Welcome:  –

Call to Worship 

(Psalm 98) 

¹ Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvellous things;
his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him.
² The Lord has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations.
³ He has remembered his love and his faithfulness to Israel;
all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

⁴ Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music;
⁵ make music to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing,
⁶ with trumpets and the blast of the ram’s horn— shout for joy before the Lord, the King.

⁷ Let the sea resound, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.
⁸ Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy;
⁹ let them sing before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity.

Prayer of Praise    

Father God, in all things, we give thanks to you for the abundant blessings you bestow upon us.  From the smallest moments of grace to the biggest triumphs, we are grateful for all that you provide and all that you are.  May this day and every day be filled with a spirit of gratitude and praise. Amen

You are invited to listen to, or join in singing 2 songs:

1^st Song: SiS 206 – Majesty, worship His Majesty

2^nd Song: I have decided to follow Jesus

Prayer of Confession 

Our Lord Jesus said:  “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. You are truly my friends if you do what I command you.”

Let us make our confession.

Most holy God, most of the time we see ourselves as nice people,

who are trying to do the loving thing in a difficult world.

We try not to lie, cheat, malign, abuse or injure others.

We try to serve you through the church and within the community.

We pray for peace and justice, and we attempt to forgive those who sin against us.

By the standards of love in the wider community we have not done so badly.

Yet deep within we know how far we fall short of the love-standard set by Jesus,

and we even fall beneath the level that our own ideals have set us.

We feel compromised and mislead by this hustling world with its glitter.

We become frustrated and undermined by a negativity within ourselves

which diverts us and leads us into withholding love.

Loving God, we certainly need your pardoning grace and humbly we ask for it.

But also we need much more.

We seek the grace of self honesty, and a sharper awareness of our own hearts.

We need your illuminating Light, helping us to see through the humbug of society.

We need to allow ourselves to become saturated with your love.

We ask for the spur of your Spirit to make us more eager for the art of true loving,

and more determined to practice what we preach. Grant us these graces we pray, for without you we are as nothing. Hear our prayer, through Christ our Saviour.

Amen!

Assurance of Forgiveness   

Sisters and brothers in the family of God, listen well for it is written of old:

   “You are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

What was thus written was in the fullness of time made gloriously visible and accessible in Jesus of Nazareth. In God name, please welcome into your minds this living truth, and accept into your hearts the saving grace of Christ Jesus.

Our sins are forgiven.

Thanks be to God.

Prayer of illumination 

Almighty God, in you ae hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.  Open our eyes that we may see the wonders of your words, and give us grace that we may clearly understand and freely choose the way of your wisdom, through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Bible Readings

Acts 10:44-48 (NIV)

⁴⁴ While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. ⁴⁵ The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on Gentiles. ⁴⁶ For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God.

Then Peter said, ⁴⁷ “Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” ⁴⁸ So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked Peter to stay with them for a few days.

This is the Word of God

Praise to you Almighty God.

John 15:9-17 (NIV)

⁹ “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. ¹⁰ If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. ¹¹ I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. ¹² My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command. ¹⁵ I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. ¹⁷ This is my command: Love each other.

This is the Gospel of our Lord

Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ.

You are invited to listen to, or join in singing the Hymn: ‘Amazing grace‘.

Sermon – ‘Chosen by God’

Pray: Open our eyes, O God, to the beauty of your word. May our lips and our lives unites to serve you, Amen

Has anyone chosen you to do something that you think it would benefit you? But it turns out, that it was not the way you expected. I have been in the same situation. You just have to deal with it in your own space and overcome it, try to move on.

The God-who-is has always been searching for us. By his choice, his relationship with us is presence, as a call, as a guide.  He is not satisfied with speaking to us, or showing things to us, or asking things of us.  He does much more.

He is Life, and he knows his creature can do nothing without him, he knows his child would die of hunger without bread.

But our bread is God himself in his begotten Son Jesus Christ, and God gives himself to us as food.  Only eternal life can feed one who is destined for eternal life.(John 6:35 -…. “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty).

The bread of earth can nourish us only on this finite earth, it can sustain us only as far as the frontier of the Invisible.  If we want to penetrate this frontier, the bread from our fields is not sufficient, if we want to march along the roads of the Invisible, we must feed on bread from heaven.

This bread from heaven is God himself.  He becomes food to us walking in the Invisible.

Let us, then, take care not to quench the Spirit.  All evil actions extinguish this light: Slander, offences and the like.  The nature of fire is such that everything foreign to it destroys it, and everything akin to it gives it further strength.

This is the way in which the spirit of grace manifests itself in Christians.

Through repentance and faith it descends into the soul of each man in the sacrament of baptism, or else is restored to him in the sacrament of repentance.

The fire of zeal is its essence.  But it can take different directions according to the individual.  The Spirit of grace leads one man to concentrate entirely on his own sanctification by severe ascetic feats, another it guides pre-eminently to works of charity, another it inspires to devote his life to another, it directs to spread the Gospel by preaching: as for example Apollos, who, burning in spirit, spoke and taught about our Lord.

Question to ponder on:

IN WHAT WAYS DO YOU WORK AT REMAINING IN JESUS?

We should try to be so closely united to Our Lord Jesus Christ, that we reproduce his life in our own, that our thoughts and words and actions should proclaim his teaching, so that he reigns in us, lives in us.  He so often enters within us in Holy Communion.  May his Kingdom reign in us.

If he sends us happiness let us accept it gratefully.  Like the Good Shepherd (John 10:11: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

Psalm 23:1: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”)…. he sets us in a rich pasture to strengthen us to follow him later into barren lands.  If he sends us crosses, let us embrace them and say ‘Bona Crux,” for this is the greatest grace of all.  It means walking through life hand in hand with our Lord, helping him to carry his Cross, like Simon of Cyrene. 

It is our Beloved, asking us to prove how much we love him.  Whether in mental suffering or bodily pain “let us rejoice and tremble with joy”.  Our Lord calls us and asks us to tell him of our love and repeat it over and over again all through our sufferings.

Every Cross, great or small, even small annoyances, are the voice of the Beloved.  He is asking for a declaration of love from us to last whilst the suffering lasts.

When one thinks of this one would like the suffering to last forever.  It will last as long as Our Lord wishes.  However sweet the suffering may become to us, we only desire it at such times as Our Lord sends it.

“Your will be done, may Brother Jesus, and not mine.  We long to forget ourselves, we ask nothing, only your glory.”

God presents himself to us little by little.  The whole story of salvation is the story of the God who comes. It is always he who comes, even if he has not yet come in his fullness.  But there is indeed one unique moment in his coming, the others were only preparations and announcement.

            The hour of his coming is the Incarnation.

            The Incarnation brings the world his presence. 

It is a presence so complete that it overshadows every presence before it.

God is made human in Christ (Roman 6:23 – for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord).  God makes himself present to us with such a special presence, such an obvious presence, as to overthrow all the complicated calculations made about him in the past.

“The invisible, intangible God has made himself visible and tangible in Christ.”

If Jesus is truly God, everything is clear, If I cannot believe this, everything darkens again. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.

Let us pray.  O God, save us in the time of trial, and deliver us from Evil. Put us in the place that we need to be to trust thee and to obey thee, and discipline with committed in all that we do to you.  Let us not go in our own foolishness but follow in your grace.  In the name of your one and only righteous son Jesus Christ, Amen.

You are invited to listen to, or join in singing the Hymn TiS650 – Brother, sister, let me serve you…

Offering

Offering Prayer

‘For the life that you have given’  TiS774 

[This hymn is being sung to the tune Austria – there is no introduction.]

[This YouTube clip is for another hymn so disregard the words – only the one verse is needed.]

For the life that you have given,

For the love in Christ made known,

With these fruits of time and labour,

With these gifts that are your own:

Here we offer, Lord, our praises;

Heart and mind and strength we bring;

Give us grace to love and serve you,

Living what we pray and sing.

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Prayers for Others

(Responsive)

God our Saviour, may these prayers which we offer you be also a renewing of our contract to love one another even as Jesus has loved us.

We pray for the end of bitterness and violence in its many forms. Bless all peacemakers: those who negotiate between nations, or arbitrate within commerce and industry, adjudicate in family courts, defuse tensions in school grounds, and counsel conflicting parties within church denominations.

We pray for the effective, compassionate care of all who are diseased, maimed, or severely handicapped, including ailing members of this congregation. Bless all who work in clinics and hospitals: surgeons, physiotherapists, nurses, physicians, oncologists, psychiatrists, dieticians, social workers, dentists, pharmacists and the staff of hospices for the dying.

 We pray for the feeding of the hungry, the clothing of the destitute, the housing of the homeless, the reformation of prisoners, and the rehabilitation of those who have been addicted to drugs. Bless every agency, church or government, which is dedicated to the care of our disadvantaged sisters and brothers

We pray for the provision of systems of justice that that are truly fair. Whether they are within our homeland, in other nations, or international courts of justice, may those who are brought to court find equality before the law. Bless with insight and integrity each barrister and judge, work in the mind and soul of every juror, that the innocent may be exonerated and the hearts of those sentenced turned towards repentance and regeneration.

We pray for the church, for all denominations large or small, that we may love one another in practice as well as in prayer.  Bless all joint initiatives in worship, fellowship and service to the community.

May the world know that there is a grace at work in us which is not our doing but a gift from a Lover who outstrips all other. Through Christ Jesus our humble Lord.

            Amen!

The Lord’s Prayer

Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come,

your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.

Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil,

For the Kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours,

Now and forever.  Amen.

Sending forth

Lord Jesus, fill us with grace and lead each of us to a holy life.  We believe your Spirit fills us and empowers us to respond to your presence.  May your Spirit kindle within us the fire of your love.

You are invited to listen to, or join in singing the Hymn TiS 154 – Great is your faithfulness, O God my Father…

Songwriters: Thomas Chisholm / William Runyan / Joey Stamper / Chad Matthew Graham

Benediction 

 May the peace of God fill our heart, mind, and activity all this day long.

  And may the blessing of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, rest upon you and remain with you always.  Amen.

Benediction Song

(Unfortunately we don’t have a URL for this song)

Now to Him who loved us, gave us

every pledge that love could give,

freely shed His blood to save us

gave His life that we might live,

Be the kingdom

And dominion

And the glory evermore.

                                                                                                Samuel Miller Waring 192 – 1827