Happiness at Church

My church is a pretty happy place. I'm serious! That's not to say that we are flippant or irreverent about the things of God. We take holiness and godliness very seriously, and unashamed hold up the standard of God's Word... But somehow that also translates into making us very happy people. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the joy of the Lord. Because we've been given so great a salvation and perfect peace in Christ, alot of things seem funny to us. And troubles pale in the sight of our Lord. So we're happy!

Sunday morning was a typical day in church. We had Sunday school, morning worship, testimonies, offering and the preaching of the Word. As I was taking my typical crazy amount of sermon notes, I also noted the things that the whole congregation laughed about. It went something like this... The Pastor said, "... clothes." Everyone laughs (related to an earlier joke from a testimony). The Pastor gets tripped up over the word, "sensory." Everybody laughs. I don't know why. Just weird pronunciation, I guess. During offering, The Pastor is talking about being "a little liberal" which made me giggle uncontrollably. Cause ya know, I'm conservative. He was talking about giving liberally, but it was still funny. The Pastor mentions, "... leprosy" and the worship team laughs, because of my jokes during worship practice about being a leper 'cause nobody sat by me recently. :)

And the winner-take-all was The Pastor skipping around and singing, "I'm going to the altar to be sa-aved. I'm going to the altar to be sa-aved!" Absolutely hilarious!! You gotta understand the point though. He's been preaching about The New Birth. And recently, about repentance and Godly sorrow - both of which are sorely lacking in modern 'conversions.' The Pastor was illustrating the general attitude of flippant and unrepentant people who are seeking salvation for selfish reasons. The illustration definitely brought the point across!

There was more fun and laughter afterwards as we welcomed our dear brother, Hudson, as he returned on a visit from Taiwan!

I was explaining to a youth recently that maturity means knowing when to be serious. You can have a good time and laugh and joke in its proper time, but also be serious and passionate and direct about the things of God. And I think that's illustrated plainly at church.

Yeah, I love my church!