"Home Church" and Worship Songs
Since we left our church in May 2019, we have been staying home watching sermons online as a family. And I've loved it. I could finally breathe and feel my soul starting to come alive again after years of being suffocated by and angry about the wretched Calvinism growing in our church. I would rather be home alone with my family every Sunday than spend one more week listening to that Calvinist garbage!
However, I have often thought that it would be nice to meet with at least one other family, doing like a "home church" thing, watching sermons online and discussing them, or just reading the Bible and discussing it amongst ourselves.
And thankfully, we recently met up with another family who has also wanted to do that too, to meet together in a home and just pray together, read Scripture together (verse by verse through a book of the Bible), talk about what we learn from God's Word, and maybe sing.
We met last week for the first time to do this ... and it was great. So simple, but so sweet. Just what I needed. We're meeting again today and will keep Sundays open for meeting whenever we can. (And I have one more family in mind who I'd love to join us, if they ever can or want to.)
And since we might like to include worship songs, I compiled some familiar worship songs with lyrics, and I am putting them here in this post so that I can find them easily when we need them. I'll try to add more as I find them.
Here are some of my favorite Praise and Worship Songs with lyrics (some might be better suited to just listening to instead of singing to, but they're so great that I couldn't leave them out):
Bless the Lord, O My Soul (Matt Redmond)
Here I Am To Worship (Chris Tomlin)
Amazing Grace, My Chains Are Gone (Chris Tomlin)
How Great Is Our God (Chris Tomlin)
Lord, I Lift Your Name On High (and one that's Jamaican Style)
Shout To The Lord (Michael W. Smith)
The Heart Of Worship (Matt Redmond)
Praise the Lord (City Harmonic)
How Great Thou Art (Chris Rice)
Holy Is The Lord God Almighty (Chris Tomlin)
Revelation Song (Phillips, Craig, and Dean)
And some songs (not necessarily worship songs) that everyone should hear/watch at least 5 times in their life:
Sweetly Broken (Jeremy Riddle)
Secret Ambition (Michael W. Smith)
Christmas Hallelujah (Cloverton)
Little Drummer Boy (For King and Country) (This is my most-favoritiest favorite Christmas song ever! My goodness, even just the story of the little drummer boy, being so poor that he has no gift to offer except a song, drumming his little heart out to bring joy and blessings to the baby Jesus because that's all he's got to give. Himself. His heart. His song. My goodness, it makes my eyes get all teary every time I think about it. I can relate.)
Burn The Ships (For King and Country)
In The Sky (Carlisle, Cleveland, Lee)
Holy (Wedding Day) (City Harmonic)
Healing Begins (Tenth Avenue North)
By Your Side (Tenth Avenue North)
Hold My Heart (Tenth Avenue North)
The Call (Regina Spektor) (It's not really a "Christian" song, but it sure is beautiful. It reminds me of Jesus's promise to come back. And I love the Narnia version of the video!)
And one totally just for fun: Atheist Kids' Songs (Tim Hawkins)