Worship: In the Morning When I Rise

Below is a service of prayer and praise. Use and adapt for your personal or group use. If you do not have a hymnal (Lift Up Your Hearts) available, these songs/hymns are easily found on YouTube. The complete service is posted here and also attached as a pdf.

In the Morning When I Rise: God Calls Us to Worship

Prayer of Invocation

We welcome the morning in this place and pray God’s presence in all our awake moments.  

What better way to do that than to begin our day with worship and praise. Thanks be to God we have a God who has called us to this place, to this day and this sunrise, and meets us here inviting us to offer up our hearts in worship. God is here and we are welcome.  

Prayer

Eternal God: as your whole church gathers around the world, each part of the globe wakes to the dawn to raise their voices in an unending hymn of praise until the whole of your creation resounds in perfect harmony with songs of loudest praise. So we join our voices, contributing our melody to participate in the worship of your church, united and made complete and perfect with one another, only by your grace which draws us together into one. Amen.  

Join to sing God’s unending praise together.

• *Great is Thy Faithfulness  (Lift Up Your Hearts #348:1,3)
• *Ten Thousand Reasons (Lift Up Your Hearts #559)

The Lord be with you

And also with you

Our help is in the name of the Lord,

Who made heaven and earth.

O Lord, open my lips,

And my mouth shall declare your praise. 

The Lord’s unfailing love and mercy never cease,

Fresh as the morning and sure as the sunrise.

Grace, mercy and peace are yours from the Triune God.  Amen.

As God has gathered us in this place, you are invited to extend the peace of Christ to your brothers and sisters around you.

In the Morning When I Rise: We Offer Up Our Prayers and Petitions

Ministry of the Word: Psalm 90

As we turn to God in prayer, we hear these words from Psalm 90 that remind us of God’s faithfulness which is sure as the sunrise. In the nighttimes of our sorrow and of our sin, personal and systemic, God’s faithfulness remains constant and consistent as the promise of the rising sun.  

Hear God’s word from Psalm 90. (Read Psalm 90)

Morning Prayers with Give Me Jesus (Lift Up Your Hearts #423)

In our prayers this morning, we are going to allow the presence of the Holy Spirit to lead us and hear the prayers of our hearts.  Follow through several prayers, interspersing the verses of “Give Me Jesus” and offer up opportunity to simply say a name, or a place, or even a single word that represents something that is on your heart.  We trust the work of the Holy Spirit to bring these to our minds and allow us to offer them up before the Lord confidently.  

Verse 1 of Give Me Jesus

In the morning when we rise, our truest desire is that you be the first thought of our day.  And that through this lens we see the world around us with your eyes for the beauty and also the brokenness, your heart to care for those we love and those we find difficult to love.  That we face the world with your hands to serve and also to receive the blessings you are so graciously ready to bestow. So we offer up to you in a single word or a single phrase these blessings for which we are grateful.  

Verse 2 (Give Me Jesus)

For many, dark midnight prevails and it feels as though the morning will never come.  Darkness comes in many forms: body, mind, spirit, personal and corporate, national and global.  For those trapped in many forms of darkness we offer up their names, or their locations, or their darkness.

Verse 3 (Give Me Jesus)

We pray for those who work to relieve the darkness and bring in your saving light.  For healthcare workers, for social workers, for church workers, for justice workers.  For all these and more, we offer up their names or their work to you.

Verse 4 (Give Me Jesus)

We pray for those who suffer in body or in mind.  Each of us carries the names and the faces of our family members, or friends, or colleagues, parishoners, our even ourselves as we face our own mortality and our own bodies and minds that fail us. We offer up these names to your saving hands.

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I arise today

Through the strength of heaven;

Light of the sun,

Splendor of fire,

Speed of lightning,

Swiftness of the wind,

Depth of the sea,

Stability of the earth,

Firmness of the rock.

I arise today

Through God's strength to pilot me;

God's might to uphold me,

God's wisdom to guide me,

God's eye to look before me,

God's ear to hear me,

God's word to speak for me,

God's hand to guard me,

God's way to lie before me,

God's shield to protect me,

God's hosts to save me

Afar and anear,

Alone or in a multitude.

I arise today

Through the mighty strength

Of the Lord of creation.  Amen.

May the whisper of God the Creator be the one that awakens you;

the open hand of the Christ the Son be the one that raises you;

the prompting of the Holy Spirit be the one that sends you,

this morning and all mornings, and leads you safely home. Amen.

Doxology

• Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow (Lift Up Your Hearts #965)