Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! Majestic God, Sovereign Lord, Father of Jesus Christ, we praise You now and bless Your name. Receive our praise as we offer it to You in the power of the Holy Spirit, poured out on the earth in order to make men …
Understanding Your Own Story
All of us, every day, all day long, are constructing a story. In this story that we construct, we are the hero and protagonist—sometimes rightly and sometimes wrongly. Accordingly, we interpret the actions of others, weaving them into the story of our lives. If we are the protagonist rightly, then we approach those around us …
All the Pathways
Our Father and gracious God, we thank You for all the pathways we took this last week, on which You protected us and gave us travel mercies. We thank You for the food before us, and the fellowship around the table. We are grateful for the blood of Jesus, which washed us clean, and which …
Let the Taproot Go Down
You are gathered here as an assembly of those who have been washed in the Word of the Lord, in the waters of baptism. You are the congregation of the saints, the assembly of the righteousness. You have gathered here, not from habit or custom, but rather to hear the same Word that washed you, …
Holy Impatience
You are here in part to learn a holy impatience. By this I do not mean susceptibility to annoyance or irritability, but rather an impatience with every false thing that tricks itself out as something worthy of admiration. You may be assured that behind every such false claim is an idol, carved from some man’s …
Fourth Decade of Psalms/Psalm 31
Introduction: Periodically we spend ten weeks on a series of psalms, and we now come to Psalms 31-40. This psalm is notable in that Jesus quoted from it for His last words on the cross. He has been followed in this by many of His disciples, including Polycarp, Bernard, Huss, Luther, and Melancthon. The Text: …
Covenant Renewal
When we worship the Lord, we are renewing the covenant with Him. He knows our frailty, and how easily we flatter ourselves, and so He seeks to bring us up short – every week. But we might mistake this language. We might begin to assume that God expects us to be constantly and consistently defeated. …
All Belongs to You
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! God of all heaven, Lord over all the earth, we come to worship You now in the kind name of Jesus Christ our Lord. You are the one in whom we live and move and have our being. Not one hair can …
The Next Christendom
As we have said numerous times, we here at Christ Church do not have a political agenda. By this we mean that we do not intend to embrace the idea that the Christian faith is just another player in the marketplace of ideas, and that we need to agitate in various ways to make our …
Acquiring A Taste
Music is very important to our God, and He requires us to come before Him with congregational music. As we do, we want to take care not to insult Him with false assumptions about what He wants. Beware of a false humility: you may believe you do not have a good voice, and in some …