James 4:13-17 - If the Lord Wills

ORDER OF WORSHIP

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CALL TO WORSHIP

How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!

My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord;

my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.

For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.

I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God

than dwell in the tents of wickedness.

For the Lord God is a sun and shield;

the Lord bestows favor and honor.

No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.

O Lord of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you!

(Psalm 84:1-2, 10-12)

SONG OF ADORATION

Be Thou My Vision (click for lyrics and sheet music)

PRAYER OF ADORATION

At this point you can pause to offer your own prayer of adoration and praise to God. To help prompt you to pray a prayer of praise ask yourself one of the following questions:

• What Scriptural passage about who God is can I turn into a prayer of praise? (e.g. Rom. 11:33-36) 

• What character or attribute of God can I focus on and give Him praise for? (e.g. His Sovereignty, Goodness, Justice, Faithfulness, etc.)

CALL TO CONFESSION (Luke 12:13-21)

Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ But God said to him, Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

Reflect on the passage above and ask God “to search your heart and try your thoughts” and confess the ways that you have fallen short of His glory.

PRAYER OF CONFESSION

Our Heavenly Father,

Forgive us for the ways that we have treasured many objects above You. 

We are guilty of seeking our joy and identity in earthly treasures.

When you give us good gifts, we are prone to love them too much, cling to them too tightly, and share them too sparingly.

Teach us to delight instead in all the spiritual riches you have lavished so extravagantly on us in Christ.

In His Name we pray, Amen.

ASSURANCE OF GRACE IN CHRIST (Ephesians 2:1-7)

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

SONG OF THANKSGIVING

Christ is Mine Forevermore (click for lyrics and sheet music)

SCRIPTURE READING (James 4:13-17)

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

SERMON (“If the Lord Wills”)

SONG OF RESPONSE

Take My Life and Let it Be (Click for lyrics and Sheet Music)

CONFESSION OF FAITH (Heidelberg Catechism Q. 27)

Christian, what do you understand by the providence of God?

God's providence is

his almighty and ever present power,

whereby, as with his hand, he still upholds

heaven and earth and all creatures,

and so governs them that

leaf and blade,

rain and drought,

fruitful and barren years,

food and drink,

health and sickness,

riches and poverty,

indeed, all things,

come to us not by chance

but by his fatherly hand.

PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD

Take time to pray for the leaders and members of our church,

for the various needs that our world is facing,

and for the advancement of God’s Kingdom amidst all of this.

DEPARTING SONG (Doxology)

GIVING OF OFFERING

We would kindly ask, that despite our inability to gather, that you would maintain your financial support of Sand Harbor. We know that many of you give by providing a physical check when we take our offering during worship and so here are some alternatives that you can utilize:

You can mail a physical check to our P.O. Box: 

Sand Harbor Presbyterian Church

P.O. Box 3187 Tequesta, FL 33469

You can set up an automatically generated check through your banking system (kind of like a bill pay) and send it to our P.O. Box

Or you can give online through our secure online giving tool by going sandharborpca.org/giving