Sunday 7/13/08 Debrief

Well all-righty then...

This week was Samuel and the hero of obedience. Ron did a great job in teaching about obedience and repentance. For example, he told the story of Saul going ahead and offering up sacrifices to God before a major battle when Samuel was running just a bit late and Samuel basically told him that God is going to continue on the course he has set but he is going to shake up the players (sorry dude, you're fired). And in contrast, when David slept with Bathsheba and had her husband whacked, David was contrite, remorseful, and full of repentance as he got down on his face before God and pleaded for mercy.

There is a difference between willful disobedience and living in grace and sanctification. Willful disobedience is my way or the high way. Grace and sanctification shows our one desire is to serve God and follow closely to Him but yes, sometimes we mess up because we are small and through His strength we run from making our mistakes again and desperately seek His forgiveness and mercy. And it is there that we find grace, peace and love from our Father because true worship is a sincere and contrite heart and a bruised reed He will not break and a smoldering candle He will not snuff out. Praise God.

There were numerous positive comments about the musical worship time. I am humbled at how our congregation loves to sing their praises to God and especially humbled at the songs that they really latch on to as songs of their heart. For example, we did Awesome God by Mullins this weekend and what is kind of a mid-tempo ballad kind of thing as it was originally recorded is a fiery war cry for the saints at NCC.

Mistah D did a great job on the sound board and in the production of a video that highlighted those from the Word that majored in obedience. It was really cool to see the video scroll through names such as Abraham, Elijah, David and have the word "Obeyed" stay static on the screen and then see the words "Jesus Obeyed" and hear the congregation begin to applaud. Now that is worship and understanding of what the Lord has done.

We had another technical issue this week.

The A/C was great, it was a little warm with all of the bodies in the sanctuary but hey it is Texas in July.

But once the service started, our computer crumped and we did not have the lyrics to Lord I lift Your Name on High projected. Fortunately, the song is very familiar to most people and they sang along anyway. But it was touch and go with getting the videos for VBS up there and the video that Dion did up during offering.

A comment to me from by bride about our computer/presentation software troubles is that we need more ram (at least 5 gig) to do all of the things we are trying to do each Sunday. We need to investigate our options for our current platform, do we have the room for more ram, or do we need another hard drive (both inexpensive fixes for the most part).

Well this week is David and the hero of Worship taught by Dion. This should be a lot of fun. We have planned for a video of a couple of our new college students cruising around the community asking what is worship. That should be enlightening.

Well, grace and peace all.

Lod