The Grove | Sunday Service Livestream | 9.19.21 | 10:45a

yes [Music] yes [Music] do [Music] is [Music] oh [Music] yes [Music] back [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] hey good morning grove church we're so excited to be here with you i'm nathan i'm one of the pastors here and this is denise and she is everything administration here and we are here because we really have an exciting weekend for you guys and it's really been an exciting week for our church too and one of the things that happened is um grove worship and andrea hughes released the first ever single that has come out of our church and so this has been an exciting week for us and i mean we have dre right here so what we wanted to do to start off our time together is we wanted to have an interview with her and just talk about the release of that song hey welcome jay yeah welcome guys wow this is so fun so good morning yeah good morning so this has been a pretty monumental moment i would say in the life of our church but in your life specifically and so talk about how that is felt releasing your first ever single yeah it's been really wild it hasn't really sunk in yet but it's been so fun i've had so much support from my family and friends and just this church really and i just want to say thank you to everyone who's been listening to the song who's been supporting me through my entire journey and i really just hope more than anything that you feel the presence of god all around you as you listen and i'm really excited just to hear how this song impacts people yeah that's awesome yeah and so i know this has been a long time coming really and i wanted to ask if you could just share with everybody what has been one of the hardest things for you during this whole process the waiting it is so hard to wait but when god promises something you know that he's going to fulfill those promises and it's been five years of waiting for this moment and i'm so excited to finally be here but um you know it's all it's super hard to wait sometimes but it's always worth it especially when it works out in god's timing yeah and one of the things too that josh said that i thought was crazy he said you'd have to be in the top two percent for your first song that you were a part of in writing to actually be released because so many artists create so much music that never gets released so how does that feel for you um i was really grateful honestly um to be a part of something that is already established here at the group and i think really just the writers who have done this for so long and you know they really helped launch it yeah make it into something yeah that's great that's awesome and one of the things that we'll talk about later is there's really been an amazing support team that has been around in the grove worship culture and community that has helped bring this to life so yeah drake thank you so much for that we know you're going to thanks for sharing with us so that's just one of the many exciting things that we have going on this week and this weekend and something else that's been exciting is justice colleges is up and running and what week is this for us at justice college i think we finish week four week four that's incredible talk a little bit about what's been going on in the life of our students and the life of justice college so justice college has been so awesome um this past chapel we gave out 23 bibles that students did not have and they're so grateful thank you church for being a part of that next we actually have a soccer game it's our second home game on friday at 5 00 pm so if you want to come out and support our justice college soccer team wear green and black or whatever justice college merch you have yeah that's exciting we need everybody to come out that's this that's this coming friday here on our home field so come join us and we are in the middle of a really sweet series and it's all about the expressions of worship and we're talking about how god is a creative god we believe that here at the grove and he created us humanity in his image and that means that we are creative beings too and so we're talking about how we express our worship through many different platforms or mediums whether that's visual art poetry song all of that and so this weekend specifically today too we have so much going on we have josh baldwin from bethel music who's here with us yeah he's leading worship with us and we also have a concert tonight with josh baldwin tim timmons and tasha yeah so and the afters as well so you guys don't want to miss that if you're in the area and you're local make sure that you join us if you can in person this weekend tune in it's going to be a great weekend tonight we have an amazing night planned with that concert and the release of surrounding me so church wherever you can listen to music please go search up surrounding me and dre hughes wherever you can find music yeah and we just wanted to invite you into this worship experience with us church thank you so much for tuning in it's been great [Music] [Music] when all i see is the battle you see my victory [Music] when all i see is the mountain you see and as i walk through the shadows your love surrounds [Music] me there [Music] [Applause] on my is with my hands lifted high oh god the battle belongs to you in every [Applause] [Music] if you are for me who can be against me for jesus you see the beauty [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] nobody fortress you go before us nothing can stand against the power of our god you shine in the shadows you win every battle nothing can stand against the power of our god and nobody fortress [Music] nothing is [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] so good to worship with you this morning grove what a great morning it's great to have my bandmates from the afters here thank you for joining us this morning i want to thank my friend josh baldwin for joining this morning as well it's going to be a special special morning and we're just going to continue worshiping just lift up your praise to god this morning [Music] lift me up waiting for the sunrise waiting for the day waiting for a sign that i'm where you want me to be [Music] [Music] that we all fall down sometimes [Music] when i am [Applause] [Music] [Music] is [Music] is [Music] [Applause] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] you lift me up when i can see [Music] you lift me up sing that out you lift me up we believe that you left me up you lift me [Music] you lift me up you lift me up you lift me [Music] good morning church you go ahead and have a seat my name is nathan i'm one of the pastors here and i just wanted to say welcome to everybody that's joining us here live in person and welcome to everybody who's joining us online we it's really such a great morning that we have planned as you can see with what we have already started with and we have so much more for you guys and some announcements that i have too um coming up for the ladies i don't want you to miss out our women's retreat is happening september 24th and 25th and it's not too late to sign up for that event and you could just go online and get registered for that the website's right up there so for any of our ladies that are looking to get connected with other women that's a great opportunity for you and another thing that is really beneficial for everybody is our financial peace university and that's happening october 14th through december 9th and this really if you haven't done this before even if you have i talked to a couple last service they did it three years ago they're doing it again so what this does is my wife and i took a deep dive on this and it teaches you how to be a good steward of what god has blessed you with and our finances and so one of the things that happened for us is we started to learn how to budget and god calls us to be good stewards and to be disciplined and we were able to not only save more but to give more and god calls us to give and not give out of compulsion right or be reluctant he calls us to make a decision to give and we can do that when we've done the work and we've become disciplined and we've taken a course like financial peace university so i want to encourage you to look into that and to do that and if you call the grove church your home i want to encourage you and challenge you church to continue to make a decision to give to what god is doing here in our church and there's many ways that you can do that you can text 77977 you could text the grove az you can go online and you can give that way we have giving boxes on the way out you can give that way too and one one last announcement for me that is super exciting i wanted to share with you guys i have here an award and this awards the grove as the best church slash place to worship and that's on all of chandler yeah we can celebrate that [Applause] and i just wanted to say i agree with this award and i think you do too we are so blessed week in and week out to have an amazing worship team that leads us so faithfully so consistently an amazing preaching team and just up everybody that has a part that goes into what we do on the weekend so thank you guys and then josh tell us some more about all the exciting things we have going on man i think the grove is not just the best church in chandler i think it's the best church in america amen amen really i mean there's a lot of great churches a lot of great churches but i know my band mates every time they visit here they comment on how special it feels how it does feel like home it's just a welcoming place josh baldwin he walked in earlier he was like i've never seen a church like this before and uh it's it's a place that if you haven't been here before it really is special and i've been in thousands of churches and i'm just so grateful to call the grove home but uh josh it's great to have you with us we have a big night planned tonight and you're going to be a part of it we're with tonight's worship arizona right here in this room we've been planning for this for a while it's gonna be such a special night you guys we're filming it and recording it for something really special we'll be releasing in the future and i know that there's some people in this room who are procrastinators like i can be sometimes and if that's you the tickets were sold out but we figured out some ways to take out some couches and kind of reconfigure things and so we released a few more tickets and so those will be available in the lobby after the service so if you're a procrastinator you can still grab a few uh on your way out but i'm excited for tonight you you got to arizona josh and you first went to prescott went to prescott and uh i said it wrong i said prescott i got um they got really angry i'm just kidding uh i uh i mean i'm not kidding i did mess it up but they didn't get angry they're sweet people and uh just been here all weekend uh leading worship at night and i love this area i'm from the south and so i feel a little bit responsible for bringing the rain and the humidity so i'm either sorry or you're welcome but so excited to be with you this morning and just excited to see what god continues to do it's been a great morning just worshiping him going after him hearing the word and so yeah i just want to invite you to stand with me and let's worship let's continue just to go in and worship the lord [Music] when darkness tries to rule over my mouth when sorrow comes to steal when brokenness and pain is all i know i won't be shaking [Music] my fear when i stand in your life [Music] [Music] i'm not afraid to leave [Music] [Music] when i stand [Music] [Applause] [Music] there's power that can't break [Music] is [Music] there's power is [Music] does it stand is [Music] still [Applause] [Music] let's fill this place with our praises this morning come on sing it [Music] out hallelujah in the presence of my enemies [Music] my [Music] fight for me [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] sleep [Music] me [Music] ashes [Music] let's get is in here this morning [Music] [Music] a little louder [Music] [Music] me [Music] [Music] in the is of the storm [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] is is [Applause] [Music] [Applause] amen church what a great morning isn't it good having josh baldwin here with bethel music thank you josh i love singing your songs and dan and matt with the afters thank you for being in town here you've blessed us you've made our sunday thank you guys well we started a few weeks ago with this series we've titled expressions and today i wanted to to use our time to talk about a theology of art and how art leads us into knowing god in deeper ways then maybe theology books can't and even sermons can't so there's there's a christian american artist by the name of makoto fujimura and makoto says in his opinion he's a christian like i said an artist and he talks about worship and theology but he says makoto says in his opinion the the ability in us or the desire to create begins at conception he says even before a child is born this child wants to create and make things makoto talks and writes about his own experience growing up he says that when he was one and a half years old he painted his first piece of art he said he can still remember it like it was yesterday painting that first first piece of art when his mother put paint and a piece of paper in front of him and his mother still has it i don't know if it's still on the fridge but he said when as a as a kid as he would create he was born into a home of creatives and artists he said he'd feel like an electrical charge was going through his body as he began to paint fujimura says that he's as he became older and became more of an artist he said he began to see his studio as a place of worship a place where he would meet or meet god he began to see his art as not just aesthetic expression but theological expression he said even in the simple act every morning he said he mixes his own paints he hand makes his paints from pigment and wax and glue and he warms them up in that process he said it becomes like a divine liturgy of sorts where he meets god that's makoto fujimera's experience as an artist growing up in the home of artists i grew up in a different kind of home i grew up in the home of presbyterians and we didn't do art as presbyterians at five years old i was studying the the shorter catechism can i see the hands of everyone that went to catechism class here well i'm sorry i'm sorry for all of you because it was sheer torture at five the short you know as presbyterians we don't we didn't do art art was for pentecostals we were told who were shallower than presbyterians theologically but we would go to catechism class the shorter catechism it's a westminster confession of faith and as a five-year-old you're supposed to memorize the 107 tenets of the shorter catechism and and know the answer the question and the answers to all of them it was sheer torture halfway through that class my family moved to africa i was so glad we left the country and then as i got older our summers my parents i learned early on we couldn't just go to the beach for example when i was six years old they said hey we're going to pensacola beach florida anyone been there to panhandle amazing beach but it was a bit of a surprise when we got there because we couldn't set foot on the sand until we first went to i'm not making this up the pensacola theological institute would spend five hours hearing rc sprole and reformed theology for five hours before we could go to the beach that was my vacation when i when i met my wife my future wife and we're engaged i invited her to go with us and she came and she wanted to go out in the beach and to the beach i said no no we got to go to the pensacola theological institute for five hours first she said after a week with us she was like who are these people what kind of christians are these who studies theology before you go to the beach that's the presbyterian in us anyway so as i became older though and we started to plant the grove i started to read a few authors that introduced me to the idea that that as christians we can learn so much about god and so much about his nature through art and the artist and i started to read and you can write these down i hope you have a good memory the first book i read on this was don miller's blue-like jazz it rocked me and then i read erwin mcmanus's the artisan soul then i read leonard sweet he's a brilliant theologian and he writes soul salsa and dan kimball who's a pastor in santa cruz he writes emerging worship and these books open my eyes to a theology of art a theology that god uses creatives to take us and show us deeper ways to understand god and so when we started the grove we made this audacious statement we said we want to be a center for the arts first it felt a little irreligious like can can a church even incorporate art that much i'd never seen it done before but we wanted to become a center for the arts and so very early on we started to invite in here artists like scott erickson and he would paint his paintings but these are some around the grove are all over the grove and he would paint during our worship times and and we still do this this is why we have grace hayes and carly here car kayla here today can we welcome kayla and and grace saying thank you for your art they're both doing stunning pieces right now and at the grove we started to do community art for example we would want people to remember things that we challenged them with for example one sunday a while ago we had a barefoot sunday which you know we asked people to take off their shoes and leave them here and we said well let's take it next level let's do barefoot sunday and art and so we had people leave their shoes on the stage and then we had bare plywood on on the ground and we invited people to step into these trays of paint and then create art with their feet as they walked across them like like my you know how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news that was the message we didn't plan on this when you step in paint and you step on plywood who knew that paint was so slippery now a few people went down we have good insurance here no big lawsuits just a lot of complaints all right anyway but we learned something that day and then i i finally thought okay i saw our art community growing i thought okay we might one day be the center for the arts because on one sunday a while ago i met a young couple and they just wrote i said well you know how did you guys hear about the grove and we they said well we heard that the grove is a center for the arts we see how you're taking the bible and artists and you're lifting them up so we moved here and this couple tells me they moved here from san francisco his name was clifton carter and then he and then i find out that clifton carter is a famous artist and not just any kind of artist he's a tattoo artist and presbyterians don't get tattoos so i didn't even know that there was such a thing as a tattoo artist really but we had clifton carter here doing amazing art i have this key idea on the screen this morning i hope this kind of sits in with you art and the arts provide meaningful expressions of worship and lead to deeper ways of knowing god and so today like i said i hope to give you a theology of making a theology of creating i hope you see that god has made you a creative in you and there are ways that maybe you haven't even discovered that that you can express your worship through the things that you make and create the problem though the tension is is that in the modern church among many christians we we have a tension and a struggle with art and the artist because for so many years christian christianity at least the christianity as i understood it and experience it was very mechanistic it was very pragmatic and utilitarian because my church experience before the grove was that that if you wanted to understand the bible and god it took reading books going to theology classes it involved things like three-point sermons and four spiritual laws and the five points of calvinism and seven dispensations and 95 and a 95 point thesis that's really what it meant to be a christian and most for most of my growing up life no one ever told me that you could understand and know god better and in deeper ways through the arts or things like poetry and the visual art through writing and so the christian faith for many has has been analytical and those things aren't bad things they're great things they're good things all of those things i just mentioned but they are insufficient today i hope to open your eyes to how god uses our creative abilities to understand him more and to show the world who god really is if you think about it jesus was a painter of sorts because every time jesus preaches sermon he tells a parable and through his parables he paints a picture in people's minds doesn't he he says things like with his words he paints a picture he says things like the kingdom of heaven is like a pearl or he'll say following me is like going to a wedding it's a beautiful thing and he would paint pictures with his words so it became unforgettable and so i i want to start here today by reminding all of us that the bible scripture is our grounding for artistic expression i think sometimes we can miss that the bible begins with a story of creation it talks about our creator god and the bible ends with a new creation and everywhere in between the bible is filled with stories of creativity some some have said maybe the whole bible is more a work of art than a work of theology i've heard some people say that maybe the gospels are are more are more a song than they are a formula but when you know the bible you begin to see that it invites us to be creative for example like i said genesis opens with god's work as a creative and then we get to exodus and exodus introduces us to two artisans i have to read their names here because they're awesome belzow and ohala abba so those are two guys and they say they are the first that are filled with a spirit of god the bible talks about them and mentions their name because it's important dr howard hendricks who's uh pre was a preeminent theologian when he wrote his one of his last books here on on art and creativity color outside the lines he says this he was a a theologian at dallas seminary creative christians root their study of creativity and the rich fertile soil of the bible their god has inviting exciting and creatively wrapped packages that beg us to be open so he's saying hey the bible is uh is our grounding for thinking theologically about art and so i'll say this next if god is a creative then you are too so the bible introduces us like i said to god the creative and and then over and over his writers express who he is in extremely creative ways for example our text today is psalm 65 our text for this whole series is from the psalms and here we read david david we know was an artist he was a musician he was a poet and he did interpretive dance yes the bible tells us that all right so here's psalm 65 the beauty of your house david writes about the creativity of god here your holy temple it satisfies us you answer our prayers with amazing wonders and with awe-inspiring displays of power what jaw-dropping astounding power is yours you are the mountain maker who sets them all in place people will stand in awe startled and stunned by your signs and wonders sunrise brilliance and sunset beauty both take turns singing their songs of joy to you you paint the wheat fields golden as you provide rich harvest luxuriant green pastures boasts of your bounty as you make every hillside blossom with joy the grazing meadows are covered with flocks and the fertile valleys are clothed with grain each dancing and shouting for joy creation celebration they're all singing their songs of praise to you do you see how god is create is incredibly creative he makes mountains and beaches rivers and oceans he makes rainbows and flowers and hills and deserts creativity is at the heart of who god is i hope you see that today and everything god touches everything he makes reflects the fact that he is a very creative being every snowflake we know is unique every child born since cain and abel their thumbprint their fingerprints are unique i uh isaac newton says this as famously said in the absence of any other proof the thumb alone would convince me that god exists so god ultimately is a creative and and so i'll say this next if god is a creative then you are made in his image in the imago de then you are a creative as well and maybe no one's ever told you that maybe maybe you've never seen that but i hope that you know that as a son or a daughter of god that you are and we talk about this often in the grove that you are made in his image you are the imago day of god and so if the father is a creative then you are a creative as well and maybe you've given up on the abilities or the desires that you've had to be a creative maybe you painted and someone made fun of it maybe you tried to play an instrument and the band kicked you out you know maybe you tried to sing and it sounded terrible at first at least a few people and you gave up and i want to say don't do that you are a maker you are an artist you are a creator just like your father in heaven i learned a valuable lesson when we held our first expression so this month of september we're calling expressions we're encouraging the artist to create art of all kinds well we had our first expressions over a decade ago and as we're planning it we had this meeting and we had a bunch of our staff and and they started to talk about the ways their contributions to our expressions month and they were stunning we had this brilliant staff who they all seem to be creatives and then one of them said to me they said well palmer what is your contribution to our expressions month what art are you bringing and i like oh my goodness i just sat there and i said i i i don't do anything creative you know i was a presbyterian we don't do those kinds of things and i said i don't have anything i said i tried to play the guitar once but nobody liked it but i said that i don't i don't have anything and then one of them said palmer you do have something to offer you remember you told us that you were writing a book i said yeah i'd written it in my head they said no but you said you want to be a writer and so they gave me the challenge they said write that book before our expressions month i had two and a half months and i wrote my first book and that led to four books that were published the last two were published by simon schuster out of new york why because someone told me that there's a creative in me and so i'm here this morning to say there is a creative in you you are the poema that's how paul says it you are made in the image of god you're you are the poema the masterpiece the work of art by your father in heaven and so you two are creative and so that's why i have on the screen uh you are made in his image and you are creative too and so if you are a creative i want to give you several simple challenges this morning and you can pick the one that that lands in your lane but the first one is this create more art it tells the story of god so i want to go back to the psalms and read another passage this is psalm 19. and here david is saying as you look around at creation you can't help but see that god exists because of his creativity the heavens proclaim the glory of god the skies display his craftsmanship day after day they continue to speak night after night they make him known they speak without a sound or word their voice is never heard yet their message has gone throughout the earth and their words to all the world so you see david is saying because of god's creation we can see him when you create you show the world god you show you show the world that there's a divine maker and so i have this idea on the screen this morning take this home with you take a picture with your with your iphone the artist brings a quality of wonder and awe of god that is not found in our systematic theology text or wrote ways of knowing artisans re-awaken us to the invisible qualities mystery and supernatural power of god and so i invite you to find the artist in you i think we can miss that art is a way we express wonder to god art tells the story of how god works in our lives how he takes imperfect things and he makes them beautiful art tells our own story of salvation you talk to any writer poet painter and they will tell you my art tells my story here's the tension that i mentioned earlier is that the church has not always valued the arts now during the the renaissance some say that the church saved the arts some are saying today the arts will save the church i don't know if that's true but during the renaissance we know that the church saved the arts because during the dark ages everyone in church began to frown on the arts they said that art was secular art even was from the devil and so art was banned from places of worship but then the renaissance came along and and the religious leaders of the day began to invite the artists back into their grey dark cathedrals to start painting frescoes and so we have like michelangelo's stunning frescoes we have rembrandt's art who's known as the painter of the soul but the renaissance reawaken everyone to the fact that god has a divine way that he uses art but then the modern church came along and let's say this was about a hundred years ago and for some reason the modern modern christian tried to take us back to the dark ages and in the modern church they began to ban art again and churches began taking down art and throwing them in the dumpsters they even took down crosses this happened across the country they even started to take some churches took out their stained glass and replaced it with plexiglass because they said christians should not be have art in their places of worship and it was crazy and then we came along a few years ago and started to say that we the grove wanted to be a center for the arts and at the time when we started to say this we were nothing more than a church plant that was meeting in a school gymnasium down the street and i remember as as our church plant was trying to get our sea legs under us i showed up one sunday morning and someone had hung two tapestries on our stage and they weren't fine pieces of art all right they were just something someone found in a christian bookstore one was a tapestry of jesus holding sheep the other one was a tapestry of jesus holding two children you know they were of jesus so i guess they belonged in the church and i thought you know those look a little tacky but it was our first attempted art so i'm just going to leave i'm not going to say anything you can't art is a beauty's in the eye of the beholder right so we left the tapestries there every week as we worshiped they were up for maybe a month maybe two months and then it could have been more than six or eight weeks and i had a gentleman stop me after church and he said hey palmer i need to talk to you about the the artwork i said you mean the tapestries he said yeah the tapestries he said you need to take them down i said and i thought he was joking i said take them down why do i need to take them down he says oh he says churches can't have can't have art where we worship i said what i said why he says because the bible says and i said no it doesn't i said i think i know my bible let's say we can't have art and so he's prepared i didn't know he was prepared but he had a post-it note in exodus chapter 20. and the and the exodus man turns to exodus chapter 20 and he starts to read you know do not create any image on heaven above or earth below and bow down to it and he reads i go hey well it says bow down to it i said listen man no one's going to bow down to these tapestries from the christian bookstore and and he looked at me and he said he said but they might be tempted to i said you think i said i don't think so and he said and so he threatens not really threatens but he says if you don't take the tapestries down i'm leaving this church well the tapestry stayed the exodus man left and maybe that was a good thing but but that tension has been there and i i say that only to say that at the grove we want to celebrate art and the artist because it introduces us to knowing god in ways that maybe other things like our theology text can't leonard sweet has said this leonard sweet again is a brilliant theologian he has a book out titled soul saul so he writes the post-modern renaissance will be led by artists who love god and so he asked this question is your church celebrating the artisans in its midst have you turned your corridors and classrooms into art galleries where your artists where your artisanship can be displayed because of this because of what leonard suite says is why we have galleries all over the globe and we keep encouraging art to be done here all right so create more art and moves people it it moves us to action and then next i want to say this write more poetry poetry is the language of the soul we get the word poem from the greek uh poema po ima and pohima means masterpiece or work of art or poem and i say that poetry is a language of the soul because when you read the bible writers like isaiah writers like paul they start to try to explain to us things about theology then all of a sudden it gets complicated so they break out into poetry moses does this in deuteronomy chapter 32. i a number of years ago i was invited well i should say by my wife too a really great theater play called uh i think you've heard of it joseph and his technicolor dreamcoat something like that and i would can i just say it'd be an awesome play if there wasn't so much darn singing just a lot of singing but i think the play does a great job showing us theology but they do it through song music has a way of doing that when david writes in the bible he writes about heartbreak and sorrow and repentance and hope and he does it all with poetry why because poetry is a language of the soul poetry says things that textbooks can't this is why i love maya angelou for example a solomon i think learned from the bible and he writes a book titled the song of songs of the song of solomon and what's happened is that solomon has has fallen in love with a young woman he wants to marry her so he writes this literature this piece that goes something like i think you're awesome maybe we can be a couple i think it's something like that and put simply i have a relative a distant relative but this relative a while ago turned 29 years old and when he turned 29 he says he realized he should be married and so he's very analytical this guy and so he sat down and with an excel spreadsheet he made a list of qualities he wanted in this future wife the things he wanted to see then he made another list of things he did not want to see all right that's one way to try to get married i don't know it's gonna work you know i don't know that if you sat down with a person and said okay i want to go through this list that i've made here and uh i like you because you have excellent hygiene your ears are symmetrical your nose is proportioned well to the rest of your faith face and your teeth are pearly white and well aligned as opposed to dislined and discolored you know i don't know how well that's going to go but what if you met someone and you fell in love and so you invite them to dinner and you sit down over a candlelit dinner with a glass of let's go with martinelli we're in church martinelli and you simply all you do is read song of songs for how beautiful you are my darling you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes you have stolen my heart how much more pleasing is your love than wine and the fragrance of your perfume than any spice your lips drop sweetness like honeycomb boom goes a dynamite put a ring on it you know it's over right there that's the bible that's the poetry and scripture how can she possibly say no i think poetry listen to think about this with me it reminds us how life is in harmony in rhythm with god poetry reminds us that when you're in the rhythm of god of god's life you're in step with him and you're in rhythm with others i think poetry reminds us that when the prose of god are in the daily rhythms of your life then christians customers at restaurants when we go there we treat servers with more dignity and respect i think when when the rhythms of god are in the rhythms of your life then friends forgive each other more easily husbands and wife say i love you more fathers and mothers are more patient with their sons and their daughters life may not ever be perfect but it can't be poetic like i said we've been trying to lift up the artists here at the grove for years and one of the artists one of my favorite artists of the grove is liv olivia and she's written a book and lyft could you come on up titled the grip of grace this is filled with her poetry and i asked i asked lift could you share a piece that talks about god and how we see him in in the world around us could you share this piece thank you liv can we welcome her by the way say thank you liv [Applause] wild and wonderful the world that overflows with majesty as i in awe am overcome by my creator's mastery wisdom he was called at the beginning of his work all things through him were made he was and is the lord and word there is wisdom on the clouds from balconies of light on the wings of the wind he takes his stride and stretches out the starry skies his cloak it drips of starlight as night jewels fall aground and the sunlight itself knits together to form the gold of his crown from the vessel of deep cast in midnight he drowned in blue darkness the sands and the waters bowed out to their sea lines when wisdom commanded them not to trespass then he said here is the sea let a million creatures that swim and leap find homes beneath its keep and a clever thing which stumps my wit within that playground sea he formed those wondrous hands had even made leviathan to play in it then when his feet walked the dirt the earth burst open with life towers rose up in green velvet as the trees of the day drank their fill and the hedges with lushness stretched out as dark forests formed the earth's frill wisdom reached to the heavens and took sun and moon by the hand and step by step to the rhythm he choreographed their slow dance as from thousand-year slumber he beckoned the earth with a nudge to awake and it shook and it turned and it melted and opened its child eyes to daybreak then wisdom touched the dust which lay silent beneath all the wild things and he breathed out a gust from his lungs and its frame rose up from the life springs this being he named the beloved and laid on its heart a great worth between cliffs of waters they walked as high as the ceiling of heaven stands steadfast over the earth so wisdom and his divine romance brought the beloved from the dirt though my mind of man can't comprehend all of these striking things i know and begs me lift my song of praise for the poems of david have told me so thank you liv [Music] [Applause] isn't that good church do you see how poetry moves the heart introduces us to god in new ways so my challenge today is to discover the creative in you it's there and so i said paint more create more art write more poetry and then finally i want to leave you with this final thought compose more music god's not done making music god wants you and your life with your life to create more music a lot of you are made for that a lot of you do this well but you're not doing it enough as we close i want to share my introduction to why creating more music is so critical for the church so before moving to chandler i moved here from long way east africa most of you know i was teaching at african bible college there i was also the college's chaplain and when i arrived at the college we had chapel five mornings a week and every morning i went to chapel the band was only doing songs or the musicians were only doing songs from a hymn book this red hymn book that was there and the hymn book is a great godly collection of hymns don't get me wrong but finally after a few months i i pulled the musicians together and my leaders david chacamba and kevin kolonka and i said hey you guys have music in malawi these hymns are from are from europe and from america one of them for example in the hymnbook was greenland's icy mountains written in 1819 and i said calvin david let's do some of your chichewa music let's do some of the music that you write and you do in your churches when you worship and so we started doing our times of worship in chichewa we started doing music that david chikamba and kevin colunga were composing with our band and it was stunning the participation the volume in chapel went way up it got loud students were dancing in the aisles they would bring in their malawian drums and instruments to play as we worship together it was amazing it was incredible about a year into this it was our spiritual emphasis week and the administration had invited a pastor from america to come speak and he landed and and he landed in the afternoon and that night we had our first our first time together with the student body with him and so our students came in our band came in and did their music for us we did like a half an hour of music chichewa music singing dancing it was incredible and then this american preacher got up to preach and he said before i share my message i need to tell you students here all of you that that were dancing and clapping in the aisles he said this music this happy clappy music does not honor god it's like what am i hearing him right and then he held up this handbook now the hymn book is filled with godly music but but god is not done making music he holds it up and he says if you want to honor god with your music you'll stop that kind of music you just were singing and you'll only sing songs from this book and i was floored and one of my great regrets in ministry is that i did not stand up and rebut him and say publicly right there and then that he was wrong instead the next morning my two worship leaders david and david cincumba and kevin kalonga showed up at my door at night about 9 00 a.m they said can we meet with you we sat down in my my living room they said palmer we're here to resign as your worship leaders i said what why they said well because the american man said our music was not bringing glory to god i said no no first of all you're not allowed to resign second the man is wrong your music is beautiful your music is honoring god in your language with your instruments we're going to keep singing the songs that you compose and we did until the day i left and so when i landed here i was determined that we would build a community of artists who are composing writing recording music that's why we built a recording studio here and then just this friday our own musician andrea drehes released her first song it's titled surrounding me let's celebrate that celebrate that it's one of my great proud moments of the growth so i'm going to turn our the rest of our time back over to andrea and our band but first watch this please [Music] yeah so we wrote surrounding me five years ago i remember i was sitting in my office and um paul gunther came in he said dre come with me i was like okay where are we going he took me into the studio where my friend eric hey bear was working on a project and he's like i want you guys to write a song today i was like um well i know it's been five years but i feel like god's timing is always the best timing yeah and what a time for this song to be coming out right now with everything that's happening in the world to know that when we're surrounded by the holy spirit it's it brings comfort it brings protection [Music] of course we wanted it to be out for the world to hear um as soon as we wrote it every artist does um but i really do feel like the lord wanted us to wait there was a waiting season at the grove i think a part of that was god knew that after covid we were going to have this amazing production team amazing film crew and really like none of this would be possible without all of the different people that are now helping more than anything when the song is released and people finally get to hear it i hope that they're just overwhelmed with the presence of the holy spirit [Music] another part of the writing process was when we were kind of trying to build out drum parts and different parts for different instruments we did do some writing in the worship house so this song really was made in this church with grow people maybe just opening up a little more like yeah it's a growth project [Applause] [Music] my prayer is that people would just feel freed up when they listen to the song for the first time and that they would just be reminded of how much god loves them ultimately [Music] church will you stand and let's sing the song together i'm so excited to share it with you i just want to invite you to take a moment and really let the holy spirit's present wrap around you spirit be my guide show me through your eyes your spirit is alive [Music] this place [Music] let's sing this out together [Music] no matter where i go [Music] you're surrounding me [Music] [Applause] [Music] your strengths [Music] oh [Music] me [Music] [Applause] [Music] you're surrounded [Music] that's my prayer over you this morning that you would feel the nearness of the holy spirit [Music] [Music] so i will take [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] me me [Music] [Applause] me [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] andrea that is an absolutely beautiful song we're so proud of you so excited for you and you guys need this song any platform that you listen to wherever you listen to music unless you have a cassette player you can find this song by searching dre hughes surrounding me add this to your music collection it's going to bless you throughout your week and i believe this is the start of so many great things ahead that god has in store and it's just a beautiful thing to be able to be a part of this day the start of it so melissa thank you for being here she flew in from texas she was a part of writing this song [Applause] and i want to thank all the people behind the scenes that you guys don't see on the stage all of our production crew they're the ones who made so much of this pop possible thank you guys so much [Applause] and i just want to thank all of you for the way you support your church we couldn't do the ministry that we do without you we are partners in ministry we come together we put our resources towards things that really matter and we're changing the world we're changing our community because of it and i truly believe we're going to leave chandler we're going to leave arizona a better place than we came into it amen and i believe god has great things in store so thank you for your support of this church i also want real quick one last if you have this bulletin on the front of it you're gonna see you're gonna see some artwork that is from our very own matt liu it's one of my favorite pieces ever matt lou is here he's going to be a part of tonight as well matt thank you for your art that you contribute to making this campus more beautiful and you'll see we have some artists here on the stage too [Music] kayla you made a piece this morning that was inspired by the passage we were going through be sure to walk by and see kayla's piece and then grace you made a piece that's kind of different over here yes uh different kind of art can you explain what you made over here yeah so uh this is uh art made out of recycling and some random trash so it is a garden uh so we've got the god of the 180s right so where we think it's an end to god it's a new beginning so that's what i have wow we had a worship team night recently and i asked each person on the worship team to share something about themselves that maybe nobody else knew and grace wrote down i like to dumpster dive and i said you gotta explain yourself a dumpster diver and she said that she and her dad for the longest time they they would collect items that they found in dumpsters and she said you wouldn't believe the beautiful amazing things that people just throw out as trash and so they would take those things and they would make art out of it sometimes and so uh thank you for sharing this art with us i think it's such a beautiful picture for how we are with god because sometimes we might feel like we're worthless or feel like we get tossed around and don't belong and and that's not how god sees us god sees us as his beautiful creation that he made and that's how you should see yourself too through the eyes of of the one who made you right now i want to pray for you lord i pray that you would help us to see ourselves through your eyes this beautiful creation that you made lord and help us to have creativity and make this world a more beautiful place through the things we create through the way that we live lord i pray that you would help us to build your kingdom here in jesus name we pray amen god bless you have a great day we'll see you later [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: The Grove

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Id: Yfd9kBjhc0M

Length: 79min 19sec (4759 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021