Prayer of Confession
O Lord, we have not longed for your coming as our only hope.
We have not lived as citizens of your kingdom as we should.
We have chosen easy belief instead of the fellowship of Your cross.

We have made this world our treasure,
giving our hearts to the creation, instead of You, the Creator.
We are callous to the needs of the poor, the lonely and the suffering.
We have not cried out for justice.
We do not grieve for those who are without Christ in a dying world.

Forgive our offenses and sins
By the Holy Spirit fill us with the light and life in Christ.
In our weakness may Your grace witness to Christ's glory.

Assurance of Pardon
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in our humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death--that is, the devil--and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. Hebrews 2:14-15

Order of Worship, January 16 2011

Grace Presbyterian Church

All sufferers can find comfort in the solidarity of the Crucified; but only those who struggle against evil by following the example of the Crucified will discover him at their side.  To claim the comfort of the Crucified while rejecting his way is to advocate not only cheap grace but a deceitful ideology... A genuinely Christian reflection on social issues must be rooted in the self-giving love of the divine Trinity as manifested on the cross of Christ; all the central themes of such reflection will have to be thought through from the perspective of the self-giving love of God... to reflect on social issues based on the same decision Paul made as he proclaimed the gospel to the Corinthians - "to know nothing among your except Jesus Christ, and him crucified."

Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace

We know enough of our history by now to be aware that people exploit what they merely concluded to be of value, but they defend what they love.  

Wendell Berry, Life Is A Miracle

The music of life is subtle and elusive and like no other--not a song with words but a song without words, a singing, clattering music to gladden the heart or turn the heart to stone, to haunt you perhaps with echoes of a vaster, farther music of which it is part...We cannot live our lives constantly looking back, listening back, lest we be turned to pillars of longing and regret, but to live without listening at all is to live deaf to the fullness of the music.  Sometimes we avoid listening for fear of what we may hear, sometimes for fear that we may hear nothing at all but the empty rattle of our own feet on the pavement.  

Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey

Love is not the opposite of wrath.  As difficult as it may be to conceive, the wrath of God is an expression of his love and deep attachment to his people.  Already in the third century, the theologian Lactantius wrote that "he who does not get angry does not care."  If God can look at the sin and injustice in this world and not get angry, he is not much of a God!  The God of the Bible is not some unmovable unfeeling force, but a God who cares.  

Klyne Snodgrass, Ephesians (The NIV Application Commentary)

Order of Worship, October 24 2010

Grace Presbyterian Church

For us Christians, all truth is "relative," relative to this Jew named Jesus.  We really do not know what the world is, much less where it is headed, until we know him.

William H. Willimon in Exilic Preaching

The repeated promises in the Qu'ran of the forgiveness of a compassionate and merciful Allah are all made to the meritorious, whose merits have been weighed in Allah's scales, whereas the gospel is good news of mercy to the undeserving.  The symbol of the religion of Jesus is the cross, not the scales.

John R. W. Stott

Very few of us have any understanding of the reason why Jesus Christ died.  If sympathy is all that human beings need, then the Cross of Christ is a farce, there was no need for it. 

    We trample the blood of the Son of God under foot if we think we are forgiven because we are sorry for our sins.  The only explanation of the forgiveness of God, and of the unfathomable depth of His forgetting, is the Death of Jesus Christ.  

    The Death of Jesus Christ is the performance in history of the very Mind of God.  There is no room for looking on Jesus Christ as a martyr; His death was not something that happened to Him which might have been prevented: His death was the very reason why He came. 

    God could forgive men in no other way. 

    The greatest note of triumph that ever sounded in the ears of a startled universe was that sounded on the Cross: "It is finished."  That was the last word in the Redemption of man. 

Oswald Chambers

Order of Worship, September 26 2010

Grace Presbyterian Church