Worship Notes for Sunday, October 21, 2012
Last week we started a series of articles about the elements of the Service of Worship, and we mentioned that the start of the service is initiated by God’s call. There is a clear distinction between an Invocation and a Call to Worship.The first is invoking God’s presence at a particular gathering in that we are asking Him to be present, to oversee, to guide or direct. This is the type of thing one does at the beginning of a meeting, sporting event, Bible study, etc.
In a Call to Worship, it is actually God who initiates and summons His people, into His presence, before His throne, on His day. This instigating call leads into praise of God for who He is and not just for what He has done.
The response to this summons and the subsequent praise forms the start of our service to Him in worship—a response that is necessarily predicated on what He Himself has called us to do. The sacrifice of worship is setting aside our own aims, goals, and ideas of worship in favor of what God requires of us. We’ll continue to explore the particulars of what this means in subsequent weeks.
As we continue in Luke 8, we are confronted again with who Jesus is and the nature of faith and the Word. The Old Testament Reading from Psalm 119 speaks of the love of the Word and holding fast to it. Our Prayer of Confession from Hosea 10 confesses our tendency towards self-sufficiency and the need for the Lord to break up the fallow ground of our hearts.
The Communion Hymns, Give Me Jesus and O God, My Portion, and My Love both remind us of the “everlasting all” that is Christ and Him alone. We conclude with Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken as a prayer to fix our eyes on Christ lest we be “choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life” and that we may bear fruit in patience.
