Worship Confessional – August 15, 2010

The last four Sundays of our Romans series has been spent in Romans 8 and it’s not hard to figure out why. This chapter is jam-packed with incredible theology and is deserving of deep study.

Consider for a moment the implications of any of these snippets taken from Romans 8:

• there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus
• if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness
• those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God
• the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children
• our present sufferings are not worth comparing wtih the glory that will be revealed in us
• hope that is seen is no hope at all
• we hope for what we do not yet have
• in all things God works for the good of those who love him
• if God is for us, who can be against us?
• it is God who justifies
• in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us
• …nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Those are all taken from a single chapter of Scripture! How could we NOT give several weeks of emphasis to this passage??

Here’s what our service looked like on Sunday -

• Welcome/Announcements
• Q&A w/ Paul Sadler, our global ministry partner in Japan
• Call to Worship – 1 Chronicles 16
• Jesus, You Are Worthy – Brenton Brown, Don Williams – C
• Our God – Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, Jonas Myrin, Jesse Reeves - A
• In Christ Alone – Keith Getty, Stuart Townend – E
• Message – Romans 8:31-39 “When You’re Under Attack”
• Our God – Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, Jonas Myrin, Jesse Reeves – A
• Everlasting God – Brenton Brown, Ken Riley – A

A few hilights from this past Sunday -

1. It was great having Paul Sadler, his family and some Japanese students here with us this weekend. Paul & his family are ministering in Tsukuba City, Japan and are global ministry partners of our church. We love what they are doing in a place that is very resistant to the gospel. Having them here this weekend to encourage them and hear an update was great for our church family. Also great to have Paul preach on Sunday morning and share some thoughts from this incredible passage of Scripture.

2. I’d been holding on to “Our God” from the new Passion album for a while, knowing that it would fit perfectly with the service this Sunday. I was right – people were definitely familiar with the song and really sang out. To teach it, we started with the bridge – “If our God is for us, who could ever stop us / If our God is with us, what could stand against.” We repeated that line with a little space in between four times so that people were familiar with it. We then hit the intro, to the verse and chorus a couple of times and then back to the bridge. When you’re teaching a  new song, don’t feel you always have you teach the chorus first.
3. I began our songs by encouraging our church to think about what it means to ascribe glory to God. We see that phrase a few times in Scripture – “Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name.” This ascribing is not about bragging, beating our chests, frothing at the mouth with how great our God is compared to all of those other gods out there but is instead about lifting God up, increasing His greatness, making Him known with the hope that one day the whole world would know of our God’s greatness, majesty, strength and power. I read several verses of 1 Chronicles 16 as a way of demonstrating what this ascribing looks like. The songs we sang, the prayers we prayed together were all examples of ascribing glory to God.

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