This Wednesday, we meet for our monthly Lord’s Supper service at 6:30 PM to remember Christ’s death in Scripture, song, and symbol.

This service will also include a Q&A time with DSC’s elders, which is a great opportunity to interact with and learn from those who lead our church. If you have any questions about our operations, ministries, vision, church planting, etc. that you would like answered, please email them to info@desertspringschurch.org. The elder’s collect questions in advanced to ensure coverage of the most prominent issues. However, if there are questions unaddressed at the Q&A they will be answered through the DSC Blog or email.

Also, don’t forget to plan for our monthly church-wide dinner served before the Lord’s Supper meeting at 5:30 PM in the Youth Room. Suggested donations for this meal support church planting: $3.00 for adults and $2.00 for children under 13 ($10.00 max per family).

At DSC, we regularly remind ourselves of what our church is about with the mission statement, “Spreading God’s Glory Broader and Deeper.” But, lately, we’ve also been using three words to summarize the kinds of things we do together in pursuit of that mission: Worship, Community, Mission. This Sunday, Ryan began a three week series in which he’ll devote a sermon to each of these three words.

In last Sunday’s sermon, “So What Do We Mean by Worship?,” Ryan answered that question with an exposition of 1 Peter 2:4-10. We are a house for God’s presence, a people for His praise, because we have a cornerstone that is precious.

The language of “worship” describes what is the totality of the Christian life. Indeed, everyone is a worshiper and they are busy worshiping something in every moment of life. Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are those who have been brought to see the truth and Glory of God for what it is, and have turned from the worship of created things and the gods of our imagination for the worship of the One True and Living God.

But, as Ryan discussed on Sunday, our corporate gatherings are like the sprint one might do at the end of a jog. Sunday mornings aren’t just like other worshipful opportunities in the week. Sundays are unique expressions of the worship of God in pursuit of his merciful, presence among us. We should give it all, not coast on in.

So what are some practical implications for believing that gathering together on Sunday is a big deal? I’ll expand here on a few I gathered from the part of Ryan’s notes he didn’t get to on Sunday:

1) Coming and Engaging:

All of us could make Sunday mornings a greater priority in our thinking about it and preparing for it. Some of us need to come more. You need for it to not be easy to stay in bed or go to the lake. Some of us need to come earlier. Identify what is slowing you down and calculate some changes to remove those problems. It may mean going to bed earlier. It may mean making what-to-wear decisions the night before. Some of us need to make more appropriate spiritual preparations through prayer, confessing sin, meditating on Scripture. Some of us need to come ready. Some of us need to talk to people. Some of us need to figure out what we’re doing here anyway. We don’t meet to be awed by song or lights or personality. We meet to be awed by God in singing, speaking, and hearing his word, and seeing Christ more clearly when we do. Some of us need to realize that a critical spirit toward elements within the service, when those criticisms aren’t grounded in God’s own word but our preferences, is hurting the church, redirecting glory from God to an idol. A critical spirit could be stealing your (and others’) joy.

2) Hearing:

This sounds more simple than it is. How natural it can be to hear and not really hear! We want to be the kind of hearers that chew and digest and speak the things we hear because in hearing them we can be transformed. We want to live more peacefully, forgive more eagerly, give more generously, serve more fervently because of our hearing. That takes more than sitting there. It doesn’t mean feverishly writing things down – we don’t do that at a movie. It means letting the words have their way with us, to be absorbed in them. If you are in and out of town, maybe you would commit to listening and really hearing every message you miss, in part, so that you will know something of what you were missing and truly miss being there live when you’re gone.

3) Singing:

We’re a church that listens to preaching pretty well. When guests preach for us, they say that we’re a wonderfully listening church. Some guest preachers have told other preachers that DSC is a church that loves preaching. We should praise God for that. But we’ve also, at times, been known for not singing very loudly, for being rather passive participants during in our weekly gathering. We can grow here as a church, so let’s grow in volume, participation, and passionate expression.

4) Going and Taking and Doing:

Our worship on Sunday is an intensified block of the same things we’re to do all week. God’s glory can be praised in every mundane part of our normal lives: in our driving, talking, walking, working, waiting, and in our sleeping (1 Cor. 10:31). We are to go to his Word, and go to him in prayer, on our own and with our family. Let’s give our all on Sunday mornings, and let that truth, glory, awe, and worship launch into the rest of our week.

Update: Cause for Praise is now also available on Amazon.

In the month of December, Desert Springs Church (DSC) released Cause for Praise, an album of songs for corporate worship recorded live at DSC in September. Almost all of these songs were written by our own DSC musicians.

Cause for Praise is now available in iTunes.

• In Christ
• Psalm 46
• Cause of our Praise
• Great God
• Clap Your Hands
• Come and Dine
• Jesus You Reign
• Have Thine Own Way
• Our Delight
• The Love of God

The lyrics from the first song, “In Christ,” represent the simplicity, focus, and gospel clarity that is the goal:

With all I have and all I am
I cannot add to the work of His hand
Because of Christ I stand here clean
And I will sing because I am redeemed

In Christ, I am made alive
Because He came and was crucified
In Christ, righteous I stand
Washed in the blood of the great I AM

There is therefore now no condemnation
For those who are in Christ Jesus

Of course, if you’d like a hard copy, you can purchase a CD for $10.00 at the Resource Center on Sunday mornings.

On November 12 and 13, we welcomed Nancy Guthrie to DSC for our annual Women’s Conference. This year’s theme, Holding On to Hope, was taken from her important book by that title. Nancy spoke from the book of Job to explore the meaning and significance of suffering for the Christian. She speaks as one who has experienced great loss, and will help all of us to better understand what Job meant when he said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

The audio from the conference is now available:

• When Your World Falls Apart
• Holding on to Hope
• Q&A with Nancy Guthrie
• Hearing God Speak in Your Storms

Also, Collin Hansen recently interviewed Nancy Guthrie at The Gospel Coalition Blog in a post entitled, “Sad People, Safe Churches.” We included some of that interview in a previous blog post and commend the entire interview to you.

In Sunday’s message, “The Urgency of Unity,” we explored Ephesians 4:1-16 to see  that unity is a declaration of the gospel’s power. Unity between diverse peoples is something unnatural to Adam’s race, but not to Christ’s. In Christ, we are a new humanity.

As those who are redeemed to God, but in the process of begin redeemed in our practical faithfulness to God, we still need to hear the command to “walk in a manner worth of the calling to which [we] have been called…eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit” (Ephesians 4:1-3).

Paul Tripp, in his book, How People Change, asks a helpful question to encourage us toward unity: “What are some common obstacles that hinder redemptive relationships from developing in our lives?”

Here are Tripp’s eight suggestions mentioned in Sunday’s sermon:

• The busyness of life, keeping relationships distant and casual.
• A total immersion in friendships that are activity and happiness based.
• A conscious avoidance of relationships as too scary or messy.
• A formal commitment to church activities, with no real connection to people.
• One-way, ministry-driven friendships in which you always minister to others, but never allow others to minister to you.
• Self-centered, “meet my felt needs” relationships that keep you always receiving, but seldom giving.
• A private, independent, “just me and God” approach to the Christian life.
• Theology as replacement for relationship. Knowing God as a life of study, rather than the pursuit of God and his people.

Visit the Messages section of the site for additional sermons on Biblical Eldership, Church Membership, and biblical help in Conflict.