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4th of July

We had a fun 4th of July weekend at Mountainview.  Our worship services were “family” style, which means the kiddos come into worship with their parents.  We started the service giving the audience the chance to vote for the song they wanted our band to play at the end.  They could text their vote for one of three songs:

  1. Born in the USA
  2. R.O.C.K. in the USA
  3. God bless the USA

Saturday night’s crowd picked R.O.C.K. in the USA and Sunday’s crowd chose Bruce Springsteen.  It was fun watching the crowd respond to both the voting and having the band play the song.  Our band did a fantastic job, too.

I spoke on the idea that true freedom is found only in Christ.  To begin my message, I showed a series of pictures of myself as a kid — making the comment with each one that I was “free to do” whatever was in the picture … free to swim in a diaper with no shirt … free to not smile … free to sing in maroon corduroy’s.  For the last picture, I popped in a picture of our worship leader sitting by the pool with a cowboy hat.  The crowd roared at both services.  And then on Sunday, Todd, our worship guy, surprised me by using the webcam on our Mac to put his face on the screen immediately after I showed his picture.

It was so funny I didn’t know what to say.

The main verse of my sermon was this one: “In him (Jesus) and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence” (Ephesians 3:12).  I spoke briefly about how we can approach God freely … without having to go through an intermediary.  And we can approach him with confidence, not in ourselves, but in what Jesus did for us.

All in all, it was a good day!