This year Christmas is on a Sunday.  That created a little tension, since generally our church meets on Sunday.  As we considered our options, we wanted to do what was best for families.  We would like to encourage your family to join in our church’s worship on Christmas morning.  We will gather at 10 AM (or whatever time works for you), after presents are opened and kids have burned off the morning energy with their new toys.  But we want to encourage you to spend a few minutes thanking Jesus and looking to Him.  Click on the document above to get the worship.  As part of your worship, we have included some Christmas carols to be sung.  Below we have links to videos on Youtube that have fairly common and easy to sing Christmas carol music with the lyrics on the screen.  You will need to either gather around your computer, of if you can, hook the computer up to your TV so it can be seen by everyone.  We also have a family activity, a family prayer time, and some Scripture, and some thoughts to consider as a family.  The one thing you will need to do in advance is wrap an empty box, something big enough to put some tags on.  You will also need to make copies of the gift card and cut them, on colored or construction paper if that is possible.  Have this ready before you begin your worship time.  All these are designed to have you worship Jesus, the newborn King.  God bless, and have a merry Christmas!

Joy to the World

Angels we have heard on high

Silent Night

Here I am to worship

As we work through this series, one of the things we will do each week is to post a blog with some ideas for each area of prayer.  These will be practical, life-application ideas you can try and use.  Every person is different.  So while the principle is vitally important (that we need to be deep in our prayers, and that each of these areas needs to be a part of our prayer life), the path to this will look different for every person.  These blogs are merely ideas for integrating the principle, in this case the importance of praise into life.

But we also need your help.  We want you to join the conversation.  We want my blog to be the beginning of a discussion that grows and grows.  We want you to include ideas that you have used to integrate these areas of prayer in your life over the next five weeks.  Hopefully after a few days we will have a long list of amazing ideas that will help everyone grow in their personal and corporate prayer life.  So join in!  Now to the first week – praise.

Ideas for praise in your prayer life

• Use the Psalms a lot.  Pray them.  Psalms is a book of prayers, songs, poems, and praises to be used in the worship of God’s people.  They are dripping with praise.  Literally, open the Psalms and recite the words as your personal prayer of worship and praise.
• Use music in your worship and praise – Several Psalms challenge us to use music, or as one says, “Sing to the Lord a new song (Psalm 96:1).”  Download some music that fits your style, but has words that take you to a vertical conversation with God.  If you don’t have music of this sort you might try some of the music listed below.  Then use some of these songs in your private times of prayer.  Let abandon flow (make sure you are in a place where no one is watching), sing with all your heart to God.
• Try reciting the ABC’s, but with each letter think of an attribute of God that leads us to praise and worship.
• Utilize postures of praise and worship that are part of the Biblical story.  Here are a few:  *Standing with hands raised (Psalm 28:2), lying prostate with face down on the floor (I Corinthians 14:24-25), dancing before the Lord (2 Samuel 6:14-15, Psalm 150:4), kneeling before God as King (Psalm 95:6), bowing (Psalm 5:7), clapping (Psalm 47:1).
• Program “praise breaks” during the day.  Set an alarm on your phone or watch for one or more times during the day, and when the alarm goes off, stop for a moment to express your love for God and your joy in his being.
• Create a habit of starting and ending your day with praise – As you wake up, voice a prayer of praise and thanksgiving, and as you go to bed, praise him for another wonderful day in His presence.
• Start using the word “Hallelujah” a lot.
• Make your life a praise – learn the ways you best express your love for God and do it often.  If you find great joy in serving, then serve.  If you worship by being a contemplative and going deep in prayer, make it happen.  If you are an intellectual who discovers praise while reading and contemplating deep truths, find time to do that.

OK, now its your turn.  Add to the conversation and start using a few of these ideas in your life this week.

P = Praise, prayers that thank and worship Jesus

R = Repent, confessing our sin and need for grace

A = Ask, petitions made to God

Y = Yield, submitting ourselves in prayer to the purpose and plan of God.

So each day the journal will lead you through each of these aspects of prayer, and will also give you other prayer needs and requests you can remember.

So, let me encourage you to start using this today, and pray with us for the next month.  And we will see the great things God will do as we seek Him together as a church family.

2011 Prayer Journal

Family Worship for Christmas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE

The religious route is to replace them with religious service and duty.  But that won’t work, because pride will replace the other idols as we begin to believe the true God is in our debt because of our service and good works.  Self-discipline is a route to failure as well, either because we won’t overcome the thorns or once again, we will get proud and look down our nose at others who can’t overcome their struggles.

Psalm 4:6-7 offer a clue.  In this prayer, David is speaking of people who are prosperous so they are ever feasting and drinking wine.  If we look at these things and believe that joy is found in the feast and the party, we will pursue those things with vigor, only to find that they offer hollow promises, with the end being greed, gluttony, and drunkenness.  But the real issue for the Psalmist is the realization of joy.  He says, “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.”  Do you see what he is claiming, he wants God’s presence in his life more than these things because the outcome is greater joy than these things can ever offer.  Too often we view God’s perspective as it relates to our thorns and decide that God is opposed to our joy, that he really wants to take away the things that will make us happy.  We feel guilty about sex, drink, too much TV, over-commitment to sports, or whatever the driving forces of our lives, but we keep believing that ultimate happiness will be found in these things.  So God frustrates us because it seems that He is opposed to that which we believe will make us happy.  This attitude is reflected in the question raise by the many in verse 6, “Who will show us some good?”  In other words, if we live for and obey God we will discover that he does not really want what is best for us.  David’s response is that when we feel this way, what we need most is the face of God shining on us.

C. S. Lewis put it this way in his book The Weight of Glory.
“If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desire, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Removing the thorns will never happen until they are replaced with something, actually our understanding that someone offers greater joy.  Only when we see the beauty of Christ and the offer of complete and infinite joy found in His glory will we genuinely see our idols as what they are, worthless substitutes for God.