Welcome to Paul Tripp's Wednesday's Word podcast. I'm Dalton, a member of the Paul Trip

Ministries team. Join me each week as I read aloud Paul's popular Wednesday's word devotional.

You can subscribe to our email list to receive this devotional straight to your inbox each week,

or you can read online at paultrip.com slash Wednesday or on Facebook, Instagram, and the Paul Tripp app. This week, or you can read online at paultrip.com slash Wednesday, or on Facebook, Instagram,

and the Paul Trip app.

This week, we'll listen to another poem from Paul, celebrating the wonder of God's family

and the blessing of belonging to the church body.

Here's this week's Wednesday's word. Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into

his presence with singing. Know that the Lord, he is God. It is he who made us, and we are his. We are his people and the sheep of his

pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him. Bless his name.

For the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever and his faithfulness to all generations.

Psalm 100. I wandered in those doors again, more habit than

conviction, propelled more by duty than joy. I'd made that entrance 10,000 times, more muscle memory

than spiritual energy. I was afraid not to be there more than I wanted to be there. Habitual words

of hello and welcome greeted me, sprinkled with

random Bible words. I smiled and mumbled niceties in return, not wanting to linger long enough to be

personal. I went directly to my seat. I had claimed it years ago. No nameplate, but it was mine.

I sat in it every week and was unsettled on this Sunday when someone

else claimed it. Wait, what? Don't they know? I looked around at the unremarkable group of people,

surveying the crowd, as they shuffled to their self-assigned seats. Students, plumbers, clerks,

piano teachers, housewives, doctors, dads, delivery drivers, bosses and baristas,

all living in the endlessly mundane, occasionally marked by moments of tragedy and triumph.

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