We try to be led by the Spirit of God in every corporate gathering (hey, hopefully in all of life as well!), and today was no exception. Ruth Pingel led worship, and Danny Dunn was scheduled to preach, but didn't get the opportunity, as we never made it that far.
Here's the songlist we moved through in worship this morning:
1. Bless Your Name - in D (by our own Ruth Pingel). This is a great 'opening' song to help us make the initial corporate decision of faith to come to the presence of God, and we started with it today, following an exhortation to come to God in worship by Trey Allemang, who was one of the guys leading the meeting this morning.
2. Happy Day - in G (B. Cantelon, T. Hughes, ThankYou Music, CCLI# 4847027). Always a tune that helps us lift up praise, this one went great today.
3. Glory - in E (Reuben Morgan, Hillsongs, CCLI# 3744592). Great song, and today, this was our jumping off point, where we moved into a spiritual place where we knew we couldn't just go ahead and do another song. We waited on God and ministered to Him for...I really don't know, but somewhere between 30 and 40 minutes, maybe longer.
There were a few prophetic songs, and a couple of exhortations, but we mostly just ministered to the Lord. His presence came and overshadowed us, as we waited for Him to do whatever He wanted to.Then, after 10 or 15 minutes of just being still, pastor Tom Bedford came and gently exhorted us to keep worshiping, and we went to the next song (which we had really hoped we'd be able to get to!)...
4. A Mighty Fortress - in C (Nathan & Christy Nockels, EMI Christian Music Publishing, CCLI# 5488935). This was our first time doing this song, which we've all listened to a lot and have really liked. Interestingly, some of the scriptures read in prophetic exhortations before we did this song had to do with God being a refuge, a fortress, etc. So when we got to this one, it really gave expression to what it seemed God was revealing of Himself to us.
Bethany Shipman was on keys today, and did a beautiful job with A Mighty Fortress. I was on acoustic guitar, and capo'ed on the 3rd fret, playing this one in A to give a higher voicing, after a suggestion from Jon Shipman, our drummer this morning.
Ruth did an awesome job of leading this song (as well as the others), and it really took us further into the glory of God. Doug Davenport came and read this passage to us from Psalm 65, after which a spontaneous shout to God erupted:
"Praise is awaiting You, O God, in Zion; and to You the vow shall be performed, O You who hear prayer, to You all flesh will come. Iniquities prevail against me; as for our transgressions, You will provide atonement for them. Blessed is the man whom You choose, and cause to approach You, that he may dwell in Your courts, We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Your house, of Your holy temple." [Ps. 65:1-3 NKJV]
It was awesome, waves of shouting and declaring the greatness of God kept coming and coming.
You know, I have to take a minute to brag on our team today - 3 of our musicians worked the night shift on their jobs, then came and played for over four hours straight with great energy and anointing (so did everybody who got a full night's sleep, by the way).
Hopefully, we'll hear from Danny next week, I know he has a great message on being contributors in the Kingdom, carrying on from where Tom left off last week. But I think we got where we needed to go this morning. I hope you had a good morning in the Lord as well. You can read about what happened in worship all over the place on Fred McKinnon's Sunday Setlist blog at theworshipcommunity.com.
This just looks so powerful! Great service!
Posted by: Lori Biddle | February 08, 2010 at 12:33 PM