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Lets begin, on this first Sunday of the New Year by singing; The Power Of Your Love
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Scripture Reading John Ch 1:1-20
The Word Became Flesh
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome[a] it.
6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
15 (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”) 16 Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and[b] is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
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Time Of Prayer
What better song to sing or just listen to as we all journey together into a New Year:
Take My Life And Let It Be, by the Staff Songsters
Let us pray
Heavenly Father, thank You for making all things new! As another new year begins, help me live each day for You. May I continually have a new song in my heart to sing to You, no matter what comes my way. I trust in You because I know that Your mercies are new every morning, and nothing ahead of me will take You by surprise. At the start of each day, help us to recognize you above all else. Enlighten the eyes of our heart that we might see you, and notice how you're at work through our lives. Give us the wisdom to make the best choices, fill us with a desire to seek after you more than anything else in this world. Let your Spirit and power breathe in us, through us, again, fresh and new. Thank you that you are greater than anything we may face in our day. Thank you that your presence goes with us and that your joy is never dependent on our circumstances, but it is our true and lasting strength, no matter what we're up against. We ask that your peace lead us, that it would guard our hearts and minds in you. We ask for your grace to cover our lives this day. Father thank you for new beginnings. What an incredible day this is with a fresh year's potential stretched out before me. I want to be found faithful this year in each and every opportunity You bring to me. Thank You, Lord, for new beginnings. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Please join 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. Amen
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Let the Staff Songsters sing again:
With All My Heart
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Is it all over
Funny this time of year, packing away the Christmas tree and the decorations. It’s as though we pack Christmas away for another year. But what if we tucked Christmas away in our hearts for the rest of the coming year. When I was a kid, one of the highlights was putting up the Christmas tree. I remember one time we had a real tree and the excitement of picking the right one for us was wonderful. Funny the things you remember. We’d bring it home, set it up in a stand and decorate it. And there was this one decoration, a silver star that would always go on top. But what goes up must come down and soon all the decorations come down. We painstakingly taking each one-off the tree and wrapping them and packing them safely back into a box or suitcase that would go back in the closet for the next year. I didn’t like that; it was a boring job. It was kind of a let-down.
Well, Christmas, as a kid, is so much about anticipation and then opening presents and enjoying them and the family celebration. But there was something intensely pessimistic about packing Christmas away in a box for the next year and taking the dead, brown, old tree out the back and chopping it up. Still today, I find, a week or two after Christmas, I still get that feeling of a bit of a let-down. It’s all over for another year. I wonder how your Christmas was this year, I wonder how you’re feeling today. Christmas is over for another year. They slip by quickly. What’s it all about and was Christmas worth it?
It’s so unusual how seasonal we all are about Christmas. It’s as though you can only do Christmassy things in the weeks leading up to Christmas and then, magically on December 25th, at midnight, it all ends and the shutters come down. I mean you don’t hear anyone singing Christmas carols a week or so after, do you? You don’t see anyone putting up Christmas decorations this week, only pulling them down.
We are creatures of habit. Bit sad really. We kind of pack this Christmas thing away for another year, almost forgetting the whole message of Christmas. When really, what you and I need, in fact, we desperately need it. We need for this message of Christmas to shine a light in our hearts 365 days a year because Christmas is one of the most profound things that God ever did.
Just stop and think for a moment, how God interacted with His people before that first Christmas. You can read all about it, through the Old Testament. Because Israel was God’s chosen people, how did God interact with them? How did God speak with them? Through people called prophets. People like Samuel and Jeremiah and Isaiah and all those others. People whom God specifically called out and spoke to and their roles were to go and speak to God’s people on His behalf. Now they said some powerful things because they were speaking the Word of God, but by and large the people rejected them. Prophets were always calling God’s people back to Him. Why? Was it because He’s a control freak? No. Because He had and still has a mighty heart for an intimate relationship with you and me.
You can read about it in the Old Testament, in the old book of Leviticus, chapter 26. God says:
I will place my dwelling place in your midst and I won’t abhor you and I will walk among you and I will be your God and you will be my people. For I am the Lord, your God who bought you out of the land of Egypt to be slaves no more. I have broken the bars of your yoke and I will make you walk upright.
And yet, over and over again, the people rejected Him. Jesus explained that in a parable that you can read in Matthew, chapter 21 beginning at verse 33. Jesus said:
Listen to another parable. There was a land owner who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a wine press in it and built a watch tower. He then leased it to tenants and went to live in another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenant to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another and stoned yet another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first time and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them saying, ‘They’ll respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and get his inheritance.’ So they seized him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
It’s exactly what you and I have done. We’ve rejected God, rejected His Word. God, all the time, is calling us home. We can run but we can’t hide. I mean, we can hear that calling in our hearts. But before Jesus, He just sent His prophets to speak His Word, a lot of words. Almost 1,000 pages in the Old Testament of pretty small print. God is always talking; God is always calling us because in His great and mighty heart, He yearns for us. So, what’s this got to do with Christmas? Just this in John chapter 1, verse 14. John writes:
And the word became flesh and lived among us and we’ve seen His glory. The glory as of a Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.
See, we’ve not just heard a bunch of words but we’ve seen His glory. We’ve seen God and that’s what you and I get out of Christmas – a God that we can see, a real live person that we can understand and lay hold of. That’s what God did when that little baby Jesus was born in that stable on that night.
And what we want to do is, we want to pack that message away for another year into some old suitcase with those Christmas decorations. But, what if we didn’t do that? What if the reality of God, dwelling with us in our midst, was something we treasured in our hearts every day of the year 24/7? What if we truly stored within our hearts that God chose to become one of us and we kept that assurance with us all year round? Its not just a bunch of words. The word (Jesus) became flesh and dwelt among us so that we could see His glory. Words can be cheap. Flesh, on the other hand, well, God has skin again. Jesus’ flesh was nailed to a cross for you and me.
What if, instead of packing Christmas away in some dusty old suitcase, what if instead, we stored it away in our hearts? Alive and fresh, through every day and every trial and every disappointment and every bump or twist in the road. God knows, God understands because the word became flesh and dwelt among us. I reckon it’s meant to be Christmas all year round.
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No one will be able to touch your heart like God can
Let him move you to respond to Him as we start a New Year
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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