What can we do to move our worship services in a God-centered direction—a worship that exalts Him and humbles us? Terry Johnson says: “The single most important step is to fill them with biblical content. Bible-filled services, services in which the songs, prayers, readings, and sermons are full of Scripture, will inevitably be filled with God as well.” This is to simply affirm that God calls the shots in worship. He sets the talking points. He is the Lord; we are the servants.

Christian worship takes place in the context of a covenant relationship between us and God. It is vital that we remember the roles we each take in that relationship: He is the Lord, and we are the servants. Therefore, worship should be an extremely humbling act, reminding us of our own creatureliness. After all, the god we are most tempted to worship besides the living and true God is the god of self. But real worship reorients us and corrects that idolatrous impulse by making it primarily about God and what He desires.

Does the corporate worship we engage in on a weekly basis impress on us our status as servants of the living God? Or do we implicitly think that we are in control, that we can call the shots in this meeting with God? I think there are at least three things that we should ask to evaluate if our worship meets the biblical criteria of asserting the supremacy of our covenant King.
Who Talks First?
The first question is simply this: Who talks first? Is it us or God? It ought to be God—it must be God. Why? Because it’s God’s Word, not man’s, that has the power to constitute a relationship with Him. If we are to come and engage with Him—which is what is happening in worship—then He needs to call us. The Westminster divines explain, “The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto Him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of Him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God’s part” (WCF 7.1). He is too great for us to grasp, unless He makes Himself available to us. This is why Reformed and Presbyterian churches have historically begun their worship services with a “call to worship.” The call to worship sets the stage and structures our services in such a way as to remind the worshipers that God is supreme, and we are His servants.
Who Talks Most?
The second question to ask is this: Who talks most? Is the service predominantly God speaking to us in the reading, singing, and preaching of the Scriptures, or is it us talking to Him? Both are important, but what are we implicitly saying if 75 percent—or even 50 percent—of a worship service is taken up with our words to God? Do we think what we have to say is more important than what God has to say?
Some U.K. readers will be familiar with the voice of Oswald Lawrence, though they likely do not know the name. Lawrence was a largely unsuccessful actor, albeit for one role: since the 1970s he was the voice of the London Underground, reminding commuters on the Northern Line to “mind the gap!” as they stepped off the tube. He served in that role until 2012, when the Underground phased out his voice in favor of an automated voice that would be used uniformly across the entire subway system. No one probably noticed, except for Lawrence’s dear widow, Margaret.

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Sanctification is a process. Give yourself the freedom to grow rather than expecting yourself to have arrived because you’ve understood some things. This is another way to protect your heart in the process of growing so that you experience sanctification as the gift God intends it to be.

Sanctification may come across as a fancy theological word. Don’t be intimidated. Simply put, sanctification is the process of becoming more like Jesus. When we embrace the gospel, God erases our sin debt, and we gain the assurance of eternity with God in heaven. That is justification. It occurs in a moment. For the rest of our earthly life, we experience progressive sanctification. It happens with ebbs and flows and in new ways during each season of life.
As we think about sanctification in light of a journey through suffering, one of the challenges for us is that we usually only think of sanctification in terms of purification from sin. Removing sin from our lives is a vital part of sanctification. We do want to see the desires of our hearts that make sin enticing shrink. The metaphor of pruning is often used for this aspect of sanctification (John 15:1–5); our sinful tendencies are cut away so that we will experience greater growth and bear more good fruit in our lives. This pruning can be painful—but even when it is, it is good, and we should thank God for it.
But if we only think of sanctification in terms of purification, we begin to believe that every unpleasant emotion that emerges from suffering reveals an idol, some aspect of life taking on a God-sized role in our heart. This belief is inaccurate, creates false guilt, and causes God to come across as an uncaring cosmic Cop. An incomplete view of sanctification makes it difficult to process grief that has stagnated in the anger phase.
So, we ask, What is the complementary aspect of sanctification that needs to be emphasized? If sanctification is the process of becoming more Christlike, the following question will point us to the answer. What verb does the Bible use to describe Jesus’ response to suffering? Consider what Hebrews 12:2 says of Jesus: “Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (emphasis added).
We become like Jesus when we endure suffering in a way that resists the shame that often accompanies it. We need a view of sanctification that allows us to both be purified from sin without a condemning sense of guilt and endure suffering without a stigmatizing sense of shame. That is what it is to be Christlike in a broken world where sin and suffering are both common experiences.
We will consider both sanctification via purification and sanctification via endurance to further consolidate the progress you’ve made on this journey. Hopefully, realizing that sanctification is not just about purification will provide the emotional freedom to grow in the areas where some desires have grown too large, which is inevitably true of all of us.
Sanctification via Purification
This is where we ask the question, What has become so important to me that I have been willing to sin in response to my pain? Perhaps your drive for achievement made the setbacks resulting from your hardship unbearable, so you cheated to catch up.
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To bear our cross is to take on ourselves whatever suffering, sacrifice and substitution is necessary for doing what interests God. Jesus was specific about saying that it is “our” cross that we are to bear, not His. But it is like His, having the same sacrificial qualities.

The cross is the character of Christianity.
As the self-appointed spokesman for Jesus’ handpicked coterie, Peter says the right thing at the right time: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” But Peter cannot leave good enough alone. As Jesus goes on to explain for the first time that He will go to Jerusalem, suffer, die, and be raised again, Peter rebukes Him for such an outlandish notion. “Never! Not you! God forbid it, Lord!”
Within moments of Peter’s sky-scraping avowal, for which he will always be remembered, Jesus calls Peter “Satan” (“Get behind Me Satan”) and declares that he is not setting his mind on God’s interests, but man’s.
It was God’s interest that Jesus must go to the cross; it is His interest that you and I bear ours also. The next pronouncement follows this incident and the revelation of Jesus’ Jerusalem itinerary, and leans on it for meaning:
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and will then repay every man according to his deeds. (Matthew 16:24-27)
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