Preparing for Sunday, 7/31/11 (Morning Corporate Worship & RENEW at Night!)

Hey everyone,
hope you've been studying Scripture this week, and have given some thought to preparing your heart to meet as the Body of Christ this Sunday. If not, I get that - but it's not too late. We're looking at a really fun Sunday coming up, with our morning corporate meeting, and our last night of the RENEW series. Make sure you come out for this last RENEW night - especially if you haven't made all the others. This should be a good one.

MORNING: Pastor John will be continuing our series on prayer, preaching out of Mark 1:35-39 and Luke 5:15,16. He'll be teaching on the priority of prayer, looking at how even the Son of God withdrew from the crowds of people to be with the Father, and to pray. Again, we see examples in Jesus for how to live, that we can't ignore if even the divine Son of God didn't neglect to do these things.

Here are the songs for the morning. Give them a listen and prepare your heart and your vocal cords to sing heartily unto the Lord.
1. Your Grace is Enough
This song is a reminder to us as we sing that God has promised to be gracious to His children, and that His grace that saves us from our sin is infinitely valuable. His grace is enough for us, even though the world and our sin offer so many passing pleasures.

2. Grace Like Rain
We sing songs like this occasionally, because they take very familiar lyrics from favorite hymns, and set them to new, fresh melodies. This one is a re-working of John Newton's "Amazing Grace," and although it will never replace the glory of the original, the creative new arrangement can help us re-focus and meditate on the lyrics, and the depth of what they proclaim.

3. Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
There is so much about this hymn that I love. I'd like to just highlight a couple things from the newer 4th verse that we've been singing lately, which was written by Bob Kauflin from Sovereign Grace Music. It's a verse that brings in the theme of the hope of Heaven, saying "O that day when freed from sinning, I shall see Thy lovely face/Full-arrayed in blood-washed linen, how I'll sing Thy sovereign grace!" This will continue our theme of God's grace, proclaiming that being born-again in Jesus, we are permanently clothed in Christ's righteousness. And it is God's sovereign grace that has done this.

4. 10,000 Reasons (NEW SONG!)
This is a new song, written by Matt Redman. It's very hymn-like, and Psalm-like especially in its chorus. Give it a listen. Basically, the theme of the song is that there are far more than 10,000 reasons to praise the Name of God, for that He is, and has done, and has promised to do for us. The lyrics are below - check them out! And see if you can catch the little tribute to the lyrics of "Amazing Grace."

Chorus
Bless the Lord O my soul
O my soul
Worship His holy name
Sing like never before
O my soul
I'll worship Your holy name

Verse 1
The sun comes up it's a new day dawning
It's time to sing Your song again
Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me
Let me be singing when the evening comes

Verse 2
You're rich in love and You're slow to anger
Your name is great and Your heart is kind
For all Your goodness I will keep on singing
Ten thousand reasons for my heart to find

Verse 3
And on that day when my strength is failing
The end draws near and my time has come
Still my soul will sing Your praise unending
Ten thousand years and then forevermore

RENEW: Be at church at 5:00 for a meal (CHILI COOK-OFF YA'LL!) and stick around from 6:00 - 7:15 for a time of music and teaching. It's gonna' be great! Dr. Preston Sprinkle will be teaching, on "Decision-making in Film, Music and the Arts." Definitely a relevant topic for us trying to live like Christ in our culture, where there is so much "art" to navigate and discern through.

We'll sing the following:
1. How Deep the Father's Love for Us
2. 10,000 Reasons
3. Blessed Be Your Name

Preparing for Sunday, 7/17/11 (Morning Corporate Worship & RENEW at Night!)

Hey guys,
Jordan will be preaching tomorrow from Luke 11:1-4, continuing our short series on "Jesus' School of Prayer." The neat thing about this prayer is that it starts with the desire for God to be hallowed and worshiped among mankind, and the requests for necessities, and for forgiveness are the outflow of that worshipful heart attitude. How often do we come to God this way, first with an attitude of dependence on the strength He supplies, and a desire for His name to be hallowed? We will have much joy, and accomplish much for the Kingdom if that heart condition is where we start.

So we'll be singing about the greatness, strength and power of God, and also singing a couple of songs that connect those attributes of God with the salvation God has provided for us in Jesus' death and resurrection. Below are the songs, with quick thought I had about each one as I picked it out for this week. Get ready to sing it out with us tomorrow!

1. Our God
Water You turned into wine, opened the eyes of the blind/There's none like You, no one like You" This song rejoices in the great power of God, and the compassion He shows toward us as well, singing about how God gave sight to the blind, and how He looks after His children

2. Open the Eyes of My Heart
Since we're studying prayer together, we'll sing this song of prayer as a response to Our God, asking God to sovereignly open the eyes of our hearts to His greatness and worth.

3. Stronger
This is a newer song we've been singing the last couple of months. This is the central "thesis" song for the morning - that we have been saved from our sin by a strong Savior, and as a result and effect of that, our desire should be for the name of Christ to be exalted and glorified.

4. Nothing but the Blood
Kind of a "reworking" of a classic hymn, this song continues the thought that the sacrifice of Christ for our sin is infinitely valuable and glorious. The songs says, "Your blood speaks a better word than all the empty claims I've heart upon this earth/Speaks righteousness for me, and stands in my defense."


RENEW!: Instead of a 2nd hour of teaching in the morning, we'll be gathering at night at 5:00 for a picnic dinner (bring your own food). Then the kids will head to the chapel, and the "grownups" will head into the main sanctuary for their respective times of teaching. We'll be hearing from Philip deCourcy on "Knowing and Living God's Will." We'll sing the following songs:
1. God of Wonders
2. Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
3. My Hope is Built (The Solid Rock)

Hope to see you there!

John Piper, on Worship

Thanks to the Desiring God blog for posting up this thought from Piper:

"The essential, vital, indispensable, defining heart of worship is the experience of being satisfied with God. This satisfaction in God magnifies God in the heart. This explains why the apostle Paul makes so little distinction between worship as a congregational service and worship as a pattern of daily life. They have the same root – a passion for treasuring God as infinitely valuable. The impulse for singing a hymn and the impulse for visiting a prisoner is the same: a thirst for God – a desire to experience as much satisfaction in God as we can."

We don't want to be short-sighted in what we look to do with singing on Sunday morning. This is the goal in the preaching, reading Scripture together, the singing, praying and fellowship: to help each other find "as much satisfaction in God as we can."

Yesterday was a great day of corporate worship together. Meditate on this quote, study Scripture and read in pursuit of God's satisfaction, and next Sunday will be a sweet time too. Start prepping now!

Preparing for Sunday, 7/10/11 (morning corporate worship, and RENEW at night)!

Hey everyone,
this Sunday is the 2nd in our preaching series on Jesus' school of prayer. I've been really excited about this short series, and last Sunday was a great kickoff for it. Jordan will be preaching this week from Luke 18:9-14, on the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector. To give you a heads up, Jordan and I spoke for a while yesterday about the passage, and Jordan is going to lead us in examining the passage as a diagnostic for prayer, rather than a how-to. In other words, how often do we actually pray like the tax collector, who cried to God for mercy because he knew he was a sinner? There's serious hope for the one who comes to God this way - the passage says that the tax collector goes away justified before God, because he threw himself upon God's mercy alone.

To prepare our minds and hearts for the preaching, we'll sing songs that reflect on God's mercy that comes to us through Jesus. The singing will go as follows:

1. The Glories of Calvary
This is the new song we introduced last week. The lyrics are all included in the "Preparing for Sunday" post from then. It's a song of prayer, for God to give us a fresh understanding of the glories of what He has given us in Jesus. The song says, Sinners find eternal joy in the triumph of Your wounds! The question is, do we believe this enough to sing about it? Hopefully so.



2. And Can it Be
One of our best hymns, written by Charles Wesley. The 2nd verse says, 'Tis mercy all, immense and free, for O my God, it found out me. I think this is one line we often pass over in our singing without really thinking it through - what this is saying is, "As a sinner, I am so worthy of God's wrath, that God's mercy MUST be immense and completely free, if God gave it to such a sinner as I am!" I am proof that God's mercy is truly MERCY." This song couples well with the parable in Luke, and the tax collector's cry to God for mercy.

3. Christ is Risen
This is a song of response to what Christ has accomplished for us. It says that we do not have to continue sinning if we're born again in Christ, because Christ has completely conquered the power of sin, and we can rely completely on His power to keep us from sinning. It's a song about the glorious power of Christ's resurrection over sin, death and Hell. The song says, O Church, come stand in the light; our God is not dead, He's alive, He's alive!

4. Take My Life and Let It Be
We'll sing this song immediately after "Christ is Risen," praying together for God to use us, and for our lives to be pleasing to Him as lives of worship. The last verse is great, and is something we shouldn't sing if we don't mean the words: Take my will and make it Thine - it shall be no longer mine.


RENEW: Be at church at 5:00 for a meal (pizza and ice cream!) and stick around from 6:00 - 7:15 for a time of music and teaching. It's gonna' be great! By the way, you have to show up to find out what songs we'll sing, at least for this week! See you there.

10 Principles of Church Music (Great Stuff)

Below is a summary by Justin Taylor, of *2 more lengthy posts by Kevin DeYoung on principles of church music. I thought they were great, biblical, and very much along the lines of where we need to continue to move as a church. (I put my favorite ones in bold for emphasis). This is really good stuff for us to meditate on, as we continue to consider what we're doing and what our goals are at Grace. Enjoy!

1. Love is indispensable to church singing that pleases God.
2. Our singing is for God’s glory and the edification of the body of Christ.
3. We ought to sing to the Lord new songs.
4. Church singing should swim in its own history of church singing.
5. Sing the Psalms.
6. We should strive for excellence in the musicality and the poetry of the songs we sing.
7. The main sound to be heard in the worship music is the sound of the congregation singing.
8. The congregation should also be stretched from time to time to learn new songs and broaden its musical horizons.
9. The texts of our songs should be matched with fitting musicality and instrumentation.
10. All of our songs should employ manifestly biblical lyrics.

*You can find DeYoung's longer posts about church music here: Post 1, Post 2

Preparing for Sunday, 7/3/11: New preaching series, and new song!

Another 4th of July weekend is upon us. Make sure you come out to our church family picnic at Grace Brethren Elementary School for dinner - 5:00 - 7:30 PM. This will kick off the next 4 Sundays nights of "Renew," our special Summer equipping series. Make sure you pick up a schedule of these nights in the church foyer tomorrow!

Tomorrow, Pastor John will be kicking off a short preaching series, entitled "The Shameless Persistence of Prayer," on the prayer life of Christ. He'll be preaching from Luke 18:1-8. Read the passage ahead of time, and be there for this series. It should be really helpful for us to look at how Christ provides an example of prayer - it's probably different than how many of us think about prayer, or at least practice prayer.

Our singing will go as follows, with a theme of the greatness and goodness of God, and the greatness of the salvation He has accomplished for us in and through Jesus:
1. God of Wonders
2. Doxology
3. The Glories of Calvary
4. Here I Am to Worship

I'd also like to highlight the new song we'll be learning together, called The Glories of Calvary. It's a great, up-tempo song of prayer to God, asking Him to reveal more of the greatness of the Gospel to us. In light of the preaching series on prayer that starts tomorrow, this song is a really important one for us to sing together. We'll start with the chorus so everyone can get the hang of that, first and foremost.

The lyrics are all below, and another version of the song (live version by Enfield). Give it a listen!

Lord, You’re calling me to come
And behold the wondrous cross
To explore the depths of grace
That came to me at such a cost
Where Your boundless love
Conquered my boundless sin
And mercy’s arms were opened wide

CHORUS
My heart is filled with a thousand songs
Proclaiming the glories of Calvary
With every breath, Lord how I long
To sing of Jesus who died for me
Lord, take me deeper
Into the glories of Calvary

Sinners find eternal joy
In the triumph of Your wounds
By our Savior’s crimson flow
Holy wrath has been removed
And Your saints below
Join with Your saints above
Rejoicing in the Risen Lamb