Sing to the Lord with Thanksgiving

For the past 3 and some odd years I have been singing on my church's worship team.  There have been many changes throughout those three+ years but none such as the last 6 months.  Last August we needed a worship leader, I volunteered.  And with much help from a friend that was leading our church's Celebrate Recovery band on Monday evenings began leading worship on Sunday mornings.

It was a lot more work than I had anticipated, I listened to too many songs to count, scheduled the songs, people for singing, playing, sound, lyrics, etc etc...We had the occasional hiccup but nothing too drastic, God is so good, He humbled me and held me.  Taught me so many things spiritually and musically. 

I started this post in January or February so this is referring to August thru December 2013.  Now I will finish it, lol!  In January my church hired a Worship Pastor.  I was very excited about it, I was ready to learn some new things and boy have I ever.  I cannot even begin to describe the work Christ has done in my heart and life this last year, but I can try. 

Last August we needed a keyboard player and a lovely teenage girl stepped up to play, she had just learned how to chord and was willing to serve the Lord with her talents.  She taught me a lot, watching her made me realize I could probably learn to do that or teach myself how to somewhat.  If you know me very well then you know I don't play the piano very well, I love to play but usually only pull out my piano music around Christmas time.  I have sang and played (easy hymns) at small churches where James has preached but only those easy hymns that I have practiced ahead of time.  Anyway, I played keys a couple of times for Celebrate Recovery last Fall and then played the very last Sunday morning in December which was a shock to everyone, including me.  Since then, our new Worship Pastor has challenged and stretched me both on playing keys and vocally.  I have learned so much from him not only musically but he has taught me spiritually as well how to lead worship, how to prepare for worship, and more.  Last month, (July) our Worship Pastor, Mark, took some of the worship team to the National Worship Leaders Conference.  What an awesome experience, I was blessed beyond measure, learned so much and have already put into practice some of the things I learned there.  God is so good to me, He is showing me how to use my gifts and talents for Him in ways I never knew I would be able to...He is simply amazing.

You Are So Good To Me

Christian singing a special at church.

Soul-Winning Made Easy

Below is a blog post from Tim Challies; blogger, author, book reviewer.  A friend showed this post to me, we had quite an, ahem, interesting laugh conversation about it. 

Soul-Winning Made Easy - Tim Challies
Some time ago a friend sent me a little gift she knew I would enjoy. It is a small book, published in 1959 titled Soul-Winning Made Easy and subtitled (The Encounter Method). It was written by C.S. Lovett who founded Baldwin Park Baptist Church (which, strangely enough, was later renamed Personal Christianity Chapel).

This book is a guide to personal evangelism and it is one that is a classic example of technique-based evangelism. Now obviously I appreciate the man’s desire to share the good news of the gospel and to train others to do the same. But what he offers is a method and one that needs to be followed with near religious fervor. He insists that anyone who would seek to evangelize must have a plan since “Every successful operation needs a plan. … One does not dare build a house without building-plans; the walls might not meet. Why, even a trip to the market requires a planned list to insure that items are not forgotten.”

He then writes “The controlled conversation technique is something new in evangelism and represents a real break-through in soul-winning. Older methods, dealing with excuses, seek to convince a prospect of his needy condition and humble him. … The new method ignores excuses and completely side-steps the explosive area of religious debate. Modern soul-winners have discovered that it is unnecessary to change a person’s mind before introducing him to Jesus. If he can truly be made aware of Christ waiting at the door of his heart, his responsibility becomes most clear. This makes soul-winning a positive ministry requiring fewer skills. Actually, it is a new frontier which allows Christian obedience to become fun!”

From that starting-point, Lovett provides a plan, step-by-step, word-by-word. He gives not only the words, but the actions and gestures that need to go along with them. And I thought, just for fun, I’d share some of that with you. These are just a few scans from what is actually a fairly lengthy book. Enjoy!









(Here’s another of his books: Help Lord—the Devil Wants Me Fat!)

NOLA 2013 ~ Mardi Gras 3

Monday, February 11, 2013
Bourbon Street
Many in our team went to Bourbon St tonight, we passed out a lot of tracts, I talked to several people.  Had a good conversation with a young man about the Lord, talked to an older gentleman and asked him who Jesus was to him and he said that Jesus was his Lord and Savior and that he would be going to church on Wednesday.  This is the attitude of many who come to Mardi Gras.  Most of our group left, I stayed and along with two others from our group went further down Bourbon Street.  The bars got rougher, strippers and the like.  I saw a young black woman with her little girl in tow, she was probably around 7 years old holding her mama's hand.  She had beads around her neck and was very wide-eyed.  I tried to give her mama a tract but she said no and walked quickly away.  The little girl, still holding her mother's hand, turned her head back to look at me.  I won't forget those big brown eyes with a look that was pleading for someone to rescue her.  How many times has she seen the vulgarity here?  Will she continue to grow up in this culture that says "sin, repent, repeat"?  Will she ever know there's more to life than this, that God loves her and sent His Son to die for her and save her from all of this?

Zechariah 10:2
For the household gods utter nonsense, and the diviners see lies; they tell false dreams and give empty consolation. Therefore the people wander like sheep; they are afflicted for lack of a shepherd.

Mardi Gras in New Orleans is like entering another dimension, it is a difficult trip to go on mission.  I found myself praying without ceasing and I realized that after I was home and at a basketball game that I hadn't been constantly praying.  Although we know people all around us are lost, we don't take the time to look at each individual as if they were and we don't look at people and act like we even care that they may be heading to hell and an eternity without God.  Why are we so calloused?  This is why I go on this mission trip, to step outside my normal every day, to have the Lord fill me up, to make me broken for the people that don't know Him, to share His love and come back to my amazingly blessed life to my family and friends that still don't know Him and share the gospel with them as well. 
Romans 13:12

The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

NOLA 2013 ~ Mardi Gras 2

February 10, 2013
Some things I wrote in my journal...
Psalm 91:14-16
14 “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. 15 When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him. 16 With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.”

Psalm 25
1 To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.

2 O my God, in you I trust;
let me not be put to shame;
let not my enemies exult over me.
3 Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame;
they shall be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.
4 Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
teach me your paths.
5 Lead me in your truth and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation;
for you I wait all the day long.
6 Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love,
for they have been from of old.
7 Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions;
according to your steadfast love remember me,
for the sake of your goodness, O Lord!
8 Good and upright is the Lord;
therefore he instructs sinners in the way.
9 He leads the humble in what is right,
and teaches the humble his way.
10 All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness,
for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.
11 For your name's sake, O Lord,
pardon my guilt, for it is great.
12 Who is the man who fears the Lord?
Him will he instruct in the way that he should choose.
13 His soul shall abide in well-being,
and his offspring shall inherit the land.
14 The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him,
and he makes known to them his covenant.
15 My eyes are ever toward the Lord,
for he will pluck my feet out of the net.
16 Turn to me and be gracious to me,
for I am lonely and afflicted.
17 The troubles of my heart are enlarged;
bring me out of my distresses.
18 Consider my affliction and my trouble,
and forgive all my sins.
19 Consider how many are my foes,
and with what violent hatred they hate me.
20 Oh, guard my soul, and deliver me!
Let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in you.
21 May integrity and uprightness preserve me,
for I wait for you.
22 Redeem Israel, O God,
out of all his troubles.

"When you can't find common ground, it's kinda like pig wrestling, you're both gonna get nasty and the pig likes it." - Jack

2 Timothy 2:24
"And the Lord's servant[a] must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil"
-this scripture goes with the above quote from Jack.

Today...I met some interesting people, I still don't feel like I'm doing enough, although I believe God would speak the right words into my heart if I needed to say more.  I do know that I need to be in the Word more, just soaking it in.  All of the sudden, I'm exhausted.

NOLA 2013 ~ Mardi Gras

Day 1 in the French Quarter
Prayer walked today, it wasn't raining this year!  Last year it was very overwhelming, hearing about it through other people's experiences, seeing things on tv, etc. an never prepare you for being in the middle of all of it.  I knew "kind of" what to expect this time, there's always something shocking or new.  Gay men kissing, nudity...darkness everywhere.  The hardest part to swallow (there are many) is the mockery of Jesus, whether it's outright rejection of the gospel or other "christians" condeming people, showing no grace, mercy, or compassion for the lost; the pure evil here, it's unnerving - I just pray without ceasing as I walk by the tarot card readers, fortune tellers, you name it.  Today we prayed in front of an occult store...what can you say?  So many being misled.
Tonight I went to Bourbon Street to hand out tracts and maybe have an opportunity to talk to people, someone.  Some are polite and take a tract and then move along, some will ignore you, some will blantantly reject you, it comes with the territory.  I met a man tonight that wouldn't take anything with Jesus on it because he was drinking.  Most of these people are very aware of their sin, they just simply don't care, they don't want to see the truth.  I looked around at all these people, all the sin and despair, and felt so blessed.  Blessed that my Lord protected me from every having a life-style like what I've seen tonight.  Not that my sin is less than theirs, just that I didn't have to experience these things before He bacame my personal Savior and Redeemer.  Tomorrow my prayer is for hearts to be opened and soft and for me to be an effective witness for my King.

John 3:16-20
¹⁶ “For God so loved the world,^[a] that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. ¹⁸ Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. ¹⁹ And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. ²⁰ For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.

On Mission at Mardi Gras ~ Part 1

Interesting picture, is it not? 

Take a closer look...Mardi Gras beads, trash, a cigarette butt, a thrown away gospel tract...look at the reflection in the water...yes, that's a cross.  This picture pretty much sums up my entire mission trip to Mardi Gras.  I saw lostness, in your face lostness, I know...sin is sin and I knew what Mardi Gras was like.  I've watched COPS, ya know.  And on Bourbon Street it was just that...like a COPS episode...nudity, homosexuality, transvestites, and lots of drunk or high people.  But there were children with their parents, senior adult couples, disabled people....didn't expect that.

Standing in the middle of Bourbon Street, a lady in our group handed an unsuspecting homosexual young man a gospel tract, he took it because it said 'Mardi Gras' on the front of it.  He turned it over and saw that it was about Jesus and looked her in the eye with disdain and wadded it up in his hand and threw it on the ground all while still holding her gaze.  It struck me as as huge statement of rejection of Christ.  Some were polite and took whatever we had to offer them, some wanted to talk to us or were at least willing to, some laughed and scoffed, some cussed, some ignored, some....wept, some....were saved.  Mardi Gras is like evangelism boot camp, get out there and share your faith, share the love of Christ and His salvation!  It made me ache...but it was empowering, I see people a little 'more'...I've always loved the song "Give Me Your Eyes" by Brandon Heath, listening to the words (really listening) makes me cry.  This is my home, my country, my city, my town, my neighborhood...I want to share the love of Jesus with them, I want to see their lives changed by the gospel.  This month at our church is Local Home Missions Month, this Saturday we are visiting a retirement "village", singing, talking with them, loving them.  Next Saturday, door-to-door evangelism...and I can't wait :)  This is how we are supposed to live, to look into every face we come in contact with and share Jesus with them.

We did free face painting to draw people to us so we could love on them, share with them, and pray with them.  I painted this entire family's faces (except dad) he wasn't up for that, lol.  But I got to have fun with these lovely people and pray with them.  I painted lots of faces.  The last day we were there, "Fat Tuesday", I painted a young woman's face, her name was Kaitlyn, she had just caught her boyfriend cheating, she was very tender, genuine, and broken.  I didn't lead her to Christ but was able to pray with her and the friends she was with, she carried a gospel tract away with her.  They left down the street and about a block away another young man (from a different church group) met these same ladies, talked with them and later told me that these girls talked about how we had prayed with them and they felt the love of Jesus and then he said Kaitlyn just started weeping.  Seeds were planted and watered...please pray for Kaitlyn's salvation.

There were many times when I thought I should've done more, I prayed to just be led by the Spirit and be obedient to whatever God would have me to do or say.  To me...I was very serious on this trip (which is strange because I am not at all a serious person, rather silly even) but God was molding and changing me in all sorts of ways to which I am so very thankful and humbled by.

Flashback to....December 2011 and Africa

I'm trying to get caught up here so just bear with me.

James went to Africa in December, yes, the country, on a mission trip with our church.  He had an amazing time and would go back tomorrow.  I, on the other hand, had a spotlessly clean house and slept like a rock the entire ten sleeps he was gone but that's beside the point.  Let me share a few pics...

Many of these villagers received Christ the night this was taken after James gave the gospel (through an interpreter) in story form.  This tribe has no written language so the 'missionaries' told stories.

 A strange tea symbolizing friendship...James bought one of these and made some for us at home....mmmmm yummy??

A city a few miles (don't know how many) away from the villages.

 

Does that look like the Lion King to you? 

James feeding a monkey...Christian was so jealous.

 James loves telling about his trip to Africa, and what I've just added here doesn't do it justice.

The Birth of King Jesus

The children's choir at my church performed their Christmas Program last night.

The uproarous laughter was the cows holding up their "Eat Mor Chikin" sign.  Cameron was my videographer and missed it, I'm sure he was just captivated by the whole performance that it just got away from him.

Light the Night for Jesus!

Some of you may or may not know that my boys have never been trick-or-treating, James and I just decided that Halloween wasn't something we were going to celebrate.  I'm not offended by people that do or think they are bad or (in maniacal voice) "evil", we just chose not to participate.  We have went to many "Fall Celebrations" at church, etc.  A check out lady at Wal-Mart years ago asked the boys what they were going to be for halloween and I stated we didn't celebrate halloween and she asked me if were Jehovah's Witnesses, lol.  All this brings me to say, we had an awesome experience on October 31, 2011.  A precious family in our church, along with many members of Cornerstone put on "Light the Night for Jesus".  There were lights throughout the yard, carnival-like games, minute-2-win it games, hot dogs, bottled water, candy galore and a professional photographer that took pictures of all the darlings that wanted their picture taken and for free of course!  So I just had to get a pic with my little darlings in our cool shirts (all the workers wore one).  Over 400 kids came through, each received lots of candy, and the gospel message of Christ.  Thank you to the wonderful family that helped make this possible, they did this last year on their own, what a privilege it was to serve alongside them.

Cameron with girlfriend, Kaitlyn.  Alyssa, Christian's girlfriend, and Christian.

Cornerstone's Got Talent 2011

We recently had a youth talent show at church.  It was interesting...

It was a lot of fun, I laughed so hard at this act and some of the other ones...and yes, those were meant to be funny.  So talented...



A Testimony

Christian gave his testimony and presented the gospel at church....before the talent show.

Fancy Grace doesn't have it all together

It had been a long week...  I didn't quite have it all together when I stepped out on stage to portray "Fancy Grace".  I had just been Fancy Grace two weeks prior and worked on the Women's Conference, etc, etc, etc.  I was a little late in getting backstage to put on my mic and wig...no mirror...nothing, I just threw it on and went with it, I really had no idea what I looked like...I just knew something wasn't right, the people backstage clued me in with their laughter.  I had rather a difficult time trying not to laugh, I tried not to think how off-kilter my hair looked.  There were two little girls sitting on the floor in front of my desk and one of them said "that's not your real hair" at which I snidely replied, "yes it is".  As the show went on I finally just told myself "forget it" LOL.  It was soooo funny.

What can I say?

Women's Conference 2011

Cornerstone Baptist Church is hosting a Women's Conference on September 16 & 17.  Sylvia Harney is the speaker and she is absolutely wonderful!  Not only funny but really moving, when I saw her a couple years ago in Branson I was transformed, it really changed me.  I began being more bold with evangelizing to people around me and began a book study with women from all walks of life.  It was really amazing.  I am thankful that God used Sylvia to touch my heart and move me into a closer walk with Christ. 

Below is a jpeg, copy as many times as you like, if that will work, ha or email me and I will send it to you as a Word Doc or PDF, or just call me to register and I will fill it out for you over the phone!

Family Night

Each Wednesday evening we do a "different" kind of service, it's called Family Night.  It is so much fun!  We have skits, music, and crazy things to display God's love and share a virtue from God's word.  Here are some of our finer moments.

Wash my toesies!

Wednesday at family night the lesson revolved around showing your love out of serving like Jesus.  Our skit was called "Toejam Man" by Steven James (love his skits!), Pastor Chris gave a short devo about Jesus washing the disciples feet, and then Pastor Tim (the youth pastor) gave a devo to the teens and their families about Jesus washing the disciples feet and then we had a foot washing.  It seems to me that these used to be very prevalent in some churches and maybe still are in some.  Pastor Tim washed Pastor Chris' feet and then one of the youth's feet, yowsa!  I told my boys that they could each do one of mine but they pretended not to hear me.  After a bit, Christian said "Come on Mom, I'll wash your feet".  What a kid!  So humble...

Jesus washed the disciples feet and by doing this showed them humility and servant leadership in action.  How can I say that any task is beneath me?  Love like Jesus!

*An awesome Steven James skit book that I have used with lots of kids & teens!