Sunday Stuff - 12/7/08

Wow, what a day in worship with the people of God basking in the presence of God. We had an amazing day in worship at the First Mt. Zion Church. The Lord was in the place all morning long and the congregation was blessed immensely because of it. Every once in a while, each of us will experience a day that causes us to be mindful why we answered the call from the Lord. It all began for me on Saturday. I was in my family room testing out my new surround sound system (Spoon, you are not the only "techie" in the group) and decided to put in a DVD of one of my favorite preachers in this country, Dr. Maurice Watson, from the 2005 Hampton's Ministers Conference, and he blessed me tremendously when he told them that many Pastors spend too much time comparing our ministries to that of other Pastors. He said that God will not bless your ministry to be great until you begin to appreciate for where God has placed you at this present time. At that moment, the Lord spoke to me about the future of our church and I was convicted to stop looking at where I was not and begin thanking God for where I am because the truth is that I do not deserve anything that I have, but for the grace of God. Thank you much Maurice Watson!

It continued during our Sunday School period, as my wife Penny, led the congregation in our season of Evangelism, and let me tell you, she flat out killed everything in the room. I am grateful to have a prayerful and intense student of the scriptures by my side in ministry. She has served as the Director of Christian Education both at her home church and at my first assignment and she has shown a wonderful gift at explaining the scriptures in ways that are easy for the people to understand. The mood in class was spiritual and it re-energized the congregation to help reach out to unbelievers and bring them to Jesus. God Be Praised!!

This spiritual mood poured over into our worship as the music was inspirational and the Lord allowed us to have some power to preach an exposition out of Acts 2:37-41 which I labeled, Responding to the Gospel. For Peter preached the first evangelical sermon to the people who would make up the first church. After they heard the gospel they responded in a way that each one of us should respond when we hear the truth of the Gospel...verse 37 says that the Jews asked Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brothers, what shall we do? The proper response to hearing the Gospel preached is, what shall we do now that we have heard what God wants from us. One of the problems with the church is that when unbelievers are stimulated to accept Christ after hearing the Gospel, the church just lets them exist to figure the rest out for themselves. But this text shows us that it is the responsibility of the people of God to lead new believers towards the ways of God, so that the will of God will be a blessing to the people of God. God blessed them in verse 41, so those who received his word were baptized and there were added that day about 3000 souls. In other words, if the church does its part and guide new believers to the way, God will do his part and grow his church. Wow what an awesome concept! I will post the outline tomorrow if God says so.