Good morning!
We are glad you have joined us this morning for our church family worship time. If you usually follow our podcasts, you will find that this week we are doing it differently. If you attend our church and have never listened to one of our podcasts, this will be something different for you as well. We hope that you will come away from this time refreshed and blessed.
We sent an email about this worship time to everyone whose email address we had. We want to make sure that everyone stays up to date with what is happening at Parkview during these days of uncertainty. If you found this page through Facebook, or because a friend told you about it, or even by accident, please click the Contact Us link (opens in a new window) and give us your email address. Then come back and let’s continue to worship.
Click on the video below and sing together, “To God Be the Glory.” The words will be on the screen. If the words get covered by an ad, you’ll need to click on the little X at the top right corner of the ad.
Pray with us:
God, we gather together today in front of computers, on our phones, apart from one another. We are living through unusual days unlike any that we have ever seen before. And in the chaos that is our lives today, we are gathered here together, knowing that you are with us, as David said in Psalm 23, “Your rod and your staff they comfort me.” And so in this time that we have this morning, shorter than what we would normally have on Sunday, we ask that you would touch each of our lives with a song, a verse, or a word, and that through this you would be worshiped as the God of the whole universe. In Jesus name, Amen.
Read the following from James 4:13-15 (NRSV).
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.” 14 Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.”
These verses remind us that while we like to think that we are important and control our own destiny, in reality, we don’t. God is the one who controls all things. This next song, reminds us that “I Know Who Holds Tomorrow.” Click on the next video and sing with us.
https://www/youtube.com/embed/OKHZRMN1E0M
In Matthew 6:25-34 (NRSV), Jesus tells us:
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.
Isn’t it great that we have a heavenly father who loves us and cares for us that he watches over us day and night, knowing exactly what we need? We’ve all been paying attention to the news a lot lately. And we see our leaders making all kinds of plans. Worrying about what will happen tomorrow.
This doesn’t mean that we should just go about life carelessly and recklessly. Yes, we should listen to our government officials and follow their instructions. Whether we like it or not, they are the people that God gave us to rule over us. But we don’t have to get stressed about what will happen tomorrow or next week. We can take one day at a time, going to God each morning and asking him how we should live today. We can live life in confidence, not in fear.
Watch these next two videos. We’ve watched them before, but they are quite appropriate in reminding us that God is in control because “the things that I’m afraid of are afraid of you [God]” and that “in the eye of the storm you [God] remain in control.” Click on each video and just watch and pay attention to the words.
Today, the message comes to us from Max Lucado. Watch this video.
Let’s close our time today by singing together again. Click on the video and sing along with the words on the screen.
Please don’t forget that you can continue to give your offering by making an online donation or by dropping off your offering with Jim Buss. We want to be able to continue paying Pastor Jon and the church still has bills to pay.
Also, don’t forget to give us your email address using the Contact form, if you did not get an email from us inviting you to today’s worship service.
A blessing as you leave…