Peace-Fully

Thank You Jesus for Sunday morning!  I wish you all could have been there--not to hear me sing, but just because it was such a great celebration of God and what He is doing in the lives of people at our church.  But here's a little rundown on my part of it. 

 

Every Sunday morning our church has a prayer time.  (Think of it sort of as Sunday School with the topic being prayer and the purpose being not to talk about it but for people to learn and do it together.)  It starts at 9:00 and I was going to practice my song for the first time with the bass player and the drummer after the prayer time which I knew probably wouldn't be over until 9:35 or 9:40.  (The service starts at 10.)  I got there around 8:45 so I wouldn't be feeling rushed and I paced around a bit while the worship team practiced.  I wasn't nervous, but I was feeling restless and wondering how it was going to work out.  I decided to sit down, try to relax a bit and pray when God said "Open your Bible."  So, I opened it and found myself on page 1589 where my eyes fell on the red words in Luke 24:36 "Peace be with you."  I can't quite describe what it meant to me, but perhaps you can imagine.  I sat there with tears in my eyes and thanked my loving, gracious Savior for being so very close and amazing and real and for speaking to me and for offering me His peace.  And I knew everything was going to work out just fine.  And that even if it didn't, that I was going to be fine because Jesus was with me.

 

Well, I was able to participate in the prayer time with everyone (again, I wish you were there!) as we prayed for the various ministries of the church and after it was all done and we prayed for the pastor and the couple who was going to be sharing their testimony I finally got to practice and it came together beautifully.  (The guys had heard the song b/c I had emailed them a recording of it.)  I got to sing during communion and felt so blessed to get to be part of the service that way.

 

The day was topped off by a lunch and dessert auction to raise money for our women's ministries and a shocking (almost scandalous) amount of money was given generously by the people who were there.  It was amazing and so much fun.   God is hilarious sometimes!

 

I pray that this week you will experience God's peace that He so generously offers to each of us.  I'm realizing more and more places where I don't live in Christ's peace and I'm expecting that the Holy Spirit is going to deal with what He is exposing because that seems to be the pattern lately.  But I'll (hopefully) tell you more about that soon...  : )

 

Peace to you!

~Melissa