Sunday 30th August:
Major Graham Bailey
Announcements
1- Sunday Stroll: this week meet at the Hall in Commercial Road at 5:30PM
2- Our next Zoom meeting for 'tea and coffee' after the meeting will be on Sunday 6th September - log in details will be posted next week.
3- Corps Family News:
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Call to Worship:
Our bible reading is taken from Hebrews 4:14-16
14 So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. 15 This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. 16 So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.
14 So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. 15 This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. 16 So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.
Song: What a faithful God have I
Salvation Army Songbook #378
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Click on the image to start the song.
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Song: Faithful One so unchanging
Songs of Fellowship #89
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Click on the image to start the song.
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Family Item - Medley of Power of Your love, Shout to the Lord & Crown Him (Majesty)
recorded by Phil Bailey
Songsters: Grace Alone
Scott Wesley Brown and Jeff Nelson
Arranged by Len Ballantine
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The Songster Leader writes:
This beautiful simple song challenges us to rely on the unfailing Grace of God. Though freely given we should never cease to treasure it as it is only given through Jesus' sacrifice for every one of us. As we endeavour to reach out to others, to make a positive impact on the lives of others, it is through God's grace empowering us that we do so. |
Prayer: Click on the image and pray the prayer as you read it through and we end with The Lord's Prayer
Bible Reading: Acts 11: 19-30 The New Living Translation (NLT)
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Click on the image to hear Amanda bring the Scripture reading to us today.
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Song: Servant King
Salvation Army Songbook #165
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Click on the image to start the song.
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Thought: Video
Thought: Written
It’s good to share again with you. Over these last couple of weeks as I’ve been sharing, I’ve looked at some of the symbols that we use within the Salvation Army. The first week we looked at the flag and reminded ourselves what the flag represented and what it stands for and then, last time, I looked at the mercy seat and the fact that although we have the mercy seat at the front of the Hall for us to use during our worship together; to make public decisions or to respond to God's prompting, because we are post-Pentecost, we now have that mercy seat in our hearts where we can meet with God wherever we are.
This week I’m going to look at, not a symbol, but a slogan of the Salvation Army. The slogan is one that you'll know well, it’s on a lot of our stationary and it says, 'Heart to God, hand to man’.
It follows on well from the mercy seat because the first part of the slogan - ‘Heart to God’ - is about the fact that we give our hearts to God, we are His. All that we are is found in Him. Of course, as we just reminded ourselves, that is where we meet God, at the mercy seat of our hearts. The primary thing for us is that we meet with God - heart to God.
But our faith has another dimension and that is about hand to man.
It’s like a re-phrasing of the commandments, ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart and your neighbour as yourself.’
As the Mercy Seat is wherever we are, so the ‘hand to man’s is wherever we are too! It’s not about the Salvation Army providing this or that service, as though we are promoting the Salvation Army, it’s about God’s people meeting needs just where they are!
Yes, it’s important for the Salvation Army to do it, but we are the Salvation Army where we are!
Our current General of the Salvation Army, Brian Peddle, retweeted a tweet this week and the tweet says this, ‘we will never change the world by going to church, we will only change it by being the church!’
‘We will never change the world by going to church, we will only change it by being the church!’
A quick aside: if you have chance, follow the General’s tweets and our Territorial Commander’s video’s during this time, they are really challenging the Salvation Army to be what it was originally intended to be & to think about what the Army should look like in the coming days that will make an impact for the Kingdom.
I was challenged last week when I was initially thinking of what to talk about, by the fact that so much of my time and energy presently, is taken up with thinking about planning whether, when, and how we reopen for worship together, rather than, as Angie & myself will be going on holiday in a couple of weeks’ time, how we ensure we can continue to serve at Open House and SAMM whilst we’re away! It was more about how we open for worship than how we serve our community! That cannot be right, and I’ve had to make sure I have re-evaluated and, yes, repented.
It reminded of some verses from the Prophet Isaiah, at the beginning of his message to the nation of Israel, he talks about the fact that God is telling the nation to ‘stop bringing me meaningless offerings, your insensitive tests are detestable to me, all of your festivals, your evil assemblies, your appointed feasts, my soul hates. They’ve become a burden to me, I’m weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you, even if you offer many prayers, I won’t listen and why? Because you should be defending the cause of the fatherless, the widow’s case you should be fighting for. Jerusalem (what he calls the faithful city) has become a harlot, she once was full of justice; righteousness used to dwell in her but no longer! That was what was important, it wasn’t about their worship, it was about the Kingdom and what that Kingdom looked like that was provoking God’s rebuke.
At their best, the Jews would have said to the pagan nations around them that “Our God is the one true God who made the whole world. He cannot be represented by a human-made image. We will demonstrate who He is by the way we live.”
That’s what they would ascribe to but didn’t achieve. We can be like that too. It reminds me of another slogan, from Tesco, which says, ‘Every little helps'
We’re trying and we might not succeed but ‘every little helps!’
But that’s not enough! Our heart to God is complete and so should our hand to man. We prove our heart to God by our hand to man!
‘Every little helps’ is quite a typical remark that you hear when you are out collecting, either at Christmas or door to door for the Big Collection. It happens when people put in their copper coins to the box & they say it, I think, as a way of placating their conscience – knowing that what they’ve given, by itself, is not going to do much!
Is it the same for me? Every little bit I do helps. Is that just to placate my conscience? Knowing that both God deserves and others in my community need more than that?
In the Scripture reading we heard just now, we saw how the early church, still finding its feet, when it was given a prophecy about a coming famine, (which came in about AD46-47), instead of having a knee-jerk inward-looking anxiety, asking whether they should stockpile food as Joseph did in Egypt, they looked out for community members worse off than themselves. And that included Jerusalem. Jerusalem was where Jesus' first followers had sold their lands and pooled their resources and where now, they were struggling to stay alive after enduring a decade or so of hostility from the authorities and probably their own wider communities.
This Antioch community knew what they had to do. Just as this community was the first place where there was a genuine effort to be a trans-ethnic community, they also saw themselves as a trans-local community, helping their new family in Christ when in need. They were showing and living a new way of being.
This people were not just first known as Christians (the King's people) in Antioch, they were known as people who were committed at the deepest level to giving themselves in love to one another and to all in need.
They saw themselves as part of the family that Angie reminded us of last week.
A couple of chapters before that in Acts is the report of the acceptance of Cornelius (a Gentile) into this family and, when Peter spoke of it to the church in Jerusalem, it was about whether Cornelius was tolerated or welcomed into the family.
What about us? Like I said earlier, we are the church where we are, do we have ‘heart to God and hand to man‘? Or do we tolerate rather than welcome people that we meet? We sing the song that says we want ‘a brotherly love that is real' – not manufactured or false.
Last week the final verse of the Songster’s song said, ‘in Jesus' Name we go to serve, to share His gifts from above ‘.
We go to serve, to help those who are struggling in these days, not just because we want to ‘convert’ them (yes, we want to see them in the Kingdom, but we don’t stop helping if they don’t respond) we do it because it’s the right thing to do – they need love and help.
One of my pet hates is when I get unsolicited phone calls and the caller starts by asking me how I am – they’re not interested in me, they just want to sell me something! Is that what we want people to think about us when we try to help them, they’re only doing this because they want to convert me? We do it because they are precious, they are precious to God and they should be precious to us.
Let’s be those people, just where we are today. ‘With Heart to God and hand to man‘ & see what God will do as we serve in His Name.
As we take time to listen to God, be reminded that God wants you to do your part where He has put you.
This week I’m going to look at, not a symbol, but a slogan of the Salvation Army. The slogan is one that you'll know well, it’s on a lot of our stationary and it says, 'Heart to God, hand to man’.
It follows on well from the mercy seat because the first part of the slogan - ‘Heart to God’ - is about the fact that we give our hearts to God, we are His. All that we are is found in Him. Of course, as we just reminded ourselves, that is where we meet God, at the mercy seat of our hearts. The primary thing for us is that we meet with God - heart to God.
But our faith has another dimension and that is about hand to man.
It’s like a re-phrasing of the commandments, ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart and your neighbour as yourself.’
As the Mercy Seat is wherever we are, so the ‘hand to man’s is wherever we are too! It’s not about the Salvation Army providing this or that service, as though we are promoting the Salvation Army, it’s about God’s people meeting needs just where they are!
Yes, it’s important for the Salvation Army to do it, but we are the Salvation Army where we are!
Our current General of the Salvation Army, Brian Peddle, retweeted a tweet this week and the tweet says this, ‘we will never change the world by going to church, we will only change it by being the church!’
‘We will never change the world by going to church, we will only change it by being the church!’
A quick aside: if you have chance, follow the General’s tweets and our Territorial Commander’s video’s during this time, they are really challenging the Salvation Army to be what it was originally intended to be & to think about what the Army should look like in the coming days that will make an impact for the Kingdom.
I was challenged last week when I was initially thinking of what to talk about, by the fact that so much of my time and energy presently, is taken up with thinking about planning whether, when, and how we reopen for worship together, rather than, as Angie & myself will be going on holiday in a couple of weeks’ time, how we ensure we can continue to serve at Open House and SAMM whilst we’re away! It was more about how we open for worship than how we serve our community! That cannot be right, and I’ve had to make sure I have re-evaluated and, yes, repented.
It reminded of some verses from the Prophet Isaiah, at the beginning of his message to the nation of Israel, he talks about the fact that God is telling the nation to ‘stop bringing me meaningless offerings, your insensitive tests are detestable to me, all of your festivals, your evil assemblies, your appointed feasts, my soul hates. They’ve become a burden to me, I’m weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you, even if you offer many prayers, I won’t listen and why? Because you should be defending the cause of the fatherless, the widow’s case you should be fighting for. Jerusalem (what he calls the faithful city) has become a harlot, she once was full of justice; righteousness used to dwell in her but no longer! That was what was important, it wasn’t about their worship, it was about the Kingdom and what that Kingdom looked like that was provoking God’s rebuke.
At their best, the Jews would have said to the pagan nations around them that “Our God is the one true God who made the whole world. He cannot be represented by a human-made image. We will demonstrate who He is by the way we live.”
That’s what they would ascribe to but didn’t achieve. We can be like that too. It reminds me of another slogan, from Tesco, which says, ‘Every little helps'
We’re trying and we might not succeed but ‘every little helps!’
But that’s not enough! Our heart to God is complete and so should our hand to man. We prove our heart to God by our hand to man!
‘Every little helps’ is quite a typical remark that you hear when you are out collecting, either at Christmas or door to door for the Big Collection. It happens when people put in their copper coins to the box & they say it, I think, as a way of placating their conscience – knowing that what they’ve given, by itself, is not going to do much!
Is it the same for me? Every little bit I do helps. Is that just to placate my conscience? Knowing that both God deserves and others in my community need more than that?
In the Scripture reading we heard just now, we saw how the early church, still finding its feet, when it was given a prophecy about a coming famine, (which came in about AD46-47), instead of having a knee-jerk inward-looking anxiety, asking whether they should stockpile food as Joseph did in Egypt, they looked out for community members worse off than themselves. And that included Jerusalem. Jerusalem was where Jesus' first followers had sold their lands and pooled their resources and where now, they were struggling to stay alive after enduring a decade or so of hostility from the authorities and probably their own wider communities.
This Antioch community knew what they had to do. Just as this community was the first place where there was a genuine effort to be a trans-ethnic community, they also saw themselves as a trans-local community, helping their new family in Christ when in need. They were showing and living a new way of being.
This people were not just first known as Christians (the King's people) in Antioch, they were known as people who were committed at the deepest level to giving themselves in love to one another and to all in need.
They saw themselves as part of the family that Angie reminded us of last week.
A couple of chapters before that in Acts is the report of the acceptance of Cornelius (a Gentile) into this family and, when Peter spoke of it to the church in Jerusalem, it was about whether Cornelius was tolerated or welcomed into the family.
What about us? Like I said earlier, we are the church where we are, do we have ‘heart to God and hand to man‘? Or do we tolerate rather than welcome people that we meet? We sing the song that says we want ‘a brotherly love that is real' – not manufactured or false.
Last week the final verse of the Songster’s song said, ‘in Jesus' Name we go to serve, to share His gifts from above ‘.
We go to serve, to help those who are struggling in these days, not just because we want to ‘convert’ them (yes, we want to see them in the Kingdom, but we don’t stop helping if they don’t respond) we do it because it’s the right thing to do – they need love and help.
One of my pet hates is when I get unsolicited phone calls and the caller starts by asking me how I am – they’re not interested in me, they just want to sell me something! Is that what we want people to think about us when we try to help them, they’re only doing this because they want to convert me? We do it because they are precious, they are precious to God and they should be precious to us.
Let’s be those people, just where we are today. ‘With Heart to God and hand to man‘ & see what God will do as we serve in His Name.
As we take time to listen to God, be reminded that God wants you to do your part where He has put you.
Song: Just where he needs me
The Salvation Army Songbook #944
Click on the image to start the song
Band: A Quiet Moment
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Click on the image to hear the band.
The Bandmaster writes: Meditate on these things as the Band play this piece of music entitled ‘A Quiet Moment’ the words of this piece say: In this quiet moment, still, before your throne, Conscious of your presence, knowing I am known, In this quiet moment, set my spirit free, In this quiet moment, make a better me.’ |
Song: Beauty for brokenness
Salvation Army Songbook #998
Click on the image to start the song this recording is from Regent Hall Salvation Army
Benediction:
Benediction taken from Hebrews 13:20-21
20 Now may the God of peace--
who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus,
the great Shepherd of the sheep,
and ratified an eternal covenant with his blood--
21 may he equip you with all you need
for doing his will.
May he produce in you,
through the power of Jesus Christ,
every good thing that is pleasing to him.
All glory to him forever and ever! Amen.
20 Now may the God of peace--
who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus,
the great Shepherd of the sheep,
and ratified an eternal covenant with his blood--
21 may he equip you with all you need
for doing his will.
May he produce in you,
through the power of Jesus Christ,
every good thing that is pleasing to him.
All glory to him forever and ever! Amen.
Note: Our 'take-away' Sunday worship started on the 22nd March. To find the previous week's services go to the Archive section of the website listed under the 'more.....' tab at the top of the page. On the 'C-19 Worship' section of the website we will only keep the current and previous month on this section of the website before moving them into the Archive.
Can you help?
In this current situation when our church doors are closed to our normal activities but our work to support those in need continues our normal source of funds (Sunday Tithes and Offerings) have reduced dramatically. We need your help, so that we continue to be ready to meet the ongoing needs of our community that will undoubtedly impact beyond this lock down period. If you are willing to help please visit our Just Giving Page to make a donation to this work. https://www.justgiving.com/