Monday Musings ...

Yesterday was an outstanding day, in fact the whole weekend was tremendous. Powerful spirit throughout our worship service. I was able to share a tremendous praise with the congregation as an 11 month old who had been in ICU for 10 days was improving rapidly. He had been on a ventilator the entire time and was now off of it. We showed a picture of him without all the tubes and wires. We had called people to specific times of prayer on Thursday and Friday and Saturday we got the news. We celebrated! Our children came during worship to a special song waving palm branches. There were 34 children who paraded through and that wasn't all the children. It was great.

We had a great time of prayer during the service with the altars nearly full as people brought requests and praises. It was a powerful time. Our singing had extra juice in light of the praises and the children. Our attendance was very good which added to the excitement. A couple of people shared very uplifting observations from our District Assembly and Missions Convention.

The message looked at what we should say and what we should do in light of who Jesus is and what He has done and is doing. We examined Matthew 21:7-11 and Psalm 118:25-29. We have to start with "Lord save us, and Hosanna". Everything starts with our relationship with Christ. Hosanna is a phrase of praise and especially connected to salvation. We need to say "You are my God". This is personal and it needs to become personal. We need to make it a relationship not just a fact. This is part of our testimony. We need to be saying "Thank You" a lot more than we do. We need to do to the Lord so much more and to each other as well. Thank you is a powerful phrase. It changes our attitude when we say it and when it is said to us. We have so much to thank God for, in fact we should be thanking him always. An attitude of gratitude changes the world, and it grows churches.

What should we do? Beyond our words, in our walk we need to "Praise Him" in fact we need to be shouting this praise. We need to quit being shy about Praising the Lord. Scripture tells us that if we don't praise Him even the rocks will cry out. I want to stay at least one step ahead of the rocks. We should do everything in the name of the Lord. Your work, your family, your friends and all you do and are should be in the name of the Lord. Not in your name, but in the Lord's name. Which means we need to do many things differently. We should lay everything down before the Lord. On Palm Sunday the people laid their cloaks, in essence their identities down before the Lord. We need to be in the parade of celebration for the Lord, in fact we should be leading the parade. Wouldn't it be awesome if we all "paraded" into worship next Sunday? We should not only say thank you, we should be thankful. Be thankful in all things. Not that all things are good, but God is good and God is still God in all things. Our thankfulness is about Him not our circumstances or our stuff.

What are you saying? What are you doing? What needs to change?

On Friday evening I was one of the sponors for our youth lock in. This was an all night event with 75 teens in attendance. We did a survivor theme and I did survive. The kids were great, but my wife and I had not done an all nighter for quite a while. I am being reminded of why I haven't done that in a while. But our youth are worth it. We had great people who helped, 12 adults helped and 7 stayed for all 12 hours, these are awesome people. Gotta go, it may be time for a nap.