Welcome to sojournmusic.com’s weekly worship music set list review & service recap. You’ll not only read a list of the songs we led following the Call To Worship, but also the readings and prayers from our liturgy. 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. Photos this week taken by Chuck Heeke at the long awaited, official public launch of our brand new campus, Sojourn New Albany. We’ve published many more photos of this campus launch in TravelBlog (blog.sojournchurch.com)
Call to Worship:
Every time we gather we want to remember that our life with God our Father begins with His words. He is the One speaking first and calling us to Himself.
The Lord merely spoke, and the heavens were created. He breathed the word, and all the stars were born. He assigned the sea its boundaries and locked the oceans in vast reservoirs. Let the whole world fear the Lord, and let everyone stand in awe of him. For when he spoke, the world began! It appeared at his command.
We put our hope in the Lord. He is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. Let your unfailing love surround us, Lord, for our hope is in you alone. -Psalm 33:4-9, 20-22
This same psalm begins by telling that it is “fitting to praise Him” and to “sing songs of praise to Him” because we can trust everything that He does.
Song: Come and Sing written by Sojourn’s Jeremy Quillo. We recorded this as the Call To Worship song on our liturgically-themed album Before The Throne. You can listen to “Come And Sing” in full here.
Song: God of Wonders written by Marc Byrd and Steve Hindalong. This is a solid contemporary song of adoration:
Early in the morning
I will celebrate the light
When I stumble in the darkness,
I will call your name by night
Prayer of Confession:
Although we sing of God’s greatness, Christ’s sacrifice, and the Holy Spirit’s work in us, we often do not live as if we believe that . We so easily forget that God is our only hope and that He was, is, and will be fulfilling His perfect plan for His glory and our good.
“To whom will you compare me? Who is my equal?” asks the Holy One. Look up into the heavens. Who created all the stars? He brings them out like an army, one after another, calling each by its name. Because of his great power and incomparable strength,
not a single one is missing. -Isaiah 40:25-26
Take a moment to confess to the Lord how you have believed that you have a better plan than God or how you have not trusted Him [silence].
Let this song be a continued prayer that God would forgive us and fix our eyes back on Himself.
Song: Be Thou My Vision anonymously written. Who doesn’t love this hymn?
Thou and thou only,
First in my heart,
High King of heaven,
My treasure thou art
Assurance/Peace:
All of God’s creation is pointing, ultimately, to Jesus. Jesus was not an afterthought; He was with God in the beginning. Hear how God’s Word explains this truth:
Everything was created through him and for him. He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together. Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body. He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead. So he is first in everything. For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross. -Colossians 1:17-20
Because of Jesus’ work on the cross, we have peace with God and with one another. Remember this as you greet each other today.
Giving:
God has shown us the meaning of generosity in the beautiful diversity of creation, in the overflowing love of Jesus Christ, in the never-ending gift of the Holy Spirit. God has abundantly blessed us and called us to be a community that honors Him and each other, to serve others with joy, to share our love and material possessions. Let us rejoice in what we have been given by the way that we give back what is His.
Let’s pray:
Almighty God, giver of every good and perfect gift, teach us to render to you all that we have and all that we are, that we may praise you, not with our lips only, but with our whole lives, turning the duties, the sorrows, and the joys of all our days into a living sacrifice to you, through our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. -adapted from the Worship Sourcebook
Instrumental
Then our pastor preached the first sermon in our new Genesis sermon series. You can hear Sojourn sermons in theSojourn Church iTunes podcast or in the Sermon Resource library at sojournchurch.com. Here is a brief part of this sermon from our newest pastor, New Albany Campus Pastor Michael Fleming:
Song: How Deep The Father’s Love For Us written by Stuart Townend. We sang and meditated on this songs as we came forward to receive Communion this week.
Reading:
Our passage of assurance from Colossians that we read earlier continues:
You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought us into his own presence, and we are holy and blameless as we stand before him without a single fault. –Adapted from Colossians 1:21b-22
Understanding this, we can rightly sing aloud both to Jesus and to one another that He truly is the Chief of all our joys and that our hope rests in Him alone.
Song: Whom Have I In Heaven But You written by Sojourn’s Brooks Ritter and Rebecca Elliott. Brooks recorded this one on The War, his half of the Double EP project we released earlier this year featuring Brooks along with Jamie Barnes. You can hear “Whom Have I In Heaven But You” in entirety here.
Song: Praise to the Lord, the Almighty written by Joachim Neander and Lobe den Herren, with new chorus and arrangement by Page CXVI. This was our song for the Sending at Sojourn Gathered this week. Hear a sample of the Page CXVI version here.
Benediction:
Go today remembering the words of the Apostle Paul: “Everything comes from God and exists by His power and is intended for His glory. All praise and glory to Him forever! Amen.” Go in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Peace be with you all. (adapted from Rom 11:36)
What an awesome next step on an incredible journey!