Prepare for Sunday, 11/3/13!
John Piper has said that we need to be purposeful and intentional at least the day before we gather as a church. Our world is so filled with distractions and our own sin natures are so derailing that we'll gather and not benefit like we should. We need to make sure we prepare to meet for worship with God's people - prepare to hear God's word, prepare to sing the Gospel, prepare to build up our fellow Christians - and in doing so we'll hopefully find Sunday mornings a rich time where our affections are renewed to love Jesus and worship him through all the trials and joys of the next week, and be refreshed to take the Gospel into all those situations.
SO, that said, here are a couple things you can do to prep for tomorrow! Jordan will be preaching his 3rd week in the "Biblical Manhood and Womanhood" series, entitled "The Calling of a Man: What He Does (As a Worshiper, Servant, and Leader)." We'll read Psalm 63 in the service tomorrow, which will be a key text for the preaching as well. Read it ahead of time if you can.
We'll sing the following songs tomorrow:
This song and the next will be our "Calls to Worship" for the morning. "Indescribable" presents God to us in his majesty and awesome power as the creator and sustainer of the world, and of our lives. It's important to start our morning of singing and preaching with a clear view of the God we gather to worship.
2. Sola
This is a new song. Very simple and concise, it gives us a view of how God has accomplished our salvation - that we gather because we've beheld the glories of Christ in God's word, and we are saved by grace, through faith, in Christ alone. This one also encourages a right response to the Gospel, saying "Lead us now, O King, in the worship of your name/Make us pure and clean, tune our hearts to sing your praise!"
One of our favorites. I'd call this tune a "modern hymn" in a sense, and it calls again to delight in God alone, and to look forward to Christ's return in the last verse.
4. Jesus Paid It All/Never Once
We'll conclude with this pairing of songs, that the Son of God has paid for all of our sins, and never once did our Creator and Father leave us alone, but intentionally gave his Son to ransom his people back to himself.
As Jordan talks about men as worshipers tomorrow, the hope is that we would have an occasion as men and women together, for God to "tune our hearts" to freshly delight and treasure Christ above anything else - to be refreshed as worshipers of God in all corners of our lives.