Jesus is Lord
Weekly Worship
Prayer for this week
We worship you almighty God because You are our Father. You love us intimately, You live with us intimately, You live in us intimately. You know every breath we take, You know the number of hairs on our head, You know every thought and action that is our lives, You are our Father in every detail. You don’t live remotely from us; You are intimated with us in every way possible. We worship You.
We worship You because You are a holy God and You have given us newness of life through Your Son Christ Jesus. You have taken us from the grips of Satan through our confession of sin and the washing of our hearts, minds and being in the blood of Jesus. You have given us the free gift of personal, eternal relationship with You, then filled us with Your Spirit that we too can live holy lives.
As we walk in You and You in us, we rejoice to see Your kingdom at work both here and now, and in the future of Your reigning kingdom. We see You at work in each of us who are committed to being in Your image, we see you are work in lives and the community around us. We adore You and worship You. Lord God, guide us in being Your people in our Christian family, in our neighbourhood, in our community, that we be Your light, Your salt, that we be Your instruments to bring heaven to all people. That we bring Your good news, salvation and redemption to all people we rub shoulders with.
We ask, Lord God, that You will continue to feed us, not just physically but also spiritually. Give to us all those things we need to bring honour and glory to Your glorious name. We know we also have needs of many of those comforts of home, car, warmth and friendships; but, Lord God, show us how to keep all of those to the place where they do not control us, but they are for Your glory and honour.
Lord God, as we seek to live in You, to be in your image we confess that there are way too many times we get it wrong and get side-tracked by the devil and his sinful ways. We say things, do things, think things, have an attitude that does not honour you. Lord God, forgive us, and cleanse us in the blood of Jesus. When people wrong us Lord, forgive them and keep our hearts and minds pure despite how we may feel wronged. Cleanse us in all things, we pray.
We pray, Father, that when satan comes around to derail our walk with You, let Your Spirit work and remind us to keep our eyes and ears fixed on You. Deliver us from all temptations and all sin that is sent our way, Your indwelling Spirit is greater than any evil forces that attack us if we keep our minds on You.
Father God we pray for people around us who are struggling because of the COVID-19 shut downs; help us to reach out to them and encourage them, help to ease the isolation that so many of our vulnerable people feel. Be very real to those who are suffering illness currently, bring rapid healing to them. Those who are having difficulties at work, Lord God we pray that You will give them times of refreshment in You to help them cope and achieve their work commitments. Continue to guide our governments as they lead our states and nation through this pandemic and the economic battles from it. Pour out Your Spirit across our nation and heal our lands we pray. We commit all these matters into Your hands, in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Allan Fahlbusch
The Message
#1: Genesis 21:821 #2: Matthew 10:24-39
Tomorrow will be the 43rd anniversary of the UCA, and our church was founded on a document called the “Basis of Union”. I would like to quote parts of paragraph 3 of the document: “The Church’s call is to… be a fellowship of reconciliation, a body within which the diverse gifts of its members are used for the building up of the whole… She is a pilgrim people, always on the way towards a promised goal, (seeking) one to come.”
This sets out clearly that we, the church, are called to reconciliation within the church, and are builders of the church of the future, in which Christ remains Lord . Some time ago Rev Rob Stoner gave a sermon in Gawler, in which he was urging us to think beyond what we have done in the past and where we are at present, so that we don’t limit our progress as a pilgrim people who are helping to build the church of the future. He gave us three critical inter-related factors for understanding what the church is about, hence how we should think as we work towards the future. The factors were:
Mission; ie God’s mission for us. Rob put two questions; “What stirs the heart of God?” and What is God calling us to ‘be’ and do?
Community; ie a safe place where all are accepted as they are, “where each person’s belonging and contribution is valued…”
Spiritual nurture; In the past Rob sees this as being based on ‘doling out’ spiritual truth according to a person’s age and faith development, whereas it should be to help people with the spiritual dimensions of their lives. This should give them an understanding that “their personal spirituality is grounded in, and is a reflection of, the spiritual nature of the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ”.
Today’s reading from Genesis is a good example of plans that appeared to be going wrong in a big way. Abraham had been promised by God that he would be the father of huge numbers of descendants despite the fact that he was very old and Sarah was way beyond child-bearing age. Nothing had come to pass so Sarah and Abraham had intervened in God’s planning period and Abraham had had a child by Sarah’s slave, Hagar.
They had become impatient and had tried to do things their way, so Ishmael was born. Eventually Sarah did become pregnant and Isaac was born as the legitimate heir of Abraham, but today we heard how she now saw Ishmael as a threat to her son, and had him and his mother sent out into the desert to a probable death.
Again God stepped in and the situation was resolved, with Isaac succeeding Abraham as God had intended, and Ishmael also becoming the founder of a long line of descendants. Twice Abraham and Sarah tried to do things their way because they were not checking with God for guidance all the way. There are lessons here for us if we feel frustrated and thwarted with the lack of progress by anything that currently affects us.
The Matthew reading is full of words and thoughts that are hard to come to terms with, but one that I want to mention is the latter part, which deals with divisions occurring within families through conflicting loyalties when a member decides to follow Jesus. There are many parts of the world in which this is still a serious problem for new Christians, but in Australia it is usually not as dire as in other parts.
The relevance to today’s sermon is that division can occur – not just in a family but in a Christian community when someone, or some group, goes in a direction that the rest think is quite wrong. What we do now shapes our future, and the future of a congregation can go horribly wrong if such divisions are allowed to occur. I don’t know of any such problems affecting the Kapunda congregation, but I sound the warning that they could occur in any congregation if we don’t go forward without close attention to what it is that God appears to be telling us.
If we put most of our priorities into a short-term issue, instead of moving forward with our eyes firmly fixed on building our mission, our community and the spiritual nurture of those whom we contact, then we could be acting like Abraham and Sarah. They did their own thing more than once because they didn’t trust God to get it right, and God had to clean up the messes that they caused.
What we do now shapes our future, and we can be thankful that the founders of the UCA did a sound job when they followed God’s prompting as they established our church. In all of our UCA congregations, let’s work more closely towards our potential. As a church moving into the future, we have no valid option other than to constantly keep in touch with God and to try to discern God’s hand in all of the apparent setbacks to our plans that we face as we work our way forward as servants of Christ.
Amen.
Ken Edwards