“Liturgy Saved Me” | Crossway Articles

Recalling Fact

“The liturgy saved me.” Lately, I used to be requested about my conversion to Christ. As I used to be sharing my testimony, I used that line—“the liturgy saved me”—(an exaggeration!) to make an vital level about how God used the various Bible readings, prayers, and songs from the Sunday liturgies of my childhood to recall God’s truths to thoughts and ultimately to work them deep down into my coronary heart. For instance, the tune Sanctus (Latin for “holy”) relies on the seraphim’s hymns in Isaiah 6:3 and Revelation 4:8, together with what the group cried out when Jesus journeyed as much as Jerusalem (Matt. 21:9, primarily based on Ps. 118:25).

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts,
heaven and earth are filled with your glory.
Hosanna within the highest.
Blessed is he who comes within the title of the Lord.
Hosanna within the highest.

For the primary eighteen years of my life, I sang (and heard sung) truths about God’s holiness every week. I additionally heard the quick confession about the excellent news of Jesus’s salvific work (“Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come once more.”), recited the early historic Christian creeds (which deal with the particular person of Christ), and prayed the Lord’s Prayer (which incorporates the petition for our want for forgiveness). Each Sunday, you would possibly say (and I do say!), I re-learned the gospel—that God is holy, we’re sinners who want our sins forgiven, and that salvation comes by the sinless Son of God, who lived and died and rose once more.

That mentioned, I need to admit that quickly after I used to be transformed to Christ on the age of 19 and throughout the Roman Catholic Church, I left that church, publicly disavowed key Catholic dogmas (notably the veneration of Mary and the saints), recoiled from the rote rituals of the mass, and began attending Willow Creek Neighborhood Church—probably the most well-known Protestant church within the seeker-sensitive motion. Speak about completely different! At Willow, no hymns have been sung, no liturgical components have been employed, and no traditional creeds have been confessed. However biblical truths have been taught, new converts have been rising hungrier for the issues of God, and a whole bunch of unbelievers recurrently discovered the Lord.

I thank God for my two years at Willow! However as I started to check the Bible, theology, and Christian historical past at Wheaton Faculty, I started to understand the liturgical richness of the Christian custom, and I used to be freshly drawn to considerate, Scripture-saturated types of worship—in private prayer and company gatherings. I started attending Faculty Church, a church close to campus, then led by R. Kent Hughes. Each Lord’s Day, I used to be inspired, edified, and geared up by Pastor Hughes’s participating preaching and deep exegesis of the entire canon of Scripture, accompanied by the soulful singing of nice hymns and the company recitation of prayers, readings, and confessions. I grew like a tree planted subsequent to the mighty Mississippi (or DuPage River, on this case)! I stayed in that stream for many of my pastoral ministry years till God replanted me within the Presbyterian Church in America, a physique that stands on the shoulders of giants like John Knox and John Calvin.

We All Want Reminders!

Within the busyness of life it’s all too simple to neglect who God is, what he has finished for us, and who we’re due to him. Crossway needs to assist! Join as we speak to obtain concise Scripture-filled, gospel-saturated reminders that may encourage you and strengthen your stroll with Jesus.

I share this a part of my journey to say this: I’m drawn to liturgy as a result of God used it to save lots of me, and he continues to sanctify me by it. Enable me to share 4 different causes, all of which I see as advantages.

1. Liturgy provides us phrases to hope.

Liturgy provides us phrases when our personal phrases fail us. Life is stuffed with moments the place our feelings—love, pleasure, sorrow, confusion, harm, and so forth—render us speechless earlier than God. Liturgy supplies structured prayers that give us a voice when our personal phrases come up quick. It helps us to speak with God even in our moments of silence and battle. The set prayers, drawn from Scripture and centuries of Christian custom, assist people and communities to strategy God with confidence, realizing that the phrases we echo have stood the take a look at of time. Whether or not in occasions of nice want or the routine of every day devotions, the church’s liturgies can information us, shaping our prayers and serving to us specific what we’d not in any other case know learn how to articulate.

2. Liturgy rightly shapes our ideas and phrases.

Liturgy is not only repetitive; it is usually formative. Over time, the common use of acquainted prayers and creeds in worship shapes our ideas, phrases, and actions. These varieties can grow to be a theological compass mounted in our heads and hearts, orienting us to the truths of the Christian religion. By repeating phrases of adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication, we’re reminded of the foundational truths of the gospel—the greatness of God, the depth of human sin, the grace supplied in Christ, and the hope of redemption. On this approach, liturgy equips us for all times as followers of Christ. As we’re led in worship many times by Scripture and the well-crafted phrases of those that have gone earlier than, these liturgical rhythms assist us to suppose rightly about God and to reply rightly to the gospel even past the Lord’s Day. Over time and with the Holy Spirit’s assist, we come to embody the phrases we pray as they equip us to articulate our beliefs and to stay out our religion in every day life.

Liturgy provides us phrases when our personal phrases fail us.

3. Liturgy reminds us that we’re a part of the worldwide and historic physique of Christ.

Liturgy reminds us that we’re a part of one thing far higher than ourselves. After we use conventional Christian liturgical varieties and prayers in worship, we be part of our voices to the worldwide and historic physique of Christ in reward. Believers have spoken or sung these prayers, confessions, readings, and songs all through centuries and throughout continents; after we take them up, we achieve this in fellowship with the common church. After we pray the Lord’s Prayer, recite the Apostles’ Creed, or sing the Sanctus, we take part in a non secular heritage that transcends time and place. This shared expertise reminds us that our religion just isn’t lived in isolation however in unity with brothers and sisters from all over the world. Whether or not we take up these phrases in giant congregations or within the quiet of our houses, the liturgy connects us to the broader Christian neighborhood, reminding us that we journey in fellowship with an awesome cloud of witnesses.

4. Liturgy helps develop holy habits.

Lastly, the usage of liturgy helps within the growth of holy habits. Simply as repeated bodily habits form our well being and well-being, repeated non secular practices form our souls. Liturgical worship—with its common rhythms of prayer, confession, Scripture studying, and so forth—creates a framework for non secular self-discipline. By way of the recurring use of those varieties, we study to repair our hearts and minds on God. This non secular rhythm cultivates a deep devotion to God and an attentiveness to his presence in our lives. Over time, these habits form our wishes, serving to us to like what God loves and to lengthy for deeper communion with him. Liturgy turns into not only a methodology of worship however a method of non secular formation, drawing us nearer to God and nurturing our development in grace.

The Final Phrase on an Necessary Phrase

Chances are you’ll not share all of my experiences or agree with all of my evaluations relating to liturgy. However I hope you share a want to worship God (“Lord, educate us to hope,” Luke 11:1), and I hope this quick submit has helped you see that Christian liturgy—with its prayers and patterns, Scriptures and songs—is a wealthy useful resource in that regard. The Greek phrase leitourgia, from which we get the phrase liturgy, is discovered within the New Testomony and may be translated as “service,” “ministry,” or “worship.” I hope that liturgy can even serve you so that you just would possibly higher worship God and minister to others.

Douglas Sean O’Donnell is the creator of Daily Liturgy Devotional: 40 Days of Worship and Prayer.

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