Worship the Lord: Sermons from the 2018 National Festival of Young Preachers

By The Festival of Young Preachers

The world-wide revival of religion is one of the surprising phenomena of modern life, and this volume of sermons by young American preachers is a testimony to that fact. One hundred and twenty gathered in Atlanta in January of 2018 to preach under the theme of this book, Worship the Lord. is collection of many of those sermons joins the previous eight in this important series to expand the most original and extensive archive of what young Christian leaders in America are thinking and saying. Give one of these books to a young person you know who is discerning a call to gospel preaching.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chalice Press
• Release date: Jan 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9780827243286

Book preview

National Festival of Young Preachers Sermon Series

Dwight A. Moody, general editor

A Beautiful Thing (2010)

Waking to the Holy (2011)

Uncommon Sense (2012)

Gospel and the City (2013)

Questions of the Soul (2014)

Pentecost on Mockingbird Lane (2015)

Heaven and Earth (2016)

Rabbi, Radical, Redeemer, Risen Lord (2017)

Worship the Lord (2018)

Copyright

Copyright ©2018 by the Academy of Preachers.

All rights reserved. For permission to reuse content, please contact the Academy of Preachers, 500 North Watterson Trail, Louisville, KY 40243, www.academyofpreachers.net, 502-245-9793 ext. 123.

Scripture quotations from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. Several scripture quotations are the authors’ paraphrase.

PRINT: 9780827243262

EPUB: 9780827243286

EPDF: 9780827243293

ChalicePress.com

Dedication

Everett McCorvey

and the

American Spiritual Ensemble

National Festival of Young Preachers Sermon Series

Copyright

Dedication

Preface

Introduction

Young Preacher Sermons

1: Don’t Lose Your Song

2: God’s Benefits Package

3: Worshipping Through Tears

4: Psalms of Lament and Depression

5: An Intangible Issue 

6: The Lord is My Shepherd

7: In God’s Way

8: Darkness is My Friend

9: God’s Not-So-Secret Service

10: Stress Relief

11: If God Had A Love Language

12: Pep-Talk Worship

13: What Lies Beneath

14: How Do We Sing When We Would Rather Wail?

15: To Be a Living Psalm

16: Forgotten Prayers and Pointless Worship

17: The Heart Transplant

18: Preaching to the Fed up

19: Everyday Is a God Day

20: Family Meeting

21: Worshiping through a Dark Season

22: To God Be the Glory

23: Still I Sing!

24: Give Thanks

25: To Worship You Live

26: The Sound of the Believer

27: Worship the Lord

28: Giving Thanks in a Cave

29: When the Wounded Worship

30: The Praise of God

31: Why We Worship

32: Get Your Own!

33: Through The Battle We’re Gonna Worship

34: From Then Until Now, God Is Faithful

35: Between Tambourines and Trumpets

36: When God Draws Near

37: A Kingdom Calling

38: You Have Searched Me, O Lord

39: A Light for the Path

40: Total Praise

41: Knowing God by Doing His Work

42: Praise the Lord!

43: Because I Know God

44: God Is Our Comfort Blanket

45: While You Were Sleeping

46: Offering the Worship of Emotional Authenticity

47: Dusty Harps

48: God is Clutch

49: A Prophetic Word to Faithless Exiles

50: A Joyful Noise

51: Something to Sing About

52: Dancing with Difference, Singing for Change

53: Can I Kick It?

54: Creator of the Stars of Night

55: God’s Handiwork

56: Worship is Resistance and Resistance is Worship

57: What Worship Requires

58: Where Are You Going with No Directions?

59: Charged To Worship

60: There’s Still Hope in the Valley

61: When Despair Meets Hope

62: The Blueprint for Worship

63: A Paradigm for Worship!

64: When Hope Hurts

Plenary Sermons and Articles

65: Sound and Fury

66: The Young and the Restless

67: Jesus Came Preaching

68: A Prophet and a Shepherd

69: Not One Stone Left on Another

70: questions and stories

List of Contributors

Academy of Preachers Class of 2018

Covenant of Gospel Preaching

Academy of Preachers

About the Editor

Preface

I am pleased once again to present a volume of sermons to the wider world of Christian faith and gospel preaching. With one exception, everything in this volume comes from the ninth National Festival of Young Preachers, sponsored by the Academy of Preachers and held in January of 2018 in Atlanta, Georgia. While the preaching of the 120 young adults remains, as always, the focal point of this edition of our annual book of sermons, the festival itself was memorable for all of us as the public transition from my ten years of leadership in the AoP to that of the new president, the Rev. Ernest A. Books, III. He and I preached a tag-team sermon in the final service, what we call The Great Amen. That multi-phased sermon is the final message printed in this book. Part of the leadership transition during the festival included a sermon by Dr. William Turner of Durham North Carolina, a person of significant influence in Rev. Brooks life and ministry. His sermon, entitled A Prophet and a Shepherd, was recorded and uploaded to the AoP YouTube channel, from which I personally transcribed and edited the text included in this book.

The core of this book is the preaching of the Young Preachers of the AoP at the festival. There were 120 who preached, including three who preached on the plenary platform (and whose sermons are included in that section of this book). Only 67 of these Young Preachers submitted their sermons in manuscript form for publication in this volume; in this way, they have added their voices to the most important on-going archive of what young Christian leaders are thinking and saying in the United States.

I have included as an introduction to this book the master class presentation by our festival director of music, Dr. Everett McCorvey. I personally transcribed and edited this text also from the video of the event now posted on our YouTube channel. At this same time, I dedicate this volume to Dr. McCorvey and his wonderful American Spiritual Ensemble. Since the 2012 festival in Louisville, Kentucky, McCorvey and his singers have been an integral part of our festivals, enriching our homiletic gatherings with their wonderful spirit, tremendous talent, and inspirational testimony. I direct you to their web site and encourage you to take every opportunity to hear them, love them, and sing with them. I surely have; and I appreciate more than I can say the friendship and gospel partnership that has been a blessing to me these seven years! It is worth noting that Dr. McCorvey also serves as director of the opera program at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky and as director of the National Chorale in New York City.

One of the most powerful elements of the National Festival of Young Preachers is the engagement these Young Preachers have with those who share their calling and commitment to gospel preaching but have been shaped by a very different ecclesial environment. Many come to our festivals from very closed religious contexts, and when they sit, and laugh, and eat, and pray, and listen, and talk with others at the Festival, they testify to the exhilarating experience of Christian fellowship that transcends doctrine, practice, and experience. In that context, I decided to include a sermon preached by a member of the AoP board of directors, Dr. Tory Baucum, pastor of the Truro Anglican Church in Falls Church, Virginia. He delivered this sermon in Canterbury Cathedral at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury as a way of bridging the divisions between Episcopal and Anglican communions in the United States.

I thank all those who helped put together this volume, especially festival manager Debbie Moody, Alan Hisle and his team of videographers, AoP president Ernest A. Brooks III, AoP donor (and proofreader) Debi England, Chalice Press editor Gail Stobaugh, artist Ike Moody, and all the Young Preachers who submitted their sermons for publication. The AoP itself, the National Festival, and this annual volume of sermons are collaborative efforts drawing together people who share a passion for young people and gospel preaching. It is a joy to serve with them in this great work. God bless us all, and God bless this wonderful work of identifying, networking, supporting, and inspiring young people in the call to gospel preaching.

Dwight A. Moody

St. Simons Island

Summer 2018

Introduction

Theology of Hymns: Some Important Questions

Everett McCorvey

I love coming to the National Festival of Young Preachers. I love to hear all the young people as they preach. Every time I leave I feel all is right with the world, that the world has hope. I don’t feel that sense of loss as I often do when watching the news or reading a newspaper. As you do what you are called to do, you contribute to this hopeful outlook. I hope we can get more young people to come this sort of event.

I grew up in both Methodist and Baptist traditions. My mother was a Methodist, and my dad was a Baptist. I went to church on Sunday morning at the top of the hill with the Methodists; then when that was over, I went to the bottom of the hill and spent the rest of Sunday with the Baptists. My dad was a deacon at First Baptist Church, Montgomery, whose pastor was Ralph David Abernathy. My childhood home was just a few blocks from where Martin Luther King, Jr. lived when he worked in Montgomery. I grew up in the 1960’s during the civil rights movement. We were very involved in the movement.

I remember as a child going to church and hearing great choirs that would come in support of the civil rights efforts: from Hampton University and Tuskegee Institute, which was just a short drive out of town. William Dawson, the great composer of spirituals and other works, was at Tuskegee, and he would bring his choirs to Montgomery. Martin Luther King, Jr. loved to sing. As you read his sermons, you note he references spirituals and uses them in his text, and sometimes he closes the sermon by quoting a spiritual. I remember, Walk together children, don’t you get weary, there’s a great camp meeting in the promised land. His wife was a singer and wanted to be an opera singer, but the world of opera was not open to African American singers. So, Coretta Scott King would do concerts in Montgomery on Sunday afternoon.

Music was an important part of my growing up. Gospel music did not come into my world until I was a junior in high school. I grew up hearing spirituals, and hymns, and then gospel music. I tried to convince my mother to let me get in the gospel choir. It was a rich time to grow up in such a musical culture. I remember the hymns we sang in church: how rich they were in terms of the words, and how we use those words throughout the week.

As I became an adult and continued to be involved in music, I saw that in some churches two things were happening: the great spirituals I had heard as a child were not being celebrated and sung as much, they were being lost; and the great hymns were fading from use. I started the American Spiritual Ensemble, and the mission of that group was and is to keep the American Negro spirituals alive. To that end, we travel all over the world, celebrating the American Negro spirituals and telling the story of those songs. During this festival over the years, I have taken the opportunity to talk about the theology of hymns and explore whether or not they are still useful.

Let me pause and ask, what are your favorite hymns? [And the responses were: How Firm a Foundation, All Creatures of our God and King, It is Well With my Soul, Blessed Quietness, Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior, Great is Thy Faithfulness, Nothing but the Blood, Be Thou My Vision, Come Thou Fount, and The Solid Rock.] For me, it is God Be with You ‘till We Meet Again. It was sung so much at my dad’s church. We all have our favorite hymns!

Someone has said, No matter our standing in life, whether Christian or not, it is true that we have heard some hymn at some time. A good example is Amazing Grace, which is sung in churches and meetings and is used more than any other in films and TV shows, whenever a scene calls for a religious song. Unbeknownst to us, many of these hymns teach us the tenets of our faith. It develops our theological understanding. This is no accident. When many people were illiterate, and Bibles were hard to come by, there was no way to teach them how to read Scripture. Many of these songs were born to present the truth of the gospel in a form that was easy to remember. We think about children’s songs: This little light of mine, and Jesus loves the little children." We know all the words and the tunes. This is the way hymns work. They help to form the doctrine of the church. Take sound doctrine and mix it with a memorable tune, and the result is something that even the most illiterate person can recall. When my mother was in her 90’s she was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. She had forgotten what I looked like for 15 years, but when I sat at the piano and played, she remembered all the hymns and all the words. They are now studying this in Alzheimer’s research because people still remember these songs.

What is theology? Theo is the Greek word for God; and logos is the Greek word for word. Put them together and it becomes, the study of God. Webster’s defines it as the science of God: the existence, character, and attributes of God, the doctrines of God we are to believe and the duties we are to practice. If we think of theology in this manner, we are studying these laws and these doctrines as we sing; we rehearse what we believe as we sing. The beauty of hymns is this: it gives us a way to communicate in a memorable way what we believe.

Compare this with a constitution. What is the constitution of the United States? A statement of who we want to be as a country? I go back to Webster’s: A system of beliefs and laws by which a country or state or organization operates. What is the difference between a theology and a constitution? Theology is divine law and the constitution is human law. Theology and constitution function in a similar way, giving us direction and guidance.

Theology is a belief system built upon intellectually and emotionally held commitments concerning God and all that God has created. Everything that you do can be theology. Theology states who you are and what you believe. You decide which theology you affirm and where you want to be with God. What can hymns do in this search? They can teach us the tenets of our faith and develop our theological understanding. I address you as young leaders with this message: the celebration of the hymns still has a place in our church life. They can help you teach the theology to your congregation. This theological understanding can be transmitted in a form that is easy to remember, with a memorable tune and with words that are readily learned and easily recalled. This works for teenagers and even adults with Alzheimer’s!

I want to take a particular song and discuss it. During this festival we have been singing some of the great hymns of the church. I choose them because of the great theology behind them. I choose hymns that are general enough to include all of us and rich enough to provide significance for the people. We sang, for instance, Leaning on the Everlasting Arms. We have had some wonderful sermons about David and the psalms. In a similar way, we can consider this hymn. It mentions such important topics as fellowship, divine joy, Jesus, blessedness, peace, and the pilgrim way. This entire hymn is rich in Christian teaching. When people sing this song, the text supplies important words and provides emotional support. We also sang Come, let us worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Give Him the honor, the praise, give God the glory. Both of these hymns have trigger words that touch the emotions in a special way.

One of my favorite hymns is All Creatures of our God and King. I compare it to Psalm 66:1-4, and I want to read that psalm now, from the NIV translation. Shout for joy to God, all the earth. Sing the glory of his name. make his praise glorious. Say to God, ‘How awesome are your deeds. So great is your power, that you enemies cringe before you. All the earth bows down to you. They sing praise to you. They sing the praises of your name.’

This is a rich psalm, like the hymn All creatures of our God and king, lift up your voice and with us sing. In this hymn, the writer goes through the whole range of creation: burning sun, silver moon, rushing wind, clouds, rising moon, lights of the evening (the stars), flowing water, fire, mother earth, flowers, fruits that grow. Even gentle death is named. Everything is included in the call to praise the trinitarian God. The whole hymn is full of theology; it states what we believe. This is the purpose of hymns.

This morning at the festival, the preacher concluded by quoting the hymn, No, Never Alone. This is another rich hymn that includes a lot of theology, such as the thunder and lightning calling us to trust God. The more we sing these hymns, the more the people feel strength and peace, especially in times of trouble. God promised never to leave me.

What does the Bible say about singing? In the Psalms, we are called to sing psalms. O Sing to the Lord a new song. The Bible speaks of singing more than 400 times. The book of Psalms is the book of songs! Noted Bible scholar Gordon Fee says, Show me a church’s song, and I will show you their theology. Like the question, what’s in your wallet? I ask, what’s in your hymns? How many of you still have hymnals in your church? On the other hand, how many of your churches are using technology for worship? I was in church once Sunday and the minister said, We were unable to print our orders of worship today. So, let’s log onto our web site together. Everybody pulled out their phone, and we sang from the phone. We need to use what technology is available while still celebrating the great hymns of our faith.

Through congregational singing Christian faith is not only expressed, but also to a very real degree it is formed. People tend to remember the theology they sing more than the theology that is preached. A repertoire of hymnody is often of critical importance in shaping the faith of a congregation.

What I want you to take away from this seminar today are some questions you can ask yourself about hymns and theology. As young ministers and leaders in the church you are selecting hymns for worship. Here are some questions.

What theology is expressed in our congregational singing? Is it biblical? Is it consistent with what we believe: about the sovereignty of God and the grace of God? about the life, death, resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus? about the Holy Spirit? about the church, the sacraments, and the Christian life? How many of us take time to do this? How do we merge this attention to singing with what is preached? What help is the lectionary in this process?

Is there sufficient pastoral breadth in our music ministry? Do our hymns address the full range of life situations? Do our congregational songs include the many moods of the soul, and do these hymns voice all types of prayers, including praise, confession, lament, intercession, and dedication? These are questions we must ask ourselves as we make choices about worship and music.

Is there sufficient liturgical breadth in our worship? Does our congregation sing songs and hymns appropriate to each of the seasons of the Christian year; for the celebration of the sacraments; for the various opportunities for the congregation to respond during worship? Is the congregation provided the opportunity to sing those parts of the service that are better sung than spoken?

How many hymns do you typically sing in a service? In unison or in parts? With the ASE, we sing in unison to encourage everyone to sing. Do you pay attention to the particular key in which a hymn is sung? Some musical keys are not helpful to singing! The same for tunes: are they sing-able tunes? My wife is a singer. She says, when we sing way above the staff, high in the vocal range, the composer really did not care about the words; if the composer had cared about the words, they would have been placed within the sing-able vocal range! That way, she says, every person can read them and sing them. We need to make sure everything is sing-able.

Is there sufficient historical, cultural, and generational breadth in the music? Does it promote the communion of saints? Are all saints present encouraged to sing? Does our music promote the idea that we are singing with the saints both throughout the ages and also around the world? Do the hymns include contribution from other cultures, other languages, and other eras? Do they allow the full participation of children, of those just beginning their Christian journey as well as those well on the way? Obviously, we cannot meet all these criteria every Sunday; but if we have a plan for music, and singing, and worship in the church, it will help us reach these goals over the course of a year.

One specific challenge is understanding what the young people want, especially when you are trying to grow a church and attract young adults into a congregation dominated by older adults. This is a real challenge. It is a tension between traditional and contemporary tastes. I recently attended a service that was thoroughly contemporary, but they sang the traditional hymn Silent Night and included liturgical dance! We must find a way to make everyone feel included. How can we connect with everyone, including the first-time person? People respond to different things, including preaching, and music, and prayers, even spirit and attitude.

Is the language of our hymns inclusive? Do they make use of the full range of biblical imagery of God, so that all persons including both male and female, young and old are included by the language of our songs? This is a challenge, especially as our world becomes more diverse. We must find a way to ensure the language in our hymns is inclusive.

What do we learn about God and the Christian faith by what we sing? Can the text stand on its own? Are we providing our congregation with sufficient vocabulary of praise? We can’t just say Praise Him 400 times! We need sufficient vocabulary; and we as church leaders must discern these ways, so we are not reducing the gospel to just a few words.

How can we bring more vocabulary into our songs? Some people relish words and rejoice in words. I work with an accountant at our university. I take to her all the invoices and bills which drive me crazy. But when she sees them, her eyes light up! She loves the numbers! She gets excited. People respond to different things, including words!

Does our music encourage corporate worship? Does the music encourage congregational singing? Or is it designed for the solo artist? Does it come across as entertainment? Are soloists and choirs leading and assisting the congregation in its worship, or do they simply display their virtuosity? Do the hymns and choruses express the faith of the gathered community or do they tend toward individual and private expressions of faith? Are we choosing hymns that are too complex or sophisticated that the gathering congregation cannot sing them? Compositions like that are better suited as an anthem for the choir. The ones chosen for the congregation need to be those the congregation can successfully sing. I love to hear great choirs and bands and soloists; but when it is time to sing, we want songs that the people can fully embrace and sing. Worship is a communal experience and not something we come to watch; we are called to be active not passive in worship. This is difficult in our time when so much of our world is driven by entertainment, featuring events designed for us to watch and listen rather than participate in. These are the challenges we face as we select our hymns for Sundays.

Is the music appropriate to the ability of the congregation? Does the music respect the past practices of the congregation, and do we include enough familiar hymns? The minister this morning mentioned SAD—Seasonal Affective Disorder. If you suffer from that, you can’t have all sad hymns in the winter! I have a musical director who loves songs in minor keys! Give me something in the major, please! We must think about these things. How do we want the congregational to feel? What do we want a song to do, when it immediately precedes the preacher or when it concludes the worship and sends the people out into the world? I hope music ministers meet with pastors and preachers to plan these things so that the music and the worship as well as the preaching have design and purpose. Some churches plan months in advance and some plan only for a week, and each can be appropriate to a specific situation.

Do the hymns and choruses we sing encourage growth in discipleship? Do they support a strategy of continuing educational ministry for the entire congregation? Do we take the time to learn new hymns and challenging hymns? Worship is a living sacrifice and our worship, including our hymns, should represent some cost to us. Learning more difficult music and coming to understand new theology may be difficult work, but it can also be a source of spiritual renewal and growth.

I love to discuss music in the church because it is so important to the worship. For me personally, I don’t know what I would have done. Music motivated me to go to school, so I could play my trumpet and march in the band. Music has been my way, my avenue to learn so much more than music. The church has been the foundation for music in our culture for centuries. I hope all of us will encourage music: the singing of music, the reading of music, and the learning of music. Church music provides a cultural context that will inspire talented young people to follow a vocation in music, for the Christian community and for the wider human community. I challenge you to contribute to that local culture by giving attention to music in your role as a church leader.

Note: There was a good bit of group discussion during this presentation, very little of which is reflected in this transcribed document.

Young Preacher Sermons

1: Don’t Lose Your Song

Psalms 98:1

Artisha Arthur

Every year in April, my alma mater, Spelman College celebrates their Founder’s Day, the day they were founded as an academic institution for higher learning. It celebrates the birthing place for all black women leaders in various professional fields and arenas. In 2014, Spelman celebrated their Founder’s Day. What intrigued me about this particular Founder’s Day was its theme, Praise Song for Spelman. This theme allows students and alumnae to give God praise for allowing Spelman to see marvelous years, challenging moments, and life-changing experiences. Through it all, as our hymn says, through years of toil and pain, may our dear walls remain, beacons of heavenly light, undaunted by the fight. It’s a song of triumph, it’s a song of celebration, and it’s a song of victory and testimony. They are acknowledging that through it all, we have won the good fight and have excelled marvelously.

In Psalm 98:1, we see that the psalmist is giving us a command and a reason to give God praise. The psalmist also celebrates and acknowledges God’s sovereign power and might in wars and battles. There are 150 psalms in the Old Testament. However, this psalm in particular is a form of divine kingship. In divine kingship, God’s rule and authority over heaven and earth are celebrated. This is a psalm that praises God and acknowledges His salvation, mercy, truth, judgment, and righteousness to us. Beloved, after we look back over our own lives and see how the hand of the Lord was upon us, we all must pause for a moment and say, Lord, I thank you for getting me through and bringing me out. Lord, I thank you for covering me and shielding me when the devil tried to take me out with his lies, deceit, and demonic whispers. Jesus, you covered me with your blood, and I was safe in your arms. If we were to give the microphone to each and every one of you, some would say, I never would have made it without the Lord! Some might say I could have been dead sleeping in my grave, but God’s mercy said, ‘You shall live and not die. It’s not time for you to quit, not time for you to leave. You have work to do in the Kingdom.’ I also believe that even during these times of trouble like we are living in now, especially after certain bills and laws are passed that will affect many people in the nation, we sometimes have a tendency to lose our song. We become discouraged, distressed, and distracted by what we see and lose sight of what is to come and who we have as our Ultimate Source. Sometimes, all of our emotions try to get the best of us and we start waddling in fear, worry, doubt, and anxiety about our future, our nation, our economy, or simply our next level. In Psalm 98:1, the psalmist gives us two reasons on why we can’t lose our song in the midst of our trials and tribulations.

First, we can’t lose our song because we know too much about God’s track record. Verse one says, O sing unto the Lord a new song for He hath done marvelous things. I don’t know about you, but I get excited because when I look back over all the years in my life, I can say the Lord’s track record has been marvelous. Track records are records of things that someone or something has done in the past. Just imagine right now, if you were in a court room and the judge and the attorney asked you to testify about the Lord’s track record, what would you tell them? Would you tell them that based on God’s track record, you learned that He was a doctor in a sick room! Would you tell them that based on His track record, you learned that God is a mind regulator, a heart fixer, a mountain mover, a burden carrier, a lover of my soul, an atmosphere shifter, a void filler, a lifter of my head, a blessing giver, my daily bread, my living water, my King, my all, my everything.

If they asked you why you say that God has done marvelous things for you and if He has, can you show us a track record or evidence of this? What are you going to say? Will you say He has done marvelous things because He healed my body? When they tried to say I would die, He let me live! I’m so glad He let me live. When I lost a loved one, the devil tried to tell me why not to give up on life and die, too; but Jesus said to me, hold out, I am not through with you yet. When the collectors called your phone and you were about to be evicted, mercy said, your house shall not perish and grace said, you are covered by the blood of Jesus.

My brothers and sisters, we can’t lose our song because we know too much about what God has done. Track records help us determine what that person or thing is likely to do in the future. In other words, if God worked and moved miraculously before, God will do it again. If God made a way for you to be in a place before, have faith to believe that God will do it again. If God provided for you when you had little money in the bank account and increased your finances and cancelled debt, don’t you know God will do it again? Don’t lose your song. Grab a song, get a song, keep a song of praise in your spirit and in your mouth that sings, Lord, I know you too much to quit. I know if you did it before, you will do it again.

I can’t lose my song! I have seen God work a miracle, I have seen God open a door! I can’t lose my song! You can’t make me doubt God. I know too much about the Lord!

The second reason why you can’t lose your song is because God’s power plus his victory has made you a winner. The second part to verse one reads, His right hand and His holy arm have gotten Him the victory. This psalm refers back to the Feast of Tabernacles, when the Israelites celebrated kingship. The people of Israel could reflect back on how God saved them and allowed their eyes to see their enemies destroyed. This is going back to when God split the Red Sea and allowed them to walk on dry ground on their way to the Promised Land while Pharaoh and his chariots were tossed into the sea and destroyed.

I want to know on this day of a new year, do I have anybody here who believes you can’t lose your song now because you have seen the power of God save you and His victory has made you a victorious winner? God’s power on your life has demonstrated that God has the victory and has made you a winner. When they tried to tell you that would never get that house, you would never own that property, you would never get that land, you would never go to that school, you would never get that PhD, you would never get out of the ghetto slums, you would never accomplish your dreams, how many people in here can testify and say, I have seen God turn it around for me. With His power and victory, He got me out of the dunghill and out of the dust, and has set me upon a rock! How many people have a song that says I am destined to win! I can win because I have God’s power and God has already given me victory!

Before I take my seat, I would like to tell a little story I heard from my mentor. My mentor, Pastor Macdonald and his wife went on a cruise. Their cruise was passing the waters in New York City. When Pastor Macdonald saw the statue of liberty, he wanted to have a conversation with her. He asked the captain, Captain, can you push this boat back? I want to see the statue of liberty. The captain at first didn’t want to do it, until he finally pushed the boat back so Pastor Macdonald could see it. When Pastor Macdonald saw the famous statue, he said, Lady Liberty, you are looking little rusty. Lady liberty said, "Well, I