Hello, Christ Pres. family. I hope you will be refreshed as you pause in the middle of this week to look back on our time of worship together and to begin preparing your hearts to worship again next Sunday. We’re trying out a new feature this week: Special questions especially for children! Let’s begin with prayer.
Pray: God, Our Creator, Each week feels strange and different right now. Many of the daily and weekly things that we have always counted on are gone, and this can cause us to feel anxious, bored, unproductive and tired. Your word says that you are moving us toward life that is marked by rest, satisfaction, and rhythm. Please shift the attachments of our hearts off of what we can control and onto what you are doing. Ground us in worship and cause our attitudes toward our weekday work to be shaped by the reality of Jesus’ victory for us.
One of our suggested songs for worship is this hymn by Wendell Kimbrough. Use the link to listen or read the lyrics below. This song helps us celebrate our dependence on Jesus. As you listen or read, try to list all the ways that Jesus helps us:
Now the days and hours and moments
Of our suff’ring seem so long;
And the toilsome wait and wond’ring
Threaten silence to our song.
Now our pain is real and pressing
Where our faith is thin and weak,
But our hope is set on Jesus;
And we cling to him, our strength.
Oh eternal weight of glory!
Oh inheritance divine!
We will see our Lord redeeming
Every past and future time.
All our pains will be transfigured,
Like the scars of Christ our Lord.
We will see the weight of glory,
And our broken years restored.
For behold! I tell a myst’ry:
At the trumpet sound we’ll wake
“Death is swallowed up in vict’ry!”
When we meet our King of Grace
Every year we thought was wasted
Every night we cried “How long?”
All will be a passing moment
In our Savior’s vict’ry song
We will see our wounded Savior.
We’ll behold him face to face;
And we’ll hear our anguished stories
Sung as vict’ry songs of grace.
Jesus put on human flesh and suffered in all the ways that we suffer. How does this give meaning to our suffering?
Because we are united to Jesus in his life, death and resurrection, we have a divine inheritance. What does this mean is true about our future?
What has Jesus’ victory done to sin, death, Satan, and all the effects of sin?
Especially for children: What are some of the ways that Jesus helps you?
Pray: Oh Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer, fill our hearts with love and our mouths with praise as we come to grips with how actual and impactful your victory over sin and death is for us. In our experiences of toilsome wait and wondering and of real and pressing pain, help us to set our hope on you, Jesus.
We heard the good news preached that Jesus is a literal Savior whose victory is genuine and lasting. We can live out of the security of His victory and are defined by belonging to Him.
And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him (Colossians 2:13-15).
The defining factor of our lives is that Jesus has saved us. How does that change the ways we think and feel about our personal successes and shortcomings in our work, school, and relationships?
How does Jesus’ finished work on the cross help us to see everything in our lives— our wins and our losses— as building blocks so that we can always be growing and moving forward rather than shifting back and forth between extremes?
Especially for children: Name a time you’ve succeeded in something like school or sports. What can you learn from that success about your identity in Jesus?
Name a time you’ve failed at something. How can you grow from that failure in your dependence on Jesus?
Pray: Lord, your grace breaks through our definitions, our circumstances, and our struggles to show us the true way: We are defined by Christ. Jesus, you went to the cross and died for us that we would die to our way and find new life in you. Holy Spirit, work in us to live in light of God’s goodness. Fix our eyes on Jesus. We long for the day when we will inherit all you have done for us. All is grace.
Next week we will look into the book of Revelation, remembering that God always finishes what he started and that there are some things we know and some things we don’t. What we do know is that Jesus has done it! He has destroyed the power of sin and death; He has freed us to live in the way that we were created to live: Loving God, Loving people, and Loving the place where God has put us. Finish this time of reflection by prayerfully reading over the following verse, asking that Jesus will be glorified as his people hear and do according to his word.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (Revelation 1:8).