Tomorrow is the first time we use our new place of worship

French in the morning. English in the evening. 

We'll have two services every week ! Evening services in French one week, English the next. 

France doesn't have a culture and legacy of evening services. It takes a long time for people to realise the possibilities and potential. But I remember those calm quiet evenings when we would meet with the church and turn our minds together to eternity as the sun set, hearing from the everlasting word as the daylight dies.

Here we go again. Best thing is that the church is on a main road and it has great big windows. There'll be vertical blinds but that won't stop the light from shining out and provoking people's curiosity.

Trying to turn from a busy and tiring week to get ready for tomorrow evening, I read David Clarkson's famous sermon "Public worship to be preferred before private." Here's a section from it :

"Here the Lord works his greatest works; greater works than ordinarily he works by private means, ergo. The most wonderful things that are now done on earth are wrought in the public ordinances, though the commonness and spiritualness of them makes them seem less wonderful. It is true, we call not conversion and regeneration miracles, but they come nearest to miracles of anything that is not so called. Here the Lord speaks life unto dry bones, and raises dead souls out of the grave and sepulchre of sin, wherein they have lain putrefying many years. Here the dead hear the voice of the Son of God and his messengers, and those that hear do live. Here he gives sight to those that are born blind; it is the effect of the gospel preached to open the eyes of sinners, and to turn them from darkness to light. Here he cures diseased souls with a word, which are otherwise incurable by the utmost help of men and angels. He sends forth his word, and heals them; it is no more with him but speaking the word, and they are made whole. Here he dispossesses Satan, and casts unclean spirits out of the souls of sinners that have been long possessed by them. Here he overthrows principalities and powers, vanquishes the powers of darkness, and causes Satan to fall from heaven like lightning. Here he turns the whole course of nature in the souls of sinners, makes old things pass away, and all things become new. Wonders these are, and would be so accounted, were they not the common work of the public ministry."

Yup.

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