Welcome to sojournmusic.com’s weekly worship music set list review. You can find links to the set lists of this church and many other churches each week in the Worship Blog Carnival at theworshipcommunity.com. And you can learn about some of the songs we sing at Sojourn Gathered each week in advance of the Sunday service by reading my “Getting Ready For Sunday” post each Thursday at Sojourn’s online journal, TravelBlog. This set list recap begins with the first song following the Call To Worship (our sets often begin with a pre-Call To Worship song that is “band leader’s choice,” and so is different in each campus). Some additional variations in the music sets may have taken place in each service/campus.
I am actually out of town right now on my honeymoon, and did not attend the service here in Louisville. The following contains the liturgy planned for yesterday’s service.
Call to Worship
Each week we begin our services with a call to worship, because we as people desperately need to hear not words from the masses telling us who we are, but we need God’s word to inform our identity.
Listen to what Paul says about us who are Christians:
You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. 22 Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault. – Colossians 1:21-23
Friends, no matter how you are “feeling,” if you are in Christ, God has forgiven you; you’ve got nothing to prove here. Breathe deep the breath of God. You are in the presence and wonder and joy of Him who sent His only Son so we could be forgiven. So let’s celebrate this truth by singing to our gracious God.
Song: Gifted Response
Prayer of Confession:
God has gone to great lengths to reconcile with us. Yet many of us refuse to do the same with each other. The scriptures call us to “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit thought the bond of peace” – Eph 4:3
Maybe today you come here with a held grudge against another brother/sister. Some of us have refused to ask forgiveness from those we have sinned against and some of us have refused to grant forgiveness to those that have pleaded for it. Let us now consider our sin and also consider God’s grace towards us as we pray for His help:
Lord, how can we raise our hands to you in worship but still clinch our fists at one another?
How can we lift our voices to you but still speak to each other through gritted teeth?
Lord, how can we understand your grace when we are unwilling to be gracious?
Jesus, Our Savior who came down from His Heavenly Throne to reconcile all creatures of Earth.
Help us put to death the stubborn will and the spiteful tongue.
You have accepted us. Help us to accept each other.
You have granted us forgiveness. Help us to extend forgiveness .
You deeply and radically love us. Help us to walk in love together.
May we your people be united and strengthened at the foot of the Cross of Christ. Amen.
Song: Lead Us Back
Song: Approach My Soul The Mercy Seat
Assurance/Peace:
Here is the truth of what God has called us to:
I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. – Ephesians 4:1-3
The new life we are called to is a precious gift. We are given lives marked by peace that we share together as God’s children. Let’s use this time to welcome each other as fellow heirs of this peace.
Sermon
Communion
Song: The Power of the Cross
Reading
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. - 2 Corinthians 5:17-19
Song: A City No Longer Forsaken
Song: Our Great God
Benediction:
Go now, as ambassadors knowing that God is reconciling the world to Himself through Christ Jesus. Go in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Peace be with you.
