Clothing Closet today from 10-1
Sun. Worship from 10-11ish in person and on Zoom with Children's Church.
Sun. Season of Prayer 2-4 in the sanctuary. (Come and go as you please) Praying for our denomination, district, church and personal needs. Do you need some prayer? Come! Or bring someone who does.
See below Sarah Boyer's prayer requests. Continue to lift the Ron Williams family as they move through grief of the loss of Ron. We buried him yesterday. UPDATE on Karen's dad Russ: He is in the hospital because the facility he lives in refuses to cook heart healthy food. The menus are loaded with salt causing his fluid retention. Pray for healing for him and for the kitchen to be open to serving healthy choices to the elderly they serve. pray for wisdom for us as we try to fight for this . Thanks!
Sarah update:
Good evening,
I have two urgent prayer requests to share with you:
Lisa Wenner has asked for prayer for her boss, Ed Shelly. We have been praying for Ed....but
right now he is at the hospital having emergency surgery for a perforated colon. He isn't doing too
good. Please pray for his medical and surgical team and for his family. Pray also that he will mend
and heal, may God's peace surround him.
Friends of Neen and mine has asked for prayer for their son, who had triple by-pass surgery today.
He came through the surgery well, and has been able to communicate verbally with his family.
Please keep him and his family in your prayers - praying that his healing goes well without any infections
Karen Kerns' father Russ is in the hospital for testing. Prayers for the doctors and those reading the test
results and pray that they find out what is going on.
Thank you church family for your prayers!
Have a great evening and weekend!!!
Blessings,
Sarah
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Good Morning Worshiping, Products of Your Choices! Everything we do can be an act of worship from doing dishes, cleaning toilets, praying, encouraging, praising, obeying God, if all you choose to do flows from a heart of worship. God has created us free to choose. We are not robots. When He draws people to Himself they all have a choice to trust and believe or reject and walk away. We see the consequences of peoples choices throughout the Bible, history and present day life. We get to choose life or death, blessings or curses. We have chosen life in Christ! PTL! Everyday, 24-7, we get to choose if we will obey or go our own way. PTL that when we choose our own way, come to realize what we are doing, that we can choose to stop, repent, be forgiven and return to God's best ways. And He always chooses to forgive, restore, redeem and help us back on track and through the consequences of our poor choices. Check out ODB and CS devos below for more on our choices. And keep choosing life, blessings and obedience! And keep choosing to praise and worship. Check out UR below. Choose to count your blessings and praise with songs of old and new songs too. Worship with psalms, hymns, spiritual songs as you choose to praise no matter the storms or good times you find yourself in.
Last year we studied a spiritual virtue each month. The Jan. virtue was joy. We get to choose how we face life. Joy is a choice--a good and healthy choice that flows from trusting God no matter what. We discussed the importance of turning off the noise around us, whatever is causing the noise, and tuning into God by casting our anxiety and fear onto God and counting our many blessings in praise. We discussed how building gratitude lists can help us to have something handy to help us to choose to refocus with praise.
Here's a song to remind you that you can choose joy as you choose to worship in the storms of life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7UE_EuFLj4
This year we are working on growing into the people we were created to be, doing the things custom made for us to do. We get to choose if we will die to self and the ways of this world and take up our crosses and follow Jesus. We get to choose how we live this life. May we all choose well today and always! Talk to God about that as you choose to be still, sit at His feet, receive and follow well. We get to choose if we live this life as an act of worship or not. PTL for freedom to choose and for helping us to know the best choices to make throughout each day! PTL for choosing you and us! Praise the Lord for being faithful to us no matter what! Here's one more very familiar hymn to offer in worship as you choose to trust and praise today, Great Is Thy Faithfulness! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN6ZgZhMOR8
Choose to have a great day as you begin with praise, worship and stillness as you sit at Jesus' feet and receive His shalom, wisdom and strength to face this day. He is faithful and worthy of all glory, honor and praise! What an awesome God we serve! Choose to worship and rejoice in this day! Yes! PTL! Amen!
Upper Room (UR):
O sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things. His right hand and his holy arm have gotten him victory. - Psalm 98:1 (NRSVUE)
As a child I lived in a small house with five sisters, one brother, and my parents. We all shared many chores — cooking, hanging laundry to dry, and caring for the younger children. My parents, however, brightened our chores with music. When Mom sang spiritual songs in the kitchen or Daddy played guitar on the porch, the family would sing along. In time, we bought an old upright piano and learned to play. From those songs, I learned to turn my attention to Jesus when life grows difficult and to talk to God and meditate on scripture often.
In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he encouraged God’s people to sing (see Eph. 5:19). Maybe he was recalling the incident from Acts 16 when he and Silas were imprisoned in Philippi. At midnight, when Paul and Silas sang hymns, an earthquake shook the prison, the doors opened, and their chains fell off.
Now, many years later, I listen to inspirational music at lunch and find peace. In late afternoons, I play piano and find joy. On sleepless nights, I recall songs from my childhood and find rest. We can find comfort when we sing praise to God.
TODAY'S PRAYER
Holy God, thank you for accepting our praise, offered through joyful songs. Thank you for bringing us peace, joy, and rest through music. Amen.Our Daily Bread (ODB):
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A few weeks after the death of a dear friend, I spoke with her mom. I was hesitant to ask how she was doing because I thought it was an inappropriate question; she was grieving. But I pushed aside my reluctance and simply asked how she was holding up. Her reply: “Listen, I choose joy.”
Her words ministered to me that day as I struggled to push beyond some unpleasant circumstances in my own life. And her words also reminded me of Moses’ edict to the Israelites at the end of Deuteronomy. Just before Moses’ death and the Israelites’ entrance into the promised land, God wanted them to know that they had a choice. Moses said, “I have set before you life and death . . . . Now choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). They could follow God’s laws and live well, or they could turn away from Him and live with the consequences of “death and destruction” (v. 15).
We must choose how to live too. We can choose joy by believing and trusting in God’s promises for our lives. Or we can choose to focus on the negative and difficult parts of our journeys, allowing them to rob us of joy. It will take practice and relying on the Holy Spirit for help, but we can choose joy—knowing that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28).
By Katara Patton
REFLECT & PRAY
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How can you choose joy in spite of your circumstances today? How is choosing joy similar to choosing life as God described to the Israelites?
Dear God, Giver of Joy, please help me to choose to follow You and believe and trust You this day.
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SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
In Deuteronomy 30:15, Moses used a figure of speech called metonymy where the effect stands for the cause. When he claimed to be setting before the people “life and prosperity, death and destruction,” he was presenting the effects of the Israelites’ decisions to help them see the significance of their choices. Obviously, no one would choose death and destruction. But their actions would lead either to life and prosperity or to death and destruction. In chapter 28, he lists the blessings for obedience (vv. 1–14) and the curses for disobedience (vv. 15–68).
J.R. Hudberg |
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Charles Stanley's God's Purpose for Your Life Devotional (CS): (Today's and Sunday's devos)
LISTEN ONLINE
