The Epic Blog

It is Valentine’s Day on Sunday, but I only mention it so that the men in our congregation have a good days advance notice. We will be completely ignoring it in worship on Sunday.
The Epic band practiced last night, and I am very excited about worship this Sunday. You should know that we have been talking about how to all be worship leaders on Sunday, and that each person on stage loves what we do, and we love leading in worship. I am blessed to work with the people that I work with.
We have a cool video opener this week to help us focus in on the reason that we gather together each week. I think that you do not want to miss it.
The songs that we are doing are:
The Time Has Come by Hillsong United
You Are Good by Israel Houghton
Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing arranged by Trinity Grace Church
You’ll Come by Hillsong United
Arms Open Wide by Hillsong United
I Need Words by David Crowder Band
The scripture that Jason will be speaking from is Matthew 6:19-24 and our entire focus this week is our focus on the Kingdom of heaven.
I encourage you to read the scripture for this week ahead of time, and if you can check out the songs that we are singing, so that you can join with us as we celebrate our citizenship in the kingdom of heaven.
I am exited to gather with you on Sunday.

Hey everyone,

Here are the words to “Come Thou Fount”.  I thought I would post them for further reflection.  Also, there are a bunch of words that, if dictionaries didn’t exist, I am sure would have disappeared by now, so here are some definitions for those words.

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above
Praise His Name, I’m fixed upon it,
Name of Gods redeeming love

God Of Glory, Voice of Thunder
Split the cedars, bring us under
Oh the shadows, of your wings
You give us grace, you give us peace

Here I raise my Ebenezer  (stone of help)
Hither by thy help I come
And I hope by thy good pleasure
Safely to arrive at home
Jesus sought me when a stranger
Wondering from the fold of God
He, to rescue me from danger
Interposed His precious blood

O to grace how great a debtor
daily I’m constrained to be!
Let thy goodness like a fetter (chain, or restraint),
bind my wandering heart to thee
Prone to wander Lord I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above

And also, here is the Anthony Mako paraphrase that I read on Sunday.  This has grown to be one of my favorite hymns so I am excited to hear how it impacts you.

Come, Oh God who supplies in abundance all that is good, and makes my soul sing in harmony with Your song of love.

You give mercy beyond what we deserve, again and again and it cause us to explode with praise to You.

Teach me to sing the song of heaven, the song of love.

I raise this symbol of help because I know that all help comes from You.  Guide us on our journey from our home here on earth to our final home with

you in heaven.  Jesus, You sought me out when I couldn’t have been farther away, and you rescued me with the power of Your blood.

I am in debt to our grace that covers all.  Chain my heart to You for my own good, because to have your heart is what I desire.  At times I wander

away but I don’t like that I do, please know I love You.  Take my heart and make it Yours.

Hello all,

One of the reasons that I was excited to start this blog was the Sunday worship preview.  I am often asked the titles of the songs that we did, and who they are by, so I thought I would begin to share them with you all so that you can check them out and also so we can all know these songs so that we can join in praise together.

Here are the songs that we will be singing on Sunday.  I am also going to put the iTunes links with them so that you can download them if you are at all interested.

By the way, the only thing that makes me nervous is that you will soon find out how obsessed I am with Hillsong worship

The Time Has Come-Hillsong United http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-time-has-come-live/id309816149?i=309816204

Everyday- Hillsong United  http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/everyday/id266824866?i=266824870

I Will Exalt You- Hillsong  http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/i-will-exalt-you/id325211999?i=325212042

Glorious One- Fee   http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/glorious-one/id264194446?i=264194704

From the Inside Out- Hillsong United  http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/from-the-inside-out-live/id309816149?i=309816305

From the Inside Out could be our theme song for this series.  As we talk about all the tough things that Jesus asks us to do, we really need to realize that it is by only strength that He can give that we are able to do those things.  He is willing to change us from the inside out, because it is far superior to faking change on the outside.  We look forward to worshipping with you on Sunday.  See You then.

Hey everyone, as promised here are the video answers to the rest of the questions that were texted in during service on Sunday.  There is 20 minutes of answers so feel free to pace yourself, or if you are feeling ambitious, hit it all at once.  We would still love to get some comment dialogue going on, so let us know your thoughts on the answers to the questions.

We really appreciate the response in text form during yesterday’s service.  Coming from someone who is on the stage some of the time (this is Anthony by the way), we can always assume that people are engaging in worship, but it is nice to have evidence and also to have a dialogue about the topics that we are addressing.  In an effort to all dive deeper into our relationship with God, today I am going to post many of the questions that were texted in yesterday, and tomorrow I will be getting with JR and he is going to answer them through video and text.  Please feel free to comment on the questions.  Even though we don’t know specific circumstances, we will be praying for those of you that are taking on the difficult task of healing broken relationships today.

Here they are:

1. U said we need to bring our wrath 2 the alter or we r divided from GOD. How do we deal w/ the wrath towards an ex spouse ? If we could we wouldn’t have divorced.
2. How do we handle anger and wrath that is caused by others unnecessarily hurting us? Are they still causing us to recognize gaps in our identity?
3. Are you still responsible for becoming reconciled with someone who doesnt want to be reconciled with you? How do you do it?  If someone is manipulating you can you leave the situation or is it your responsibility to be there for them as a christian?
4. i never realized how easy it is to murder someone. A lot of the time i think it automatically and when i act on that thought It’s even worse.  Why is it the hardest thing in my life seems to be to actually live my life for god?
5. If we decide to examine the gap between how we see ourselves & how we are, what first steps should we take?  Ultimately, isn’t the answer to “why are you angry” the same for all of us? What should our response be?
6. Key question for me today is what am I “killing” in order to avoid having that thing (or person) challenge my identity?
7. People may think “I would never be a murderer.” But if God didn’t have his hand on us what would there be 2 stop us. There but for the grace of God go I…
8. how do i know when i am crossing the threshold from anger to wrath? what preventative measures can i take?

Welcome to the EPIC blog.  As I announced in service today, we would love to use this as a way to live out our faith in community beyond the hour that we have together on Sunday morning.  We would love to hear from you.  This can be a place for discussion and questions about anything and everything.

JR spoke this morning about reconciling our relationships with one another.  Have you done that yet?  Don’t forget that person that came to mind.

Things coming this week:

-Answers to the questions that were texted in during service that JR did not get to.

-Next week service preview

Thanks for stopping by.  Say hello, and don’t forget to sign up to receive RSS updates.  If you don’t know how to do that, just email me and I will walk you through it.  anthonymako@me.com