Skip to content Open Heart Open Heaven: Relational Worship or Religious Ways Aug 31 · 29 min ...more
Open Heart Open Heaven: Relational Worship or Religious Ways
August 31, 2026 · 29 min
We hope you enjoy this episode of A Significant Life. You can watch A Significant Life every week in the PrayTV App, on The Cornerstone Network or on YouTube.Website: asignificantlife.comPrayTV App: Pray.comYouTube: youtube.com/@ASignificantLife
Series A Significant Life
Jim Graff is a respected pastor, leader, and author who loves helping people fulfill their unique
potential while finding their significance in Jesus Christ.
August 31, 2026 · 29 min · A Significant Life
We hope you enjoy this episode of A Significant Life. You can watch A Significant Life every week in the PrayTV App, on The Cornerstone Network or on YouTube.Website: asignificantlife.comPrayTV App: Pray.comYouTube: youtube.com/@ASignificantLife ...more Show the full description Show less We hope you enjoy this episode of A Significant Life. You can watch A Significant Life every week in the PrayTV App, on The Cornerstone Network or on YouTube.Website: asignificantlife.comPrayTV App: Pray.comYouTube: youtube.com/@ASignificantLife
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In this video 0:00 Dangers of Religious Tradition11:40 God's Authoritative Summons18:20 The Call to True Sacrifice29:40 Submission Over Wickedness39:20 Thank Offerings Unlock Salvation
Dangers of Religious Tradition 0:00 Hi. I'm Jim Graff, founder of Significant Life. Do you want to listen to our messages, podcasts, or prayers without interruption? Then subscribe to Jim Graff's premium channel on pray dot com.0:12 When you do, you unlock all of our A significant life content and get to listen to it ad free, all while supporting A significant life as we help others discover their unique God given significance.0:24 So join us in consuming faith filled content that enhances significance ad free by subscribing on the pray dot com app today.0:34 Visit pray dot com slash jimgraf to sign up, download the app, and get access to all of our content. It's also an incredible way to grow your daily prayer habit, giving you full0:46 access to pray dot com's original content and deeply encouraging meditative prayer series. Best of all, your monthly subscription helps fund the work where God is helping people discover how to0:57 live a significant life all over the world.1:00 Are you searching for a life that means something? Most of us wrestle with our significance. Pastor Jim Graf understands, and in his book, A Significant Life, he shares extensive insight and inspiration1:13 that can help us change the course of our life and live in the purposes God placed in our heart. A Significant Life is a must read for your gift of any amount. We would love to send you your own copy of A Significant1:24 Life. Contact us today. Visit a significantlife dot com. That's a significantlife dot com.1:50 If you have your bible, open to Psalm chapter 50. And I know a lot of you bring your phones on Sunday morning, and I hope you use our outlines that we prepare because our outlines always have the
2:02 major point of the scripture that we're studying, and it also gives you even more scriptures that you can study to strengthen the message that God speak into our heart. But today, I wanna talk about
2:14 the fact that have you noticed that there are many different people who bring many interpretations to the Bible? And some of that is good because as long as it's
2:26 God's doctrine that we don't mess with, we can all bring a little more understanding and perspective that helps us to serve God better. But the Bible also says in 1st Timothy 4 verse 1
2:38 that in the last days, there would be doctrines of devils. And what that means is the devil has this way of sneaking in and he distorts God's word and he deceives people and he
2:49 damages lives and he hurts people because we're not able to live God's truth the way that we should. And in Matthew 15, the Pharisees challenged Jesus 1 day
3:01 and they challenged him because he wasn't following the interpretation of scripture that they thought he should. And Jesus wouldn't follow it because that interpretation of scripture
3:13 was distorting God's presence and it was distorting the way God wanted to relate to people. But after the Pharisees challenged Jesus, he challenged him back and he said this to
3:25 them, why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? And Jesus is talking about the fact that religious habits can develop in our heart and they're not really
3:37 based on God's truth. They're just based on tradition that's been handed to us in life. And you may say, well pastor, why do people follow tradition like that? Well, for some people, they
3:49 just wanna please people in their life more than they want to please God. So this poor theology and poor tradition gets handed down through their families. For other people,
4:01 honestly, they want to live with the heart that's far from God. They don't want God to make these demands on them because they want to do their own thing. And pretty soon their religion has more tradition
4:13 associated with it than it's really acting upon the truth of God. And Jesus knew that's a dangerous thing and here's why. Jesus said in verse 6, you nullify the
4:25 word of God for the sake of your tradition. In other words, if you obeyed the truth, you would be blessed by the truth, but you're actually negating the power of the word of God because
4:37 of your tradition. And then Jesus said, you're actually hypocrites. And Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you that these people honor me with their lips, but their
4:48 hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain. In other words, their worship is really worthless because their teachings are just human rules. Now when Jesus called them a
5:00 hypocrite, I don't think it was quite as offensive as maybe we would hear that word today because it could also be interpreted that you're a pretender when it comes to
5:12 worship or you're an actor whenever it comes to your worship. It was very common in their day at their place for 1 performer to play many different parts,
5:23 and he would hold up a mask depending on the part that he or she was playing in that play. So think of it this way this morning. Let's just say that I was gonna bring you a message and I
5:35 was gonna be very fatherly and very wise, and I would hold up a pastor Larry mass. So you would know this is really pastor Larry I'm acting like this morning, not pastor Jim.
5:47 Or pretend I started talking really really fast and I sounded like I was from New York. How many of you know you would know it was doctor Chris who was talking to you, not pastor Jim. Or let's just pretend I moved so
5:58 fast that the cameras couldn't keep up with me. How many of you know that would be pastor Tony who is talking to you this morning, not pastor Jim? And Jesus was simply saying to them, you're not being who God has
6:10 called you to be because who you're called to be is a much loved child of God who because of how you honor the father, he is blessing your future more than you ever
6:22 dreamed your future could be blessed. That's the point of the Psalm we're gonna study today. God wants us to know that dishonor for his ways is gonna cause us to miss a lot of blessing
6:34 in our life. But honor for God's ways puts us on his pathway of blessing. And so I'm gonna read the last verse of this Psalm and then we're gonna come back and it's gonna teach us how
6:46 to experience what this last verse says. God wants every person to experience. Psalm 50 says, those who sacrifice thank offerings honor me and to the blameless
6:58 I will show my salvation. Now notice it's not to the perfect because none of us are ever gonna be as perfect as Jesus was. And the truth is we're all gonna be praying, God
7:09 forgive me of sins until the day we step into heaven. But but there is something God asks and that is a blamelessness. That when he points out something that's wrong in our life,
7:21 something that we're deceived about, something that's damaging our life, God wants us to have the honor to say, yes sir God, I wanna follow you and I wanna reflect your goodness
7:33 in my future. And that's what this Psalm is gonna help us to do. The word thank offering is the Hebrew word, todah, and it means to extend our hands in gratitude to
7:45 God. It's teaching us what moves our heart from a place of religion to a place of real worship. And it starts by God giving us a summons. And a
7:57 summons is a formal court order that requires us to appear. I recently got a summons. I was told that I had to show up at the end of July and I had to be in the
8:08 courtroom because I was potentially going to be the member of a grand jury. You say, what did you do with that summons? I prayed, Lord, please let me not be selected in the name of Jesus. No. I'm just
8:20 kidding you. What I did was I showed up and they didn't select me. So I will admit I was kinda happy. But when I got home, I got curious. I thought, what would have happened if I wouldn't showed
8:32 up for that summons and you and I learned the judge would have fined me 100 to 1000 dollars if I didn't show up or the judge could throw me in jail. Now why does the
8:43 judge have the power to do that? Well, God tells us in the 1st verse why he has the power to summons every single 1 of us. He starts in verse 1 by saying, the mighty
8:55 1, God. The Lord speaks and he summons the earth from the rising of the sun to where it sets. So God summons everybody. Why? Because when it says he's the
9:07 mighty 1, it's the Hebrew word El. And El means the almighty, the powerful God. God says, listen, I created the universe. And since I created the
9:19 universe, unless you have the power to create another 1 of these things called the universe, then I have the power to call you in and I wanna talk to you as your father. Think about this. What
9:31 if the person who created my iPhone saw me using my iPhone and he said to me, Jim, I wanna show you how to use this better. I would be happy because
9:42 my 7 year old granddaughter can show me how to use my iPhone better. But some people with their lives say, no God, I got this. I know what I want. And what happens
9:54 is when we say no to the designer, I wanna do what I wanna do, we end up diminishing the designer's plan for our life. So God says that I am El.
10:06 I'm the 1 who created everything. And then when he says, God, he says, I'm your creator and your judge. And of course, if the boss called us into the office, we have to go, right? Because
10:18 he's the boss. Or we could go get another job if we don't want to come in. But if you don't want to say yes to God, where are you gonna go? Because God owns everything. And then I love this last
10:30 part he says, I'm the mighty 1, God the Lord. And the Hebrew word for the Lord is, I'm the covenant keeping 1. In other words, I wanna love you better than you've
10:41 ever been loved. I wanna lead you places you could never go without me helping you, but I need you to respond to my summons if that's gonna happen. So God wants us to understand
10:53 that when he issues a summons, he's not asking us for an appointment. God's reminding us that he needs to be an authority in our life. And then he says it again in verse 4. It says, he
11:05 summons the heavens above and the earth that he may judge his people. And he says, gather to me the consecrated people who made a covenant with me by sacrifice.
11:17 Now, this is interesting because God is gonna be talking to people who say they're consecrated, who say that they're sacrificing things for God, but he's gonna say your sacrifice is
11:29 incomplete so I can't do all the things that I wanna do in your life because I love you so much. And so the 2nd thing that God does after he summons us
God's Authoritative Summons
11:44 interesting because God says in verse 7, he says, listen my people and I'll speak. I'll testify against you Israel that I'm your God. I'm your God. And
11:56 again, the word God is the 1 which means he's our judge. He's the 1 who summoned us into his presence. And he says to us, I bring no charges against you concerning your sacrifices or concerning your burnt offerings which
12:06 are ever before me. And that's concerning your burnt offerings which are ever before me. In other words, God says you're coming to church. You're even bringing your offering that I asked you to
12:18 bring to church. And I want you to know that's not what I'm thinking about. I'm not thinking about whether you consecrate yourself to come to church regular on a Sunday to honor the Sabbath. I'm
12:30 not thinking about whether you bring an offering whenever you come to church. And all of us know that we have to do those things to supply for God's house. Can you say amen? But here's God's point and that
12:42 is he doesn't ask us to come and do those things just to supply for his house. He calls us to do those things so he can shape us as a son or a daughter into a person
12:54 that God blesses. And so God says, I call you to consecrate yourself. I call you to sacrifice. What do we sacrifice? Well, we sacrifice our thoughts for his
13:05 better thoughts that can bless our life more. We sacrifice what we think would make us happy so that God's leadership could have full effect in our heart and we can truly be happy because of what
13:17 God does. But how many of you ever heard the story about the chicken and the pig? And they had a wonderful farmer who took care of them. He generously fed
13:29 them every single day. He built a beautiful barn to protect them and to keep the crazy creatures that could harm them away. And 1 morning it was the farmer's birthday
13:41 and the chicken got up 1st because he likes making noise whenever it's dawn, right? And then the chicken said to the pig who kind of slowly got up, he said, Listen, let's
13:53 do something special for mister farmer today because mister farmer is such a special man.
14:10 Minute. For you, that's an offering. For me it's a total sacrifice. Right? And that's what Paul says God asked us for in Romans chapter 12 verse 1. What does Paul say? He said, therefore I urge you brothers and
14:21 sisters in view of God's mercy. In other words, if Jesus died on a cross for you and if he loved you that much, if God the father loved you enough to send him to the
14:33 cross for you, do you really think you can produce a better life loving yourself than loving God with all your heart? The answer is no. But even people who come to church because
14:45 they understand that to some degree, Paul continues. He said, in view of God's mercy, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. You know,
14:57 your body carries a sin nature. It's why you have wrong thoughts. It's why you have wrong desires. And God says, you're gonna have to sacrifice that. And I want you to know this is your true and this is
15:08 your proper worship. And I put some scriptures on your outline. I hope you'll look at later because they talk about what God promises as our father to a person who lives with a fully
15:20 surrendered heart. Deuteronomy 28 verse 1 and 2, he says, if you'll fully obey me, and if you'll carefully follow all my commands I give you today, all my blessings are gonna come on you
15:32 and they're gonna accompany you if you fully obey me. Listen to what John Jesus said in John 15 7 before he was crucified. He looked at his disciples and he said, if you
15:44 remain in me and my words remain in you, you can start asking for whatever you wish and it'll be done unto you. In other words, the God who created everything including you,
15:57 the God who encoded desires in your heart, and the God who encoded a will for your life, He says, if you'll just trust me to be your father, I promise you it'll be more fulfilling than anything
16:09 that you could ever bring forth on your own as a person. And I know some of us here today are saying, Pastor Jim, man, I know God loves me. But the truth is, when when when I think
16:21 about my heart, I don't feel that loved by God. I get it. For others of you, you look at your circumstances and you think, why isn't God working in my circumstances more? Why don't I see God
16:33 God's love taking care of these things? Well, this verse is helping us and and and what's happening is God loves you but Jesus told the the disciples 2 verses
16:45 later after he said that if you'll remain in me and my words remain in you, you're gonna start asking for what you wish and it'll be done to you. Jesus said these words just 2 verses later,
16:57 He says, as the father has loved me, so have I loved you. So remain in my love. Don't let your thoughts and desires and emotions pull you from the love of God. And then he said, if you
17:08 keep my commands, you will remain in my love. Just as I've kept my father's commands and I remain in his love. And I've told you this so that your joy may be complete. And
17:20 I've told you this so my joy can be on the inside of you. If you wanna know how to be loved by God, I'll tell you how to live loved by God. Start doing what he asked of you
17:32 and 1 day you'll look up and you'll say, my goodness, I can't believe that God can make my life more like it is in heaven. I have been through so much hell but when I obeyed you God,
17:44 you began to turn the influence of hell into the blessing of heaven in my life. And then there's 0.333 step and that is God asked for our submission. Now, this is where it gets
17:56 really juicy y'all. So put your seat belts on. Okay? It says that God says to the wicked person, you're saying, hold it a minute. You talked about gather the consecrated, gather those willing to sacrifice
18:08 and now you're saying, I wanna talk to the wicked people. Why is that? Because we as church people, we're not perfect, are we? Then God says to the wicked person, I say to you, what right do you have to
The Call to True Sacrifice
18:20 recite my laws or take my covenant on your lips? You hate my instruction and you cast my words behind you. When you see a thief, you join with them. You throw in your lot with
18:32 adulterers. You use your mouth for what's evil, and you harness your tongue for deceit. Now this is what's so interesting to me and that is when God starts accusing
18:43 people of wickedness, notice he didn't say you're committing adultery or you're committing this sin, you're you're a thief. He says you are approving, you are complicit
18:55 in a life where people are committing adultery and they're doing things that are wrong. And you know what? Quite frankly, I'll put it in street talk this morning. You don't have the guts to stand up for
19:07 truth. And God says, I wanna talk to you about the fact you don't have the guts to stand up for truth because that makes you complicit in the evil that's going on. And listen, we got a challenge in this culture and that
19:18 is I understand it, mom and dad, that society's gotten so secular and our kids are getting tempted on every hand. And we're living in a day where parents are really busy and for
19:30 some reason we have mistaken being godly for being nice. And God has to heal this if God's gonna heal our country right now. So I just
19:42 declare from my mouth today that the most godly pastors, the most godly parents, the most godly leaders are gonna fill up the house of God so he can reverse the curse in this country and God can
19:54 restore blessing again. See, God starts with the big rocks and he doesn't talk about whether you're doing it, he talks about whether you're approving of it so that it has power that's generated in
20:05 our society. And then he says, and if people are committing adultery and if people are stealing, then they're gonna do some other things. They're gonna be deceitful with their tongues. They're gonna testify against
20:17 brother and sister. They'll slander their own mother son. And now listen to this, God said, when you did these things and I kept silent, you thought I was like you. But now I arraign you
20:29 and I set my accusations before you. So here's what God's saying as a father, and just know this that the Bible talks about if God's gonna bless us, we have to learn how to receive
20:40 the kindness and the sternness of God. If you respond wrong every time somebody's stern with you, you're probably not gonna live with Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior of your life.
20:53 And the truth is as a pastor, God told me what my job is. He said, teach the truth. And then he said, if the church doesn't obey the truth, you gotta correct them. You gotta say, hey guys, this isn't me talking. This is
21:04 God. We gotta obey this. Right? And then he says, if they don't correct if they don't receive correction, you gotta rebuke people. And God said, you have to do that with all authority. And then he said, encourage
21:14 everybody and make sure you love them a whole bunch because you start doing that, they get real mad at you. Right? And so as a pastor, I want you to know I love you enough that I want you to receive the work of the
21:25 father in your life. And can I tell you, I've pastored for a long time and I've seen people who chose to gratify their flesh over honor God? And can I tell you, I've seen people
21:36 distort the gospel? I've seen people take forgiveness and they would use it so that they could distort and live any kind of wrong lifestyle because God's forgiving. And God's forgiving but
21:48 it doesn't mean he endorses your wrong lifestyle. You'll end up paying for that. I've seen people who listen, they just disobedience becomes a way of life and here is where we miss
22:00 it guys. God will love you no matter what you do, but we hurt ourselves and we hurt others when we mistake God's love and patience and we think it means that God's given us permission. And
22:12 in this Psalm, God's saying, I don't give you permission, I'm just loving and I'm patient. And he said, here's what I want for you because I'm a father who loves you so much. I I want you to know I'm summonsing
22:23 you that all of the earth is called to the lordship of Jesus Christ. It was such a miraculous event that was prophesied, supernaturally brought to pass. His life is amazing. There's no
22:35 way to discount or to discredit what Jesus Christ accomplished when he was on this earth. And God says, the reason I sent my son, I'm summonsing you and
22:47 I want you to sacrifice the pleasures of sin. And I want you to submit to me and I'll make you a promise. If you do that, you'll experience salvation in your life.
23:00 That's the last verse, those who sacrifice thank offerings. Everybody say those who. That means no matter what I've ever done, I should be encouraged this morning that God wants to love
23:11 me like his own son or daughter. God wants to bless me. God loved me so much that if I was the only person in the whole world, God would have sent Jesus Christ. How many of you know it's
23:23 fitting for us to praise God every Sunday morning and to give God the biggest hand clap in this auditorium? Because God's love is amazing, right? And he says, If you'll offer thank offerings
23:35 to me, if you'll extend your hands in gratitude for my guidance and my instruction in your life, He said, I promise you to the blameless, to those who don't make excuses for their
23:47 own immoral, ungodly lifestyle. He said, I'll show you my salvation. I'll show you how much I can bless your life. As I was preparing this message, I thought back to the
23:58 70s and the 80s when God sent us a revival that he's getting ready to send to a whole new generation. And I thought about how we saw man, we saw potheads become amazing preachers of the
24:10 gospel like Greg Laurie. Right? We saw people who were so self serving. They thought they thought the world should bow down to them and they said, no, not me. The whole world needs to bow down to Christ. And I
24:22 went back to those 19 70 worship services I was in. Yes. I had the long hair on my, you know, I I wasn't quite Michael Graff, but Jim Graff had a lot longer hair.
24:34 And I had hair all over my ears. And yes. I wore the bell bottoms and almost tripped on them. I mean, I was all in in the seventies. And I can think about those services whenever we would worship.
24:46 And I've been singing some of those songs to prepare me for this new era of consecration and blessing that God's calling us to. And I thought I'd bring 1 of them to you to close this message
24:58 this morning. This was a Wayne Watson song that we sung. Where the people of God were called by his name, were called from the dark, and we're delivered from shame.
25:10 We're 1 holy race, saints everyone, because of the blood of Christ Jesus the Son. Oh, we would sing that and we would have so
25:22 much shame. The things we were doing in the seventies, there was so much shame whenever we sung that. But there's 2 kinds of people I'm concerned about this morning. Number 1, I'm concerned about the
25:34 stubborn. If you think that you can just live your life however you wanna live and it's not gonna matter, 1 day you're gonna take your last breath and you know what? Life on earth is gonna turn into life and
25:45 eternity. And I just want you to admit in your heart today, eternity is too long to be wrong. Give your heart to Jesus. He'll make earth better and he'll make eternity amazing. Amen?
25:59 The other people that I wanna talk to are people who need to crawl out beyond your shame Because some people are stubborn, some people you're underneath your shame. And I want you to know
26:11 this pastor grew up going with my dad and being around people in bars and this pastor grew up in locker rooms. And I grew up with people who had a lot of issues and they had a lot of problems
26:23 in their life. And that's why I'm so strong at Faith Family Church about saying this place will never be here to see through people. We're gonna see people through past drug addiction, past
26:34 immorality, past the things that the enemy is doing to destroy lives. But nobody can do it for you. Are you grateful that God summoned you so he can save your life, Church
26:46 family. Thank you for being with us today. You know, it's such a joy to teach God's word and to watch it rearrange
26:58 people on the inside so God can reward us on the outside.
27:02 That's true, Jim. And I'm loving this series. It's sharing clearly what our hearts need to see our deepest longings fulfilled. Of course, King David wrote the Psalm to help us live with the kind of hearts that attract
27:13 heaven's blessing. It's something we can all do. The Psalm promises all who walk its pathway will receive God's blessing. And vindication are things that God will make right. You know, you can build a life of blessing
27:25 and create a legacy of blessing
27:38 Significant Life, he shares extensive insight and inspiration that can help us change the course of our life and live in the purposes God placed in our heart. A Significant Life is a must read for your gift of any
27:50 amount. We would love to send you your own copy of A Significant Life. Contact us today. Visit a significantlife dot com. That's a significantlife dot com. We'd love to have you as a part of our
28:02 online community. Simply subscribe to A Significant Life on YouTube, and you'll be able to catch up on past teachings, as well as watch extra content from the entire team. You can follow us on Facebook and Instagram too,
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28:26 how we can pray with you. God bless you.
Jim Graff276K followers