As usual - a great day at Living Word yesterday.
We sang:
- Rise Up O Church of God
- Blessed Be Your Name (Redman)
- How Great is Our God (Tomlin)
- Speak O Lord (Townend / Getty)
- We Are Called to Be God’s People
We had a bit of a glitch with the final hymn - but those things happen. I was so encouraged by several things yesterday:
- The lady battling cancer continues to raise her hands in worship with a joyous smile on her face.
- A visiting friend of a young teenager in our congregation closes her eyes in worship and I could see her mind exalting Jesus Christ through it.
- A young man raises his hands to God during the Lord’s Prayer (I had to have my eyes open because I was holding my squirmy daughter
)
- Finding out that two new regular visitors sing, play the bass and play the guitar
Wade preached a fantastic sermon on the 4th commandment - very convicting and encouraging. We are able to bring our daughter to the zoo and thouroughly enjoy watching her “ooh” and “oh” and scream in delight at giraffes, squirrel monkeys and many other animals. Ended the day with a movie with my wife and got to bed slightly early. A great Sunday.
I thoroughly enjoyed our worship time yesterday. I had the day off from leading worship and it was great to just be led again. It brought joy to my heart to do Days of Elijah, not only because I love that song, but because the people who led it are elderly saints in our church and usually pick older music. It was so cool to have them do that song! The boom-chick arrangement was slightly humorous, but overall the song was led very well and fit the topic of the message perfectly. The song list was as follows:
- Victory in Jesus
- Thy Word
- Great is the Lord (Smith)
- Days of Elijah
- Take Time to Be Holy (closing song)
We were in the nursery yesterday, so I was only able to listen to a few minutes of the sermon before leaving, but some thoughts really hit home. Pastor Wade said, “God is not a priority. He’s everything. Jesus is either Lord of all or He is not Lord at all.” Wow. I’m looking forward to listening to the rest of the message.
We also had a very enjoyable Father’s Day with supper at Texas Roadhouse - yum! - and I’m finally going to be able to get a perennial bed done in my yard that’s been on the back burner for two years because I haven’t wanted to dig through a foot of rock to get it out of the yard. Thankfully, due to offering free rock at a garage sale and my neighbor needing rock for underneath a shed he was building, we were able to clear the entire space that I’ve been wanting to redo. Now to just find a truck I can use to go pick up a whole bunch of dirt.
I’ll admit it. My prayer life is probably the one area of my Christian walk that needs the most work. And yes, learning how to pray and pray consistently is work, but as we learned in The Truth Project last night, the word ‘work’ has been twisted into an ugly thing instead of the privilege that God gave to us.
Pastor Wade encouraged and challenged us to just plain spend time with God, to “trust in Him at all times…pour out your heart before Him, (because) God is a refuge for us.” He encouraged men to realize that we can’t afford to NOT be praying and we have to model it for our families. Good, good stuff.
We sang:
- Psalm 9 (a great lead/echo song right from Scripture)
- Oh Lord, You’re Beautiful (classic Keith Green)
- Sweet Hour of Prayer
- Strong Tower (Furler/Taylor)
The transition to EasyWorship seems to be going well, but we still need to work on getting some bugs out like making sure all the songs are on the default text so that it’s large enough and making sure songs and Scriptures are broken into more manageable screens.
And another fantastic part about yesterday…spending time with my daughter (lots of laughs from peek-a-boo and shoulder rides!) while being able to let my wife rest and catch up on some much needed sleep.
This week, since the Scribit widget in the sidebar has been utilized, we’ll look at different ways to worship God and not just on Sundays.
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.
Yesterday was another great day at Living Word. As I mentioned before, Pastor Wade and I have had a heart to get people to have more of a heart and attitude of worship during worship services, so we’ve started meeting weekly to plan and evaluate services and to change the format of the service slightly. Yesterday was the first major change. I thought it was very, very good. Wade took us through Psalm 2 as a call to worship and boy, that really focused my heart. My hope and prayer was that others’ hearts were focused as well. After the call to worship we then worshiped through song, Scripture reading, offerings and hearing the teaching of God’s Word. It was a good morning.
Songs:
- Everlasting God (Brown - used as a “gathering” type song)
- All Hail the Pow’r of Jesus Name (from hymncharts.com - great resource if you’ve never used it before)
- Your Name (Baloche/Brown)
- Enough (Tomlin/Giglio)
- Speak, O Lord (Getty/Townend - used to prepare our hearts to hear the teaching from God’s Word)
A personal sidenote - does anyone else’s kids have a really hard time on Sundays? :-) Our daughter made it through church really well, but without her usual nap she was not a happy camper after church! We had to leave lunch early to get her home! She’s worth rushing out the door, though! 