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Rejoice! ... and Wait

Psalm 33 opens with these lines:

"Shout for joy in the Lord, O you righteous!
    Praise befits the upright.
Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre;
    make melody to him with the harp of ten strings!
 Sing to him a new song;
    play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts."

And it closes with these:

"Our soul waits for the Lord;
    he is our help and our shield.
For our heart is glad in him,
    because we trust in his holy name.
Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us,
    even as we hope in you."

When we gather on Sundays as a church, it's important to remember that we're called to a variety of actions and responses. There are times for rejoicing and praise. There are times for praising and loud shouts.  There are also times for waiting on the Lord and quietly hoping in his steadfast love. 

Depending on the season of your life, any given Sunday, the Lord may be calling you to loud shouts of praise and rejoicing, or He may be calling you to quietly hoping and waiting on Him. 

One of our goals in our music ministry is to provide contexts every Sunday for a variety of personal responses of worship to the Lord. We want to have songs that support "loud shouts of praise" and songs that support the posture of a soul that "waits on the Lord". 

But we can't do that alone just as a band. God designed the local church to be a mutual means of support. We can encourage one another by participating in the full spectrum of responses even if they don't all represent the primary emotion we're feeling on a given day. If you're in a place of really desiring to praise the Lord with loud shouts of joy this Sunday, we'd encourage you to do so! And we'd encourage you to also actively participate in the moments designed to support those who are in more of a place of quietly waiting on the Lord.

If you're in a place of desperately waiting on the Lord and desiring to put your hope in Him in spite of difficulty you're facing or a specific hope deferred, we'd encourage you to do that! But we'd also encourage you to actively participate in the moments designed to support those loud shouts of praise to the Lord.

In both cases, the emotion and response that comes less naturally to you on a given day is still one that is supported by the truth of who God is, and is encouraged in his Word. Actively pursuing those varied responses helps you to speak Truth to your own soul, to affirm God's character, and to encourage those God has placed in the body with you.

So rejoice! And wait! Do it all for the Glory of God and the good of others, and trust that God will meet you where you are and bless you as you stretch outside of your natural state to honor him and serve your brothers and sisters.

This Sunday, the service will include these Scriptures and Songs:

Call to worship from Psalm 33
At Your Name
Nobody Like You
Here Is Love
Exhortation from Psalm 33
Psalm 62 
Sermon from John 15
You Have My Surrender
Posted by Tim Payne with

A Hope Built On Nothing Less

When trials come and suffering abounds; when confusion reigns and the difficulty we face just doesn't make sense at all, there's only one place we can and must run. As we enter this study in Habakkuk together as a church, it's so important that we allow it remind us of one thing, first and foremost: Our hope must be in the love of Jesus displayed at the cross. Our confidence that God loves us and will do what is necessary to draw us to himself for our ultimate and eternal good is truly an incredible and insane confidence in human terms. The Cross is the ultimate and permanent seal of God's promises toward us - to do us good and to do good through us. The grace of God, the love of God, the justice of God, the mercy of God - they all find their most perfect expression in the sacrificial death of Christ and their permanent seal in His resurrection and promise to come again.

All the mysteries in this life pale in comparison to the mystery of God's grace to us in Christ. Let your pondering and wrestling with that mystery overshadow your struggle with any other mystery. When we do that, we'll find our hope properly placed, our joy properly restored, and our endurance shored up.

The songs we sing this Sunday will seek to remind us of these truths and encourage us to celebrate the hope that we have in trials and suffering...the Hope that we have because of the mystery of God's proven faithfulness to us at the Cross.

Here are the songs and Scriptures that will be included in our service this Sunday:

-Call to Worship from Psalm 46
-A Mighty Fortress
-This Is Amazing Grace
-He Will Hold Me Fast
-Exhortation from Matthew 6:19-21
-New Again
-Amen
-O Lord, My Rock and My Redeemer
 
And Here's a Spotify Playlist of the songs we'll be singing. We hope you'll listen to them over the coming days so you can sing them without distraction with us on Sunday!
Posted by Tim Payne with

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