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.
Sunday was again a great day in the life of Living Word (as always).
Songs for the service:
- Lord Most High - Harris/Sadler
- Sing to the King - Foote
- How Deep the Father’s Love for Us - Townend
- Jesus, I Come - William T. Sleeper
We’ve been talking about “the day the universe changed” for the last two Sundays and it’s been really interesting. This past Sunday we talked about the blame game and were definitely challenged to examine ourselves. We were also reminded of the promise in Genesis 3 that the woman’s offspring (Jesus) would bruise his (the serpent’s) head. Literally blow a crushing blow to him and vanquish him. I thought it was awesome that Sing to the King has the exact words, “Satan is vanquished and Jesus is King” in it. I had no idea that there would be a section on “how to vanquish Satan” in the message. I love it when God works like that.
We had another awesome Truth Project small group meeting with some tough discussion. We talked about the question “who is man” and how society generally teaches that man is basically good with no tendency for evil. The Bible teaches the opposite. It was a struggle for some people in the group to understand how children could be born into sin. I have to admit that I was having a tough time coming up with an explanation. I know the Bible says “in sin my mother conceived me” (Psalm 139) and “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3) but how do you argue that children are sinful to someone who doesn’t believe that the Bible is true (our group believes the Bible is true, I’m talking in general here)?
I also assured the group that even though children are sinful, there is somehow a mystery that they can have great faith, even at the infant stage (at least I’m fairly certain the Greek implies this in the New Testament where Jesus talks about having the faith of a child). This is something that we can never understand, one of those amazing mysteries of God that we can take joy in.
When I first started blogging, I used to have a post every Monday called “Sunday Recap.” I miss doing these types of posts as it causes me to reflect on the great things that God did and allowed me to take part in during worship on Sunday morning (and Sunday evening, now). A few blogs I’m reading have been calling them “worship confessionals.” I’m not sure what they mean by that, so I’m going to keep mine titled “Sunday Recap” for now. Here’s the recap from yesterday:
Worship set:
- Pre-service song: Marvelous Light by Charlie Hall
- Strong Tower - Peter Furler/Steven Taylor
- The Solid Rock - Bradbury
- Before the Throne of God Above - Steve and Vicki Cook
- Speak, O Lord - Getty/Townend
Every once in a while, the music and the message just click. That happened during worship yesterday. Pastor Wade talked about the fall of man from Genesis and then closed the message by talking about guilt and what to do with it when Satan throws it at us in various forms. We sang the second and third verses of “Before the Throne” as a reprise and the first words of the second verse are “When Satan tempts me to despair, and tells me of my guilt within, upward I look and see Him there who put an end to all my sin.” That’s powerful stuff.
Sunday evening was Truth Project at small group and I was able to lead worship in a small group setting for the first time. Nerves made me move through the teaching portion too quickly, but I think there was a good spirit in the place (well, obviously there was, since the Holy Spirit was present :-). Like we talked about in the study, though, our minds were engaged and in tune with God’s presence, so I know He was glorified!
