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We are a ragtag fellowship of sinful people bought and restored by the Astounding grace of God through his Son Jesus, the Christ, in whom all people and all things throughout all creation find their rightful place and function. We worship together by God’s grace to celebrate the goodness of our God in Jesus Christ; we study together by God’s grace to grow together in our knowledge of his goodness; we fellowship together by God’s grace to taste his goodness; and we walk together by God’s grace in a world in desperate need to see the goodness of God. At Chattanooga Valley Presbyterian Church, we are sinners possessed by God’s grace in Christ for the display of God’s glory in Christ.

Click on the link below to find out more about Bible study, prayer, fellowship groups as well as schedules for the current week. You will also find included a guide for “sharing one another’s burdens” through prayer.

Life of the Church for the Week of 08.24.08

Paul hints at the stream that nourishes such a perspective when he says in Romans, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” He continues, as though to underscore the intensity of anticipation with which he speaks, “For [even] the creation waits with eager longing for the [full/complete] revealing of the sons of God.”

Paul and James are not simply whistling Dixie while Atlanta burns, but are following the very pattern of Christ himself who said to his disciples on the night of his betrayal, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart, I have overcome the world.”

And what Jesus declared and what Paul and James echo, God, by his generous grace, reveals to John as Encouragement to his children living in a fallen world: “Then I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain; and when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb [and worshipped, singing], ‘Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.’”

As we gather, may we gather together rejoicing in the historical fact that our Lord has overcome the world that so persistently presses us and threatens to break us; may we rejoice as we see one another, recognizing by faith that each one stands as a monument of the living Lord’s one-time and continued victory over the power of the world in us, among us, and around us by the powerful working of his Spirit through his Word.

File: Order of Worship for March 11, 2007

The main difference between Christians and others is that we take God seriously and they do not. We really do believe that he is the central reality of all existence. … Our work goes wrong when we lose touch with the God who works ‘his salvation in the midst of the earth.’ It goes wrong both when we work anxiously and when we don’t work at all, when we become frantic and compulsive in our work (Babel) and when we become indolent and lethargic in our work (Thessalonica). … Christian worship [as a gift of God's grace in which we learn to immitate God's glory and grace in our lives] gathers the energy and focuses the motivation that transform us from consumers who use work to get things into people who are intimate and in whom work is a way of being in creative, restoring relationship with another. As Christians worship and do the jobs and tasks assigned to them by their God of grace in what the world calls ‘work’, we learn to pay attention to and practice what God is doing in love and justice, in helping and healing, in liberating and cheering. (Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, p111.)

As we prepare to gather together this weekend in response to God’s gracious invitation in Christ, to gaze upon his glory and grace in Christ and be changed into instruments tuned to his heartbeat in Christ for the display of his glory, may we pray together God would be pleased, that he would be glorified by our fellowshipping worship so that we may be a cause of rejoicing in the world among the people in which he has planted us.

File: Order of Worship for March 4, 2007

As we prepare to gather together as God’s people, made alive by his astounding and abounding grace in Jesus Christ, let us be mindful of this redemptive fact that each one of exhibits before one another and the watching world the glorious and present reign of the living Lord through the living Jesus!

File: Order of Worship for February 25, 2007

May the wonder of our Lord overtake us as we prepare to come together this week to worship and commune together with him in his house at his table by his astounding grace in Christ.

Psalm 113

Praise the Lord!
Praise, O servants of the Lord,
praise the name of the Lord!

Blessed be the name of the Lord
from this time forth and forevermore!
From the rising of the sun to its setting,
the name of the Lord is to be praised!

The Lord is high above all nations,
and his glory above the heavens!
Who is like the Lord our God,
who is seated on high,
who looks far down
on the heavens and the earth?
He raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap,
to make them sit with princes,
with the princes of his people.
He gives the barren woman a home,
making her the joyous mother of children.
Praise the Lord!

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, [the transcendant, creator, holy] God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created all things, who is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, who upholds the universe by the word of his power, who, after making purification for the sins of the world, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high!

Pastor Daniel writes similarly to God’s people living as exiles in Babylon; pastor John writes similarly to believers being pressed, beaten, and killed under Nero’s tryanny. To the ears of 21st Century saints, such as we are, these pastors sound terribly insensitive to the needs of their people; their letters seem to be beside the point. And yet, they drive right to the point: at the heart of true, abundant, hope-filled life among a dark, desperate, dead world of lies is … worship, the worship of the living God, displayed in his glory in the person of Jesus Christ, who reigns supreme today over all circumstances, all people, all institutions, all nations, all powers and dominions to accomplish his purpose: the creation of a new people to dwell in a new heavens and a new earth for the eternal display of his glory. To paraphrase John Piper in his book “Let the Nations be Glad:” People hurt, people cry, people are depressed, people are estranged and alienated; we have upheavals and wars; nations rise and fall on the backs of their people; injustice and lack of mercy abound; Missions exists, evangelism exists, counseling exists — all of these things exist because true worship of the living God does not. Missions is not at the heart of the Great Commission, worship is. Worship is the fuel and goal of the Christian life in Christ.

As you and your family prepare to gather together with God’s 21st Century saints this weekend, reflect on the fact that it is our public, corporate gathering before the throne of the living God to adore, praise, hear, and obey him in Christ by faith that is at the heart of God’s work to reconcile all things to himself in Christ. It is as God Unites us to Christ through baptism, Gathers us Together in Christ, Speaks to Us in Christ, Equips Us in Christ, and Sends Us in Christ that we are reoriented to His glorious reign through this One like a son of man and so bear witness to the Hope of the world, Jesus Christ and him crucified.

It is also as we pray, fellowship, and serve together in Christ. So, as you prepare, please note the following:

• “Promised Land” Work Day: please join us Saturday @ 10:00am if you are able to begin clearing the 7 acres behind the church so that in the coming months and years we can use it to display and minister God’s glory and grace in Christ to the community in which we have been planted.

File: Order of Worship for February 11, 2007

And they heard: “I am YHWH, your God, the God your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. There is no other; there is none beside me. Therefore, you shall place no other so-called gods before me.” They had seen it: by the power of YHWH’s grace, the most powerful gods of the world had been systematically put to shame and defeated, along with their people so that the cries of His own people for justice and mercy may be vindicated and His own glory displayed for all the world to see.

When we come to worship, this is the God before whom we come, by Whose grace we come: the God who has not only defeated the Egyptian pantheon, but the kingdom of Death itself so that our cries for mercy may be vindicated and His own glory displayed. This week, as we come to worship, let us, by faith, prepare our hearts to worship THIS God, and no other; to worship THIS God alone, the God by whose power Jesus, the Christ, was raised and now reigns supreme in glory, and no other.

As you gather, please be in prayer for each other that we would gather to worship THIS God, and be in prayer for God’s people worldwide that together THIS God’s name would be magnified and glorified through Christ-centered worship before a watching and desperately needy world.

File: Order of Worship for February 4, 2007

And so, in Acts 8, Luke recounts for us an Ethiopian eunuch who has journeyed from the ends of the earth, from among those explicitly banned from the family of the God of Jacob, in order to learn Yahweh and his ways, in order to get wisdom and understanding. And, lo and behold, what does he find? A commoner speaking of a crucified carpenter.

This weekend as you prepare yourselves and your family to gather together with Christ’s redeemed reflect on the astounding mystery of God by which he restores us (and all things), makes us alive, and binds us together; namely, Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Please also keep the following items in mind, making them a matter of praise and prayer:

• New Babies! - praise God for his safe delivery of Kaylee Ruth Wilcox (1/9) and Roger Gerald Collins, III (1/23); pray for the recovery and adjustment of these families growing by God’s grace for the display of his glory
• New Growth - that the community of Christ’s redeemed at CVPC would be increasingly possessed with a sense of the “Wonder of It all” through our prayer, worship, and fellowship together;
• New Outreach - pray that the Lord would be pleased to declare and display his good news through the ESL outreach, CVES Mentoring, and the Blue Ridge, Georgia Outreach.

File: Order of Worship for January 28, 2007