Praise Report Week 42 – 2021
As I had mentioned in my previous post, my goal is to do this Praise Report every week. So here is my Praise Report of Week 42, 2021. I discovered that it is not easy. This is my second one so far, but I had some trouble in getting it on writing.
Men’s Ministry.
Maybe I already had told this, but I am also part of the Men’s Ministry. Twice a week we come together. On the second Saturday of the month, we meet face-to-face. And on the fourth Saturday, we will have an online meeting. We had talked about the book of Luke and these last Saturdays, we talked about Luke 7.
It is a nice chapter and it is about Trust and Forgiving. By answering the questions that go with it, you start to think about some things. Some questions are also asking about how you could or would apply this in your own life.
Our next lessons will be about Luke 8 and the title is “Receiving and Obeying”. I am curious to see how this will go and what I or we can learn from this.
Sunday Service.
Two days before the Sunday Service, I will already prepare the line-up of the lyrics for the Praise and Worship songs. Most of the lyrics are already in the system, but I always go through them to make sure that they are the same as what will be sung. Then on Sunday, I will place the file on my USB stick. Once I have the sermon, I also will place that on my USB stick and take it to the church.
When I am finished setting up the laptop and beamer, I will copy the files to the laptop. And to my big surprise, I discovered that I had brought the wrong list of lyrics. This was the list from a year ago. Because I don’t live too far from the church, I thought I would just go back home and get the right list.
I also had tried to go through my emails on my mobile device, to see if I could find the email with the songs. But my emails on my phone are only from the last 10 days and this was sent earlier than that. So I did not have the email. Thank God, one of the members of the technical team had the email and forwarded it to me. And I could do the list again. Maybe it was a sign for me, to think it over and maybe set the save date of my emails, longer. That if it would happen again, I still could retrieve it from my phone. Lesson learned.
The setup went further without any problems and the practice of the Praise and Worship also was nice. During the service, with one song, you could see that the song leader also was touched.
Testimony.
This time we had two testimonies/thanksgivings. The first one was from our Pastor. The next day, he and his wife would celebrate their 28th wedding anniversary. He mentioned that he thanked the Lord for keeping them together. And that during those years, they had grown more together. And also had grown stronger in their faith.
The other testimony was a double one. She was thankful for the health of her husband. He had some problems but after the checkup of the doctor, he was told that he was healthy. Just got some preventional medication. She also told about her daughter. She would stop working for the company where she was working and would start her own company. In these last days, she was saying goodby to all her patients, one by one. Each one of them was a bit sad that she was leaving and all of them were giving her gifts as a Thank You for all that she had done for them. I can imagine that this can be very emotional. But it is also nice to see, that all the hard work and effort you had put into it, was appreciated.
The Sermon.
The bible verse for that Sunday was Matthew 26:64
64 “You have said so,” Jesus replied. “But I say to all of you: From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
Matthew 26:64 (NIV)
The verses 57-63 also were used, as an introduction. In short, this was all about the accusations towards Jesus.
This is the part of which I had trouble getting it into writing. For some reason, this part did not speak to me. The way I was listening to it, it was more of a story to me. It was not telling me something. It was not speaking to me.
For sure, it will be different for each one of us, and maybe you can listen and watch the sermon yourself. If you want, you can share your thoughts on it in the comments.
You can find the video of the service here; https://fb.watch/8V3Sbi6gsw/
(The sermon starts at 35:00)
Closing.
This weekend it was proven again to me, that we cannot be in control of everything. No matter how well you do your best or how well you want to be prepared, there is always the possibility that something goes different than you planned. We always need to keep in mind, that we are not in control but that we can pray and ask the Lord for guidance and help. It also can be the work of the evil one, to discourage us from doing the work of the Lord. And we need to try to recognize this and try not to fall for it.
Testimonies, how big or how small, we all can learn from it. We all can see, how the Lord is working differently in each one of us. But it also can show us, that we can and need to be thankful for even the smallest things in our lives.
Not every bible verse is talking to us. Maybe one verse has a bigger meaning to a person and maybe little or nothing to another person. This is also the Lord’s way of telling different things to different people. We always need to keep our eyes, ears, and minds open for it.
As always, please take care and stay safe.
God Bless