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Worship November 2018

Church Family,
It’s been an exciting time of ministry at Oakhill, and I pray that this Fall season has found you refreshed and excited to see God continue to move in our lives and in our church! I want to thank everyone who took the time to come out to our Family Night of Worship last month. We weren't able to have the event outside due to weather, but I am thankful that the rain didn’t keep us down, and we were still able to enjoy fellowship and worship together inside! I especially want to thank Darrell Ommart and Doughboy BBQ, as well as Lolly’s Pops for providing all the food and drink. I am excited to continue this event with our church family in the future!

This month, I want to challenge us with a question: How do we handle distractions in worship? I don’t mean distractions as in the person behind you singing off key, or the person next to you constantly checking their cellphone during worship. By distractions, I mean the stress, the thoughts, and the outside situations that we bring into worship with us. Maybe you had a bad week. Maybe your child smarted off to you right as you walked into church and your wondering how you’re going to handle the situation once you get home. The stressful situations that we bring into worship are endless. And they can be distractions. So how do we handle them? A lot of times, we want to forget them. We want to do our best to completely put them out of our minds so that we can solely focus on God. But let’s be honest, we’re human, and that’s hard to do. And if I’m honest, even as a worship leader, sometimes it’s hard to tune out stress in my life to lead worship on Sunday morning.

So maybe running from these distractions is hard to do. So why run from them? Why forget about them? Let me encourage you to not forget about these distractions, but to bring them to God in worship. Offer them to God. After all, God is all things to us. He is the ultimate healer. He is the ultimate peace-maker. He’s the ultimate wisdom-giver. He desires to be close to us, as we come close to Him. So, in worship, don’t take your stress and your distractions further from God. Bring them close. Bring your heart, and all the baggage that comes with it.  Lean in. There’s nothing quite like the presence of God. And in the presence of God, things change. Richard Foster said, “If we don’t leave worship looking more like Jesus, then is has not been true worship. To stand before the Holy One is to change.” You are loved by Jesus. The details of your life are in the hands of Jesus. And He is worthy of our worship. I’ll see you on Sunday! I can’t wait to worship together.

Worship October 2018

Church Family,     
I hope you are enjoying this cooler weather as Fall has made it’s way in! I pray that you and your families had a great summer, and we are excited about what God is going to do in our next season of ministry together. As the fall season sets in, it’s no mystery that all of our lives become very busy. In fact, our lives become so busy that if we’re not careful, we’re going to miss God working in the midst of us. I bring this up, became I’m afraid that we all have a tendency to get so bogged down in the busy details of our lives, that we will trick ourselves into thinking that God is not working in our lives, when in fact, He is working, and we’re just not focused on Him enough to see it.

We always search for God in the “big.” We look for the “big miracles.” We look for the major life-changing events, that prove to us that God is working. Let me challenge to you took for God in the “small.” Yes, God is present in the “big.” But he’s also present in the “small.” God is present and working in the details of our lives. We woke up this  morning breathing the air that God created. There is no detail that God has not orchestrated for us. In fact, if you start to look for God in the “small” details of your life, you will see God working more than you ever expected. He is there, and He is working on your behalf.

So what is it that’s keeping us from seeing God in the “small?” Is it that we’re just too busy with everyday life that we suddenly don’t have time for God? That may be hard to hear, but the reality is that if we aren’t careful, we can start to develop an apathetic attitude to the working of God. Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still, and know that I am God.” So if you ever come to a season of life in which you doubt the working of God, I challenge you to be still. Be still, and look around. When you look away from the world, when you turn from the business of life, and when you turn to God, you’ll see Him and all that He has for you. So my prayer that we would all slow down and see God working, and we would believe in Him and would trust Him. He’s our Good Father, and He loves us. Let’s worship and glorify Him, even in the small details of our lives.