This Sunday, we will confess corporately as we always do. Well, not exactly as we always do. We will sing it, and we will recite it together, but we won’t confess silently. Although our corporate worship will always contain certain elements, those elements can take on a number of forms. We know that our liturgy, our traditions and our rituals can not and will not supersede the life-giving Spirit or its work in our meetings. Thus our designs for worship should point believers to that very real, experience-altering presence promised in God’s word, while pointing the non-Christian to the gospel for security.

Let’s explore some new ways to recount the gospel to each other in God’s presence Sunday. Consider this song of preparation – with confession at its heart – from one of my favorite Christian song writers, Brooks Ritter: Waters of Forgiveness

By his wounds, our debts were paid.
Come sinner, find your life.

Each of our worship services includes a time of confession. This part of our liturgy has always interested me, largely because it is a practice found across various religious traditions. So why do we do it? There’s a lot to that answer, and I’ll unpack it over the course of several weeks. To understand how corporate confession of sin could find a place in protestant worship, consider the grand context of our worship. When we gather to worship our God, we are recounting the gospel story, illustrating it through our own experiences, and reiterating our assurance in it. Everything we do on Sunday points to the cross. That’s why, when we confess our sins, we remind ourselves that we were lost, in need of something we could not secure on our own. And it is equally important to be reminded, as often as we confress together, that Christ’s work satisfied his wrath once and for all. Jeff Purswell, of Covenant Life Church (the worship team’s host August 10-14), adds some depth to this conversation:

…it is through the power of the gospel that we are transformed to live new lives by the power of the Spirit. It is through the gospel that we are freed from selfishness to give our lives in service of others. Sure, the scope of Christ’s redemption is the whole cosmos (Colossians 1:20), but at the center of his redemptive concern are rebellious image-bearers whom he is ransoming to be his children. But all of these entailments, implications, and promises are founded upon the rock-solid, unchanging accomplishment of God through the gospel of his Son. It is this message that is God’s power to save sinners, to comfort the grieving, to motivate the listless, to encourage the downhearted, to assure the guilt-stricken.

This message never changes; this message is always true; and so our hope is always secure.

Read the full article here. See you Sunday.

A few weeks go, we introduced a song called “Lord You Have My Heart.” This week, we will sing it together as a congregation for the first time! Here are the lyrics again:

Lord you have my heart
And I will search for yours
Jesus take my life and lead me on.

Lord you have my heart
And I will search for yours
Let me be to you a sacrifice.

(men) And I will praise you Lord
(ladies) I will praise you Lord
(men) And I will sing of love come down
(ladies) I will sing of love come down
(men) And as you show your face
(ladies) Show your face
(together) We’ll see your glory here.

See you Sunday.

Despite what you may or may not have read in our bulletin for this week (error mine), Chris Tomlin did not co-author Amazing Grace. He did reimagine the song with the help of Louie Giglio to create My Chains Are Gone. We won’t be singing that version this week. Instead, we will rediscover the original version to its original tune together. We have discussed the story of John Newton in the past. He authored this song in the mid 18th century, writing it to herald his moment of “great deliverance” – a time at sea where all seemed lost.

What strikes me most about John Newton is his story. It’s human. It’s flawed and full of the need for God’s grace, just like mine. To sing these old songs and to preserve their original melodies at times can be a valuable excercise in worship. We remember that these song writers were men and women with problems. We sing the same words and these familiar tunes (in this case, most people agree that the melody stemmed from old slave spirituals, likely to have been sung on the slave ship that Newton captained), and we apply our own lives to them. As you offer your voice with the bride of Christ this week, put yourself in the hymn writer’s shoes. Have you ever had a moment of “great deliverance”? Would you have written it differently?

We take communion together every first Sunday of the month. This week as we experience the mystery of the sacrament together, we will also dwell on these words of Asaph. As Christians, we claim God’s promise to be good to the pure in heart – to those vested in his son’s death. As we live out our daily lives, though, truly believing it can prove much more difficult, especially when those around us are benefiting from a life free from the burdens each believer carries. Consider the words of Psalm 73 and God’s work in your life as you approach this Sunday.

73:1 Truly God is good to Israel,
to those who are pure in heart.
2 But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled,
my steps had nearly slipped.
3 For I was envious of the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

4 For they have no pangs until death;
their bodies are fat and sleek.
5 They are not in trouble as others are;
they are not stricken like the rest of mankind.

Kevin Twit, founder of Indelible Grace Music and author of many of the songs we use in corporate worship, co-wrote a simple song reflecting on this Psalm. Preview it here.