Cornerstone Church of Blaine
2013 Men’s Retreat
“Everybody worships. In the day-to-day trenches of
adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism.
Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what
to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe
choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to
worship is that pretty much anything else you worship
will eat you alive…
If you worship money and things, if they are where
you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have
enough, never feel you have enough. Worship your
body and beauty and sexual allure and you will
always feel ugly. And when time and age start
showing, you will die a million deaths before they
finally grieve you…
worship power, you will end up feeling weak and
afraid, and you will need ever more power over
others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your
intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling
stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found
out. But the insidious thing about these forms of
worship is… they’re unconscious. They are default
settings.”
- David Foster Wallace, 2005
Glory to God
Glory to Us
Worship of God
Worship of…
Money
Career
Reputation
Homo religioso: Man the Worshipper
They went on from there and passed through
Galilee. And he did not want anyone to know, 31 for
he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The
Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of
men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after
three days he will rise.” But they did not understand
the saying, and were afraid to ask him. And they
came to Capernaum. And when he was in the
house he asked them, “What were you discussing on
the way?” But they kept silent, for on the way they
had argued with one another about who was the
greatest.
- Mark 9:30-34
If we are unsuccessful at bringing glory to ourselves,
we feel empty. Like failures.
If we feel we are successful at bringing glory to
ourselves we seek our worship is killed because of
PRIDE.
All of this worship for ‘self-glory’ leads to problems
with:
• Identity
• Immaturity
• Integrity
Our created identity: worshippers of God.
When we try to change our identity and worship
other things for our glory, we get problems with our
identity.
Alternate identities:
• lead to emptiness immediately
• they lead to only temporary fulfillment until they
become our baseline and fail to satisfy
New Identity
Self – glory
Fulfillment
Emptiness
We look to our jobs, families, bank
accounts, looks, etc., to give us something
they never can: SPIRITUAL FULFILLMENT
Seeking self-glory over God’s glory is immature.
False worship leads to immaturity.
Immaturity:
Rejecting our God-given identity and dreaming
about the identity we really want.
We fantasize about our own glory.
Integrity: soundness of moral character. Honesty.
When we worship God, when our identities are
correctly in place, we are the same wherever we
are, and whatever we encounter.
This is because our God is always with us, and what
we worship is always present.
Lack of Integrity: holes in our character.
When we worship our glory, we are different when
opportunities for glory our present.
We try to be glorious at work, in public, or in our
dreams, but we are grumpy and unloving to our wife
and kids.
There is a war for our worship.
Worshipping God is a fight on our own, but it is
natural in God’s presence.
The presence of God leads us to worship.
We are at peace when we bring God glory through
worship.