We began with Phil Wickham's "True Love" because it fit really well with Pastor Joe's message, "True Story." It was a great intro to the service, and really summarized the Easter message as a whole. After Joe introduced the message by recounting the true story of the resurrection of Jesus, we continued into The Modern Post's rendition of "Before The Throne," starting basically a cappella with the tag, "Because the sinless Savior died/ My sinful soul is counted free/ For God the Just is satisfied/ To look on Him and pardon me/ To look on Him and pardon me." From there we jumped right into "Made Alive," which is one of our church's favorite songs and a great fit for Easter. I love hearing the church sing this one out! After Joe's message, we sang Brenton Brown's "Jesus Take All of Me (Just As I Am)," which was a very fitting response song for the weekend. I love this arrangement of "Just As I Am," one of my favorite hymns of all time. I think it states beautifully and clearly our deep need for Jesus' redeeming work for us and the fact that He takes us as we are and makes new in Him. After we passed out buckets to take up the response cards and the offering, we closed out our services with Alex Nifong's arrangement of "Jesus Paid It All" and "This is Amazing Grace." In all, it was a beautiful, encouraging, and powerful time of worshiping Jesus together!
I am so proud of and thankful for our team, both staff and volunteers. They worked so hard to pull these services off and to serve our church and our community well. Our tech director, Wyatt Johnston, executed a great plan for all the logistics of the entire event and led his team well. Our worship arts team did a fantastic job in proclaiming the gospel through our singing and pointing people to Jesus. We also had a wonderful crew of people who helped us pack everything up and bring it back to our building Sunday afternoon. Everyone did everything with grace and with excellence. I am so privileged and grateful to serve with such amazing people!
I hope you had a wonderful Easter celebrating our risen Lord Jesus. He has done it all for us!
"But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus..." - Ephesians 2:4-5 ESV
