Service texts--Theme: Remaining in Christ (John 15)

Great and marvelous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty.
Just and true are your ways, King of the ages.
Who will not fear you, O Lord, and bring glory to your name?
For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you,
for your righteous acts have been revealed. (Revelation 3:15)

Your name is holy
What A friend we have in Jesus

Without Christ, we get mired in that old stagnant life of sin. But God’s gift is this: he takes our sin-dead lives and makes us alive in Christ. When we make our home in Christ, God works in us and through us, recreating us into the people he created us to be, doing the work he created us for. (Ephesians 2, The Message--sort of)

He who began a good work in you

Oh, how great is Your goodness, which You have laid up for those who fear,
revere, and worship You, goodness for those who trust and take refuge in You!
In the secret place of Your presence You hide them from harmful plots; You
shelter them from strife in Your pavilion. Blessed be the Lord! (Psalm 31)

You are my Hiding Place
O Blessed Spring

Guide me O Thou great Jehovah

Service texts--Theme: Love overcomes evil

Scripture: 1 John 4: 7-21
A note about this week's topic: The scripture for this week talks about the source of love, and how it cast out fear; the title of the sermon is "How can we make our House a Home?" (The answer found in this text is, of course, love--that is, the perfect love of God found in Christ.) Henri Nouwen's book Lifesigns: Intimacy, Fecundity, and Ecstacy brilliantly and deeply examines the difference between "the house of fear" and "the house of love." It's a book the profoundly affects me each time I read it, and I really ought to read it once a year just to hear, through Nouwen's words, God say again "fear not." Seriously, if you haven't read it, go get it. It is short, readable, pithy and inspiring.

Service Texts:

The Psalmist cries: Whom have I in heaven, but You? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. Though my heart and my body fail, God is the strength of my heart. Brothers and Sisters, we gather in Christ name to find strength in God; as he gave the Israelites their sustenance in the dessert, so we ask him to send his Holy Manna to strengthen and nurture us today. (Psalm 73)

Christians we have met to Worship
I lift my eyes up

Jesus, God’s Son, is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being; He holds everything together by what he says--powerful words! This is the same Jesus we can trust as our Savior, the Jesus who says “surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
(Hebrews 1 and Matthew 28)

'Tis so Sweet to Trust in Jesus
Pass me not, O Gentle Savior
The River (Brian Doerksen)
Closing: He came down/We are Marching