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.
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! 
We had a great Sunday at Living Word. A great Sunday. We’re in the midst of slightly redesigning the worship service, which is exciting, but in the meantime, this is how yesterday looked:
Some highlights of the music were when the children walked through the congregation with palm branches during “Hosanna, Loud Hosanna” and had a wonderful moment of teaching from one of our awesome Sunday school volunteers. Another highlight was that my mother-in-law was playing from chord sheets from the first time after years and years of being a classical piano player (nice work!!). The only glitch was that the words for “Come Christians Join to Sing” weren’t the right words, so we had to look off the screen. But it still worked great.
The best part of the day, for me though, was Pastor Wade’s teaching on worship. Wow. What a great sermon. You really should take a listen. And I’ll give you a hint, it had little to do with music.
We also had the privilege of hanging out at Pizza Ranch and watching the movie “Amazing Grace.” Great food, great movie, great fellowship. Great time.
A great day on Sunday at Living Word.
Songs:
- Sing to the King (Foote)
- Marvelous Light (Charlie Hall)
- Jesus, Thank You (Pat Sczebel - Sovereign Grace Music)
- Jesus Paid it All
I will never get sick of Jesus, Thank You. What an amazing song to sing. Pastor Wade taught on four curses that came about as a result of the fall. One of the has been a very tricky subject for many Christians - the curse that man would rule over woman. He did such an awesome job explaining these things and pointing out that if men don’t step it up in there own lives and be a true spiritual head that is willing to die for his wife as Christ died for the church than it will never work. I’d encourage you to take a listen to the sermon. It was phenomenal. One fantastic quote from Wade:
Whoops, did I just do the stereotype of the American sitcom? Dad’s you want to get down about your role in life, just watch TV. Men, you will start to see that the cultural expectation for you is to commit adultery and to buy beer…we men are easy bait…God wants you to step up and lead your families…He wants you on your knees, taking your family before the Lord, doing battle. He wants you on your knees, He wants you in His word, to step up and be a man!”
Truth Project in small group was awesome. We looked at “Who is God” and El Qannah, one of the Hebrew names for God rocked my world. Study that name sometime. It will challenge, change and blow your mind on who God is.
