death does not win

The day after I watched David bury his wife, I led worship @ HBC...the whole weekend was a reminder of how great God is, and that he is very much alive in his people. I picked the worship set the Sunday before Elizabeth's death, which turned out to be an amazing time of worship for me. This is something I said before the You Are My God/Good to Me/How Great Is Our God/Heart of Worship stream of songs...

That was meant to wake us up a little bit (referring to Trading My Sorrows/Ancient of Days)...I want to say thanks to Pastor Rick for jumping in on drums this morning on short notice...so thank you

I want to give the context of how I'm worshiping this morning as we go into these next 4 songs...to me worship is a response to God. Singing is just one small aspect of worshiping God...you know all the people that are over there with our kids (pointing down the hall) are doing the greater act of worship right now, and I think we all know that. So there's my plug for getting involved with the child ministry if you want to do that...you know, when we respond to God it's a lot about the "here and now" of responding... but it's also a reflection of where we've been maybe this last week or even before that...I watched a friend bury his 27 year old wife yesterday, so as we sing these songs - you know death has been pretty real to me and to I know some of you out there this week (I was referring to the Attia's in my mind because Magdy's dad had died - I remember catching Caroline's eyes @ that point)...death comes kind of close sometimes, and becomes really tangible at some points in our lives...I saw my friend say that God is good and I know that he said that not only with his words but also with his actions, and it was a real reminder to me that God is Good in all things....so even though death is real...the greatness of God is that death does not win!...Paul said it this way....the Apostle Paul

I declare to you brothers that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. Nor does....death has been swallowed up in victory...

The highlights for me....when we repeated the chorus to You Are My God - we had some neat harmonies going on and it was so easy to sing "You Are My God - early in the morning - will I rise to meet you" - in light of Elizabeth's death....then @ the end of "Good to Me" we hung on the words "Good to Me" - I added an extra measure to the three chords that loop and we sang Good to me at half the tempo...we just hung on it for awhile....Good to Me