Sojourn’s Liturgy Recap, March 9-10, 2013

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, 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 “How To Prepare For Sojourn Gathered” post each Thursday at Sojourn’s online journal, TravelBlog.

East Campus photos by Allison Rushing.

Prelude: Psalm 57 written by Sojourn’s Jeremy Quillo, recorded on our These Things I Remember album.

Call to Worship:
As a church family we celebrate the fourth week of Lent, a season of prayer and fasting that prepares our hearts for the joy and celebration of Easter Sunday. As we seek God in this season we recall that it is God that pursues us, rescues us from our sin and gathers us as a church. He lovingly calls us to worship and tells us to follow Him. Today let us remember the promises of God and renew our promise to be His people.

Let us worship God, who has done great things.
We rejoice in our God, who made a way
through the desert of this world.
Let us worship God, who has caused streams of mercy
to flow in the wasteland.
We are the people God has formed through Christ;
we worship him, and we rejoice!
Let us worship God in spirit and in truth.
We praise God for the grace that has saved us.
Alleluia! We rejoice!
—based on Isaiah 43:19-21, adapted from the Worship Sourcebook

Song: Come Thou Fount, the classic hymn (traditional arrangement).

Prayer of Confession:
The prophet Isaiah exposes our sin when he says this; let’s say it together:

“All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own.”
- Isaiah 53:6

Let’s take a moment to silently confess the ways that we have wandered away from God, knowing that He is faithful to forgive and patiently waits for his sheep to return to him. (SILENCE)

Song: Come To Me written by Lizzie Akers, Jeff Capps, Michael Bleecker and Hunter Pecunia, recorded by The Village Church in Texas.

Words of Assurance:
Hear the words of Christ:

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd sacrifices his life for the sheep.
I know my own sheep, and they know me, just as my Father knows me and I know the Father. So I sacrifice my life for the sheep. They will listen to my voice, and there will be one flock with one shepherd – John 10:11,14-16

Let’s confess this together:
Today we will hear his voice and not harden our hearts.
Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;
for he is our God  and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.
- Based on Psalm 95: 6-8

Song: We Are Listening written by Jeremy Quillo. This is a sung-prayer of illumination, written to precede a sermon or scripture reading. You can hear it on our Before The Throne record.

Passing Of Peace: As the gathered people of God, let’s take a moment to welcome one another here today.

Giving

Then our preacher taught the latest sermon in our series on the Book of Job. You can hear Sojourn sermons in theSojourn Church iTunes podcast or in the Sermon Resource library at sojournchurch.com.

Song: Bless the Lord Who Gives and Takes a new song by my wife Kristen Gilles and me. This was our Communion song of the week. We wrote it based on the book of Job, a Charles Spurgeon quote, and the way God has dealt with us since the birth and death of our son Parker last October.

Kristen and the Sojourn band will record “Bless The Lord Who Gives And Takes” soon and offer it to you as a free mp3 download and chord/lyric sheet.

Reading:
Let’s read this Psalm together:

We belong to you;
you hold our right hand.
You guide us with your counsel,
leading us to a glorious destiny.
Whom have we in heaven but you?
We desire you more than anything on earth.
Our flesh may fail, and our spirit may grow weak,
but God remains the strength of our heart;  he is ours forever. – Based on Psalm 73:23-26

Song: Whom Have I In Heaven But You? written by Isaac Watts, Brooks Ritter and Rebecca Elliott. You can hear this modern hymn on our double-EP The War/The Mercy Seat.

Song: Beautiful Savior written by Stuart Townend.

Benediction:
Friends, let us follow the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ.
May he enable us to serve together in faith, hope, and love.
Peace be with you.