We enjoyed a great time of God’s presence in our worship service yesterday. I love it when we are ready to receive what God wants to show us. Our time of music and prayer was powerful. It had been a very hectic week for me and I was feeling very scattered early Sunday morning, so the time in our worship service was even more meaningful to me. I guess I have already started musing …

-It was a great time of worship. Our technical glitches were very minimal and the service flowed well.

-We had a lot of children present yesterday. That always adds a lot energy to the building. I am very encouraged by the growth we are experiencing in our children’s ministries.

-Yesterday had such a great spirit that we even had people saying amen, and praise the Lord out loud! That is not the norm for our congregation, though I wish it happened a lot more often.

-I started a new series entitled “Breaking Free from Financial Bondage”. For 3 weeks we are looking at what the Bible says about handling our money. No, it is not a series on giving to the church. It is a series on getting control of what God has provided instead of wondering what happened to your money and being enslaved to your debt.

-Had a great conversation with someone who just recently started tackling their debt and is seeing great progress and is creating a tool that can help others figure out bills, debt and a budget. What great timing. God really knows what he is doing.

-Early last week I was working on a completely different message, but I just kept feeling blocked as I studied. On Wednesday I began looking at this topic and it just flowed as I studied.

-We had a very lively, fun and meaningful discussion as we continued to study grace and truth in our small group last evening. The group was small in number but it was a great time of discussing. I really enjoyed the debate and discussion. I love the openness to ask questions that is in this group.

-We had some new people attend yesterday and they are in our community looking for a church home. That is always encouraging, and especially so if they come back.

-We are 3 weeks from a special series of Revival/Renewal services. We have several special times of praying for revival planned. I am anxious to see how our church responds to the opportunities to pray and to participate in the special services.

-Our attendance was up yesterday which added to the feeling of anticipation in the building. Most encouraging was seeing that attendance and realizing that we had a lot of fairly consistent attenders absent.

-I am supposed to go through a volunteer orientation at our local hospital this week so I can begin serving 1 day a week as a chaplain. I am looking forward to beginning that ministry.

Here’s hoping you see some encouraging things this week.

Dennis