“Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet! Praise him with the harp and lyre!” (Psalm 150:3)


Many people attend church for the excellent music they hear. The Psalmist said that was a valid part of worship when he wrote, “Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet! Praise him with the harp and lyre!” (Psalm 150:3). 
But we must be careful not to come to church merely for what we get out of it. Someone said, “The pastor may be as dry as chalk, the worship leaders may sound like a rusty hinge, the organ may have a case of asthma, and there may be a sanctimonious hypocrite in every pew. This is beside the point. We attend church not merely to receive; we come to give” (Love Carved in Stone, pp. 64-65).
Well said. The real music of worship comes from our hearts, not from manufactured instruments. Still, those who play the instruments here do a good job of tuning our hearts to sing our Lord’s praises. 
So let’s sing notes of love and praise from the bottom of our hearts as we worship Jesus today.
Pastor Tom

“Magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together” (Psalm 34:3).
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Whoever heard of a solitary celebration? When your joy overflows, you can’t help sharing it with others. 
Jesus’ three parables in Luke 15 illustrate this. After the shepherd found his lost sheep, he called his friends and neighbors together and said, “Rejoice with me!” After the woman found her lost coin, she summoned her friends and neighbors and said, “Rejoice with me!” And when the Prodigal Son returned home, his father killed the fattened calf and threw a party. His joy was so great, he had to share it with others.
That’s why we come together here at church. Worship is a celebration of Jesus, and when you celebrate, you just can’t do it alone. 
So I extend to you the psalmist’s invitation when he said, “Magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.”
Pastor Tom

“The Word of God…judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).


That verse sounds scary, doesn’t it? It sounds like spiritual open-heart surgery, in which the scalpel of God’s Word cuts away at the calluses that desensitize us to God. But if we need open-heart surgery, we’d be unwise to avoid it. 
We need the spiritual heart surgery that only God’s Word can perform. Without it our hearts will grow hard toward the Lord we love. We can thank God that there’s hope for our depraved hearts. 
So let’s open our hearts today to the Great Physician and the scalpel of his Word. It will only do us good!
Pastor Tom