Happy New Year everyone! We had a great kickoff for the new year this morning at Life Church in Kirksville, MO. We had a few people out traveling today - some still on family holidays, others in Raleigh NC, with European and U.S. apostolic team folks for an eldership ordination at Christian Life Fellowship.
We've been in a place as a church in the last several weeks where we've really felt the Lord drawing us to Himself, with the realization that He's wanting to envision and empower us to serve Him in ways that only come from a deeper life of fellowship with Him. This didn't dissipate over the holidays, and we came together this morning with the same expectation and sense of being drawn to Him.
I mentioned something to the guys who were leading today, that they had me share to open the meeting. I was reading in Exodus 24 where God calls Moses up the mountain to meet with him. Aaron and his sons and the 70 leaders of Israel couldn't come all the way up with Moses to the presence of God, they had to "worship from a distance." And the rest of the people couldn't come onto the mountain at all - only stand at the base and see the fearsome presence of God descend on it in a cloud. This made me think about Heb. 12 in reference to that situation, where the writer says we haven't come to a physical mountain like they did, but to Mount Zion, the city of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to God Himself. How blessed we are to have the privilege of coming directly to the Lord Himself, rather than being warned to stay away, all because of the blood of Jesus which atoned once for all for our sins, adopted as children of God. Praise God! And we did.
As a worship team, we are having a lot of logistical trouble right now for some reason - making the schedule out for this month (thanks Ruth!) was very difficult, our sound board is falling apart, etc. This morning was no exception as the person scheduled to lead hurt her back yesterday, one of the scheduled singers e-mailed me at 1:00 in the morning to say he was throwing up, and another singer scheduled for today just didn't make it. But it really felt like we had everyone we needed, and we had a great time ascending the mountain together. Here are the songs we did this morning:
You Deserve It - in B (by our own Bethany Shipman). I love this song! It got us up and moving, and we went right across to the chorus of ...
You, You Are God - in B (Walker Beach, Gateway Publishing, CCLI #4389918). Awesome song, keyed in on the last phrase "I want my life to praise you."
All Of My Life - in F, G (Harold Forbis, OneVoiceWorship.Org, CCLI #5611458). This is a song I wrote a couple of years ago that's on the To Carry the Glory CD I just released. It's pretty simple, with a message of walking with the Lord, to become like the Lord, to be able to live for the Lord, with a bridge that prays "consume me". We modulated from F to G in the middle, then went straight across to the chorus of...
The Potter's Hand - in G (Darlene Zschech, Hillsong Publishing, CCLI# 2449771). This became a real song of consecration for us, and we went back to it at the end for an altar call, asking God to come fill us so he can use us to live real lives of worship, filled with His presence, His power, and His purpose, enabled to reflect His light in our world.
Tony Fajkus brought us an excellent word about how the expansion of God's Kingdom comes through discipleship. He talked about how we are to become disciples and to make disciples, making three main points from the book of Acts: 1. Disciples are about the business of seeing lives changes, 2) Disciples are about changing cities, and 3) Disciples are about transforming culture.
We heard an announcement about one particular outreach opportunity that D'Markus Thomas is heading up - an afterschool program, which is a great chance to reach into our city with the love of Christ. And, again, we ended with an altar of consecration.
Hope you had a great day in the house of God as well. Read about what took place in churches all over the place at Fred McKinnon's Sunday Setlist blog carnival. God bless, have a great 2010!
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