Genesis 7, part 2

Great Things
Verse 1
Come let us worship our King
Come let us bow at His feet
He has done great things
See what our Savior has done
See how His love overcomes
He has done great things
He has done great things

Chorus
O Hero of Heaven You conquered the grave
You free every captive and break every chain
O God You have done great things
We dance in Your freedom awake and alive
O Jesus our Savior Your name lifted high
O God You have done great things

Verse 2
You’ve been faithful through every storm
You’ll be faithful forevermore
You have done great things
And I know You will do it again
For Your promise is yes and amen
You will do great things
God You do great things

Bridge
Hallelujah God above it all
Hallelujah God unshakable
Hallelujah You have done great things
(REPEAT)
You’ve done great things

Ending
You have done great things
O God You do great things
CCLI Song # 7111321
Jonas Myrin | Phil Wickham
© 2018 Capitol CMG Paragon (Admin. by Capitol CMG Publishing)
Son of the Lion (Admin. by Capitol CMG Publishing)
Phil Wickham Music (Fair Trade Music Publishing [c/o Essential Music Publishing LLC])
Simply Global Songs (Fair Trade Music Publishing [c/o Essential Music Publishing LLC])
Sing My Songs (Fair Trade Music Publishing [c/o Essential Music Publishing LLC])
For use solely with the SongSelect® Terms of Use. All rights reserved. www.ccli.com
CCLI License # 11176923

Graves Into Gardens
Verse 1
I searched the world but it couldn't fill me
Man's empty praise and treasures that fade
Are never enough
Then You came along and put me back together
And every desire is now satisfied here in Your love

Chorus
Oh there's nothing better than You
There's nothing better than You
Lord there's nothing
Nothing is better than You

Verse 2
I'm not afraid to show You my weakness
My failures and flaws
Lord You've seen them all
And You still call me friend
'Cause the God of the mountain
Is the God of the valley
And there's not a place
Your mercy and grace won't find me again

Bridge
You turn mourning to dancing
You give beauty for ashes
You turn shame into glory
You're the only one who can

Bridge
You turn graves into gardens
You turn bones into armies
You turn seas into highways
You're the only one who can

CCLI Song # 7138219
Brandon Lake | Chris Brown | Steven Furtick | Tiffany Hudson
© 2019 Brandon Lake Music (Admin. by Bethel Music Publishing)
Music by Elevation Worship Publishing (Admin. by Essential Music Publishing LLC)
Maverick City Publishing Worldwide (Admin. by Heritage Worship Publishing)
Bethel Music Publishing
For use solely with the SongSelect® Terms of Use. All rights reserved. www.ccli.com
CCLI License # 11176923

Be Thou My Vision
Verse 1
Be Thou my Vision O Lord of my heart
Naught be all else to me save that Thou art
Thou my best thought by day or by night
Waking or sleeping Thy presence my light

Verse 2
Be Thou my Wisdom and Thou my true Word
I ever with Thee and Thou with me Lord
Thou my great Father I Thy true son
Thou in me dwelling and I with Thee one

Verse 3
High King of heaven my victory won
May I reach heaven's joys bright heaven's Sun
Heart of my own heart whatever befall
Still be my Vision O Ruler of all

Ending
Be Thou my Vision

CCLI Song # 7056332
Eleanor Henrietta Hull | Mary Elizabeth Byrne | Russell Mauldin
© Words: Public Domain
Music: 2010 Belden Street Music Publishing (Admin. by ClearBox Rights, LLC)

For use solely with the SongSelect® Terms of Use. All rights reserved. www.ccli.com

CCLI License # 11176923

Goodness Of God
Verse 1

I love You Lord
Oh Your mercy never fails me
All my days
I've been held in Your hands
From the moment that I wake up
Until I lay my head
I will sing of the goodness of God

Chorus
All my life You have been faithful
All my life You have been so so good
With every breath that I am able
I will sing of the goodness of God

Verse 2
I love Your voice
You have led me through the fire
In darkest night
You are close like no other
I've known You as a father
I've known You as a friend
I have lived in the goodness of God

Bridge
Your goodness is running after
It’s running after me
Your goodness is running after
It’s running after me
With my life laid down
I’m surrendered now
I give You everything
Your goodness is running after
It's running after me

CCLI Song # 7117726

Ben Fielding | Brian Johnson | Ed Cash | Jason Ingram | Jenn Johnson
© 2018 Capitol CMG Paragon (Admin. by Capitol CMG Publishing)
SHOUT! Music Publishing Australia (Admin. by Capitol CMG Publishing)
Fellow Ships Music (Admin. by Essential Music Publishing LLC)
So Essential Tunes (Admin. by Essential Music Publishing LLC)
Bethel Music Publishing

For use solely with the SongSelect® Terms of Use. All rights reserved. www.ccli.com

CCLI License # 11176923

__________________________

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%207%3A1-20&version=CJB,RSV

__________________________

INSPIRATION 

As Jesus sought for a way to explain his return, he hearkened back to the flood of Noah. Parallels are obvious. A message of judgment was proclaimed then. It is proclaimed still. People didn’t listen then. They refuse to listen today. Noah was sent to save the faithful. Christ was sent to do the same. A flood of water came then. A flood of fire will come next. Noah built a safe place out of wood. Jesus made a safe place with the cross. Those who believed hid in the ark. Those who believe are hidden in Christ. Most important, what God did in Noah’s generation, he will do at Christ’s return. He will pronounce a universal, irreversible judgment. A judgment in which grace is revealed, rewards are unveiled, and the impenitent are punished. As you read the story of Noah, you won’t find the word judgment. But you will find ample evidence of one. The era of Noah was a sad one. “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence” (Genesis 6:11). Such rebellion broke the heart of God. “His heart was deeply troubled” (verse 6). He sent a flood, a mighty purging flood, upon the earth. The skies rained for forty days. “[The waters] rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered” (7:19). Only Noah, his family, and the animals on the ark escaped. Everyone else perished. God didn’t slam the gavel on the bench, but he did close the door of the ark. According to Jesus: “That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man” (Matthew 24:39). And so a judgment was rendered. Talk about a thought that stirs anxiety! Just the term judgment day conjures up images of tiny people at the base of a huge bench. On the top of the bench is a book and behind the bench is God and from God comes a voice of judgment—Guilty! Gulp. We are supposed to encourage each other with these words? How can the judgment stir anything except panic? For the unprepared, it can’t. But for the follower of Jesus who understands the judgment—the hour is not to be dreaded. 

(From When Christ Comes by Max Lucado.)

  

REACTION 

7. Imagine yourself in Noah’s situation. How would you have responded to God? 

8. In what ways does obedience to God often require a step of faith? 

9. Why is it sometimes difficult to lean into the implications directed by God's Spirit? 

10. In what ways has God rewarded your obedience to him? 

11. How can your obedience to God have an influence on others? 

12. What attitudes are typical of people whose obedience to God you greatly respect?

LIFE LESSONS  

Moses invites us into the very heart of God when he tells us the Lord’s heart “was deeply troubled” because of the sin of humankind (Genesis 6:6). Sin had so infested everything about humanity—both inside and out—that the Lord ultimately decided he needed to start over with Noah and his family. Notice the Bible doesn’t say that God was pleased with this outcome or that he felt any form of vengefulness or wrath toward the human race. Rather, we read that God experienced deep pain as he mourned over the sinfulness that affected his beloved creation. It was for this same reason that God would send Jesus, “who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). 

DEVOTION 

Sometimes, Father, you ask us to do things that we don’t understand. We question, hesitate, and struggle to obey you. Today, we pray that you would draw us closer to you so we will have the confidence to take that step of faith and do as you ask.

Lucado, Max. Life Lessons from Genesis (pp. 29-30). HarperChristian Resources. Kindle Edition. 

Pouring over the Community

 

HOW MIGHT EACH OF US POUR OVER PEOPLE WHERE THEY WORK, LIVE, STUDY AND PLAY?

(Notes taken from our Lesson 8, Letters to the Church by Francis Chan (c) 2018 by David C Cook 

This serves as a reminder that each of us is given a purpose for our presence within a community)  

Francis Chan:  I was having lunch in São Paulo with the pastor of a thriving congregation. I began encouraging him for the exciting things I saw happening, but he stopped me mid-compliment and said, “Yeah, but the church still feels too much like a zoo. So many churches feel like zoos. We take these powerful animals out of the jungle and put them on display in cages. Have you ever seen the movie Madagascar?” I immediately knew what he was talking about. The movie begins with a bunch of “wild” animals in a zoo. All the spectators are in awe of these powerful and exotic animals. Everyone’s favorite is the lion; the children go crazy, cheering every time he roars. Most of the animals love this setup. They’re extremely well cared for. Trainers wait on them hand and foot, bringing them everything they need and ensuring that their habitats, which are carefully designed to look like “the wild,” are safe and comfortable for the animals. But the zebra finds himself dreaming about the wild. He can’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t made to live in a zoo; he was made to roam free. His restlessness creates a situation where several of the animals escape the zoo and later find themselves stranded in the jungle of Madagascar. The movie is hilarious, mostly stemming from watching domesticated animals trying to survive in the wild. These animals were born to live free, born with the instincts and physical characteristics required to thrive. But their zoo environment had made them tame, useless in the wild. I wonder whether you’ve felt like the zebra. You’ve been a faithful member of your church, but you keep feeling like you were made for something more. Maybe you’ve even experienced what it’s like to live in the wild. It may have been on an overseas mission trip or while boldly reaching out in your own neighborhood. You’ve known the joy of seeing your instincts kick in and allow you to thrive. But now you’re stuck in the zoo, where everything is comfortable, everything is controlled. And you just want to get back to living in the wild.

Jim's note: *Ask yourself, Who would be the "zoo-keepers" in this analogy?  Please refrain from saying my name out loud! ;-)

Chan:  Another pastor of a smaller church (“only” forty thousand people) explained that the founding pastor had told the congregation not to stay in the church longer than five years. In his mind, after five years, there wouldn’t be anything else they could learn from him. Like a child turning eighteen, it would be time for them to start a new journey. But they were running into a problem: once the people got comfortable in the zoo, they refused to leave. In fact, they no longer believed they were able to live outside the zoo. I was talking to a pastor from the Philippines who has over thirty thousand people in his church. He told me he used to send missionaries to the United States for Bible training but he would never make that mistake again. He explained that once these would-be missionaries spent time in the US, they never came back! Once they tasted the comforts, they came up with all sorts of reasons they were called to take a nice salary from a church and raise their children in America.

The answer is not to build bigger and nicer cages. Nor is it to renovate the cages so they look more like the wild. It’s time to open the cages, remind the animals of their God-given instincts and capabilities, and release them into the wild. 

Alan Hirsch has said, “In so many churches the mission of the church has actually become the maintenance of the institution itself.”

  ___

“[I pray you would know] what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.” Ephesians 1:19–21

_______________________

If the Holy Spirit enters a person at salvation, do you believe that you have already received a full version of the Holy Spirit? If so, do you already have gifts meant to build up the body? 

Ask yourself these questions:

• Who outside our faith are you PRAYING for?
• Who outside our faith have you CARED for?
• What is God teaching you these recent days?

Let's review some of our recent events:

5th Sunday at ASU with the pups

Bible Study inside Fair Trade Cafe

Worship inside The Painters Lounge