I thought that maybe today I would walk you through the first part of the service. It is important for everyone to know where they fit in and to feel comfortable as we worship together. Hope this is ok.
After Adda and the worship team lead us in worship we will begin the service at 10am. They will start music at 9:40ish to allow people time to pray and sing to God. It is nice to have a time of calm to begin with.
You will notice we made four choices for our gathering: lots of Bible! lots of worship music! lots of prayers! and as I mentioned the other day, the two sacraments commanded by Jesus.
So as we begin at 10am the worship team chose to celebrate God and His amazing Grace.
This is Amazing Grace
After the song I will pray a prayer called the collect, which is pretty much what it says: a prayer to draw us together, to focus our hearts and minds … to collect us. Then your mom will read our first Scripture reading from Matthew 3 – it tells us about Jesus’ baptism.
After that we sing a song of surrender to God.
Take my life and let it be
I hope and pray that by this time we all will be coming to a place together where we can open ourselves to God’s work in us. A place where we decrease and He increases – a place where we begin to realize how much we need Him and how much He Loves us.
We will hear the great commandments and then your Godparents will read to us from 1st Corinthians 2 and Matthew 5. We will hear how God’s ways are so different from our ways. Then through the Gospel Jesus will tell us a bit about what it is like to follow Him.
The sermon comes next. I like it when the sermon is called the “Proclamation of the Word.” Why? Because too often sermons become about what a preacher wants to say rather than about helping us hear what God says. I am an old man – but let me tell you this – old men can learn a great deal from young priests. When a particular young priest I know proclaimed God’s word, he rarely spoke for more than 10 minutes - in those minutes he beautifully illuminated God’s Word – I can still remember so many of those messages. I have forgotten a ton of long, drawn out sermons. Your great Grandma will remind me: God took 10 verses, you have 10 minutes – use them well and lives will change. I think she is right.
After the proclamation of the Word, we will sing again and then we move on to the Baptism.
No Longer Slaves
Tomorrow we can walk through the first part of the Baptism.
Be blessed
t HE
Friday, January 20, 2017
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