This week we welcome back our pastor, Ruffin Alphin. He and his daughter Anna Friedrich have returned from Kenya where they worked with Street Child in the slums of Kibera. We will be hearing from him this week on his trip but also on our lives and responsibilities as Christians to be the light and salt of the earth (Matt. 5:13 - 14.)
Our Call to Worship this week is from Psalm 103. We will not be reading the entire Psalm this week so I encourage you to read it as it is a great psalm of hope and encouragement. We will pick up the theme of God's goodness to us as his people and that we should bless the Lord for all of his benefits to us. It is easy in these tumultuous times to not see God's goodness but just as the hymn "God Moves in a Mysterious Way" teaches us that behind a frowning providence he hides a smiling face.
In light of this we enter into the musical portion of our liturgy with "Thy God Reigneth!" and reflect upon God's goodness to us in our personal lives and that our trust in him will never fail because he will never fail us or his promises. We will also proclaim the coming of his kingdom and that we, as his children, desire to see it consummated. This is the logical outgrowth of his work in us and among us that our faith not remain focused upon our individual experiences, as crucial as they are, but that we see the expansion and growth of the church universal for the benfit of all people and his glory.
Hence, we will then read from Philippians 1: "I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God."
Our lives as Christians should not be marked by a self-centered privatized religion but rather we should let God be our guide and vision as we live and move in our respective families and communities. This is part of the fruit of righteousness that Paul is exhorting us to. We will close this portion of our liturgy with the great hymn "Be Thou My Vision."
In addition to this, Suzanne Wolvin will be leading us as well this week as we pray for the persecuted church. She will sing a great song by Sara Groves called "When the Saints." On Sunday Nov. 24 at 6:30 we will be hosting a night of prayer for the persecuted church.
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2 comments:
Thank you, Mark, for these insights before we gather in worship. You got me wondering whether thoughts such as these have more power to our worship than the many pages of up-coming activities for the Body.
Making our bulletin a "worship guide" that not only has the "what's what" of the service, but also the "why and so what" around those events, would help the worshiper who may be so distracted by other matters. I'd suggest we owe them messages like these. Wouldn't it be cool to have other such preparatory matters as we gather?!
Dave, I think that's a great idea. Thanks, Mark, for these thoughts. This will be a great tool to help us as families prepare for the Lord's Day together.
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