Praise God from whom all blessings flow! We’ve had a wonderful trip that was capped off with a great last day. From the work we did to the interactions and friendships we formed here to the special time of sharing how God’s worked in our hearts this week, we’ve been blessed by a truly merciful and caring God. We’re heading back to Gainesville tomorrow morning. Please pray for our travels.

 

Yesterday was a fun day. The boys worked in the morning tearing apart a fence and saving good boards, moving furniture into a cottage, and unloading cement and wood posts for a new fence. The ladies spent a final day at the thrift store cleaning and sorting.
During the afternoon we took off work and got a tour of the Palmer Home property and around Columbus, Mississippi from Helen. Did you know that Memorial Day started in Columbus and that it’s also the birthplace of Tennessee Williams? We drove by many beautiful Antebellum homes, and finished the tour at Beans & Cream, a local coffee/ice cream shop.
At night the fellas went fishing, and the gals went to a game night with the Palmer Home girls. We capped it all off with a massive basketball game with some Palmer Home kids. Of course, we still did our singing and devotions after. 🙂 Everyone’s very tired, so please pray for a great last day of hard work and that we’d be aware of the ways God is moving on this trip.

Here are some pics:

 

Each of our worship services includes a time of confession. This part of our liturgy has always interested me, largely because it is a practice found across various religious traditions. So why do we do it? There’s a lot to that answer, and I’ll unpack it over the course of several weeks. To understand how corporate confession of sin could find a place in protestant worship, consider the grand context of our worship. When we gather to worship our God, we are recounting the gospel story, illustrating it through our own experiences, and reiterating our assurance in it. Everything we do on Sunday points to the cross. That’s why, when we confess our sins, we remind ourselves that we were lost, in need of something we could not secure on our own. And it is equally important to be reminded, as often as we confress together, that Christ’s work satisfied his wrath once and for all. Jeff Purswell, of Covenant Life Church (the worship team’s host August 10-14), adds some depth to this conversation:

…it is through the power of the gospel that we are transformed to live new lives by the power of the Spirit. It is through the gospel that we are freed from selfishness to give our lives in service of others. Sure, the scope of Christ’s redemption is the whole cosmos (Colossians 1:20), but at the center of his redemptive concern are rebellious image-bearers whom he is ransoming to be his children. But all of these entailments, implications, and promises are founded upon the rock-solid, unchanging accomplishment of God through the gospel of his Son. It is this message that is God’s power to save sinners, to comfort the grieving, to motivate the listless, to encourage the downhearted, to assure the guilt-stricken.

This message never changes; this message is always true; and so our hope is always secure.

Read the full article here. See you Sunday.

 

“We are told in Exodus 19:1 that the Israelites arrive at Mt. Sinai 3 months to the day after they have left Egypt. In Numbers 10:11 they leave Mt. Sinai ‘on the 20th day of the 2nd month of the 2nd year’, about 10 days short of a 12-month stay (at Sinai).”

–Peter Enns

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In Exodus 19 God started by telling His people what kind of God He was, and then He told them what kind of people they were supposed to be: a precious people with a special purpose.

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