Engage Your Heart | Easter 2023

Each week at Mercyview we enter expecting to meet with God together through the finished work of Jesus and the ministry of the Holy Spirit among us. This weekly post is designed to help those who gather with us on Sundays come into the gathering ready to engage in worship through singing, praying, and hearing in meaningful ways. 

We meet at 5p @ Memorial Baptist Church, 2800 S Yale Ave. Our livestream will be available at that time on our website, www.mercyview.com.

Here is how you can engage your heart for worship:

1. Read through the provided text and/or consider the topic that will be preached on that Sunday.
2. Sing, listen or read through the song lyrics that we’ll be singing together and ask the Lord to deepen your understanding of Him through them. Get to know unknown songs or ask for a fresh view of old ones.
3. Pray for the Lord to reveal Himself to you and the gathered church in powerful ways. Pray for those who are serving this week and for the one who is preparing and preaching God’s Word. 

Our worship service is organized into four stages that we call Movements. These movements allow us to focus on specific aspects of worshiping God by giving us context and perspective. 

Movement One: God is God and We are Not

Call to Worship: A time when we look at Scripture and orient our hearts toward God.

Confession of Sin: A time for us to examine our hearts under the light of God's Word and confess our sins to God.

Assurance of Pardon: A reminder that in Christ all our sins are covered, we are forgiven, and we now walk in newness of life through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Confessing Our Faith: We read a question and answer from The New City Catechism as a way to help us learn and live out what we believe. 

Question 29: How can we be saved?

Answer: Only by faith in Jesus Christ and in his substitutionary atoning death on the cross; so even though we are guilty of having disobeyed God and are still inclined to all evil, nevertheless, God, without any merit of our own but only by pure grace, imputes to us the perfect righteousness of Christ when we repent and believe in him.

Movement Two: We Approach God

Sung Worship: 

• Stronger
• Living Hope
• It is Well

Spotify Playlist

Prayer: In response to our time of sung worship, we want to pause before moving into the ministry of the Word and approach God in prayer.

Movement Three: God Instructs Us 

Ministry of the Word: Easter Sermon // Text: Luke 24:1-12

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.

Movement Four: God Feeds Us  

The Lord's Supper: Each week, following the teaching of God's Word, we come to the table and celebrate the finished work of Christ. We remember his death, rejoice in his resurrection, and in the taking of the elements "taste and see that the Lord is good." 

Sung Worship: Christ Be Magnified *New Song*

Spotify Playlist: