Worship for Your Week - Summertime
This blog exists to help fuel our worship - to help us see and savor God as the greatest treasure in all of existence! We'll be posting playlists of songs and a brief reflection on particular issues related to worship. Be sure to check out the links to the playlist below.
Several times throughout this summer we will be having what we are calling a Night of Worship & Prayer — evenings set aside to simply worship God together, specifically as we sing with passion, pray with boldness and think on God's Word in truth. Here are three big reasons we wanted to do this:
1. To more faithfully embody the central value of worship as a community.
We were made by God and for God (Col 1:16); so, we desire to increasingly be about God in our worship. We exist as a community restored and transformed by the Gospel of Jesus to be a God-worshipping people (1 Pet 2:9). Because of this, we want, by His grace, to more deeply value, treasure and love (read: worship!) the God who made us and saves us for Himself!
2. To grow in fully responding to God specifically through singing and prayer as a community.
Scripture is littered with the notion of worshipping God through song. Psalm 95 says, “Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song…Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God.” In fact, there are over four hundred references to singing and around fifty direct commands to sing throughout the Bible. The longest book, the Psalms, is actually a collection of songs. And several times in the New Testament we’re told to sing when we gather together as God’s people (Eph 5:19; Col 3:16).
These intentional nights meant to focus primarily on worship through singing and prayer can stretch us in our response to the magnitude of God holistically — with our hearts (i.e., our affections, desires & emotions), our minds (i.e., what we believe & know), our bodies (i.e., our physical postures) and ultimately the entirety of our lives (Mark 12:30-31).
3. To pursue and grow to absolutely love the presence of God together as a community.
The Bible begins and ends with people dwelling in the presence of God (Gen. 1-2; Rev. 21:3), and this is what the Gospel restores us to — God HIMSELF! (Rom. 5:1-2; Eph. 3:15-19). So, we want to be a people who love God’s presence and are set apart by it as a community! Notice how Moses pleads in Exodus 33: “God, if Your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I and your people have found favor in your sight? Is it not your going with us that makes us distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?” Or how the Psalmist declares in Psalm 26: “O LORD, how I love the house where You live, the place where Your glorious presence dwells.” And in Psalm 16: “You make known to me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy, and at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
Friends, let us sing and pray and beg for this to increase among us! May we be marked by God's presence through His Spirit (Acts 2). May people walk away from our gatherings saying there is something distinct about our community, our relationships, our love. May people leave time spent in any interaction with us saying, "God really is among them" (1 Cor. 14:25).
Let’s pursue and worship Him together. For His glory and our joy.
