Lets begin by singing and knowing that God loves us all.
How deep The Father's Love
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We need to pray for Turkey & Syria. And we will do that just now.
Let us pray
Father, We want to bring before you a prayer for the people of Turkey and Syria. We pray for everyone whose lives have been destroyed in the earthquakes that have devastated parts of these countries.
We bring before you the injured. Lord, bring healing to mind, body and soul through your Spirit's power.
We bring before you the families, friends, and communities of those who have died. May they experience the comfort of your embrace. We pray for anyone who is still trapped and longing for rescue.
We pray for the respective governments of these countries. Grant them clarity and ways to respond quickly to the plight of their people.
We bring before you those displaced and made homeless – help them to find new homes, Lord.
We lift up to you the emergency services and rescue teams working so hard to rescue people buried in rubble. Bless them, Lord, with energy and sharpness in their searching.
We bring before you the hospitals and medical teams on the ground – gift them with skills beyond their understanding.
We bring before you all the people of Turkey and Syria – may there be hope as they look to clear debris and rebuild infrastructure.
Lord, in your incredible mercy, bring beauty from ashes in this situation. We know you are present with everyone in the midst of this crisis, with the people in their pain and loss. We thank you for your amazing grace and love, God of every place and time.
We love you Lord. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Please share with me in The Lord's Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever.
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Before we go to the word let us sing: There is none like you
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A Tough Lesson To Learn
Have you ever done something and later on, you discover that your actions had consequences that you never expected? Well, there’s one thing that we do, that builds a wall between God and ourselves, I know because I’ve done it myself. It’s something that we would never expect. In any relationship there can be things that we can do or we say, patterns of behaviour that we fall into that cause barriers to grow up like brick walls between us. One brick at a time and before you know it, to get close to the other person; you have to crash through or climb over this massive brick wall. Together lets crash through one of the biggest brick walls that we can build between us and God. And you know the really insidious thing about this particular brick wall, we don’t even realise it’s happening because it’s about our relationship, not with God but with other people. And yet as our relationships with other people fail, so we can drift away from the closeness of God that we so long for.
I want to share with you a story, a story of someone that I knew. He had a great heart, a great leader. He was prepared to take the hard decisions when he had to. The problem was, every now and then he had angry outbursts.
One day I was on the receiving end of one of those angry outbursts. Yes, I was shocked. I wanted to react, but, turned to God and said, “God, what do you want me to do?” And quick as a flash the Spirit of God whispered, ‘Turn the other cheek’. As you can imagine that wasn’t what I wanted to do. It’s not fun, I mean I had some righteous anger to get rid of. The problem is my righteous anger doesn’t help this other person who my God loves just as much as He loves me. See, that’s the key, listen to how Jesus puts it. He says this, it’s recorded in Mark chapter 12 beginning at verse 29.
‘The most important one,’ answered Jesus, ‘is this: Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength’ and the second commandment is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these’. (Mark 12:29-31)
Every country has a currency; the UK it’s pound sterling, in the USA it’s American dollars, in India it’s rupees, in the Democratic Republic of Congo it’s Congolese francs. In Australia is the Australian Doller. And the Kingdom of God has a currency too; the currency in the Kingdom of God however is love. It’s the currency of relationship, it’s the currency of closeness, it’s the currency of intimacy with God and with other people and it’s not about how much you have, it’s about how much you give.
The Kingdom of God is a double-sided coin – the love of God and the love of neighbour and there’s a reason for that. God doesn’t just love me, He loves you too and that is mightily inconvenient to me some days I have to tell you. See if I don’t like you and say that I love God, well, the two don’t go together do they . Apostle John puts it this way in 1 John chapter 4, verse 20,
If anyone says, ‘I love God’ and yet hates his brother, he’s a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen and He has given us this command: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 John 4:20-21)
Pretty straight forward, a barrier that I erect between me and you is in effect, a barrier that I erect between me and God. Again, have a listen to Jesus’ own words in the Lords Prayer, He says:
Father, forgive us our sins as we forgive the sins of others. (Luke 11:4)
And then He goes on to explain:
For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you but if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father in heaven wi
ll not forgive your sins. (Matthew 6:14-15)
Therefore, if you are offering a gift at the altar and there you remember you brother has something against you, leave the gift there in front of the altar and first, go and be reconciled to your brother. Then come and offer your gift to God. (Matthew 5:22-23)
A barrier between you and me that one of us builds or that the other one builds or that we both build or that we leave there without dealing with, without tearing it down brick by brick no matter what it costs us, that barrier in the intimacy of our relationship is also a barrier between each one of us, as individuals, in our relationship with God.
Peter says to Jesus,
How many times should I forgive these people that wrong me, seven times? (Matthew 18:21)
I mean if you slap me in the face seven times and I forgive you seven times, that’s an awful lot and Jesus says, ‘No actually I expect you to forgive seventy-seven times’.
In other words; just keep forgiving and Jesus goes on after that to tell a parable of the wicked servant, this servant who owed his master a big debt, he couldn’t pay it, the master forgave him his debt but in turn, the servant refuses to forgive a much smaller debt that one of the other servants owes him. When the master finds out he’s not happy, this is what happens, in Matthew chapter 18 beginning at verse 32.
So the master calls the servant in and says, “You wicked servant! I cancelled all of that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” In anger his master turned him over to the jailors to be tortured until he could pay back all that he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart. (Matthew 18:32-35)
Pretty direct stuff, isn’t it? I know it’s not what we want to hear, what we want is to be able to have arguments and get even. Jesus is saying, ‘You can’t have that’. Intimacy with God demands that we deal with fractured relationships no matter what the cost and if we’re praying and our prayers are bouncing of the ceiling, we think, ‘Oh why is it that I can’t get close to God?’ Maybe we need to look around at how we’re treating other people. Maybe we need to deal with some broken relationships no matter what the cost because God loves each one of us and when I hate someone He loves, that is an offence to Him. When you hate someone, He loves, that is an offence to Him. The currency of intimacy with God is love and that currency is a double-sided c
oin, you can’t have one without the other – you just can’t, they’re part of the one coin and when we fail in this area, we put up a barrier between us and God. I know this is a tough lesson to learn. And a lesson we may fail a few times until we get it right. But if we want to draw close to God however, we have to deal with it. No ifs, no buts, no maybes.
The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:
The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
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There will be no on-line worship next week.
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