Minister: Lift up your hearts!
Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord!
Father of all glory, we come now to exalt and praise Your name. We ask that You would strengthen and feed us, and nourish us, but not because the focus of this service of worship is on us. We ask You to strengthen us so that we might be able to lift up Your name as it ought to be lifted up. You are not honored and worshipped in our community as You ought to be, and so we ask You to use us as Your instruments and vessels for accomplishing this.
We acknowledge You as the only God. All other gods and lords, all principalities and powers, are nothing but vanities and mist, and so we lift up Your holy and triune name this morning. We do so as a defiance of all idolatry, and we confess with humiliation that many of Your people have drifted into the notion that You may be included in the great secular pantheon of gods, and that all You want for Your people is a place at the secular table.
Restore us to the truth, we pray, and we ask that Your would restore us through our worship.
And so, gracious Father, we worship You now through Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end, amen.