i am an offering

Sunday was a bit of an odd day at Living Word for me, as my wife and I had the pleasure of being involved in the nursery!  As a result of this, we weren’t able to hear the message during the worship time, but I was able to listen to it online this morning.  It was a great privilege to work in the nursery (a little crazy, but a great privilege!)

Sunday songs:

• Almighty (Watson)
• Blessed Be Your Name (Redman)
• Blessed be the Lord, God, Almighty (Fitts)
• All Creatures of our God and King (traditional hymn)

The worship team did a great job this past Sunday.  It was nice to just be in the congregation with no responsibilities.  The one thing I would love to see us all work on is transitions between songs.  Helpful things to do are to wait until after the first song to encourage the congregation through spoken word (instead of talking before the first song and having silence in between the first and second), or picking songs that are in the same key that can flow seamlessly into one another.  But other than these minor things, my mind was led to focus on Jesus and I was able to sing to Him with minimal distraction, so thanks worship team!

I always have to laugh when I sing “All Creatures,” however, because I always picture the skit of Mr. Bean in church trying to sing along and not knowing where to end the “alleluia’s!”  Alleluia!  Alleluia! Allelu—ya..ya…y..y…ya!

Pastor Wade shared a fantastic sermon on ‘profitable pain.’  God will use anything to bring glory to Him, and in order to grow in our faith, often the process will be painful.  We can’t short-circuit this process of growth by trying to avoid pain.  And God is with us through all of it.  Good stuff and one that I will be listening to at least one or two more times this week.

Because our Truth Project hosts were out of town and we had a ministry event Sunday night, as was able to share a relaxing evening with family, which was so needed.

A great day.

Another great day at Living Word!

Songs:

• Forever (Tomlin)
• Sing to the King (Foote)
• Where You Lead Me (DeShetler)
• He Leadeth Me (Traditional Hymn) - we sang the last verse accapella and it was beautiful.
• Savior, Like a Shepherd, Lead Us (Traditional Hymn)

Highlights of the day:

• An older gentleman sang “Child of the King” for special music and boy what a treat that was!  He was a little reminiscent of Glen Payne to me! (for those of you familiar with the legendary Southern Gospel quartet - The Cathedrals - also, don’t always trust wikipedia, but you have to laugh out loud when it says this above the article “Please help improve this article by removing excessive trivia and irrelevant praise, criticism, lists and collections of links.(February 2008)”)
• Stay in the Shepherd’s back pocket.  Wade urged us to stay as close to the shepherd as we can, and no harm will befall us.  Good stuff.
• Not from the service, but thanks to some regulars at a local Mexican restaurant, we got free dessert after lunch!  Sweetness!
• Truth Project took a look at History and what a great look it was.  My mind was challenged and transformed.