It's All In Him

 Take a walk with me this Sunday for church at Bethel. Lift your hands in praise to the Lord with your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. There is a sweet presence of God that fills the sanctuary, it is humbling. Bro. Jonathan Walker steps up to preach. You can watch/view the sermon here. He asked  the church to continue to worship and to dwell in the sweet presence of the Lord. He then proceeds to preach a sermon that is so much needed at this time. He encourages the saints to let Jesus rise above all the chaos that is going on in their lives. We all have problems. Yet, in all this, if we can realize that "It's all in Him", we too can rise above it. He was not diminishing all that is taking place. He was trying to get us to look up. To not stay so focused on all that was going wrong all around us. Jesus truly is the answer for the world today. If God be for us, who can be against us? We walk by faith and not by sight. Lift Jesus up, above our circumstances. For, If He is lifted up, He will draw all men unto Him.  There are two sides. There is the judgment side and the grace side. The wages of sin is death. He is a gentlemen, God is not willing that any perish but that all have eternal life. The choice is up to you and I. He listens to our hearts cry and He answers us. Bro. Walker used a visual aid to show the two sides. He had a tall clear vase filled with water. He put a tangerine into the vase of water -which by the way many times represents troubles in the Bible.  The tangerine is covered by the protective skin. When dropped into the waters of trouble, it goes down, but quickly floats back to the top. The covering keeps it safe. He then pealed the skin off of the tangerine. He dropped the tangerine back into the water. At first it sunk then rose to the middle of the water in the vase and then rose to the top. It stayed there floating for a very short while and then sunk to the bottom. Without it's protective covering, it did float back up, but it no longer had the hedge of protection over it and it sunk back down to the bottom. The troubled waters had over taken it.  If we stay under the protective covering of God, it will carry us through life troubles. The trouble will still be there, but God gives us the strength we need to carry on and rise up. Without the this protective covering, eventually the troubles will cause us to sink down. The answer is Jesus. It's truly all in him. Bro. Walker then had the praise team and church sing some very old hymns. I love these hymns. They were written through great trials and are for me meaty songs. They have depth. Don't get me wrong, I love the new songs too. There is just something to be said about those old hymns. I love them. So, I was thrilled when he started to sing these songs. Song number one was, "Jesus We're Depending On You". You can watch/listen to a version of it here.  The second hymn was "What A Friend We Have In Jesus". You can watch /listen to it here . The third hymn was " Victory In Jesus". You can watch/listen to it here . For the fourth and last hymn he chose " All In Him" this time he played the video of J T Pugh talking about the song and singing the song. You can watch/view it here.   Please note for the first three songs, I found random versions of them being sung via YouTube.  Each and every song as it was sung at Bethel was such a treat. As we sang these songs, you could feel our sprits being lifted and by the last song, there was an air of victory flowing through the entire congregation.  Say what you want to say about the church. We are not perfect. No one is. I love this church though and I am staying in it.  God is good.

For a treat, as I was looking for these hymns, I came across this gem of Bro Nathaniel and Jean Urshan singing "No Hiding Place Down Here".  I grew up hearing them sing and this just brought back such wonderful memories. Oh how I loved this couple. She could play that piano and gave the best hugs! Please take some time to watch it here.  Oh how I miss this style of singing and worship.