The Pearl of Great Price

We’ve been on a roll for the last several weeks at emanate and at Grace Center. And by that I mean, we’ve been experiencing a prolonged sense of God’s presence during worship. So much so, that we’ve found that we can’t move on from worship. Some people are asking us what this means or what this is. The simple answer of course is that we have no idea. All we know is that we love this and long for it to continue. 

Our heart at emanate has always been that we create a space for Jesus to be welcomed and worshipped. We want our corporate gatherings (as well as our individual lives) to be unreservedly open for the Holy Spirit to move as he wishes. So when we sense that the Holy Spirit arrives, we want to do everything to ensure that he has priority in our service. This is often quite a difficult thing for us a leadership to navigate, because often we  don’t know what he’s up to. So sometimes it’s a waiting game - should we move on? should we stop here? should we wait and see what happens after this worship song?  We are trying to consider so many different factors but our core value is that his presence trumps everything else. We place such a high value on the person of Jesus and his presence that we’re happy to sacrifice anything else to have him in our midst; time, order of service, offerings, teaching, personal comfort. 

You know when sometimes you pass a department store that’s undergoing renovations, they have a sign that says, “Please excuse our appearance as we are remodeling” well this blog post is kind of like that. If you are new to emanate please excuse us while we try and work out how best to flow with the holy spirit and his presence. If you are not sure what’s going on, just close your eyes and focus on Jesus and his presence. If it helps, adjust your posture, if you are sitting, try standing up. If you are standing up, try lying down. If you are in your seat, trying coming down to the front. If you’ve been coming for a long time, then you know our heart is just to pursue Jesus. 

On a practical note, we haven’t been able to make announcements about upcoming events - this is kind of a big deal because we really want you to attend them and get changed, from now on we’ll post our announcements online. Same thing with offerings - if you’ve come prepared to give, there’s a metal box outside of the office door in the main lobby that you can drop them in. If you’d prefer to give online, you can do so online. Lastly, because we haven’t done any teachings the last couple of weeks, the downloads section is looking pretty sparse. But if you do miss a service, you can find a video archive on our ustream page if you want to engage with the worship.

Thanks for being so flexible as we all pursue the king of love together.