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Come join us for worship every Sunday at 10AM in the
main sanctuary! For directions to our church,
click here.
What Is Worship?
Worship is much more than a sermon, prayer,
and a collection of songs at church on Sundays. True
worship involves a pattern of revelation and
response: God, by his grace, reveals himself to us,
and we, by faith, respond. As seen throughout the
Bible, this has been a consistent pattern.
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God reveals himself
to us as our God. Therefore, we must
love him with all that we are.
Hear, O
Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is
one. Love the LORD your God with all
your heart and with all your soul and
with all your strength.
(Deuteronomy 6:4-5)
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Paul reminds us that
God has shown us undeserving and
unfathomable mercy. Therefore, we must
respond by offering up ourselves to him.
Therefore, I
urge you, brothers, in view of God's
mercy, to offer your bodies as living
sacrifices, holy and pleasing to
God--this is your spiritual act of
worship. (Romans 12:1)
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God again reveals
himself to us as high and exalted. He
even used the seraphs to reveal his
glory to Isaiah by reaching out and
touching the live coal to his lips,
which signified atonement. Then Isaiah
responds.
In the year
that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord
seated on a throne, high and exalted,
and the train of his robe filled the
temple. Above him were seraphs, each
with six wings: With two wings they
covered their faces, with two they
covered their feet, and with two they
were flying. And they were calling to
one another: "Holy, holy, holy is
the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is
full of his glory." At the sound of
their voices the doorposts and
thresholds shook and the temple was
filled with smoke. "Woe to me!"
I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a
man of unclean lips, and I live among a
people of unclean lips, and my eyes have
seen the King, the LORD Almighty."
The one of the seraphs flew to me with a
live coal in his hand, which he had take
with tongs from the altar. With it he
touched my mouth and said, "See,
this has touched your lips; your guilt
is taken away and your sin atoned for."
Then I heard the voice of the Lord
saying, "Whom shall I send? And who
will go for us?" And I said,
"Here am I. Send me!" (Isaiah 6:1-8)
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When we truly understand the Gospel, we recognize
that God reached out to us by sending his one and
only son, Jesus Christ, to earth to die on the cross
in our place. Like Isaiah, we have been atoned for
our sins. And like Isaiah, we respond in humility
and surrender, offering up our lives for his
worship. And this happens continually throughout our
lives, not only at church.
Corporate Worship
Corporate worship at Covenant Chapel
happens whenever we gather together to respond to
God's goodness. It is a public expression of loving
God with all our heart, soul and strength. It is an
open invitation and declaration to gather as
followers of Jesus Christ and to intimately connect
with God.
Since worship is about the connection of God's
revelation and people's response, it is important
that people understand who and why we worship. Our
combination of contemporary and liturgical elements throughout the worship service creates a
balance that allows us to tell the story of God's
redemption of man through the cross in a culturally
relevant and meaningful way. |
