Worship Notes for Pentecost Sunday, May 27, 2012
Today as we celebrate Pentecost, we celebrate the birthday of the Church—when Christ sent the Holy Spirit to dwell among His people making them the temple of God. This marks the fulfillment of the new covenant with God Himself writing His laws on our hearts. The greatest work of the Spirit is to reveal Christ and that is what we pray for today.We begin the service with Verse 4 of Holy God We Praise Your Name—an expression of praise to the essence and mystery of the Trinity. We follow with the Call to Worship from Psalm 104 in which we see the work of the Spirit in creating, renewing, and maintaining creation. Our praise continues with Come Thou Almighty King as praise to the three persons of the Trinity and a reminder of the Kingdom that Christ brings as expressed in our passage from Luke 6. The next hymn, Come Down, O Love Divine, is a prayer for the holy flame of the Spirit to burn brightly in our hearts and lives.
The Prayer of Confession from Ephesians 4 leads us through the rebellion of our hearts as we seek to follow our own ways instead of pursuing the unity of the Spirit to which we have been called. We follow confession with Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken—an apt continuation of our confessional prayer. For Communion Hymns, we sing of the Spirit of Mercy and the desire for the Comforter to preside over the Church. O God, the Holy Spirit is a beautiful reminder of the work of the Spirit in directing our gaze and focus on Christ—how He took away our guilt, forgave our sins, completed atonement and saved our captive souls.
We conclude the service with Breathe on Me Breath of God—praying for that days when my heart is pure and wholly God’s.
