The worship theme we've been following since late August is "The Most Excellent Way", a focus on the way of love. Sunday's text was Cor 13:5 - Love "keeps no record of wrongs." (NIV)
The service began with "Rock of Ages", then after welcome and announcements, the chorus of the song "Think about His Love":
Think about His love, Think about His goodness
Think about His grace that's brought us through
For as high as the heaven's above
So great is the measure of our Father's love,
Great is the measure of our Father's love.
Walt Harrah © 1987 Integrity's Hosanna! Music
Then we needed scripture that would move us forward in the theme of forgiveness and would also drop a hint preparing for the introduction of the new song "Better than Life":
Your love is everlasting, It's an everlasting love
Your mercy is as new as ev'ry rising of the sun
And Your lovingkindness, Lovingkindness is better than life
Your grace is all sufficient, it's an all-sufficient grace
Your power and Your glor are forever on display
And Your lovingkindness, Lovingkindness is better than life
Oh it's better, Oh better than life
Oh so much better
Jesus Your lovingkindness is better than life
Cindy Cruse-Ratcliff & Israel Houghton
c 2001 Integrity's Praise! Music My Other Publishing Company (Admin. by Integrity's Praise! Music) Lakewood Ministries Music (Admin. by Integrity Music, Inc.)
So after once through "Think about His love", we went into a unison reading:
O God, you are my God; I earnestly search for you.
My soul thirsts for you; my whole body longs for you
in this parched and weary land where there is no water.
Now here I am in the place of worship, eyes open,
drinking in your strength and glory.
Your love is better than life – How I praise you!
Psalm 63 – from the NIV, NLT, and Message versions - arranged by RJL
We sang "Think about His Love" again before the following reading:
It wasn't so long ago that we were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. We let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell us how to live. We all did what we felt like doing, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ.
O God, Your love is better than life – How I praise you!
Eph 2:1-5 and Psalm 63:3 – from the NIV, NLT, and Message versions
Then we sang "Better than Life" - with full rhythm section and brass.
Finally this unison reading led into "For the Lord is Good", also with an original brass arrangement:
The LORD is good. When trouble comes, he is a strong refuge. And he knows everyone who trusts in him.
Nahum 1:7 NLT
(Cho)
For the Lord is good, and His love endures forever
He's a faithful God to all generations
For the Lord is good and His mercies will not fail us
They are new each day, O lift your voice and say The Lord is good!
Great is Your faithfulness O Lord (ECHO)
Your lovingkindness fills our hearts to overflowing
Songs of rejoicing and sweet praise
They fill our hearts (ECHO)
They fill our days
(Cho)
Gary Sadler & Lynn DeShazo
c 1997 Integrity's Hosanna! Music
We have a second verse text which was written by our Senior Pastor, Al Doering:
Your love and mercy give us life
Jesus, your cross has opened up the way to Heaven
Daily we live under Your grace
You bring us hope
through all our days.
It was a very strong opening for worship.
Sunday
Bravo for this essay on Halloween!
It's great to hear someone offer a balanced perspective on a topic that routinely gets well-meaning believers worked up over an unnecessary concern.
Excerpts:
It has become routine in October for some Christian schools to send out letters warning parents about the evils of Halloween, and it has become equally routine for me to be asked questions about this matter.
"Halloween" is simply a contraction for All Hallows' Eve. The word "hallow" means "saint," in that "hallow" is just an alternative form of the word "holy" ("hallowed be Thy name"). All Saints' Day is November 1. It is the celebration of the victory of the saints in union with Christ.
and
What is the means by which the demonic realm is vanquished? In a word: mockery. Satan's great sin (and our great sin) is pride. Thus, to drive Satan from us we ridicule him.
..."He who sits in the heavens laughs; Yahweh ridicules them" says Psalm 2. Let us join in His holy laughter, and mock the enemies of Christ on October 31.
Read more... (via)
Excerpts:
It has become routine in October for some Christian schools to send out letters warning parents about the evils of Halloween, and it has become equally routine for me to be asked questions about this matter.
"Halloween" is simply a contraction for All Hallows' Eve. The word "hallow" means "saint," in that "hallow" is just an alternative form of the word "holy" ("hallowed be Thy name"). All Saints' Day is November 1. It is the celebration of the victory of the saints in union with Christ.
and
What is the means by which the demonic realm is vanquished? In a word: mockery. Satan's great sin (and our great sin) is pride. Thus, to drive Satan from us we ridicule him.
..."He who sits in the heavens laughs; Yahweh ridicules them" says Psalm 2. Let us join in His holy laughter, and mock the enemies of Christ on October 31.
Read more... (via)
Scripture Collage
We often assemble what we call "scriptural collages" that are used in worship - sometimes spoken in unison, sometimes responsively between one or more leaders and the congregation.
This week we wanted a series of passages emphasizing grace and forgiveness to seamlessly join two songs: Phil Baquie's "God of Mercy" and the choral song "Mercy's embrace". So I knew I wanted to begin and end with mercy. Here's the final cut:
The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… is the source of every mercy and the God who comforts us. 2 Cor 1:3
He is so rich in kindness that he purchased our freedom through the blood of his Son, and our sins are forgiven. Eph 1:7
All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God's paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the guilt and sins of us all. Is 53:6
There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Romans 8:1
All the prophets testify … that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. Acts 10:43
He saved us, not because of the good things we did, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins and gave us a new life through the Holy Spirit. Titus 3:5
This week we wanted a series of passages emphasizing grace and forgiveness to seamlessly join two songs: Phil Baquie's "God of Mercy" and the choral song "Mercy's embrace". So I knew I wanted to begin and end with mercy. Here's the final cut:
The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… is the source of every mercy and the God who comforts us. 2 Cor 1:3
He is so rich in kindness that he purchased our freedom through the blood of his Son, and our sins are forgiven. Eph 1:7
All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God's paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the guilt and sins of us all. Is 53:6
There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Romans 8:1
All the prophets testify … that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. Acts 10:43
He saved us, not because of the good things we did, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins and gave us a new life through the Holy Spirit. Titus 3:5
Monday
Monday Morning: All Narnia
Narnia: The Pressure is Insane
So says Walden Media President Micheal Flaherty, who's feeling the heat to get The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe exactly right. But Flaherty promises audiences a "fantastic, faithful adaptation."
Read More...
The Lion, the Witch, the Faithful
"This is a huge roll of the dice for Disney and Walden," said "Narnia" producer Mark Johnson. "But the payoff could be enormous."
Walt Disney Studios is hoping that the same kind of church-based campaign that helped turn "The Passion of the Christ" into a blockbuster will convert C.S. Lewis' children's classic "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" into a big-screen franchise — with "Lion King"-sized profits.
Read more...
How to Tell if The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a Christian Film (from Time.com)
Whether four sentences from the C.S. Lewis book make it onto the big screen will make a big difference
By DAVID VAN BIEMA
The White Witch: "That human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property."
Aslan (later) : "The Witch knew the Deep Magic. But if she could have looked a little further back... she would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards." from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis
Earlier this month, Disney ran the first test screening of its December release, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe in a California theater. The existence of a screenable print constitutes a kind of opening bell for two questions regarding its content.The answer to the first, "Is it any good as a movie?" will be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Disney and its co-producer, Walden Media and will only be known later this year when the box office comes in.
The second, more intriguing question, "Has it reproduced the Christian character of C.S. Lewis's book?" could also be worth tens of millions if it inspires Passion of the Christ-style repeat viewings by conservative Christians. And the answer could lie in whether the four sentences above, which constitute a kind of evangelical sniff test make it into the film. (A Disney spokesperson said that since he had not attended the screening and that there is not yet a final cut, he could not verify whether it contains the lines, but promised that "the movie is going to be as faithful to the book as possible.")
Lewis always insisted that his seven Narnia books were not a point-by- point Christian allegory. Much of The Lion, the Witch owes more to English folktales or Norse and classical myth than to the New Testament. The passage of the four Pevensie children through the magic closet into a world laboring under a spell of eternal winter is not Christian, nor are the cruel white witch, talking animals, centaurs, and even a duo of Roman gods who inhabit it. True, the description of the redeeming figure of the lion Aslan as "the Son the Great Emperor-Beyond-the- Sea" is a big hint. But even Aslan's sacrifice on a huge stone table (not a cross; and performed with a stone knife, Aztec-style), and his subsequent miraculous recovery could have been borrowed from any number of world religions.
It is the book's explanation for this key sequence that makes it exclusively Christian. After Edmund Pevensie betrays Aslan and his brother and sisters, the Witch claims his blood in accordance to the laws of "Deep Magic." Aslan concedes this and offers himself up in proxy, announcing glumly, "I have settled the claim on your brother's blood." Miraculously revived, he explains, "the Witch knew the Deep Magic. But if she could have looked a little further back... she would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards."
This is Christianity in a kid-lit veil. Like any good sermon, its key points can be traced to Biblical citations here mostly from the Letters of the apostle Paul. Edmund's treachery corresponds to the sins of humanity, which Paul explains is inherently doomed to violate God's Law ("The Deep Magic"). Because of this violation, writes Paul in Romans, humans are literally owned by Satan ("slaves of the one whom you obey"); and "the wages of sin is death." The idea that Aslan, because he is sinless, can voluntarily pay for Edmund's blood with his own, is the powerful Christian doctrine of blood atonement, developed from texts like the First Letter of Peter: "You know that you were ransomed... with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot." Like Christ's, Aslan's resurrection is inevitable ("If Christ has not been raised, then ... our faith is in vain," Paul writes in First Corinthians.) And it conquers not just his death (or as Aslan would say, causes it to move backwards) but that of all believers, who will also see resurrection. Paul rejoices: "Death is swallowed up in victory... O death, where is thy sting?"
In The Lion, Aslan and Lucy Pevensie celebrate with a "mad" game of tag. Gibson's The Passion of the Christ magnified one fraction of the Atonement/Resurrection storyChrist's suffering into a two hour movie. By contrast, Lewis packed the two huge ideas into a few lines at the brief hinge moment of his plot. But the same electric current than charged The Passion runs through them. What the Lion's filmmakers do with the charming storytelling that surrounds them is theologically optional. But if these key ideas are muddled, the film may be a classic, but never a Christian classic. And its revenues, large as they may be, will reflect that.
So says Walden Media President Micheal Flaherty, who's feeling the heat to get The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe exactly right. But Flaherty promises audiences a "fantastic, faithful adaptation."
Read More...
The Lion, the Witch, the Faithful
"This is a huge roll of the dice for Disney and Walden," said "Narnia" producer Mark Johnson. "But the payoff could be enormous."
Walt Disney Studios is hoping that the same kind of church-based campaign that helped turn "The Passion of the Christ" into a blockbuster will convert C.S. Lewis' children's classic "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" into a big-screen franchise — with "Lion King"-sized profits.
Read more...
How to Tell if The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a Christian Film (from Time.com)
Whether four sentences from the C.S. Lewis book make it onto the big screen will make a big difference
By DAVID VAN BIEMA
The White Witch: "That human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property."
Aslan (later) : "The Witch knew the Deep Magic. But if she could have looked a little further back... she would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards." from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis
Earlier this month, Disney ran the first test screening of its December release, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe in a California theater. The existence of a screenable print constitutes a kind of opening bell for two questions regarding its content.The answer to the first, "Is it any good as a movie?" will be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Disney and its co-producer, Walden Media and will only be known later this year when the box office comes in.
The second, more intriguing question, "Has it reproduced the Christian character of C.S. Lewis's book?" could also be worth tens of millions if it inspires Passion of the Christ-style repeat viewings by conservative Christians. And the answer could lie in whether the four sentences above, which constitute a kind of evangelical sniff test make it into the film. (A Disney spokesperson said that since he had not attended the screening and that there is not yet a final cut, he could not verify whether it contains the lines, but promised that "the movie is going to be as faithful to the book as possible.")
Lewis always insisted that his seven Narnia books were not a point-by- point Christian allegory. Much of The Lion, the Witch owes more to English folktales or Norse and classical myth than to the New Testament. The passage of the four Pevensie children through the magic closet into a world laboring under a spell of eternal winter is not Christian, nor are the cruel white witch, talking animals, centaurs, and even a duo of Roman gods who inhabit it. True, the description of the redeeming figure of the lion Aslan as "the Son the Great Emperor-Beyond-the- Sea" is a big hint. But even Aslan's sacrifice on a huge stone table (not a cross; and performed with a stone knife, Aztec-style), and his subsequent miraculous recovery could have been borrowed from any number of world religions.
It is the book's explanation for this key sequence that makes it exclusively Christian. After Edmund Pevensie betrays Aslan and his brother and sisters, the Witch claims his blood in accordance to the laws of "Deep Magic." Aslan concedes this and offers himself up in proxy, announcing glumly, "I have settled the claim on your brother's blood." Miraculously revived, he explains, "the Witch knew the Deep Magic. But if she could have looked a little further back... she would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards."
This is Christianity in a kid-lit veil. Like any good sermon, its key points can be traced to Biblical citations here mostly from the Letters of the apostle Paul. Edmund's treachery corresponds to the sins of humanity, which Paul explains is inherently doomed to violate God's Law ("The Deep Magic"). Because of this violation, writes Paul in Romans, humans are literally owned by Satan ("slaves of the one whom you obey"); and "the wages of sin is death." The idea that Aslan, because he is sinless, can voluntarily pay for Edmund's blood with his own, is the powerful Christian doctrine of blood atonement, developed from texts like the First Letter of Peter: "You know that you were ransomed... with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot." Like Christ's, Aslan's resurrection is inevitable ("If Christ has not been raised, then ... our faith is in vain," Paul writes in First Corinthians.) And it conquers not just his death (or as Aslan would say, causes it to move backwards) but that of all believers, who will also see resurrection. Paul rejoices: "Death is swallowed up in victory... O death, where is thy sting?"
In The Lion, Aslan and Lucy Pevensie celebrate with a "mad" game of tag. Gibson's The Passion of the Christ magnified one fraction of the Atonement/Resurrection storyChrist's suffering into a two hour movie. By contrast, Lewis packed the two huge ideas into a few lines at the brief hinge moment of his plot. But the same electric current than charged The Passion runs through them. What the Lion's filmmakers do with the charming storytelling that surrounds them is theologically optional. But if these key ideas are muddled, the film may be a classic, but never a Christian classic. And its revenues, large as they may be, will reflect that.
Saturday
Yes, I'm still here
It's been a fairly busy week, y'all. 10 days ago we learned that a person I've known for over 6 years but strictly through a couple of Christian e-mail discussion groups was evacuated from her southeast Texas home, and that she and her friend were on the verge of leaving the home in northeast Texas where they were holed up. They needed a place to stay and yet had nowhere to go. They were looking west towards Tyler, TX. Because she anticipated being offline for an unknown period of time and did not want to be utterly out of contact or un-locatable, she gave the friend's cell phone number.
We read the post and knew we were being tapped by God to provide lodging for these two friends. And so it was that 9 days ago our house became a home to 2 more people.
It has been a fascinating journey. Of particular note and satisfaction has been watching this man re-discover faith. He showed up 9 days ago with a haunted, hunted kind of look. I have just watched as God has softened his heart and re-made a home there. We've had several conversations and I have spent a lot of time just listening and asking open-ended, leading questions. And God is moving in this guy's heart.
They have connected with the local AA folks since they are both recovering alcoholics. They have attended church and feel a strong attraction to it. They've secured an apartment through the local AA connections here but now need to fill it with furnishings as wide as pots, pans and dishes, couch, table, chairs, beds, dressers. Unfortunately, Rita and Trina before her have nearly emptied out the pool of available resources like that. Our friends will probably go to southeast Texas to salvage what they can from their previous home. (If you are so inclined you are welcome to make a donation towards their needs sent to CTK.)
There is much God has yet to do in their lives - as there is in mine or yours - but it has been very satisfying to see God use our few loaves and fishes' worth of ministry efforts to impact these two lives.
We read the post and knew we were being tapped by God to provide lodging for these two friends. And so it was that 9 days ago our house became a home to 2 more people.
It has been a fascinating journey. Of particular note and satisfaction has been watching this man re-discover faith. He showed up 9 days ago with a haunted, hunted kind of look. I have just watched as God has softened his heart and re-made a home there. We've had several conversations and I have spent a lot of time just listening and asking open-ended, leading questions. And God is moving in this guy's heart.
They have connected with the local AA folks since they are both recovering alcoholics. They have attended church and feel a strong attraction to it. They've secured an apartment through the local AA connections here but now need to fill it with furnishings as wide as pots, pans and dishes, couch, table, chairs, beds, dressers. Unfortunately, Rita and Trina before her have nearly emptied out the pool of available resources like that. Our friends will probably go to southeast Texas to salvage what they can from their previous home. (If you are so inclined you are welcome to make a donation towards their needs sent to CTK.)
There is much God has yet to do in their lives - as there is in mine or yours - but it has been very satisfying to see God use our few loaves and fishes' worth of ministry efforts to impact these two lives.
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