What an incredible weekend! It was so exciting to see God move in so many people’s lives and call them to be baptized. We celebrated God’s trustworthiness and kindness to us and then moved into celebrating the Lord’s death, resurrection and return.

We opened with “A Mighty Fortress” remembering that God is our refuge and we can run to him and be safe, and worshiping him in light of that.

We then prayed a prayer of confession and supplication called “O Fountain of All Good” from The Valley of Vision, a collection of puritan prayers.

O Fountain of all good, destroy in me every lofty thought, break pride to pieces and scatter it to the winds… Break me, then bind me up…

Nothing exceeds thy power, nothing is too great for thee to do, nothing too good for thee to give. Infinite is thy might, boundless thy love, limitless thy grace, glorious thy saving name…

Let angels sing for sinners repenting, prodigals restored, blind eyes opened, broken hearts bound up, and saints built up in their holy faith.

I ask great things of a great God.

Because God is a great God… both sovereign AND loving… we can trust him and put all our hope in him and be confident he will never let us down… So we sang “You Are Sovereign Here” to praise him for his never-ending faithfulness to us. Every situation we face, whether trials or blessing, is working together for our good and his glory. He is never far from us!

We ended our first time of singing together with “Rock of Ages” where we yet again remembered that all our hope is in Jesus and he is our rock and refuge, as well as our righteousness and only hope for salvation.

For communion, we sang “Mystery” to praise God that he has died, risen and is coming again! Hallelujah! What a Savior!

Celebrate his death and rising
Lift your eyes, proclaim His coming!

Then we partied hard as people displayed with baptism that Jesus is the God who brings the dead to life!

This week we began with “A Mighty Fortress” to remember who God is and what he has done for us, and stand in awe of that as the fuel for our worship of His holy name.

A mighty fortress is our God
A sacred refuge is Your name
Your Kingdom is unshakeable
With You forever we will reign

We then moved into singing of our only hope, which is found “In Christ Alone.” Our hope is not in religion or works, and we can never earn our own salvation… the work of Jesus Christ alone is the very substance of our hope.

We ended out the morning with singing in adoration of the holiness of God in “Revelation Song” and then reflected on the truth that Jesus alone is worthy to call us righteous and holy as he is holy. What sweet truth to cling to.

In response to Jonathan McIntosh’s sermon on religion and works versus the grace of Jesus, we reflected on “Amazing Grace” as we took communion together.

Then we closed out our time of worshiping together with the words of “Behold The Spotless Lamb.”

With justice led to victory
Our hope to stand in Him complete
Rests solely in our risen King
Not by our works, it’s by His grace

What an incredible Sunday morning of worship this week. As Darrin preached on Jesus and Miracles, we really wanted to celebrate God’s power and supremacy!

We opened with the call to worship, “Crown Him with Many Crowns,” and declared together that he is the King, the Lamb upon his throne and is fully deserving of our worship. In doing so, we join with the heavenly anthem that drowns out all music but its own, “All hail our Redeemer, who died eternal life to bring, and lives that death may die!”

In Mark 6:30-56, we see that the impetus of Jesus’ miracles was his great compassion that he had on people, who were lost like sheep without a shepherd. It was out of his compassion that he worked miracles and it is out of compassion that he works salvation for us, the greatest Miracle of all. So we sang “Mighty to Save” together to praise God for his redeeming work in our lives.

Finally, concluding our initial time of worship through singing, we sang of the supremacy of God in the song, “Our God,” which names the very miracles that he has done and declares that he is greater, stronger and higher than any other.

In response, along with communion, we prayed for people to be healed holistically, both physically and emotionally, along with any other needs people had. As we prayed and remembered in communion, we sang, “There Is A Fountain,” for it is the blood of Jesus that is the power for every miracle, every physical or emotional healing, every spiritual renewal, and certainly for salvation itself.

In closing, we sang “God & Sinner Reconcile” and praised God that he became sin so we might become his righteousness. He died that we may have life. It is by his wounds we are healed and he is faithful to use our wounds for our good, to make us more like himself each day. This is the truth we walk in daily.