{"id":24,"date":"2008-05-20T15:09:11","date_gmt":"2008-05-20T19:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/?p=24"},"modified":"2008-05-20T15:10:18","modified_gmt":"2008-05-20T19:10:18","slug":"when-was-the-last-time-you-cried-in-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/20\/when-was-the-last-time-you-cried-in-church\/","title":{"rendered":"When was the last time you cried in church?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday my family and I visited Crossroads Bible Church<\/a> in Grand Rapids. We had heard good things from some of Kat’s students at Cornerstone University<\/a> who attend there, but hey, we’ve heard great things about some churches that were just plain scarey!<\/p>\n

What amazed me was how it resonated with my spirit. I can’t remember the last time that I was in worship and realized that tears were streaming down my face. Not out of need or guilt, but tears of joy and awe as I knew I was in the presence of my Lord.<\/p>\n

What went on to bring this response?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

It meets in a school and the main gathering is in the gym. This is not the type of church architecture that thrills me, let alone brings me to tears!\u00a0 I am much more drawn to ancient\u00a0tall, gothic cathedrals (there is a lack of them even in churchy Grand Rapids).\u00a0 But hey, they had coffee and cookies.\u00a0 Find that in a cathedral.<\/p>\n

The band was very good,\u00a0they\u00a0lead us in\u00a0new songs along with remakes of old hymns. Maybe we were just lucky that they picked a couple of my favorite hymns, but I loved the music.\u00a0 (The drummer has game, the lead was strong but nicely understated, the worship leader<\/a> was authentic — that’s rare.)<\/p>\n

The message rocked. The senior pastor, Rod Van Solkema<\/a>, knows his stuff. It is obvious that he loves the word, has studied it intensively, and is careful to handle it accurately. This was the 4th anniversary of the founding of this fellowship, and Rod (he doesn’t call himself “pastor” — that alone is refreshing) preached on the story of Abraham and the sacrifice of his son Isaac.\u00a0 I’ve heard this text preached many times but Rod tied in the Genesis account with the Hebrews 11 tribute in a way that most preachers miss.<\/p>\n

Then there was a baptism.\u00a0 A bunch of people came up, told their stories of deliverance and freedom and transformation through Christ, and then were baptised.\u00a0 Listening to people give their story with freshness and vulnerablity is so impactful.\u00a0 Great to see this done on Sunday morning, it was a real witness.<\/p>\n

This was kind of a celebration service since it was their 4th anniversary, so it went long, but all four of us were quick to say we wanted to return.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I’m not sure what exactly brought me into the awe inspiring presence of God, but\u00a0it\u00a0was real. When was the last time you found yourself in tears out of love and in awe of your God?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday my family and I visited Crossroads Bible Church in Grand Rapids. We had heard good things from some of Kat’s students at Cornerstone University who attend there, but hey, we’ve heard great things about some churches that were just plain scarey! What amazed me was how it resonated with my spirit. I can’t remember […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}