The Shape of Worship 10: Professing Our Faith
For Meditation
Reciting a creed or speaking part of a historic confession may seem a rote, stale exercise. To the contrary, it draws us to profess what we believe aloud. Our beliefs, if they mean anything to us, are meant to be expressed. Speaking them strengthens our convictions. In worship, when we stand together and speak a creed or part of a Confession, we remind and instruct ourselves afresh of the things at the heart of our faith in Jesus Christ. We reinforce that which we know to be true over against all the contrary beliefs that compete for our allegiance. Professing our faith not only re-invigorates our convictions, it puts us in the proper stance toward others. We announce what we believe to the world, the task to which we are called as Christ followers each day.
Our Worship Guide for Sunday's Services can be viewed by clicking the image below:
Deuteronomy 6:4-12
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. 10 When the Lord your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you—a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, 11 houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—then when you eat and are satisfied, 12 be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
Philippians 2:5-11
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! 9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
