This Sunday at Living Word was fantastic. I think even more so than usual for me. It wasn’t because we had a Sunday almost full of music at the church, but more because God ordained everything to work out perfectly.
I was a bit concerned about the crammed schedule of having a group from our sister church sing three songs, plus having The Ambassadors, a Summer Team from our Bible School being here as well, plus having our own worship team leading worship. So we decided (I should say we were prompted by the Holy Spirit) to let the Summer Team lead worship and make the service a little more of a “concert” style service. Boy, what a great decision the Spirit led us to!
Not only was it nice for our musicians to have a bit of break, it was so good to just listen to God’s Word being sung in music. We also learned a great new worship song by Aaron Shust that we will be singing in days to come. And, I was helping teach some of our youth how to run EasyWorship and get this, both of these youth actually sang during the service! It was so cool to sit between two young people who were lifting their praises to God. Here was the song list:
- The Name of Jesus (Aaron Shust)
- Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (updated arrangement)
- Be the Centre (Michael Frye)
- Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior (Hymn by Fanny Crosby)
And, oh yeah, the message was awesome.
And we celebrated our final night of The Truth Project by having pizza and worshiping together before watching the last session.
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.
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!
