Hope In Love

Posts Tagged ‘God-moment

Your name is holy (You are the sovereign I AM) (Brian Doerkson)
Better is one day (Matt Redman)
Facedown (Matt Redman)
I love your presence (Darren Clark/ Jessie Lane)

I am a huge fan of God moments. This morning Chris “the pastor” was supposed to speak on community…he’s doing a whole series on it…but then God took over the service and did His own thing. Chris went up during announcements and (while shaking) told the congregation how angry he was about how Christians are ok with settling. He said he was angry with himself and us about how we settle and we grow comfortable with sin in our lives…we compromise…we work on the stuff that others can see, but the internal stuff (pride, holding on to hurts, unforgiveness, etc) we just let fester and we don’t deal with it. He was so angry he decided to take a moment to cool off. Brett went to up and he was supposed to go do announcements about youth stuff but then he ended up giving a 15 minute mini-preach about how we have compromised and accepted the world’s view of relationships. Stats say that the divorce rate between Christian couples and non-Christian couples is exactly the same…yet we as Christians know that marriage is an earthly example of Christ’s relationship with the Church…so what are we saying about our relationship with Christ? Are we displaying the love of Christ?

One topic that has been discussed a lot this past week by Brett and Val is little comments that, although they are meant as jokes, they are very likely to cause “problems” in marriages. For example, people who refer to their wives as “the old ball and chain” or something similar…if my (possible future) husband called me that, it would hurt and I don’t think it would be displaying his love to me, which might lead me to become less amped about loving him. Also, what picture are you presenting to the young men around you who may be thinking about marriage? And yes it’s a joke, and it may be funny, but it may also cause hurt. Marriage is a beautiful thing (picture), but if we keep tearing at it and making fun of it, it may lose it’s significance, it’s beauty, it’s meaning…and that, inho, is one of the main causes of divorces today.

Evening service is taking on a different look as most of the students have finished for the year and have gone home…so it looks less like a service and more like a gathering – no music, no formal preach, just a “hey let’s get together and worship differently”… We had around 15 people tonight and we sat in a circle and pretty much discussed the issue of building each other up and blessing each other instead of ripping into each other and making those jokes that may seem innocent but may also break the other person down unintentionally…so basically continuing the morning’s talk but with a focus of us as a congregation rather than marriage context. We pretty much realised that course talk (Ephesians 5) can lead to hurt, e.g. if you make a joke about someone and they take it the wrong way. And also, even if the other person takes it as a joke, if someone else walks by, not knowing the context of the joke or the relationship between the joker and the jokee, will the words of your mouth speak blessings or curses to them…will they see the love of Christ in your words?

So basically lesson of the day: watch what you say. Build each other up. Verbally bless one another.

Such a super awesome day!

For more setlists and sermon recaps go to FredMcCommick.com

Week 2, for me at least, of the “Sunday Setlists” blog carnival at FredMcKinnon.Com

Morning
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o praise him (david crowder)
Great in Power (Russell Fragar)
You’re Beautiful (Phil Wickham)
let me found at your table (brad klynsmith)
Above all else (Vicky Beeching)
Be the center (Michael Frye)

The same team that led last week led this week, which would account for the repetition of the songs from last week.

Went to youth again this morning so missed out on the sermon. My heart was broken in youth…one of the girls broke down as she told about the difficulties she’s having with her dad… aaarrrrgggg… everytime I hear another story about another youth person that has to deal with father issues it makes me want to scream…I don’t know if I could deal with this on a regular basis…don’t think I will ever go into full-time youth ministry…my heart just can’t take it.

Anyway, Brett was back this week so he led youth and he talked on relationships with emphasis on true (real) love…it went great, the youth were very interactive, which always makes it more fun.
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Evening – enGAGE
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Lord reign in me (Brenton Brown)
We cry out (Brian Johnson)
From the inside out (Joel Houston)
Consuming Fire (Tim Hughes)
O Praise Him (David Crowder)
The Wonderful Cross (Chris Tomlin)
Oh Lord, you’re beautiful (Keith Green)

Tonight was great. We had a whole lot of first time visitors, which is weird…I mean cos it’s in the middle of the year…you expect a lot of visitors at the beginning of the year, and maybe a couple during the year (it’s a student service so most peple who come there have been around for the year and you’d presume by now they’d have found a church to call home) but tonight I think half the people who were there were visiting…interesting.

Worship was great…I felt it was one of those services that we did not do all that well as the worship team (I for one made a whole lot of mistakes) but God kinda took over and made it a worship-filled service so it was really great.

Then afterwards, a friend was giving us a lift home and when we asked him how he was doing he just broke down and so we just prayed for him right there and then as he was driving…It was such a beautiful God-moment.

I have been super encouraged lately by the people in my church who have just taken a stand and become Church when others are in need. enGAGE is totally reminding me of the early (acts) church and giving me hope we can really be that in this day and age.


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