Bible Verse for Sunday Service November 24, 2024
Psalm 95:2-3
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
For the Lord is a great God,
and a great King above all gods.
Announcements:
Next Sunday missionary guests Randy and Laurie Steel will be with us. They will share from their years of experience in the mission field in Paraguay work with Ethnos 360 Bible Institute. We will provide a love offering.
For this week, because of the Thanksgiving celebration, the ladies will not meet for Bible study. On December 3, they will meet for prayer, and then decorate the tree for Christmas, and go out for lunch afterwards.
We received a letter from our missionary Nancy Burns on the foyer bulletin board. She ministers to the deaf in Peru. Please pray for her health. She is back in Ekalaka, MT due to her health needs.
Our devotional booklets are on the foyer table, Daily Breads and the Days of Praise booklets.
The deacons will meet on December 5th.
Sermon:
Pastor Jim preached on several verses in Philippians 4:6-8 in a sermon he titled “Thanksgiving is… Trusting.” Pastor introduced his idea by remarking that many times in our experiences in customer service, we are told “no worries,” which seems to mean no big deal. But, Pastor remarked many concerns of life appear as big deals, for example, getting laid off. So, how can we be thankful, and give thanks in this environment. Pastor explored this in two points.
To begin, Pastor asked us to consider thankful praying. What are we doing when we give God our thanks? His answer, strengthening our trust in pray. As we seek God in prayer, we focus on Him, on begin to compare our problems to His magnitude. In our worship, there is no room to worry. As admonished by Peter, we must place all of our cares on him. By doing so, we gain God’s peace. Another way of putting this is to say that the peace of God comes to those who have peace with Him. Besides scriptures from Romans and John, Pastor asked us to consider Jesus in the boat with the disciples, and to consider ourselves in that boat with Him.
Another aspect of trusting in our Thanksgiving is to acknowledge that Biblical thinking is giving God our thought life. Thinking through our blessings involves meditation. Pastor explained that one component of meditation is evaluating things. He suggested a think list, a list were we can consider the abundance of our lives. In our evaluation, we should work positively and negatively. We must not let our mind linger on sinful thoughts. Another aspect of our meditation is contemplation. While thinking over things, we can think over the good qualities of Our Lord.
To conclude Pastor asked us to consider a quote from William Hendrickson: “When a person prays without giving thanks, he has clipped the wings of prayer, so that it cannot rise.” We will have no peace without thanks as our prayers will not reach the Lord. So, every time we pray, not just at Thanksgiving, let’s give thanks to Him.
Accessing the Service, Bulletin and Sermon Outline:
Here are the pages from the bulletin, click on the images below to see them full size:
If you would like to have the sermon outline, you can download it here, a pdf file.
If you would like a link to this service you can find it here. It starts a little later as we had difficulty with our camera at the start of the service. Perhaps you would like to share it with your friends. You could also share that link on social media, if you use any of the providers. We use Rumble, a safe alternative to Google’s YouTube.