A personal Prayer of Invocation :

Lord, you have promised to meet those who seek your face. Come now and reveal your presence to me as I make myself present to you. May my worship be acceptable in your sight. In the name of Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen.

Greetings:

How good it is that once more on another new Sunday we gather to offer our worship to God! May He be pleased with what we offer to Him. Leading us as we do so is our Worship Leader for the morning, Ted Smith. When it comes to that time in the service when we share in the Lord’s Supper together our leader will be Trevor Purdie.

To any who are present as visitors it is our pleasure to welcome you and we trust that you will feel right at home. After the service is over you are most welcome to stay for a cuppa and a chat in our coffee shop.

Guest speaker:

With May being a five Sunday month, Grant and Helen are away for the weekend and so today it is special to have Dave and Joy Althorpe back with us. Dave is now ministering at the Hawthorn church in Adelaide as well as serving part-time as one of the Ministry Care & Development (Minister to ministers) team. As the title for his sermon today, Dave has given “Alive to Love.”

Trinity Sunday:

Today, the first Sunday after Pentecost, is known as Trinity Sunday when the focus is on the three Persons of the Godhead – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity is central to the Christian faith.

To help us try and understand how the three can be co-eternal and coequal together we have the symbol of an equilateral triangle the sides and angles of which are equal and form one figure, inside a circle which signifies divine unity and divine eternity.

As the three Persons are coequal in honour and power, so they are co-eternal, not one before the other. Any such illustration of the Trinity, verbal or visual, is at best an approximation of the truth of God’s being. We cannot grasp the nature of God with our minds. But we can accept in faith what God has revealed of himself in his Word and together with the apostle Paul exclaim in our worship of the Triune God, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements and his paths beyond tracing out!” (Romans 11:33).

Benediction :

May the power, peace, and presence of Jesus Christ uphold, sustain, direct and keep you in this week ahead. Amen.

˄GS

In the Australian Psalm “Universal Praise” based on Psalm 67 we read,

May love divine be with us all and smile upon our common life,
till nations rise up in belief and own God’s power to save and heal.
Let all the nations praise you, God, let every nation praise you!
The gifts of land and sea increase; our God has blessed us to the full.
With generous love you heal us all; we stand in awe before such grace.

How good it is that once again we can meet at the start of another new week to worship our heavenly Father! May He be pleased with our worship as we present it to Him. Leading us as we do this will be Trevor Hampel, and then when it’s time for us to ‘break bread’ together our leader will be Steve Bown.

To anyone who may be present as a visitor it is our pleasure to have you joining with us. We would also like to invite you to stay after the service for a time of fellowship in our coffee shop.

When it comes time for the sermon this morning, Pastor Grant will bring the third message in his series on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, “Now About Spiritual Gifts – The Most Excellent Way.”

James considers it natural that a person with faith also has works. It is not a heavy and moralistic Christian duty; it is the Christian possibility and lifestyle – response comes with true faith.

On this theme, the Bible is clear and direct – God loves and cares for the poor. Jesus said to be perfect. In other words, to be imitators of the perfect God, to do as God does. If we are to love God, we are to love and care for the poor and hungry, too. “You will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16a) he said, and he meant that we are known by our ethical behaviour as illustrated by life experience.
(From Visions of a World Hungry by T. Pettepiece)

˄GS

FALLING IN LOVE

“We love because he first loved us.” 1 John 4:19

I love books. I buy far too many and read far too few. I once heard of another woman who loved books. One day she was disappointed to realise that one of the volumes she brought home was not at all what she had hoped for. It was dry, lacked relevance and had symbolism that she could not embrace. Very poorly written and a waste of money, she thought. She put it on one of her shelves and forgot about it.

Years later on a rare night away from her books, she found herself at a party and engaged in a fascinating discussion with a young man. It was pretty much love at first word. They talked for hours and found they had much in common; he was a writer and she a librarian. A match for sure! It was hard for them to part ways at the end of the night and she floated home, not feeling the pavement beneath her feet.

Too excited to sleep, she decided to peruse her vast personal library to see if she could find any books written by her newfound friend. And indeed she did! It was covered in dust. That’s right — it was the poorly written find from years before. She sat down with a cup of tea and began to read. How wrong she had been! It was the most meaningful, insightful and eloquent novel ever written . . .

What happened?  Had the book been magically transformed?  No? She had fallen in love with the author. Many of us have a book on our bookcase covered in dust. A love letter, written to us personally and ignorantly ignored. We don’t open it often. Why? Because we haven’t fallen in love with the Author. And it grieves Him.

It’s a conundrum to be sure. What comes first, a love for the Word or a love for Him? I think the answer is found in 1 John 4:19. We need to ‘meet’ the author before we can truly embrace his writing. We need to fall in love with the One who loved us first. Ask Jesus to be your Saviour and Lord of your life. Begin an amazing relationship that will last an eternity . . . live your own love story that includes an everlasting happily ever after. The Book will become completely engaging once you fall in love with the Author.

By Lori Dixon, Writer/Speaker/Servant of Christ (Published in “Christian Women” November 2013)

Kairos Prison Ministry

The next Kairos course will be the 18^th conducted in Mobilong Gaol.   The team has been meeting and working together over the months of August and September, and is almost ready to march through the gates of the prison, on the 15^th of October.    They will go back in each day, and finish on the 18^th.

Once again the families from the Church of Christ will be billeting the team, and our church will become the base for the duration of the course.     Things are different this time – we have been denied the privilege of taking home-made meals into prison, which changes our logistics considerably.  As a security measure, we can’t rely on many things we did before, but as servants of Christ, we do what we can within the rules set before us.

We are still able to take biscuits in, but have had those copious quantities of support letters reduced to just 6 per ‘guest’.  There is, as always, a request for prayer support.  Use this link (sorry – the link is no longer relevant because the event is now over, so the link has been removed) to register your half hour slot within the duration of the course.

This is a great time for our guests, many of whom see Jesus in action for the first time.  Many seeds are sown, and some change their lives totally.  It is also a real experience for the team, to be on mission working in such an intense environment, where they rely on God so often, and where God always shows His awesome presence.

The team is so grateful for the continued support from the Murray Bridge Church of Christ.

Steve Bown

Murray Bridge Church of Christ Representative for Kairos.

HIS  LOVE

Recently, our pianist played the music for a familiar, much loved and challenging song. As I remembered the words, they reminded me of the depth of God’s great love for all of us. These are the words, written by N.J. Clayton, in the early 1940s:

 ‘It was His love for me that nailed Him to the tree

     to die in agony for all my sin.

  For my own guilt and blame, the great Redeemer came,

      willing to bear the shame of all my sin.

  To Calvary’s hill one day the Lord was led away,

       none else the price could pay for all my sin.

  He, on the Cross was slain, yielding His life in pain;

      He felt the bitter stain of all my sin.

  Was ever love so strong?  Was ever crime so wrong

      when Jesus suffered long, for all my sin?

  He saw my greatest need, became my Friend indeed,

     through Him I have been freed of all my sin.

  O, what a Saviour is mine! In Him God’s mercies combine;

      His love can never decline; and He loves me!’

In John 3:16 we read these words: ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His One and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.’

Then in 1 John 3:16, the Apostle continues to explain what love really is. ‘This is how we know what loves is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.’

Again in 4:10 ‘This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us  and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.’ In verse 19 he writes: ‘We love because He first loved us.’

As we come to worship our loving and faithful God this morning, may the realisation of that Amazing Love, enable us to pause in wonder at the privilege we have, as His children, to show that love to others as we live and work during this coming week.

˄OC

The Dead Letter Office

We all delight in receiving letters in the mail. Sure, in this era, letter writing is fast becoming a lost art. We whip off quick emails or text messages to all and sundry with no thought about the style, spelling or grammar. It’s symptomatic of the instant society in which we live. Am I the only person left who checks emails and Facebook status updates for spelling, punctuation and grammar?

Most post offices in the world have a Dead Letter Office, the place where undeliverable mail accumulates. In some places these are called ‘nixies’, meaning that the address is indecipherable, incomplete, totally wrong or the person no longer resides there. One source I consulted estimates that 35% of all mail ends up in the rubbish bin.

My wife and I enjoy the television series As time goes by (BBC TV). The two main characters had a relationship before the Korean War. The war separates them and their letters end up in the war dead letter office. Many years later they meet by chance, falling in love all over again and then marrying. There is much misunderstanding in their relationship and this is rich material for a great deal of humour.

In our courting days (goodness – there’s an old fashioned term) I would write to my girlfriend every second or third day, despite living only about 30km apart. Our letters didn’t end up in a dead letter office, and we were married early the next year. We’re still in love – with each other fortunately. (Note to self: I haven’t written to her in a while.)

We’re never too old to receive a letter from someone who loves us, so would you like to read one? How about opening your Bible, God’s love-letter just for you? Be reminded of the fact that he loved you so much that he gave his son Jesus for you.

Don’t let his love-letter languish unread in the Dead Letter Office.

˄TH