Welcome to our hymn sing!

Ephesians 4:2 – “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”

---

For “littles” and “young at heart”

Prayer to start the day:

(Feel free to say each line and have your child repeat
what you say or say it as you pray together.)

Dear God,
Now before I run to play, let me not forget to pray.
To God who kept me through the night
And wakes me with the morning light.
Help me, Lord, to love thee more
Than I ever loved before.
In my work and in my play
Please be with me through the day. Amen

---

The Jesus Medley 3 (I Have Decided to Follow Jesus)

During the month of February we are going to learn a medley (group of songs put together that all focus on love). Each week we will repeat the last one and add a new one.

---

I Have Decided to Follow Jesus

1. I have decided to follow Jesus (3 times)
No turning back, no turning back.

2.Though none go with me, still I will follow (3 times)
No turning back, no turning back.

3.The world behind me, the cross before me. (3 times)
No turning back, no turning back.

---

Rock of Ages
1776

“My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; 
and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s Hand.”  
John 10:29

Hymn Background:

On November 4, 1740, a baby in Farnham, England, was given the formidable name of Augustus Montague Toplady.  His father died in a war, his mother spoiled him, his friends thought him “sick and neurotic,” and his relatives disliked him.

But Augustus was interested in the Lord. “I am now arrived at the age of 11 years,” he wrote on his birthday.  “I praise God, I can remember no dreadful crime; to the Lord be the glory.”  By age 12 he was preaching sermons to whoever would listen.  At 14 he began writing hymns.  At 16 he converted to Christ while attending a service in a barn.  And at 22 he was ordained an Anglican priest.

As a staunch Calvinist, he despised John Wesley’s theology and bitterly attacked the great Methodist leader.  “I  believe him to be the most rancorous hater of the gospel-system that ever appeared on this island,”  Augustus wrote.

In 1776 Augustus wrote an article about God’s forgiveness, intending it as a slap at Wesley.  He ended his article with an original poem which became the 1st verse of this beloved hymn.

Augustus Toplady died at age 38, but his poem outlived him and has been called “the best known, best loved, and most widely useful” hymn in the English language.  Oddly, it is remarkably similar to something Wesley had written 30 years before in the preface of a book of hymns for the Lord’s Supper: “O Rock of Salvation, Rock struck and cleft for me, let those two streams of blood and water which gushed from thy side,  bring down pardon and holiness into my soul.”

LYRICS:

1. Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee;
Let the water and the blood, from thy wounded side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure; save from wrath and make me pure.

2. Not the labors of my hands can fulfill thy law’s demands;
Could my zeal no respite know, could my tears forever flow,
All for sin could not atone; thou must save, and thou alone.

3. Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling;
Naked, come to thee for dress; helpless look to thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly; wash me Savior or I die.

4. While I draw this fleeting breath, when mine eyes shall close in death,
When I soar to worlds unknown, see thee on thy judgement throne,
Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.

---

A Woman and A Coin