If you are new to our Mid-Week Worship devotional, learn more about it here.
For this week’s devotional, we will be guided by this week’s texts from the Revised Common Lectionary.
Songs used in the Mid-Week Worship devotional are added each week to a Spotify playlist.
You can follow it here.
Time of Preparation
Begin by taking inventory of your surroundings. Are things in your vicinity conducive to a time of personal worship? Are there any changes or adjustments (turning off tech, making yourself comfortable) you need to make before you begin?
When you are ready, take a moment to sit in silence and prepare your heart for worship. Ask God to clear away any distractions that might keep you from being truly present in this moment. Take a few moments to breathe in and out, asking God to still your heart and mind.
BREATH PRAYER OF PREPARATION (from Psalm 63):
(breathe in) O God, you are my God
(breathe out) Earnestly I seek You
Encounter With God
In this first movement, we simply seek to see God for who He is: the One worthy of worship.
“Sing to the LORD; praise the LORD! For he has delivered the life of the needy
from the hands of evildoers.”
—Jeremiah 20:13
The greatness of God is experienced in his power to set us free. Let’s begin our time of worship by praising God for his deliverance and care. We rehearse the goodness of God by remembering how he has acted on our behalf in Jesus Christ.
SONG OF ENCOUNTER: House of the Lord (lyrics here)
Confession
In this second movement, we simply see ourselves for who we are: people who need God.
“So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
—Romans 6:11 (NRSV)
Take a moment in silence to breathe in God’s invitation to bring your sin and struggles to Him. Remind yourself that his invitation is not rooted in shame, but inexhaustible love.
SONG OF CONFESSION: Lord Have Mercy (lyrics here)
Assurance
In this third movement, we receive the good news of the gospel: we are forgiven.
“For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call on you.”
—Psalm 86:5 (NRSV)
Augustine of Hippo wrote, “Forgiveness is the remission of sins. For it is by this that what has been lost, and was found, is saved from being lost again.” Spend some time reflecting on these words and how God has “found” you out of his goodness and love.
SONG OF ASSURANCE: When All Thy Mercies (lyrics here)
Commission
In this final movement, we are encouraged and equipped for the work God would have us do.
“Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death
Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.”
—Romans 6:3-4 (NRSV)
There is a practice, old as the church itself, of beginning each day by touching water and recalling who you are. Not who you were. Who you are.
The reformers were fierce advocates of it. When Luther was plagued by doubt or assailed by accusation - whether from his own conscience or elsewhere - his answer was not to summon more willpower or better arguments. He would declare, simply: Baptizatus sum. I have been baptised.
Remembering our baptismal identity is powerful because it reminds us who we are, and whose we are.
We live in an age of identity confusion - not just culturally, but spiritually. We are endlessly encouraged to construct ourselves: to curate, define, and perform who we are. The gospel cuts clean against this. Our deepest identity is not something we build. It is something we receive. We are marked, claimed, and named - not by our own achievements, but by the triune God who met us at the water.
REMEMBERING YOUR BAPTISM
Take some time today to remember your baptism, or if you have not been baptized, take this time to contemplate its meaning as something you may wish to embrace in your own life. Here is a simple, three-step practice for remembering your baptism which you may want to build into your devotional life from time to time. It is an intentional, tactile act that holds no sacramental power or significance. It serves as a simple reminder of a significant act.
Preparation
Find a quiet place. Still yourself. Take a few slow, unhurried breaths.
When you are ready, move to wherever there is water - a bowl, a basin, a sink. Let the ordinary-ness of it be part of the point. Grace comes to us through common, physical things.
Remembrance
Dip your fingers into the water, or let it run over your hands.
As you do, speak these words aloud, or hold them quietly in your heart:
In my baptism, we are claimed.
Not because we are ready.
Not because we are worthy.
But because God, in his mercy, chooses to meet us and call us His own
In water, in word, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Closing
Dry your hands slowly and deliberately.
As you do, remember that the water does not stay - but what it signified does. You carry your baptism with you. Into the ordinary day. Into the difficult conversation. Into the moment of doubt. Into whatever each moment holds.
Go, knowing whose you are.
Benediction
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
—Romans 15:13 (NIV)