What an amazing Sunday! I was trying to wait until the link went up, then I could try to post the actual sermon link, but they are running behind apparently. And I am running out of time. (and we won't even talk about the skill that it will take me to do something like that. Skill that I don't have.)

Anyway, back to Sunday. (Let me just take this moment to throw in..."I love my church!") Our pastor has been doing a series titled "What's the Story?" They have this little quote in the bulletin thing that we get. "While all of life starts with God's story, the beauty comes when His story intersects with yours."

This weeks sermon was titled Your Story. Dave had asked for emails giving our stories in a hundred words or less and he was going to draw parts of them for his sermon. Apparently somewhere along the way, he changed his mind and invited seventeen "stories" to share their story via tape with our congregation. (I would totally be freaking out here because we have a big congregation!) So yesterday's sermon was a mixture of Dave and these seventeen clips. And they were powerful. The funny thing was that they weren't all dramatic or traumatic. Some were powerful in their simplicity. Just ordinary people (like me) who surrendered to Jesus and are continuing to use their lives as he sees fit. Some made us laugh, some made us cry. We were so proud of the ones who obviously overcame hardships. Then, there was the last one. There is a lady in our church who has cerebral palsy. She has spent her life struggling to be understood. I am sure that it has been frustrating and painful at times for her. And yet, she has such a sweet spirit. (She comes in the store from time to time so I know this personally.) The final thing she said was, "My disability doesn't define me....my Jesus does!" And we cried. What a blessing. I think we all have something that we could insert in that sentence besides "disability" and I would hope that it doesn't define us either. Our Jesus does.

Michael O'Brien (from NewSong) has been helping write the words and music for our Easter Pageant this year. He closed that portion of the sermon with the song And the Story Goes On.
This is a part of the chorus:

And the story goes on

And it burns like a flame

Through the years and the tears and the trials

The story goes on

And we carry his name

And it echoes across the miles

We enter this life with a whimper and cry

Sometimes we falter, sometimes we fly

But the ultimate truth we can never deny

And forever the story goes on

What a wonderful reminder. If you'd like to hear the sermon yourself click here. At this point, they still have last weeks sermon up, but they should put up the one titled "Your Story" sometime today.