First Presbyterian Church, Sterling IL

Welcome to First Presbyterian Online!   Visit past services at firstonsecond.blogspot.com . Click here for an automatic playlist that plays this week's videos. (Click "Play All.") God’s People Gather *Prelude with Amy - Come Now is the Time to Worship Prelude Pondering The spirit likes to dress up like this: ten fingers, ten toes, shoulders, and all the rest at night in the black branches, in the morning in the blue branches of the world. It could float, of course, but would rather plumb rough matter. Airy and shapeless thing, it needs the metaphor of the body, lime and appetite, the oceanic fluids; it needs the body’s world, instinct and imagination and the dark hug of time, sweetness and tangibility, to be understood, to be more than pure light that burns where no one is— so it enters us— in the morning shines from brute comfort like a stitch of lightning; and at night lights up the deep and wondrous drownings of the ...

Visit past services at firstonsecond.blogspot.com . Welcome to First Presbyterian Sterling Online! *Prelude with Emma Prelude Pondering “Waiting is the hardest work of hope.” —Lewis B. Smedes *Welcome with Aaron *Call to Worship with Jodi Leader: Clap your hands, all you peoples; shout to God with songs of joy. Lift up your hearts. People: We lift them to the Lord. Leader: God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. Lift up your hearts. People: We lift them to the Lord. Leader: God is ruler over all the earth; the Lord reigns on a holy throne. Lift up your hearts. People: We lift them to the Lord. Leader: God put this power to work in Christ, raising him from the dead. Lift up your hearts. People: We lift them to the Lord. Leader: God has highly exalted him, giving him the name above all names. Lift up your hearts. People: We lift them to the Lord. Leader: Jesus Christ is Lord! Glory to God in the highest. Lift up your hearts. Peo...

Welcome to First Presbyterian Sterling Online! Visit past services at firstonsecond.blogspot.com . God’s People Gather  *Prelude with Amy Prelude Pondering There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Christ, it must follow that you are trying to obey him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because he has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of heaven is already inside you. ― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity * Call to Worship with Henry Leader: Jesus promised he would ask God to send an advocate. People: To help us and be with us forever. Leader: Jesus promised that the Spirit would be the spirit of truth. People: The world couldn’t accept it, but we know the Spirit is with us. Leader: Jes...

Welcome to First Presbyterian Sterling Online! Visit past services at firstonsecond.blogspot.com . God’s People Gather *Prelude with Rex Prelude Pondering “...eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in… And someone’s face, whom you love, will be as a star Both intimate and ultimate, And you will be heart-shaken and respectful. And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper Oh let me, for a while longer, enter the two Beautiful bodies of your lungs... Look, and look again. This world is not just a little thrill for your eyes. It’s more than bones. It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse. It’s more than the beating of a single heart. It’s praising. It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving. You have a life- just imagine that! You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe Still another… And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope. I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that...

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  Welcome to First Presbyterian Sterling Online!   Visit past services at firstonsecond.blogspot.com . God’s People Gather *Prelude - Down by the Riverside with Rex, Amy, and Emma Prelude Pondering The borders of the church—its identity and character—have substance. They can be seen and described in this text. And yet, as the text also makes clear, these borders move in time. They respond to the new face at the table. They learn new scripts and live into new roles. They make room for those that are different, even as they stand “together” (vs. 44) in worship, service, learning and fellowship. They are open to the surprise of the Spirit and to the awe-filled work of God’s salvation – even God’s salvation of the borders themselves. These are borders that perform, and through God’s help, perform faithfully. - Jerusha Matsen Neal, Commentary on Acts 2:42-47, Workingpreacher.org *Welcome *Call to Worship  Leader: We gather as God’s church, together t...