says, while Peter was talking, there was a brown cloud that came and a voice came from the cloud and said, this is my son whom I love. Now listen to this. I’m very pleased with him. Listen to the last part, listen to him. God, the father said, listen, I want you to listen to the voice of my son. The way you receive God’s word when it’s being preached or when you’re being read, when it’s being is one of the ways you worship. Yeah. I’m going to give you a picture though of what goes on at the same time where you’ll see what’s happening.

James Greer: 20:28 I wish I’d known this when I was younger. There’s two things that are going on when I’m preaching, the Holy Spirit, trying to impress upon your heart to give you a truth to apply to transform your life. The devil and his spirit are trying to snatch it where you don’t get it. And if you look at Mark chapter 4:13 I’m going to walk through it real quickly because of time, but I want you to see there’s another truth that you can get out of this. You’ll see how Christians sometimes get saved and they’re gone, and you’ll see how relationships start out real happy and then break up real quick. Because really Mark 4 on, is really about relationships, total. Manely he was talking about the relationship between me, you, him and God. But it applies to every relationship in life. And if you’ll learn the principle, man, you can grow like crazy in every relationship. And if you don’t, none of your relationships will really last.

James Greer: 21:31 I’m preaching Mark 4:13 and he said to them, do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the other parables? He said, if you don’t understand this, you’re not going to understand them. And so he said, the sower sows the word. Oh, every Sunday when I preach, I better be preaching the word. Amen? And these are the ones who fall by the wayside where the word is sown. When the preaching, the words going out, your heart is a soul.

James Greer: 22:01 And when they hear, Satan comes immediately and he tries to take the word that is sown in your heart. In other words, the word is going out. It’s going out all over the saints where it’s going everywhere. It’s going over Facebook. It’s going everywhere now. And Satan said, Oh, let me get it. Let me get him distracted. Let me get it. Let me, let me do something where it doesn’t go into their heart. And so immediately he tries to take it away. Let me give you an illustration. Have you ever been in a relationship and trying to be truthful with somebody and they say, Hey, you’re taking my words and you are twisting them. Be Ready.

James Greer: 22:32 Satan wants to take the truth and twist it. He wants to take a relationship. Even when you’re trying to be honest with somebody you love and you’re saying, man, I want to tell you how much I love you. I was like, Oh, you’re just saying that. So Satan will twist the words where they don’t, he right words, don’t get into your heart. He’ll do it in relationship. He’ll do it in God’s word. He’ll do it in my preaching. But see, when you get exposed to the truth, now next time he tries to twist it. If you’ll be ready, the Holy Spirit will tell you, hey, he’s trying to twist it or trying to take it so you pay attention to the word Amen? You’ll know it, so you don’t wrestle against flesh and blood but with principalities.

James Greer: 23:11 Keep your heart. All the issues come from your heart. Verse 16 then it says, these likewise are the ones that sewn stony hearts. Then I’ll tell you why you need to keep your heart soft. You can come in and your heart is hard and you can hear the word, but it will last, because you hear the word immediately receive it and you receive it with gladness, but your heart was hard so it couldn’t go down deep. There was no roots. Uh oh in themselves. So they endure it only for a short time, yet they come to church and get excited for a short time. You get into a relationship and at you think it’s going to be great, afterwards then come tribulation. Can I tell you, I don’t care how good the church is. I don’t care how good you are. I don’t care how good your marriage is. I don’t care how good is your relationship. There’s going to be tribulation and persecution is going to come and if you don’t have the roots, you won’t have the fruit. So how deep your roots are will determine the way you respond when the problem comes. See it came, it came, and immediately they stumbled or immediately the relationship was broken or immediately they started having problems. See, I’m going to tell you something good. When the roots are deep, when the persecution comes, you get closer together, not further apart.

James Greer: 24:30 Now, these are the ones that that were sewn to thorns and they’re the ones that they heard the word and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things entered in. They just choked the word. They became unfruitful. Now see they came in, they heard word, they even knew the word, but they pursued the deceitfulness of riches. They told him they’re going to give him something that only God’s word could give them. See, you thought they were going to get happiness and see only God’s word gives you peace, love, and joy and it just choked it out. But then there’s Journey Church people, praise God. These are the ones that came, they saw the good ground. That’s your heart. It was ready. It was receptive. They heard the word, they accepted the word.

James Greer: 25:19 They applied the word and they bear fruit. Some 30 fold, some 60 fold, some a hundred. What kind of fruit did they start bearing? Love and joy and peace and long serving a gentleness, goodness, faith against the law, and nobody else could take from them. They started changing their lives. They had promises that they believe and lives changed because of who they were and the reason they could do that because they just surrendered their life. I want a church that learns to surrender. Can I tell you something? If you learn to surrender, you’ll live in the safest place in your life. If you surrender before anything or anybody can get to you, they got to go through Christ. That’s safe. That’s power. You start shrinking your wheels, your desires, your worries, your frustrations, your disappointment. It’s not a foolish thing to do. It’s the most important thing you do. Everybody surrenders to something or somebody. Yeah, you either surrender to your opinions or other’s opinions, to money, to entertainment, to fears, to pride or lust.

James Greer: 26:42 You are designed to worship God though, but if you don’t worship God, you’ll worship idols. You’ve got a free choice, but listen, you don’t have a free choice of the consequences. You don’t have free choice of the outcome. If you don’t surrender to Christ, you surrender to chaos. You don’t have a choice. That the other approach leads to frustration, disappointment, and self-destruction. The only reason we will not surrender to Christ is because of our own wills. Thinking we know better than Christ. Just like in the beginning with Adam and Eve.

James Greer: 27:00 The answer is to surrender. We worship God with our words, worship God through his word, and we worship God through our wealth. When we give on l Sundays, when I take the offer and I said, it’s a time of worship. 2 Corinthians 9:13 says this, you will be glorified God through your generous gifts. Your generosity will prove what? That you’re obedient to the good news of the gospel. Listen to this. Deuteronomy 14:23 the purpose of tithing is just to teach us to put God first in our life. Where our heart is so is everything else. I’m going to give you a couple of ways and we’re going to close. Do you know what the opposite of worship is, idolatry? As a Christian idolatry is looking to anything other than Jesus Christ to meet our physical, emotional, spiritual needs. That’s what idolatry is. You know what idolatry, is by when you’re going through pain, what do you look to? When you have a need what you go to? When you’re really hurting what do you look to? When you celebrate who Do you give credit to?

James Greer: 28:23 As we are getting ready to close, you get the wonderful opportunity to surrender to God. To become preoccupied and completely dependent upon Christ. We need to, somebody may need to surrender your heart to Christ as Savior. Some of you need to surrender your mouth. Some of you need to surrender your actions. You ready? Surrender is the safest sanctuary that you can ever live. I used to say, man, I want you to come to the be in the sanctuary, talking about right here when I get ready to preach. I want our sanctuary to be a real sanctuary. I want it to be a safe refuge, a place that anybody can come, no matter what they’ve ever done, no matter what their past, no matter what it is. When they walk in this sanctuary, we want to be a safe place. But when we surrender, we become into God’s sanctuary, his safe place. Listen to this. That means anything or anybody that wants to get to you has to go through Christ first. What a safe place to be. That’s where I want to be and that’s where I want you to be. Would you stand and let me pray for you and pray with you.

James Greer: 29:43 Father, thank you for your son. I just thank you that we can love you, that we can worship you and god been so good to us. God, I pray that for those that came today with worries and frustration and fears, they would just, man, they would just surrender to you. They need to surrender their hearts to Jesus. Surrender their worries, surrender their problems. If they need somebody to pray with them, to pray for them, God, whatever it is. If they need to join the church, or follow through in Baptism, God, whatever you live on their hearts, I pray, God, I pray that their faith would override any fear. It’s in Jesus name. I pray. Amen.

Recorded in Pineville, Louisiana.