Many thanks to our worship leaders, Matthew and David, for how they help us to focus on lifting up praise to our Great and Merciful God!  We are blessed that they are willing to use their gifts for the benefit of our faith family.  [And, let’s not forget that they both are also great teachers!]  

 Matthew and David work hard in preparing the praise part of our worship.  This includes the amazing videos that are often displayed at the beginning of our worship time.  Oh, you didn’t know about this?  Then you are missing out on some amazing encouragement and inspiration.  Come into our sanctuary early and let your spirit be refreshed!  

 These guys also constantly find themselves having to search for strange, hard-to-find pictures or videos that I think are needed for the sermon.  They also find themselves having to scramble at the last minute to add things into the sermon slides that I should have requested much earlier.  And they always come to my rescue with grace - with smiles and encouraging words rather than sarcastic comments or rebukes, which would actually be more deserved.  Thank you, Matthew and David, for being Jesus to me, and to everyone at TOCC.

 And, let me give a quick example of how The Spirit works through these guys to bring connection between the singing and the sermons.  Two weeks ago, Matthew played a video of the Lauren Daigle song, “You Say”, as we started our worship time.  This past Sunday, David Gilbert taught us how to sing this song.  I was happy because the lyrics of the chorus [the only part of the song that I knew] speak of some of the great things God says about who we are, thus fitting perfectly with the current sermon series.  

 But, only when David taught us the song did I actually pay attention to the lyrics of the first verse of the song:

               “I keep fighting voices in my mind that say I’m not enough.  Every single lie that tells me I will never measure up.”     

Chills ran up my spine as these words hit me, because this was exactly the theme of the sermon.  I had no idea that David was going to teach us this song.  I had no idea those words were even in the song.  David had no idea what the sermon was going to be about.  Yet, somehow, it all come together seamlessly, as though it had all been coordinated by expert planners.  But it wasn’t expert planning.  It was The Holy Spirit of God moving at TOCC.  

 So what?  

 Well, one thing it means is that God has a plan for His people at TOCC.  He is by no means finished with His plan, and He is by no means finished with us.  If God was finished with us, we would never see any evidence of Him working in and through us here.  But we keep seeing the work of The Holy Spirit here.  God still wants us to partner with Him to advance The Kingdom.  He is looking for people who are willing to do what He is asking them to do.  

 So, instead of, “So what?”, the better question is, “So what are we going to do?”  Or maybe, a better question is, “So what are you, and what am I, going to do?”  

~Shepherd Ambrose Ramsey