Entering His Story

Genuine worship has only one Leader, Jesus Christ.  When I speak of Jesus as the Leader of worship, I mean, first of all, that he is alive and present among his people.  His voice can be heard in their hearts and his presence known.  We not only read about him in the Scripture, we can know him by revelation.  He wants to teach us, guide us, rebuke us, comfort us. (Richard Foster, Celebration of Disciplines, 155)

I have quoted this before, and I cannot over-stress its importance.  This takes us beyond good liturgy, good sermons, good art, good music, good friends, good volunteering, and good food.  Recognizing Jesus as much as we are able either provides depth or reveals the folly of all those things that were once distractions.  He brings life to things that we didn’t even realize were dry bones.  He is our help, our fortress.  In the Eucharist, we’ll sing the following to echo last week’s sermon:

Had it not been the LORD ʻtwas on our side 
They would have swallowed us alive
Not been the LORD ʻtwas on our side
By raging waters weʼd have died
Because the LORD was on our side
You broke the snare and set us free
As a bird now flying higher, higher!

In our opening set of music, we will use Luther’s epic hymn “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” to remind us of God’s beautiful story that he has invited us into.  And we will enter that story corporately by our proclaiming in one voice that “Jesus, we come to Thee!”

Check out this Sunday’s Scripture readings and music at restorationmusic.wordpress.com .