Let us being by singing an old favourite: King Of Kings Majesty
God of heaven living in me. Gentle Saviour Closest Friend.
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We continue with our 3rd Self Denial Appeal
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Scripture Reading John Ch15 beginning at verse 12
Jesus said, “This is My commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are My friends if you do as I command you. I don’t call you servants anymore because the servant doesn’t know what the Master is doing, but I have called you friends because I have made know to you everything that I have heard from My Father. You didn’t choose My but I chose you and I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for in My name.”
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As we go into a time of prayer, let us lift our hearts to His throne and sing;
All Hail The Lamb
Let us pray
You have blessed us, O God, with the gift of friendship, the bonding of persons in a circle of love.
We thank you for such a blessing: for friends who love us, who share our sorrows, who laugh with us in celebration, who bear our pain, who need us as we need them, who weep as we weep, who hold us when words fail, and who give us the freedom to be ourselves. Bless our friends with health, wholeness, life, and love.
Amen.
Spend some times brining our Corps family to God in Prayer. Bring our community, family and friends. Bring our country, its leaders and remember to bring yourself to His throne, then we will share in the Lord's Prayer together.
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. Amen.
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Announcements
Please remember in your prayers Stuart & Margaret, as they are both in hospital with Covid.
We have had a call from Andrew Southcott. He has spoken to Stuart and Margaret this morning. His Mum is about the same – extremely tired and lacking any energy.
The doctors have found that Stuart has a blood clot on his lungs and are giving Heparin injections to dissolve it. He is also on oxygen. The Nurses have wheeled Stuart to Margaret’s ward so that they can spend a little time together. Andrew is going to keep us updated and we will pass the information on to you all as I know that you will be very concerned about them. Neil also has Covid. He thinks he has a chest infection as well as Covid and is going to try to get antibiotics from the G.P. on Monday. Leanne is not fully recovered from her operation so things are a bit difficult for them.
Please continue to pray for them all. Prayer changes things.
We continue to pray for Elsie Camm who was taken into hospital the other week. She will be coming home early this week. For this we give thanks to God.
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Please see below an invitation to The Divisional Prayer & Worship Online
The Divisional Prayer and Worship online gathering takes place next week on Wednesday 24th February 2021 at 7.30pm. The joining details are below:
Join the Zoom Meeting by clicking on the link below.
Via the App the room number is 8097121209 and the password is Prayer for video calling.
By phone only -the dial in number is 0330 0885830 - this should be followed by the Meeting ID 8097121209 and then you will be asked for the password / passcode which is 378173.
The same details apply for the next meeting on Wednesday 31st March 2021
Thank you.
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I invite you to watch this powerful video from YourNeighbour.org.
It encourages us all to bring hope to our neighbourhood and our Community through our love and friendship to all. The church, which is you and me are needed now more than ever. Let us show that love and friendship to all who we meet.
I am thankful for David Grinnell in sharing this video with me. It encouraged me and I'm sure it will encourage you to bring hope, love and friendship into this fractured world.
We the Salvation Army are part of YourNeighbour.org.
“I am delighted The Salvation Army is a part of an even larger army, the Church of Jesus. Together we can ensure every person and family in our neighbourhoods are looked out for and provided for at this critical time.
The Salvation Army was born on the street and again this is where God calls his people to be!” — Commissioner Anthony Cotterill
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Just before we go to the word let us sing: Jesus Keep Me Near The Cross
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Jesus Our Friend
Jesus did some amazing things. One of the things He did was to call together a rag-tag band of 12 disciples to be His closest friends. In fact, His relationship with them, when you think about it, is quite surprising in many ways. But, if He hadn’t drawn together those friends, there’s every chance that you and I wouldn’t be here this morning sharing worship together.
Friendship is an awesome thing, isn’t it? Just stop and think about it for a moment. Friends make our world richer. They come in with their different perspectives and gifts and abilities and passions to connect with us. And somehow having friends alongside us and being a friend alongside them, well, I think that’s just a wonderful gift.
I know that sometimes we rub each other the wrong way, but that’s all part of life. Let’s put it this way. If you didn’t rub me the wrong way sometimes, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to learn and forgive. If I didn’t rub you the wrong way you wouldn’t learn to forgive and learn either. At times, we need to learn and get off our high horses and humble ourselves.
So, what is friendship? For one, it’s preparedness; to humble ourselves, to love one another in the same way that we love ourselves.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbour as yourself.
Jonathan, King Saul’s son, humbled himself to the point of death to be David’s friend. And another Son, the Son Of God humbled himself to death, death on a cross to show us his friendship, and love towards us.
Jesus was born a baby in Bethlehem. He grows up in Nazareth in humble surroundings as a carpenter’s son. Did He have friends as he was growing up? We don’t know, but I’m sure he did. But then, one day it’s time for Him to step out of His role as a carpenter’s son and begin his public ministry. It is then that he starts to call some Disciples to His side. Now, He had lots of disciples, and a disciple was someone who followed a Rabbi and Jesus the Rabbi had lots and lots of them. He was doing all these amazing miracles and he was speaking in ways that people didn’t expect.
Read with me Matthew Chapter 4:
Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching in their Synagogues and proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. So His fame spread throughout all Syria and they brought all the sick: those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains and demoniacs and epileptics and paralytics and He cured them. And great crowds followed Him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and from beyond the Jordon.
Out of those great crowds he chose just twelve Disciples.
Matthew Chapter 10 reads:
These are the names of the twelve Apostles: first Simon also known as Peter, then his brother Andrew; James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Phillip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus and Thaddeus; Simon the Zealot; and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed Him.
He did that because He knew that if His ministry was going to live on beyond His time here on earth, if the coming of the Son of God was going to have an impact thousands of years on, He was going to have to pass on His passion and His teaching to a handful of others – people who would pass it on to more and more across the world and down through the ages.
He knew that ultimately it was friendship that was going to change the world. Think about it. The Church exists today, God’s Word is being preached today, lives are being transformed today, people are meeting Jesus today, you and I are sharing worship today because friendship was and remains the cornerstone of God’s plan to reconcile people back to Him.
Friendship is a key component to proclaiming the gospel of Jesus. We often don’t think of that, do we? These Disciples lived with Jesus, travelled with Jesus, were admonished by Jesus. They watched how Jesus handled Himself, saw His miracles – all this happened because He drew them close to Himself. He was their Rabbi. He was their friend. And they lived with Him on the road for the best part of 3.5 years.
Listen to what Jesus said to His Disciples – about His friendship with them in John Chapter 15 beginning at verse 12:
He said, “This is My commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are My friends if you do as I command you. I don’t call you servants anymore because the servant doesn’t know what the Master is doing, but I have called you friends because I have made know to you everything that I have heard from My Father. You didn’t choose me but I chose you and I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for in My name.”
And because they were His friends, He was going to show them the greatest act of friendship, the greatest act of love ever, by literally laying down His life for them. He was opening up a relationship with His Father to them by telling them, revealing to them what God was all about in sending Jesus to live, to walk, to speak, to heal, to suffer, to die, to rise again.
God sent Jesus to be their friend. God sent Jesus to be our friend. It’s what the Holy Spirit revealed to them and to us about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that God’s family, the Church, was born on this earth and now lives on in the lives of those who believe.
As a direct result and consequence of His friendship, demonstrated in the greatest love that any man or woman can show, God is now calling us to go and bear fruit; to go and change the world; to go and be Jesus to a lost and hurting world in desperate need of knowing about and experiencing the amazing love, the amazing friendship of God through Jesus Christ.
Do you get it? Have you put your trust in Jesus yet? If the answer’s “Yes”, then you are His friend. Set free, forgiven by the price He paid for you and your sin upon that cross. Set free to live a new life through His victory over death with the door to the eternal love and friendship of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, flung open. The welcome mat is put out, the table is set, so that forever you can fellowship with your God.
Now if that isn’t a model of friendship for you and me to live out here on earth, then I don’t know what is. And it all started when God called you and He called me to be His friends. It all started because He first loved us. That’s what friendship is.
Friendship takes the first step and if you have never responded to that friendship, then let me encourage you to make a simple prayer right now to God and accept Jesus as your Saviour, to accept Jesus as your Lord, to accept Jesus as your Friend. And God will be your friend from this moment forward, for eternity.
Jesus said, “This is My commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are My friends if you do as I command you. I don’t call you servants anymore because the servant doesn’t know what the Master is doing, but I call you my friends because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from My Father. You didn’t choose me but I chose you and I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for in My name.”
Amen.
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We cannot close our time together without singing; What A Friend.
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.
And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them.
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