Breathtakingly Beautiful:(turn up the volume)
I love imaginative and wonderfully crafted worship, something new, something creative and inspiring, different from what we so often hear. This worship expression is out-of-the-box, completely unique, fresh and fragrant and my spirit responded with joy to hear God extolled in such a beautiful way. It’s in true worship we enter into the realms of heaven, the Lord encamping around us, a pilgrimage of encounter, where music, rhythm and song are carried by instruments born as far back as David’s tabernacle. Worship invites the presence of God, reaching into our brokenness and failures and bringing a longed-for healing balm.
Psalm 8:1-4
O Lord Our Lord
How majestic is Your Name in all the earth
So glorious You have taught infants and children to give You praise
They silence your revengeful enemies
When I gaze into the night sky and see the work of Your fingers
The moon and stars You have set in place
What is man that You should think of us
Mere humans, that You should care for us
Psalm 50:1-6
The Mighty One, God, the Lord has spoken
Summoning the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting
Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty
God shines in glorious radiance
Our God approaches with the roar of thunder
And does not keep silence
Fire devours everything in His way
And a great storm rages around Him
He summons the heavens above
As He judges His people
Gather my faithful ones to Me
Those who have made a covenant with Me by their worship
Then, let the heavens declare His justice
For God Himself sits as judge
Praying over our youth leaders and high schooler’s just before they left for Guatemala.
Our industrious youth working on a new Hope Renewed International ministry building this week
Prayer Focus This Week…
- Youth in Guatemala – changed hearts, changed lives, hunger to know God more deeply
- Several church members who have elderly parents declining
- Pray for the amazing musicians and singers on our worship team
- Ministry in Thailand, for wisdom and direction for the future
- Pray for our nation, bitterly divided over the recent election
- Missionary friend Bob Schaefer in Tamale, Ghana whose mother just died
- Sarah Jane Labrador, young leader in the central Philippines whose mother also recently died
- Sawdust artists Barbara Turner whose husband Alan passed
Finally: “If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Pastor Jay