Sunday Stuff

Who told the United States Congress to change the date for turning your clocks forward without telling me? For not only did it affect MY ability to get some much needed rest (LOL), but it affected our congregation from making it to church on time.

Penny and I got to church on time (thank God ) and we spent time together on our knees at the altar. Having time in communion and fellowship with the Master before worship is something that we both take very seriously to be the very mechanism that God will use to not only change the atmosphere at our church, but to also send the unchurched to the House of the Lord. It is starting to really catch on with the congregation, and my continued prayer to the Lord is that every member will deem it essential for them to get to the altar before worship themselves.

Penny began a new teaching series during Sunday School, as the Lord has led her to take our church back to the basics entitled How to Study God's Word. As she is centered on that, the Lord has led me to lead our church on Thursday Evening during Bible Study, to a new teaching series on the book of Revelation entitled Victory in Jesus. Both classes were well attended and the participation was great and encouraging that we are headed in the right direction. Please keep us in our prayers.

Again Jamal took us into the presence of the Lord during our Praise & Worship period. God is using this young man in a mighty way through his gift of singing. God has put an organ with a leslie speaker inside his throat and he is using it to the glory of God. Our music ministry was in rare form yesterday, as they accompanied me on a great old song of the church entitled Jesus Be a Fence All Around Me. I love those young men! They are not going anywhere!

We preached the next to last sermon of our series on the book of Ezra with an exposition on chapter 9:1-9 which I labeled A Prayer For Revival. The great scribe Ezra, after leading the people of God back into Jerusalem, noticed that the people were participating in intermarriages with the natives of the land, who were not devoted to the Lord. They were taking their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons. This practice troubled and grieved Ezra greatly, so much so that the bible says he tore his hair and his garments. So he goes into the temple during the evening sacrifice, and he begins to pray to the Lord to revive this dead people and lead them back to the Lord.

I dare say that many of our churches have allowed themselves to mixed the ways of the Lord with the ways of this world, and that has caused them to dilute their worship and be contrary to the will of God. We all need to pray that God can and will bring us all back into right relationship, fellowship and worship of the Lord Jesus Christ.