It was good to be at God’s house and worship after a week away.  It always feels good when you feel like you’ve “come home” to church as well!  Songs from yesterday provided by some great volunteers:

• We Trust in the Name of the Lord our God
• Be Lifted High
• Your Name
• Blessed be the Name (although, this one didn’t quite work out, more in a second)

As I was proofing the service before it was put into EasyWorship and saw “Blessed be the Name” I thought to myself, “Hmm…I don’t recognize that song.  Great!  Must be a new one that we’ll learn.”

As we came to that song and the worship leaders started it I could tell something was wrong.  The words weren’t matching what the leader was singing and the congregation wasn’t singing along.  Then the music stops.  The right words are searched for and everyone realizes that the wrong song was put into EasyWorship.  We had a good chuckle and kept going.  Although our church is very forgiving with stuff like that, it was still a bit of an awkward moment.  Coming this week I’d like to look at what happens when certain things don’t quite work out the way you expected them to.

• What Happens When…The Wrong Song is on the Screen and the Projection Volunteer can’t Find the Right One?
• What Happens When…Your Guitar is So Badly Out of Tune You Have to Stop the Music?
• What Happens When…The Music Track for Special Music Won’t Play?
• No Matter What The Sound Tech Does a Microphone Keeps Feedbacking?

See you the rest of the week!

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.

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.

Where do you find your confidence?

God has blessed me with natural talent. Learning a new song and memorizing songs come very easily for me. Remembering chord progressions and talking while I play are two things that I don’t have too much trouble with. But I’m saying this not to boast, but to tell you that it’s probably my biggest downfall when it comes to trusting Christ.

I often think that I can do things on my own, without God’s power. I often think that because things come easily to me, I don’t have to prepare or practice or rely on the Holy Spirit. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

What do you depend on?

Bob Kauflin, in his new book Worship Matters has a very encouraging and convicting chapter on the power of the Holy Spirit. As I’ve read his book so far, this chapter has been one that stands out at me the most. In it he writes:

So here’s the question: How much do you pray? Do you pray for his guidance before you start planning for Sunday? What do you place more trust in-God’s power or your performance? Do you toss up generic prayers like, “God, please bless our time today?” Or do you pray specifically, asking the Spirit to reveal Christ to everyone gathered, to help the congregation sing with understanding, and to bring forth fruit in people’s lives? (pg. 83)

Granted, Bob is talking about a worship leader praying for various aspects of a worship service, but how often do we do the same thing in our lives? How often do we not pray before we start our day? How often do we place more trust in our performance then God’s power? How often do we pray generic prayers of “God, please bless me today, or bless so-and-so today,” without getting very specific. God cares about the details.

Bob goes on to say these very convicting statements:

Confessing our utter dependence on the Holy Spirit should produce a deep sense of gratitude, humility, and peace in our hearts. It should free us from anxious thoughts about how smoothly the service will flow, whether or not the sound system will feed back, and how people will respond to us. (pg. 83)

Again, if we apply this to our own everyday lives, utter dependence on the Holy Spirit should free us from anxious thoughts about anything and everything.

So how about you? Are you finding your adequacy in God? Or are you finding yourself self-sufficient without an utter dependence on Him? Let us become God-sufficient, knowing that He is so much more than enough for all we could ever ask or imagine.

This is just way too good to pass up, plus it helps me make you aware of a great new blog (or two). Rocksinmydryer is giving away a box set of all the artists on the WOW Hits 1 CD. Craziness! Thanks Missy for the heads up.

More on satisfaction, sufficiency and confidence in Christ later today.