Here’s what we did:

In Jesus’ Name

Love Has Come

Greater is He (New song for us written by Melanie Caudle)

Message: Series TOXIC finished today as we looked at toxic words that we both receive and give.  Words have power!  Speak life-giving words!

Sweetly Broken (during communion)

Always

Greater is He

Nobody falls down on their face before the god they wanted.  Nobody goes out to heal, to clothe, to teach, to feed, because of the god they wanted.  They are more likely to stay at home with their feet up.

Yet, I so often see people as opportunities for me to feel fulfilled rather than opportunities for me to relate with the secure unthreatened love of Jesus.  And that depersonalizes them into useful objects that I either appreciate or despise.

God didn’t put us on earth to retire comfortably, but to draw the people in your sphere of relating to Him by the power of our holy, radically self-sacrificing, other-centered love.  We are here to live A NEW WAY, to draw close to God in order to be formed into the likeness of His Son.

Of course we’ll face opposition where the battle to be holy will become so difficult and the narrow road so steep that we may leave the narrow road for a season.  But know this: God will not leave us there!  There is always a way back from sin!  Tears of hope will flow every time we experience God’s loving mercy when we fail.  God still loves us.  He will not give up on us.  He still has a plan.

So we must remain alert to compromised spiritual leaders who entice us more with the hope of blessings than with the promise of holiness, who lead you to think that God’s love makes Him more concerned with your present comfort than your eternal joy.

We have to avoid 2 mistakes:

1. Never mistake earth for heaven.
2. Never mistake the enemies on earth (illness, financial problems, other people, you name it) for only those things that are wrong in the world around you.  There is much wrong in the world that we must try to correct.  But your worst enemy is you.  My worst enemy is me.  I mean our tendency to want what we want MORE than what God wants and to think that’s perfectly OK.  It isn’t.

Then your love is sustained by confidence in God’s character, not by enjoyment of current blessings.

Praise, by its very nature, is outward, open, demonstrative, and obvious to anyone watching.  Psalm 107:32 and 111:1.

There are 8 ways I count in the Bible to express praise:

Group 1: VOCAL: 1) singing 2) shouting 3) speaking

Group 2: AUDIBLE: 4) clapping 5) playing instruments

Group 3: VISIBLE: 6) kneeling 7) dancing 8) raising hands

Some common words in the Bible for worship: the Hebrew word “shachaw”= “to bow down, stoop”

Greek, “proskuneo”= “to kiss the feet”

Where is dancing?  Psalm 149:3

Raising hands? Psalm 63:4

How many do you feel comfortable using?  God has made us different so I don’t think we have to do all of them, but we should certainly not mock those that do.