Welcome! We pray our ToGather worship blesses you. (Find out more about ToGather.)

Opening with Praise in Word and Song:

Let's begin our ToGather worship by joining the apostle Paul in his burst of praise, thanking God for the grace given to us in Jesus:

Praise be to [you,] the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For [you] chose us in [Christ] before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in [your] sight. In love [you] predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with [your] pleasure and will — to the praise of [your] glorious grace, which [you have] freely given us in the One [you love]. [Amen.] (Ephesians 1:3-6)

Phillips, Craig, and Dean provide us the words through song for recognizing and being thankful for this grace, as we sing "Your Grace Still Amazes Me":

Our focus in ToGather is on God's overwhelmingly generous grace given to us in Jesus. Rather than taking such grace for granted, we offer our lives to God and choose to walk away from sin. Our focus comes from our Verse of the Day from Titus 2:11-12:

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age... (Titus 2:11-12).

Sharing The Supper:

Demetrius chose songs focused on the grace we have received because of Jesus' love for us. On our own, we are broken and fragile, yet Jesus makes us precious to the Father and useful to the work of the Kingdom of God. We join Hillsong in singing "Broken Vessels (Amazing Grace)":

As we share in the Lord's Supper, Fred Spain uses Isaiah 53 to help us cherish the grace of God that is ours:

God's grace transforms us from being broken and fragile to being useful to him. Each of us prays for the Holy Spirit to empower and renew us as we sing "Restore My Soul" with Hallal:

Focusing on the Scriptures:

To prepare our hearts to say, "No!" to sin because of grace, we join Hillsong and sing "Grace to Grace." While the music that goes with this song is lovely, the lyrics to this song are inspiring. If we embrace these words as we sing them, then we are ready for God's grace to move us from forgiveness because of grace to thankful and passionate holiness as we live for Jesus by the power of that grace.

Phil will share several passages from Scripture that emphasize today's message. To help you dig deeper into these passages, he has provided a list of the key Scriptures at the end of the video and immediately following the video:

These are the Scriptures referenced in the video. The text of these Scriptures is included at the end of today's ToGather:
Titus 2:11-12; Matthew 22:29; Romans 5:5-11; Romans 6:1-11; Romans 8:13; 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 John 1:5-2:2; Luke 7:36-40

Closing with Praise:

We live passionately dedicated to holiness in response to God's lavish grace!
We close with a prayer adapted from Paul's praise in Ephesians 1:7-8 and his call to live for Jesus in Romans 12:1-2, followed by Tasha Cobb Leonard's song of triumph and promise, "Gracefully Broken":

O Father, we praise you for the redemption you bought for us through the sacrifice of Jesus, the Son you so dearly love. Through grace, dear Father, you have blessed us with the forgiveness of our sins as you lavished on us the riches of your grace. Not only do we thank you and praise you with our words, dear Father, but we also pledge our lives as living sacrifices lived to honor you in holiness as the Spirit transforms us by your grace and as we refuse to yield to the pressures of our world's fallen values. Through Jesus, we offer ourselves to you. Amen.

May God bless you this week as you live in his grace!

Thank God for this gift too wonderful for words! (2 Corinthians 9:15 NLT)

Special thanks to The Lumo Project and Free Bible Images for images related to the ministry of Jesus.

Appendix: Scriptures cited into today's lesson video:

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age... (Titus 2:11-12)

Jesus replied, "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God." (Matthew 22:29)

And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:5-11)

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin — because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:1-11)

For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. (Romans 8:13)

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us. My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father — Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 1:5-2:2)

When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.
When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner."
Jesus answered him, "Simon, I have something to tell you." (Luke 7:36-40)