Declare His Glory

This Sunday is the launch for our Missions Expo month. We started brainstorming for this event about 18 months ago, and it is exciting to see it coming to fruition. We have an amazing month ahead of us. I think you will be impressed to see the new look of the sanctuary, with flags and the huge banner covering the whole front of the room. You will be struck by the international art in the halls, the trifolds of our missionaries on the windows, and much more. We have been praying, again last night as a planning team, that God will visit us in a unique way, and that we will never be the same, that our hearts would be won by Jesus call to the ends of the earth, that we will learn more what it means to love our own city.

It is fitting that this event should begin on Epiphany Sunday, when we remember the visit of the Wisemen to the Christ child, and thus the revelation of God to the gentiles, or the nations. It is an opportunity for us to reflect again on how God has revealed himself to each of us. In these last days, God has spoken so powerfully through the incarnation, the ultimate revelation of his Son, Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:1-3). I look back on my own life and consider the huge difference it makes that God has made himself known to me again and again. How have you seen this in your life?

Pastor Steve will lead us into Psalm 96, the theme passage for our Missions Expo—Declare his glory among the nations. It has been our tradition on this Sunday to invite one of our members to share a testimony, and Shinji Yasugi will share a very international testimony, bringing together Japanese, Korean, and Australian cultures.

It is also communion Sunday, so let’s prepare our hearts to meet Christ in a unique way through these common elements of the bread and the cup. We can come to his Table in our weakness, failures, sickness, and frailty and find healing, strength, forgiveness, and renewal.

Consider these words from Psalm 96:7-9 as we gather for worship on Sunday:

Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples,
    ascribe to the Lord glory and strength!
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
    bring an offering, and come into his courts!
Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness;
    tremble before him, all the earth!

~Dan Denk