Normally I don’t post two times in one day, but I had to pass this along.  We used to watch American Idol regularly, but didn’t watch this season.  I had heard about the show using “Shout to the Lord” on it during the “Give Back” episode and wasn’t sure what to think.  As always, Bob Kauflin gives a great, thought-provoking response.  Check it out.

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! 😉

Two thoughts from today have been going through my mind over and over.  The first is from a meeting I had with our Pastor.  He said:

Life’s too short for mediocrity.

Good to remember and very challenging, isn’t it?  Is God satisfied with mediocrity in our lives?  Read Revelation 3:15-17 (and the rest of the Bible for that matter) to find out the answer to that question.

As I was editing an article on finances for a newsletter that goes out monthly, I read this:

(speaking of the precision needed for Apollo 13’s last burn to make it back to Earth) He asked what the degree of error was that they were working with to which they answered two degrees.  He further explained that, at only a two degree difference, they would miss the earth by 120 miles by the time they landed.  You might be asking what this story has to do with marriage and money?  We have all been taught different ways of managing our money and have developed different spending habits.  When we first get married, we may only be two degrees different from our spouse in the way we think, however, five, fifteen or twenty years later we are 120 miles apart in how we think and act in regards to our finances.

Wow!  Isn’t that true of every area of our marriage as well?  If you do not prepare properly and think things like, “Well, we disagree slightly on this one thing but it’s no big deal,” it could be a huge deal in the long run.

Yesterday was a great day at Living Word yet again!  For the first time in I don’t know how many years, I had Easter Sunday off.  That was a very strange experience, yet refreshing at the same time.  We sang many great Easter hymns:

• He Lives
• Rejoice, the Lord Is King
• Oh For a Thousand Tongues (this threw me off guard a bit, because it wasn’t the traditional hymn we are familiar with, it was a song from around 1980.  I didn’t know it, but it was a good song nonetheless.)
• Because He Lives

We had a small, eclectic ensemble of instruments that accompanied two of the hymns and it really sounded quite good.  It was great to get some young people involved as well!

Pastor Wade’s teaching was great once again.  He asked three questions that really made you think:

• Did the Resurrection really happen?
• Why did (does) the Resurrection matter?
• Is the Resurrection yours?

He also asked the question, “If the Resurrection hadn’t happened, would your life look any different?”  When you really stop and think about it, that’s a challenging and convicting question.  Would it?

We had a fantastic time with family as well yesterday and Layla (our daughter) was in a great, happy mood most of the day.  That was wonderful as we were a little concerned how she’d do away from home all day and with all sorts of people.  She did great!

I hope you had a joy-filled Easter full of worship of our Risen Savior and precious time with family.