Join us for the annual meeting during the Sunday school hour, 9-10:00a this Sunday. Christ came to build his Church (Mt. 16:18). We encourage you to come and be an intentional part of that. We’ll have a one-hour meeting, a one hour fellowship time within h food, then worship at 11:00a.
You probably know our own Ross Hauck is the featured vocalist in “Joseph,” an oratorio being performed Sunday evening in the sanctuary.(Details on the website, cpcissaquah.org.) Luther said plenty of things about Music, including: “My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.” He also said, “Music is the art of the prophets and the gift of God.” I know you know this, but Ross also is a gift to us. Performance and dinner, beginning at 5:00p.
Also, be sure and check out Ross’s “Liturgy Lessons” each week. A great deal of encouragement and scholarship in those. You can find them on the front page of the website, or under the drop-down menu “listen & read.”
I keep a word processing document of quotes accumulated over the years. Here are a couple favorites. The first is B.B. Warfield making the case that human agency alone cannot account for the remarkable spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire:
“Look at them. A dozen ignorant peasants proclaiming a crucified Jew as the founder of a new faith; bearing as the symbol of their worship an instrument which was the sign of ignominy, slavery and crime; preaching what must have seemed an absurd doctrine of humility, patient suffering and love to enemies – graces undreamed of before; demanding what must have seemed an absurd worship for one who had died like a slave, and making what must have seemed an absurd promise of everlasting life through one who had himself died, and that between two thieves.”
Then Charles Bridges (1794-1869), a preacher and theologian in the Church of England, on the same idea of human vs. divine agency. If these words were practiced by the Church, the world would be a very different place:
“‘Let our confidence be uniform. In all thy ways acknowledge him'” (Proverbs 3:6). Take one step at a time, every step under divine warrant and direction. Ever plan for yourself in simple dependence on God. It is nothing less than self-idolatry to conceive that we can carry on even the ordinary matters of the day without his counsel. He loves to be consulted. Therefore take all thy difficulties to be resolved by him.
Be in the habit of going to him in the first place—before self-will, self-pleasing, self-wisdom, human friends, convenience, expediency. Before any of these have been consulted, go to God at once. Consider no circumstances too clear to need his direction. In all thy ways, small as well as great; in all thy concerns, personal or relative, temporal or eternal, let him be supreme.”