Sunday Service Marsden Road
The Call
to Worship was also a Prayer of Adoration and thanks
for the beautiful day, the people, the Marsden Road
Church
Hymn TiS 155 “How Great
Though Art”
This hymn comes from Psalm 92:5 “O
Lord, how great are Thy works!” … and is a wonderful evolution of a Swedish
poem inspired by a storm and written in 1885 by preacher, Carl Gustav Boberg and
later sung to the melody of a Swedish folk song. A British Missionary in Poland Mount
Dalsnibba in Norway
Prayer of
Confession We confessed our
sins and prayed for God to give us clear minds and open hearts to live our
daily lives as his disciples. “Hold us to You and build our relationship
with You and with those You have given us on earth. Through Jesus Christ out Lord. Amen.”
Offering /
Prayer Nerida and Alan were helped with the offering
by three children and Hugh asked for God’s Blessing on our gifts.
Children’s
Address: Although
challenged by the failure of technology, Hugh “painted” the children a clear
message in words that the best way to serve God is to be good to the people
around you – the people you live with every day. If you love God’s people you love God!
Hymn TiS 526 “Bring forth
the Kingdom”
Words
& Music written by Marty Haugen, © 1986, GIA Publications, Inc. This song
invites us to live, shine, grow and love to bring forth justice in the Kingdom of God
After this
the Children went out to Sunday Kids with their teachers.
Bible Reading: Acts 17:22-31
(page 858) John 14:15-21 (page 825) Before reading from Acts, Warwick told us of
the “goose-bump” feeling of being involved in history that he had felt just
last week as he walked along “The Way of St. Paul” in Athens. In this reading, Paul begins by saying;
"I see that in everything that concerns religion you are uncommonly
scrupulous." Religion, for the
people of Athens
The
reading from John told of the promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit to be an
Advocate after Jesus died and rose from the dead - to leave his disciples again
to return to His Father. “The man who
has received my commands and obeys them – he it is who loves me; and he who
loves me will be loved by my Father; and I will love him and disclose myself to
him.”
Reflection: “What
thoughts would you share?”
Hugh
invited us to speculate on what we would pass on to those we love if we knew we
were soon to die and leave their sight.
It is interesting to wonder what you would do if given this chance for a
final “lecture”. You could use the
opportunity to share things about your life and what was important; you could
speak about the blessings that came to your life through those you love; you
could speak about the many aspects of your Faith – or you could even “waste”
that precious time making excuses for what you may have meant to do. I think this kind of prioritising is
something in which we should invest some serious thought.
Many commentaries point out that today’s
scripture lesson from the Gospel of John “is a key portion of Jesus’ Last
Lecture.”
The scene was the Last Supper. Jesus has
gathered with his 12 disciples in an upper room in a house in Jerusalem
Hugh
painted a good picture of the reactions of the disciples who didn’t understand
and began to suffer “extreme separation
anxiety” as Jesus explained his coming death.
Seeing their distress and being aware that
the road ahead would be demanding, Jesus, in his last lecture, comforted his
disciples and reassured them that they would not be alone. In verse 16 of today’s reading, Jesus says, “I
will ask the Father and he will give you a helper, to be with you.”
In
explaining the difficulties of translation from Greek to English, Hugh told us
of additional meanings for the Greek word for “helper”. It also
means, Comforter, Advocate, Supporter, Exhorter and Counselor. This Helper
/Advocate/Comforter/Counselor is what we call the Holy Spirit or the Holy
Ghost.
In his last lecture, to mitigate the trauma
his friends would soon experience, Jesus assured them that God’s Spirit would
take his place and would be with them forever.
After
telling his disciples, “I will not leave
you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer
see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my
Father, and you in me, and I in you.”
This
reassurance that, although the physical presence and assurance this has brought
them will soon be gone, Jesus will soon return through God’s Spirit; has formed
the basis of our Christian journey until the present time.
Hugh told
us; In a nutshell, there has been always
consistency and coherence in the lives of millions of millions of churches and
their members throughout the Christian church history, though they have been
expressed and practiced slightly differently according to their cultures and
traditions. The sole reason for this is
the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Because of the ministry of the Holy Spirit,
the Lord’s Prayer has been prayed for twenty thousand years; the communion of
the Lord’s Table has been remembered and practiced and the Gospel stories have
been declared and retold far and wide.
The Holy Spirit is the interior urging that
motivates us to act in Christ-like ways. God’s Spirit gets under our skin when
we are sitting on a fence between the world and God’s Kingdom; God’s Spirit
pricks our conscience when we treat someone unfairly or ignore people in need. God’s Spirit also prompts us to check in with
a friend who is struggling and to stand for a just cause. God’s Spirit urges us
to take care of God’s creation and to be generous with our wealth.
We must
act as people of God’s Kingdom and ignore negative voices within us that “clamor for attention” and be “aroused by God’s Spirit”. “You
are part of the ministry of the Holy Spirit.”
Further, the Scriptures indicate time and
again that the chief way to express our love for God is to love our
neighbor. God’s Spirit calls upon us to
take others’ pain as our own and act on it. ONLY THEN, we can prove our love
for God is real and genuine. Only then, we can prove to the world that we
belong to God.
Prayers of
Intercession: Ruth led our prayers for the world with
mention of many of the troubled places and the people worried by war and
unrest. She prayed with us in our hope for
the people who lead us in all parts of our lives to show compassion and love
and strength. Then Ruth prayed for all
those personal concerns and for the people we know who need our prayers for
many different reasons. Then we all
joined together in the Lord’s Prayer.
Hymn TiS 658 “I, the Lord of Sea and sky”
“Here am I, Lord. Is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go, Lord, if you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart.”
This hymn
was written by an American, Dan Schutte in 1981 and is based on the words of Isaiah
6:8 and 1 Samuel 3.
The
Benediction & Blessing
We felt very blessed
by the messages in the service today and left after the Benediction to share
our Christian love at our usual morning tea gathering in the hall.
Hymn TiS 720 Halle ,
Halle
Amen.
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