Joy in Saints
The other night as we were standing in church, singing at the beginning of our prayer meeting, I was overwhelmed by God’s grace. The songs that Joshua and our ‘Band of Brothers’ choose to lead us in worship are always theologically-rich and packed with scriptural truth, so the fact that I would be overwhelmed by grace is nothing new.
This time, however, it wasn’t because of the words that we were singing but because of the people who were singing them. All around me I could hear the voices of the saints of Grace Fellowship Church–and they were praising God for his glorious, condescending love that he shows in the gospel.
Our preaching pastor has been away on sabbatical for the past 10 weeks or so, and so much of the pastoral ministry has fallen to me. It has been my absolute delight to see how the saints at GFC have opened up their ears and their lives to me over this summer. Each of them has been a blessing to me as I’ve watched them struggle, grow, deepen in their love for Christ, wrestle with hard texts, live through difficult family situations, try to discern God’s will for their lives, endure pain, and much more.
As we sang, I heard their voices and was reminded of the myriads of things going on in each of their lives, and all the potential reasons that each of them would have to doubt God and his goodness. But by his grace, each of them stood and sang as a testimony of their ongoing faith and trust in Christ to sustain them through all seasons of this life.
His grace is truly amazing, and their singing through the seasons of their lives showed me that on Wednesday night. Even thinking about it now brings to mind a verse from one of my favourite psalms (although I’m still trying to find a psalm that’s not one of my favourites…):
Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.”
As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.
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