In the Summer of 2015, the Lord graciously granted me an unexpected opportunity. My father, who for 26 years pastored the church I was serving, resigned, and I was asked by church leadership to serve as pastor in the interim. For the first time in my life, I was responsible to prepare the gathered worship services of the church. At that time, I had never read a book on liturgics and had …
COMMUNION MEDITATION
As we take hold of a piece of bread and a cup of juice, we must never forget that they symbolize a real body that was broken and red blood that was truly spilled.
Christianity is not a religion of religious symbols in hope of a real salvation. It is a real salvation with symbols which embody our hope.
As John Updike said in his Seven Stanzas for Easter:
Make no mistake: if …
EXHORTATION
God doesn’t give us his grace so that we can go easy on ourselves. He gives us his grace so that we can be truthful with ourselves. If we know that after we’ve been completely truthful to God his grace remains, then we have every encouragement not to go easy on our sin. Good news church: where sin did abound, grace did much more abound, so let’s go to our Father and confess our …
CONFESSION
Heavenly Father,
We come today as those who have experienced the deepest realities of your grace. Our sins have been cleansed in Christ, we are comforted by his love, as your church we participate with one another in the work of your Spirit, we have shown one another the affection and love of Christ. All of those realities are ours. They define us, and hem us in, and shape our lives.
Yet Father, even …
All week long, I’ve been helping my son memorize Psalm 23:1 – “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” We’ve been reminding him that God is his shepherd, and God knows all of his sheep. He knows their needs, their fears, their sicknesses and their sufferings.
Verse 5 of Psalm 23 says, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.” For us in the church, that table is this …
EXHORTATION – Psalm 103:2
2 Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits,
Ingratitude is what happens when we fail to give God credit and glory for the good gifts he has given us. And there are two ways that ingratitude manifests itself in our lives:
The first is to receive and enjoy all his good gifts while not acknowledging that God is the one giving them. It’s to forget that …
CALL TO WORSHIP – Revelation 5:12b-13
Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” …
CALL TO CONFESSION
Romans 5:8
God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
CONFESSION:
Our Father,
We you have made us to love you and to demonstrate that love through obedience. We confess to you that we have not loved you as we ought. And we know our love is lacking, because our obedience is lacking. We confess that even when we obey, we often do …
CALL TO WORSHIP – Ephesians 1:3-5
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of …
EXHORTATION
In the ancient world, salt wasn’t valued so much for seasoning abilities. Salt’s true worth was its preserving qualities. If you have a piece of meat that’s going back, you can prolong it’s life by pressing salt into it. Salt stems decay.
And when Jesus tells Christians to be the salt of the earth, he’s saying that we are to be agents of preservation. When we see an individual who’s self-destructive or hopeless; when …
