“God is near at hand when you do approach Him in prayer. Oh, comforting truth! A God at hand to hear the softest breath of prayer–to listen to every confession of sin–to every cry of need–to every utterance of sorrow–to every wail of woe–to every appeal for counsel, strength, and support. Arise, O my soul! and give yourself to prayer; for God is near at hand to hear and answer you.”
- Octavius Winslow
As we continue in our Easter series, “Do You Believe?”, this week we were in John 17. Our senior pastor preached a message called “The True Lord’s Prayer” as we asked if people believed that Jesus is One with the Father. As we looked at what Jesus’ prayer in John 17 revealed about Himself and about the Father, we sang of His glory and celebrated transformed hearts together through baptism.
The service began as normal with welcome and announcements as reminded people about the many events coming up in connection with Holy Week like Palm Sunday, our Maundy Thursday Passover Remembrance, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. We also reminded people about summer camps and heard about one of our regional camps, Yellowstone Alliance Adventures.
In our call to worship (written by our intern), Continue Reading…
We began our second series of the year this past Sunday called “be People of Prayer.” If you are the observant-type, you may notice that the title and look is similar. This is by design, as the previous series (Be People of the Word) and this one (Be People of Prayer) are designed to work together. We’ll be taking the next four weeks looking at some different aspects of prayer and helping people to begin to establish or continue a pattern of prayer.
The first week was focused on looking again at the example of Jesus and the time He spent in prayer. We looked at Mark 1:35-39, Luke 6:12-13, and Luke 22:39-46 as Jesus prayed often, He prayed hard, and He prayed through. Click for more info and video! Continue Reading…
We’re in the third week of the “Be People of the Word” series as we focused on the value and benefits of the what the Bible offers us as an owner’s manual for life. We tackled Psalm 119 (all of it), and approached it be first focusing on the blessing of obedience that comes from studying the Word and then presenting a number of “tips” based off of the main themes in Psalm 119.
We began with Welcome and Announcements, and then as part of the Call to Worship, I took a teachable moment focused on why we sing when we gather (because we are instructed to and because it helps us to remember and declare the truth of who God is and what He has done). I mentioned that the songs we sing are from Scripture, some of them exactly, and that the reason we often put verses on the screen during musical interludes was to help people connect the songs with their Scriptural basis. I then read a medley of Scriptures (Col 1:19, John 3:35, Phil 2:9-11, Eph 1:21, Col 1:16, Rom 14:9, Col 2:10, John 1:16). Continue Reading…
We finished up the three week mini-series this week. The Bible has much to say about prayer and the God we pray to. Unfortunately, we develop these boxes in life that we put prayer in, and ultimately put God in too. When we put God in a box, we forget how powerful and awesome He is, and how much He desires for us to trust Him with amazing and wonderful things. As a result, we pray these anemic and pitiful prayers and miss out on seeing God do some amazing things.
Beyond the Lord’s Prayer, the New Testament is full of great prayer examples of how we (as Christ-followers) can be praying for God’s will on earth and for our fellow Christ-followers. Join us as we expand our vision and discover what’s outside the box.
This week, we looked at the prayer Paul prayed for the church in Philippians 1:3-11 and were reminded of the important role of praying for those we walk the journey with so that the love of God can be made real in us.
For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Red Online Worship History Course with Dan Wilt
We’ve developed this church perspective that worship = music. While music and singing are a huge part of worship expression, worship is far more than music. It’s something that I am discovering both in the Bible and in looking at the history of worship expression in churches across time. Two of those expressions that we should revisit are those of prayer and scripture.
The worship languages of prayer and Scripture have always been important to me, and I have been privileged to be a part of churches that have valued those things, even if maybe not to the point of the Church of the past. These languages played a huge role in the life of the early church, both corporately and individually. For them, life drove prayer. Continue Reading…
