This past week, my wife, Juli, did an amazing job of leading the congregation to the throne of God as she ended the worship time with “Revelation Song”.  A family in our church recorded it and posted it on youtube.  It’s been awesome to see her grow as a vocalist and especially as a contagiously passionate worshipper of Christ. She would much rather have Christ exalted than her ability recognized, but I’m very grateful to have my wife serve with me on our worship team.

1.  Nothing But the Blood
2.  Greeting
3.  Offering
4.  Announcements

5.  Jesus Messiah
7.  Grace Unmeasured (Sov. Grace Music)
7.  Jesus You Are Worthy

Scripture Reading: Revelation 4:8b, 11; 5:9-14 (ESV)
7.    Special Music: Revelation Song (Juli)
8.    Message: P. Dan
9.    Closing Song: The Stand

My new favorite book is Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health by Donald S. Whitney.  The first chapter is entitled “Do You Thirst For God?”.  I love the fact that he starts the book with this chapter, because too often we begin diagnosing our spiritual health by the “spiritual things” we are doing or not doing (reading my Bible, praying, church involvement/attendence, etc.).  NO NO NO!  We must begin by pursuing God because he is a worthy pursuit and satisfying to the soul.  It is of God himself that Paul says in Phil. 3:10, “that I may know Him…”.  The Apostle Paul knew God a lot better that I do, but He wanted to know Him even more!  It satisfies our soul to be satisfied in God himself and crave more!  THEN…. the desire for His Word will grow stronger, the need for communicating in our relationship with Him will grow deeper, and the love  of serving Him will be sweeter.  You see, we often desire the results of pursuing God rather than pursuing God Himself!  Wow.  Good stuff.  Worship leaders, you must read this book!

Check out this prayer from A. W. Tozer.  It is the prayer of the satisfied soul:

O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more.  I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace.  I am ashamed of my lack of desire.  O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made thirsty still. (Whitney, p. 23)

I introduced another song that I wrote.  As a songwriter, it is exciting to see people catch on to a song and hear them sing it to the Lord.  People seemed to pick it up quickly, which is how I intended the song to be.  When I write a worship song where the goal is congregational participation, it is important to keep in mind the “accessibility” of the song.  On other songs that I have written which I intend to sing myself, the phrasing and melody will be more suited to my own voice.  Also, I might be more personal on the subject of the song or it’s meaning, but for worship I don’t want people spending lots of time trying to figure out what they saying to the Lord because I wrote the song about how God provided for a specific situation in my life.  Although people can relate to provision, the song is about me.  I’m trying to give a group of believers a voice to express worship to God.  I also don’t want people trying to hit notes that when they try to sing they thinking, “man, my vocal cords are gonna break if I have to sing that on the second verse!”.  I’m also not going to write in a long instrumental break between verses because I thought it was a SWEET chord progression, while everyone is thinking, “how much longer ’till I’m supposed to sing again…I just want to sing to the Lord!”.  Anyway, these are some of the ramblings of a songwriter trying to do his best at helping the church express worship to God in song.  I’ll try to post an acoustic version of the song.  Here’s the set this past week:

1. Sing to the King
2. Greeting
3. Announcements/Offering
4. Update on St. Vincent Church planting (Pastor Al Blake)
5. Yours (We introduced a new song to the church that I wrote)
6. Scripture reading: 1 John 2:15-17 (esv)
7. Be Thou My Vision (I wrote a simple flute line for the verses, worked good!)
8. How Great Is Our God
9. Message: Pastor Dan (series: Worldliness)
10. Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus (no band, just Joe on acoustic)

My pastor and I are kicking off a new radio ministry in the detroit area beginning on March 2nd on WRDT AM 560.  We are calling it Grace and Truth Radio Ministry.  Pastor Dan’s messages will be the content of the broadcast.  I wrote the music for intro and exit to the program.  It was a lot of fun.  For those of you not in the detroit area you can listen to it live online here.  It will be on at 9:30am & replayed at 1:30pm.  For the Month of March it will also be on their FM station, WMUZ 103.5, at 9:30pm.  We’re excited.  So tell your friends about Grace and Truth Radio!

Blogging had to take a back seat on my priority list for a while.  Christmas concert is over…phew!  I have enjoyed singing some the Christmas songs in our church theses past few weeks.  I stressed to the band that we don’t do Christmas songs because of the nostalgia or sentimentality of the songs.  We sing them because they are songs that proclaim truth about Christ…incarnation, worship, exhaltation, ascription, divinity, lordship, etc…

Also, I have released a 6 song CD of Christmas songs and songs that I have written.  It’s called “Peace Has Come”, which is also the title track.  I wrote Peace Has Come for our Christmas concert.

Your Grace Is Enough
Our God Saves
Offering & Announcements
Grace Unmeasured (Patty leads)
You Have Been So Good To Me

Scripture Reading: Psalm 145:1-8

How Great Thou Art (Paul Baloche Version)
Message: Pastor Al

I really like Paul Baloche’s version of “How Great Thou Art”.  The words of that song are so rich!  They need a stronger feel that his version brings.  If you haven’t picked up his CD “Our God Saves”, you need to.

Al preached Genesis 42.  He really brought it this week!  I’m thankful for the faithful preaching of the Word.

Communion this week!

Acoustic Set
The Wonderful Cross
There Is a fountain
Nothing But the blood (Redman)
Jesus, Thank You

I asked people to come and share scriptures that about the cross in between the songs.  It was great to hear the word of God really focus our time of worship.  Communion IS about remembering the work of Christ on the cross.

Message
Reflection
Bread & Juice

w/Band
Blessed Be Your Name

Thanks to my blog friend Josh, I now have a sweet header banner.  Thanks, Josh!  I was starting to feel like a real blogger with the new look, then I realized I haven’t bloged in 2 and a half weeks.  I’m tryin’

I’m working on a lot of Christmas details.  Lot’s of details.

I had great time praying with the Body tonight!  I realize that I don’t pray near as much as I need to.  At Harvest, one of our pillars is “firmly believing in the power of prayer”.  I believe tonight we experienced that.

Harvest Prayer and Worship Night

Call to Prayer – Psalm 17:1,6-9 (we cry out to the Lord)

Pastor Dan Leads us in continual prayer:
Adoration – Heb. 13:15
Confession – I John 1:9
Thanksgiving – Psalm 9:1
Supplication – Phil. 4:6
A.    Pray for Each Other
•    Pray in faith for the person next to you – Eph. 6:18

B.    Pray for the Leaders of our Nation
•    Pray for the salvation of our nation’s leaders – I Tim. 2:4
•    Pray that they would humble themselves before God – 2 Ch. 7:14
•    Pray that they would rule according to the wisdom of God rather than the wisdom of man – 1 Cor. 3:18-19

C.    Pray for the Ministry of the Church
•    Pray that God will allow us to purchase land in the future for our church
•    Pray that we would have a heart for evangelism – Matthew 22:36-40
•    Pray for the Elders and the Leadership as they seek God’s direction for our church
•    Pray that we would be a people who delight in God’s Word – Psalm 1:2, 3

Worship and Singing
Give Us Clean Hands
Praise to the Lord, the Almighty
Let Your People Sing
The Solid Rock

1.  Come Christians Join to Sing
Carribean Worship set (Nigel leads)
2.  Lord, I Lift Your Name on High
3.  This is the Day / He Has Made Me Glad
Greeting
Announcements
4.  I Stand Amazed
Scripture Reading:  Psalm 91:1-4,14-16 (Juli leads)
5.  Never Let Go (Joe reads Rom. 8:28-35: 37-39 after bridge then sing chorus again)
6. Worthy Is the Lamb
Message:  Pastor Al (Gen. 40)
7.  Never Let Go

Pastor Al’s brother Nigel was visiting from the island of St. Vincent in the Carribean.  He’s a worship leader down there.  I had him lead some songs.  It was great!  He led from the drums.  I love that we were able to experience worship from another culture.  I think it’s so good for us to realize that none of us have the “edge” on a particular style of worship.  We worshipped God with Reggae…It was a highlight for me as a worship leader.