CHRISTIAN WOMEN’S FELLOWSHIP
Tuesday 1st March 2016 1:30 pm in the Coffee Shop
This year’s theme is “Our favourite Psalm”
Chris Hurst will be speaking on her favourite Psalm.
Afternoon tea provided.
June Parker will bring the Mission Spot.
All ladies welcome.
Paper daisies, Coonalpyn (Photo: Trevor Hampel)
Monday – Saturday:
Christian Bookshop open 9 am – 5 pm Mon – Fri plus Saturday morning.
Monday 29th February:
7:30 pm NO Hampel’s Home group this week.
Tuesday 1st March:
9 am Pastoral Care Group meeting
10 am Play Group
1:30 pm Christian Women’s Fellowship
6:30 pm Church Board meeting regarding the constitution
Wednesday 2nd – Friday 4th March
Coffee Shop 10 am – 2 pm
Wednesday 2nd March
7:30 pm Home Groups – various locations
Friday 4th March
10 am World Day of Prayer (in our church this year)
Saturday 5th March
7:29 am Men’s Bible Study
Sunday 6th March
10 am Worship Service: speaker Grant Spangenberg “Risk-taker, care-taker, under-taker?”
DATE CLAIMERS FOR YOUR CALENDAR
Thursday 10th March
Special Open Doors presentation 7:30 pm
Friday 18th and Saturday 19th March
CWCI Convention, Westminster School, Marion
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Harvesting in the 1950s (Photo credit: John Hampel – Trevor’s brother)
In today’s message from God’s Word, Pastor Grant spoke on the topic “The Lord of the Harvest.”The Lord of the Harvest.”
(You can listen to this sermon from next Tuesday via our church app. – it’s free.)
Joni Erickson Tada, in writing about her friend Bev, mentions how one year she and her husband and children drove to the family farm in North Dakota to help with the wheat harvest. When asked about what happens when a header is at work, Bev spoke of the threshing of the grain.
Joni goes on, “I’ve learned that the Biblical word ‘tribulation’ has its root meaning in the word ‘thresh’. At times it seems as if we’ve been through the threshing part of the header… perhaps even in the past week. It is something that is never easy, never pleasant. Paul, in Romans 5 tells us that tribulation brings about perseverance, and perseverance yields a crop of character (v.4).
Just like a farmer, God is after something precious in our soul, that priceless, blessed grain. It may be hard to picture results or yield when we are going through a time of testing. It’s hard to imagine how God might be pleased or how we might be benefitted. But splendid spiritual grain is to be found only in the lives of those with noble character – character gleaned through threshing. Somehow that makes the beating and flailing of the threshing worthwhile.”
Benediction:
God be our strength in His ongoing shaping, refining, and building of our character this week. Amen.
˄GS
All are welcome to come and worship our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ with us tomorrow morning.
Special focus: Harvest Thanksgiving
Details are as follows:
Time: 10am to approx 11:30am Sunday February 28th 2016.
Venue: Murray Bridge Church of Christ, 32 Seventh Street, Murray Bridge
Worship leader: Ted Smith
Communion: Rob Frazer
Speaker: Pastor Grant Spangenberg
Reading: Matthew 6: 25 – 33 “Lord of the Harvest”
Come along for a time of worship and fellowship.
Stay for a while after the service and enjoy a cuppa in the Coffee Shop.
Note: There will be a church luncheon provided by the Coffee Shop staff for those who have booked.
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I’ll never look at my hands the same!
Grandpa, some ninety plus years, sat feebly on the patio bench. He didn’t move, just sat with his head down staring at his hands.
When I sat down beside him he didn’t acknowledge my presence and the longer I sat, I wondered if he was OK.
Finally, not really wanting to disturb him but wanting to check on him at the same time, I asked him if he was okay. He raised his head and looked at me and smiled. “Yes, I’m fine. Thank you for asking,” he said in a clear strong voice.
“I didn’t mean to disturb you, Grandpa, but you were just sitting here staring at your hands and I wanted to make sure you were okay,” I explained to him.
“Have you ever looked at your hands,” he asked. “I mean really looked at your hands?”
I slowly opened my hands and stared down at them. I turned them over, palms up and then palms down. No, I guess I had never really looked at my hands as I tried to figure out the point he was making. Grandpa smiled and related this story:
“Stop and think for a moment about the hands you have, how they have served you well throughout your years. These hands, though wrinkled, shrivelled, and weak have been the tools I have used all my life to reach out and grab and embrace life.
They put food in my mouth and clothes on my back. As a child my mother taught me to fold them in prayer. They tied my shoes and pulled on my boots. They have been dirty, scraped and raw, swollen and bent. They were uneasy and clumsy when I tried to hold my newborn son.
Decorated with my wedding band they showed the world that I was married and loved someone special. They trembled and shook when I buried my parents and spouse and walked my daughter down the aisle. They have covered my face, combed my hair, and washed and cleansed the rest of my body.
They have been sticky and wet, bent and broken, dried and raw. And to this day, when not much of anything else of me works real well, these hands hold me up, lay me down, and again continue to fold in prayer.
These hands are the mark of where I’ve been and the ruggedness of my life. But more importantly it will be these hands that God will reach out and take when he leads me home. And with my hands He will lift me to His side and there I will use these hands to touch the face of Christ.”
I will never look at my hands the same again. But I remember God reached out and took my grandpa’s hands and led him home.
When my hands are hurt or sore I think of Grandpa. I know he has been stroked and caressed and held by the hands of God. I, too, want to touch the face of God and feel His hands upon my face.
When you receive this, say a prayer for the person who sent it to you and watch God’s answer to prayer work in your life. Let’s continue praying for one another. Passing this on to anyone you consider a friend will bless you both. Passing this on to one not considered a friend is something Christ would have done.
(Source unknown.)
Monday – Saturday:
Christian Bookshop open 9 am – 5 pm Mon – Fri plus Saturday morning.
Monday 22nd February:
7:30 pm Hampel’s Home group. This will be at the home of Ted and Pam Smith (until further notice).
Tuesday 23rd February:
9 am Pastoral Care Group meeting
Wednesday 24th – Friday 26th February
Coffee Shop 10 am – 2 pm
Thursday 25th February
12 noon Mobile Mission Maintenance meeting with Terry Baxter – all welcome.
Saturday 27th February
7:29 am Men’s Bible Study
Sunday 28th February
10 am Worship Service and Harvest Festival: speaker Grant Spangenberg “Lord of the Harvest”
12:30 pm Church lunch in the Coffee Shop.
DATE CLAIMERS FOR YOUR CALENDAR
Friday 4th March
10am World Day of Prayer (in our church this year)
Friday 18th and Saturday 19th March
CWCI Convention, Westminster School, Marion
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Prayer
In a prayer of invocation reflecting on the unchangeable nature of God and His truth an author states,
“God of power unconquerable and light unquenchable look with favour upon us your servants as we enter into your presence for worship. By the power of your Spirit at work within each of us, transform and make our lives and witness fruitful. This we ask in the name and Spirit of Christ our Lord. Amen.”
A demanding journey
“This month, (Feb 10th) we began one of the most rugged, costly, inspiring and demanding journeys of all – the journey through Lent to Easter.”
So writes Ann Siddall, a facilitator in Spirituality. She continues:
“It’s no coincidence that they theme of journey is deeply woven into the world’s major religions, great literature, art, plays and movies. It is present in the Christian story, from the great Exodus epic in the Old Testament, to Jesus’ journey from Nazareth to Jerusalem; and from the stories in the church’s history, to the life of our own faith community and our personal life experience.”
As we journey again through this holy season of Lent and Easter be mindful of questions such as, “How does Jesus’ way of journeying through situations speak to you? What draws you forward at present? What hold you back? What does Jesus’ journey have to say to the church’s way of being in the world?”
For our encouragement, we need to remember that Jesus did not reach a certain stage of the journey where he became free from struggle… The great thing is to simply keep journeying on with the faith – (not blind faith, questions are a great traveller’s aid); and hope (not false hope, but hope in what is possible in the God-with-us kind of life Jesus lived out).
Travel well.
Benediction:
Be filled with hope, joy, and peace by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
˄GS
All are welcome to come and worship our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ with us tomorrow morning.
Details are as follows:
Time: 10am to approx 11:30am Sunday February 21st 2016.
Venue: Murray Bridge Church of Christ, 32 Seventh Street, Murray Bridge
Worship leader: David Mills
Communion: John Lawson
Guest Speaker: Rob George, International President of OAC Ministries – see here for more details.
Reading: Acts 8: 26 – 39 “Philip – the evangelist”
Come along for a time of worship and fellowship.
Stay for a while after the service and enjoy a cuppa in the Coffee Shop.
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Sahara Desert (Photo: Trevor Hampel)
In the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples went to sleep when they should have stayed awake, and once they realized what they had done it produced despair.
The sense of having done something irreversible tends to make us despair. We say, “Well, it’s all over and ruined now; what’s the point in trying any more.”
If we think this kind of despair is an exception, we are mistaken. It is a very ordinary human experience. Whenever we realize we have not taken advantage of a magnificent opportunity, we are apt to sink into despair.
But Jesus comes and lovingly says to us, in essence, “Sleep on now. That opportunity is lost forever and you can’t change that. But get up, and let’s go on to the next thing.” In other words, let the past sleep, but let it sleep in the sweet embrace of Christ, and let us go on into the invincible future with Him.
There will be experiences like this in each of our lives. We will have times of despair caused by real events in our lives, and we will be unable to lift ourselves out of them. The disciples, in this instance, had done a downright unthinkable thing— they had gone to sleep instead of watching with Jesus.
But our Lord came to them taking the spiritual initiative against their despair and said, in effect, “Get up, and do the next thing.” If we are inspired by God, what is the next thing? It is to trust Him absolutely and to pray on the basis of His redemption.
Never let the sense of past failure defeat your next step.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
This coming Sunday 21st February we have the pleasure of welcoming our guest speaker, Rob George from OAC Ministries.
Rob is the International President of OAC Ministries and we are privileged to have him visit. On their OACM website he says:
“I love preaching in the open air to large, attentive crowds, as sometimes (but certainly not always) happens in various countries. Once, in Kenya, at a night film meeting with over 400 people there, you could have heard a pin drop! The “holy hush” as some have described it. Most recently this occurred for me in Lima, Peru with over 200 at an afternoon meeting.
Great visuals enliven any presentation. The fluorescent light and paints for night open airs is especially good, as is an intriguing magic trick that packs a powerful message. Also, knowing your audience, to adapt the presentation to their level of understanding.”
