Tuesday, August 31, 2004
A SHORT REPORT ABOUT LAST SUNDAY
God blessed the Sunday morning worship service at my church so much. My long-time friend was absolutely terrific on the piano. And he gave his moving testimony of how he left touring with the Band to come home after his father recovered from a severe automobile accident in which he should have died. My friend spent a lot of years playing with some of the really "greats" of our generation. He toured with Al Hirt, "Boots" Randolph, just to name a couple.
Anyway, the music was all good and everybody really got into the spirit of worship. There were no problems in that part of the service. My friend wrote a marvelous song about, "God Doesn't Love You Any More." It is so theologically accurate to the Bible. I built my sermon around the theme of that song.
As he sang we had the words showing on the screen. And our tech person is really great with all that sort of thing. When the words to his song showed, they were highlighted in yellow. As he sang them, the projectionist moved the highlighting off the words. It was very effective.
We had a video testimony by a couple who are also friends of mine. They had been told to have an abortion of their first child. They told in simple, moving words about that experience. The couple had planned to be present but a family commitment in Tennessee prevented them from attending. But after the video testimony we showed a couple of pictures of the family to show the healthy boy who is now 12 years old that they were told to abort. People were moved. This video testimony was one of the things woven in as a part of the sermon. We also had a sharing of joys and concerns and then had a prayer time for those requests as part of the sermon.
The only "hitch" was that the video got stuck right at the first. But the projectionist got it going and all was well.
There was a very good attendance even though for whatever reason or reasons there were at least six regular families absent that day. Several from our old church attended and surprised us.
I think the sermon went okay. I really "poured" myself into it! I had prayed and prayed that it would be all right and that God would use it. I am still praying for that. I guess it was okay. I lost my voice in the afternoon as a result but it was only temporary. That always happens when I haven't spoken publicly for awhile. It is the old "use-it-or-lose-it" principle.
There were several indications that people were blessed by the service. It was a good Sunday for me after being on Sabbatical for three weeks.
On to next week! I'm preaching about the spiritual consequences of being a "worklaholic". Sunday is called "Labor Day Sunday" in America.
The next week is the kick-off for our 50 Day Spiritual Adventure.
Jim
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