Thursday Evenings at All Hallows (Thursday, February 23, 2023)
Welcome to Thursday Evenings at All Hallows Murray.
Opening Hymn:Open this link in a new tab to hear Chris Tomlin and Louie Giglio’s “Holy Is the Lord.” [W&S #3028]
We stand and lift up our hands
For the joy of the Lord is our strength
We bow down and worship Him now
How great, how awesome is He
And together we sing
Everyone sing
Holy is the Lord God Almighty
The earth is filled with His glory
Holy is the Lord God Almighty
The earth is filled with His glory
The earth is filled with His glory
We stand and lift up our hands
For the joy of the Lord is our strength
We bow down and worship Him now
How great, how awesome is He
Holy is the Lord God Almighty
The earth is filled with His glory
Holy is the Lord God Almighty
The earth is filled with His glory
The earth is filled with His glory
It's rising up all around
It's the anthem of the Lord's renown
It's rising up all around
It's the anthem of the Lord's renown
It's rising up all around
It's the anthem of the Lord's renown
It's rising up all around
It's the anthem of the Lord's renown
And together we sing
Everyone sing
Holy is the Lord God Almighty
The earth is filled with His glory
Holy is the Lord God Almighty
The earth is filled with His glory
The earth is filled with His glory
Holy, holy is the Lord Almighty, holy, holy
Holy, holy is the Lord Almighty, holy, holy
Holy, holy is the Lord Almighty, holy, holy
Holy, holy is the Lord Almighty, holy, holy
Greeting:
Sing to the Lord, and praise him!
Proclaim every day the good news that he has saved us.
Proclaim his glory to the nations,
his mighty deeds to all peoples.
Hymn of Preparation
Open this link in a new tab to hear Rusty Edwards and Linda Cable Shute’s “By Grace We Have Been Saved.” [WnS #3110]
1 By grace we have been saved
Through faith and not by keeping law
God's saints believed
By what they heard
And not by what they saw
And not by what they saw
2 For all have sinned and fallen short
God's plan not one obeyed
Christ has for all fulfilled the law
Believe confess be saved
Believe confess be saved
3 God gave to earth a perfect love
Through Jesus on the cross
While we were foes
Christ died for us
We gained by God's own loss
We gained by God's own loss
4 We know the wage of sin is death
Thank God we shall revive
For just as Jesus rose again
We too are made alive
We too are made alive
5 Set free we now have peace with God
Salvation is secured
How beautiful the feet of those
Who share this gospel word
Who share this gospel word
Let us bow our heads in prayer.
Silence
Loving God, stir, we pray, in every heart a longing for you:
grant us discernment that we may recognize your guiding hand;
grant us courage that we may step out and follow;
grant us deep trust in you, our God and Father,
the one who holds and promises never to abandon us.
We make this prayer in the name of your Son Jesus Christ,
our redeemer, Lord and friend. Amen.
The Rev. Heather Morris, alt.
Scripture Reading:
A reading from the New Testament (Galatians 2:11-21)
But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong. When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile believers, who were not circumcised. But afterward, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision. As a result, other Jewish believers followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.
When I saw that they were not following the truth of the gospel message, I said to Peter in front of all the others, “Since you, a Jew by birth, have discarded the Jewish laws and are living like a Gentile, why are you now trying to make these Gentiles follow the Jewish traditions?
“You and I are Jews by birth, not ‘sinners’ like the Gentiles. Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.”
But suppose we seek to be made right with God through faith in Christ and then we are found guilty because we have abandoned the law. Would that mean Christ has led us into sin? Absolutely not! Rather, I am a sinner if I rebuild the old system of law I already tore down. For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law—I stopped trying to meet all its requirements—so that I might live for God. My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.
Silence
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
One of the earliest divisions in what would become known as Christianity was over whether Gentiles converts to the new faith would have to undergo circumcision and to comply with the ceremonies and rites, dietary regulations, dress code, and civil precepts of the Law that God had given through Moses to the people of Israel. In effect, they would have to become Jews. Those who took this position were essentially saying that God’s grace was not enough, and salvation was limited to practicing Jews. In this evening’s reading the apostle Paul takes issue with this view. In opposition to what the Judaizers taught, Paul maintained:
“…we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.”
For those who may be unfamiliar with the term “Judaizers,” it refers to the early Jewish Christians who insisted upon the conversion of Gentiles to Judaism as a precondition for them to become a disciple of Jesus Christ.
While the question of whether Gentile converts should first become Jews was settled at the Council of Jerusalem, a council about which you can read in Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, the view that people must first change their way of life, behave differently from how they have been behaving before they can become a follower of Jesus did not go away. It is very much alive today in a variety of forms.
What we learn from Scripture is that God meets us where we are. He does not require us to undergo a change first. However, God does not leave us where we are. God’s grace, the power of the Holy Spirit, works in us, transforming us in our character, our attitudes, our way of thinking, and our actions into the likeness of Jesus, restoring God’s own marred image in us.
John Wesley called this process “Christian perfection.” God’s grace working in us, perfects us in the sense of making us free from faults, replacing undesirable character traits, attitudes and ways of thinking, and actions with more desirable ones. While we may never achieve a state of being complete and correct in every way, we will grow in our love of God, our love of our neighbors, our love of our fellow Christians, our pursuit of holiness, and our practice of godliness. We will take on the qualities of God’s hesed, God’s loving kindness—compassion, forgiveness, generosity, kindness, mercy, patience, faithfulness, and grace. A new person will emerge from the old.
While the Holy Spirit may work in our lives in the way that the Holy Spirit appears to be working in the lives of the young people at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky, and on other university campuses, the Holy Spirit also may work in our lives in less noticeable ways. God works through ordinary events as well as extraordinary ones. God works through what are called the means of grace, through public services of worship, through the reading and the study of the Bible and meditation upon its words, through fasting and abstinence, through the Lord’s Supper, or Holy Communion, through individual, family, and group prayer, and through spiritual conversations. Engaging in the means of grace will not make us right with God any more than obeying the Law, the Mosaic Code, as it is also called, It will, however, invigorate, strengthen, and confirm our faith and help us to grow to be more like Jesus and to live our lives according to his teaching and example.
Among the distinctives of Wesleyan Methodists is what are traditionally called the “Four Alls.” They include the belief that “there is no limit to what the grace of God can do in us.” This belief is grounded in the words of Jesus, as well as the Angel Gabriel. When Gabriel spoke with Mary, Jesus’ mother-to-be, telling her God had chosen her to bear the Messiah, Gabrel spoke these words, “… there is nothing that God cannot do” (Luke 1:37, GNT). Jesus himself said the same thing to his disciples. “What is humanly impossible is possible for God (Luke 18:27 GNT).”
This leads us back to what may be the stirring of revival at Asbury University and elsewhere. Revival, a time when an interest in the Christian faith starts again stronger than before, accompanied by a hunger for God, and a yearning for a deeper relationship with God, is not something that we ourselves are able to cause. It is a work of the Holy Spirit. The best we can do is to encourage it. Whether anything comes from it depends upon the grace of God. Because revival is a work of the Holy Spirit, it is a good idea to keep an open mind and not be too quick to dismiss what is happening. The passage of time will reveal what lasting effects this development will have upon the lives of the young people involved.
While it may be possible to find a naturalistic explanation for what is happening, such an explanation does not rule out that God’s hand is behind this development. I believe that we would be wise to not make too greater distinction between natural processes and supernatural ones. God works through both. I suspect that God does not make a distinction between the two.
I also do not think that we should dismiss as the Holy Spirit’s work what is happening because God is to our way of thinking not acting how we think that God should act. If we are honest with ourselves, there is far more what we do not know than there is what we do know. We are often too quick to put God in the dock, as C.S. Lewis put it, and pass judgment on God.
The Judaizers of Paul’s time struggled with the revelation that we are made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ because it did not fit with the way that they had come to think God should act. They were not comfortable with the thought that everyone is made for relationship with God and none one was outside of God’s love and grace. However, when we read the Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, we discover that through a series of events God made it clear to the early Jewish Christians that the One whom they believed is their God is the God of all people and the Jesus whom they believed is their Savior is the Savior of all people. God takes one of the worst Jewish persecutors of Jewish Christians, turns him into a believer, and makes him an apostle to the Gentiles, to non-Jews.
I believe that we can safely conclude from the testimony of the Holy Scriptures that everyone needs Jesus. All people can come to know Jesus. Everyone can live their lives rooted in a deep relationship with Jesus. All people can grow as followers of Jesus. We are saved by grace by faith in Jesus. But coming to a living faith in Jesus is just the beginning. The Holy Spirit awakens and arouses faith I us in order to transform us and in transforming us to transform the world.
Silence
Hymn of Response:
Open this link in a new tab to hear Ben Fielding and Reuben Morgan’s “Mighty to Save.”
Well, everyone needs compassion
A love that's never failing
Let mercy fall on me
Well, everyone needs forgiveness
The kindness of a Savior
The Hope of nations
Savior, He can move the mountains
For my God is mighty to save
He is mighty to save
Forever, author of Salvation
He rose and conquered the grave
Jesus conquered the grave
So take me as You find me
All my fears and failures
And fill my life again
I give my life to follow
Everything I believe in
And now I surrender (I surrender)
Savior, He can move the mountains
My God is mighty to save
He is mighty to save
Forever, author of Salvation
He rose and conquered the grave
Jesus conquered the grave
Savior, He can move the mountains
My God is mighty to save
He is mighty to save
Forever, author of Salvation
He rose and conquered the grave
Jesus conquered the grave
Shine Your light and let the whole world see
We're singing for the glory of the risen King, Jesus
Shine Your light and let the whole world see
We're singing for the glory of the risen King
Savior, He can move the mountains
My God is mighty to save
He is mighty to save
Forever, author of Salvation
He rose and conquered the grave
Jesus conquered the grave
Savior, He can move the mountains
My God is mighty to save
He is mighty to save
Forever, author of Salvation
He rose and conquered the grave
Jesus conquered the grave
Shine Your light and let the whole world see
We're singing for the glory of the risen King, Jesus
Shine Your light and let the whole world see
We're singing for the glory of the risen King, Jesus
Shine Your light and let the whole world see
We're singing for the glory of the risen King, Jesus
Shine Your light and let the whole world see
We're singing for the glory of the risen King
Shine Your light and let the whole world see
We're singing for the glory of the risen King, Jesus
Shine Your light and let the whole world see
We're singing for the glory of the risen King
Concerns and Prayers
The following is prayed, during which any person may offer a brief prayer of intercession or petition.
After each prayer, the leader may conclude: Loving God and all may respond: Hear our prayer.
Pray for the Church throughout the world – that the Spirit will revive and refresh the Church in every part…
Pray for our local church and the churches in our area – that we may be waiting attentively for the ways God is speaking through the Spirit…
Pray for those who come to our church, and for those on the fringes - that they may have an assurance of God’s love and know that they are saved through Christ…
Pray for those who are in leadership in the Church - that they may be strengthened and upheld in their ministries…
Pray for those whom we know who do not know of God’s love – for friends or family, for neighbors or colleagues, that God’s Spirit may fill their hearts…
Pray for the Kingdom of God - that it may break through in us and among us, that the earth may be filled with the glory of God…
Pray for ourselves - that God’s Spirit will speak in our hearts, that we may be bold to proclaim the gospel in our words and actions…
Other biddings may be added here to reflect local circumstances.
We make our prayers in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, as we join in the words that he himself has taught us:
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.
Closing Hymn:
Open this link in a new tab to hear Trevor Hodge’s musical setting of Bessy Porter Ann Head’s “O Breath of Life, Come Sweeping through Us.” [WAS #3146]*
1 O Breath of life, come sweeping through us,
revive your church with life and power.
O Breath of life, come, cleanse, renew us,
and fit your church to meet this hour.
O Breath of love, come breathe within,
renewing thought and will and heart.
Come, love of Christ, afresh to win;
revive your church in every part.
2 O Wind of God, come bend us, break us,
till humbly we confess our need.
Then in your tenderness remake us;
revive, restore, for this we plead.
O Breath of love, come breathe within,
renewing thought and will and heart.
Come, love of Christ, afresh to win;
revive your church in every part.
Revive us, Lord! Is zeal abating
while harvest fields are vast and white?
Revive us, Lord, the world is waiting,
equip your church to spread the light.
O Breath of love, come breathe within,
renewing thought and will and heart.
Come, love of Christ, afresh to win;
revive your church in every part.
O Breath of love, come breathe within,
renewing thought and will and heart.
Come, love of Christ, afresh to win;
revive your church in every part.
Coda:
O Breath of life, come sweeping through us,
revive your church with life and power.
*This is a different musical setting from Carlton R. Young's setting in Worship and Song.
Benediction:
May the Lord bless us and keep us,
May the Lord make his face to shine on us and be gracious to us,
May the Lord look on us with kindness and give us peace. Amen.
Proclaim every day the good news that he has saved us.
Proclaim his glory to the nations,
his mighty deeds to all peoples.
Hymn of Preparation
Open this link in a new tab to hear Rusty Edwards and Linda Cable Shute’s “By Grace We Have Been Saved.” [WnS #3110]
1 By grace we have been saved
Through faith and not by keeping law
God's saints believed
By what they heard
And not by what they saw
And not by what they saw
2 For all have sinned and fallen short
God's plan not one obeyed
Christ has for all fulfilled the law
Believe confess be saved
Believe confess be saved
3 God gave to earth a perfect love
Through Jesus on the cross
While we were foes
Christ died for us
We gained by God's own loss
We gained by God's own loss
4 We know the wage of sin is death
Thank God we shall revive
For just as Jesus rose again
We too are made alive
We too are made alive
5 Set free we now have peace with God
Salvation is secured
How beautiful the feet of those
Who share this gospel word
Who share this gospel word
Let us bow our heads in prayer.
Silence
Loving God, stir, we pray, in every heart a longing for you:
grant us discernment that we may recognize your guiding hand;
grant us courage that we may step out and follow;
grant us deep trust in you, our God and Father,
the one who holds and promises never to abandon us.
We make this prayer in the name of your Son Jesus Christ,
our redeemer, Lord and friend. Amen.
The Rev. Heather Morris, alt.
Scripture Reading:
A reading from the New Testament (Galatians 2:11-21)
But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong. When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile believers, who were not circumcised. But afterward, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision. As a result, other Jewish believers followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.
When I saw that they were not following the truth of the gospel message, I said to Peter in front of all the others, “Since you, a Jew by birth, have discarded the Jewish laws and are living like a Gentile, why are you now trying to make these Gentiles follow the Jewish traditions?
“You and I are Jews by birth, not ‘sinners’ like the Gentiles. Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.”
But suppose we seek to be made right with God through faith in Christ and then we are found guilty because we have abandoned the law. Would that mean Christ has led us into sin? Absolutely not! Rather, I am a sinner if I rebuild the old system of law I already tore down. For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law—I stopped trying to meet all its requirements—so that I might live for God. My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.
Silence
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Just the Beginning
One of the earliest divisions in what would become known as Christianity was over whether Gentiles converts to the new faith would have to undergo circumcision and to comply with the ceremonies and rites, dietary regulations, dress code, and civil precepts of the Law that God had given through Moses to the people of Israel. In effect, they would have to become Jews. Those who took this position were essentially saying that God’s grace was not enough, and salvation was limited to practicing Jews. In this evening’s reading the apostle Paul takes issue with this view. In opposition to what the Judaizers taught, Paul maintained:
“…we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.”
For those who may be unfamiliar with the term “Judaizers,” it refers to the early Jewish Christians who insisted upon the conversion of Gentiles to Judaism as a precondition for them to become a disciple of Jesus Christ.
While the question of whether Gentile converts should first become Jews was settled at the Council of Jerusalem, a council about which you can read in Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, the view that people must first change their way of life, behave differently from how they have been behaving before they can become a follower of Jesus did not go away. It is very much alive today in a variety of forms.
What we learn from Scripture is that God meets us where we are. He does not require us to undergo a change first. However, God does not leave us where we are. God’s grace, the power of the Holy Spirit, works in us, transforming us in our character, our attitudes, our way of thinking, and our actions into the likeness of Jesus, restoring God’s own marred image in us.
John Wesley called this process “Christian perfection.” God’s grace working in us, perfects us in the sense of making us free from faults, replacing undesirable character traits, attitudes and ways of thinking, and actions with more desirable ones. While we may never achieve a state of being complete and correct in every way, we will grow in our love of God, our love of our neighbors, our love of our fellow Christians, our pursuit of holiness, and our practice of godliness. We will take on the qualities of God’s hesed, God’s loving kindness—compassion, forgiveness, generosity, kindness, mercy, patience, faithfulness, and grace. A new person will emerge from the old.
While the Holy Spirit may work in our lives in the way that the Holy Spirit appears to be working in the lives of the young people at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky, and on other university campuses, the Holy Spirit also may work in our lives in less noticeable ways. God works through ordinary events as well as extraordinary ones. God works through what are called the means of grace, through public services of worship, through the reading and the study of the Bible and meditation upon its words, through fasting and abstinence, through the Lord’s Supper, or Holy Communion, through individual, family, and group prayer, and through spiritual conversations. Engaging in the means of grace will not make us right with God any more than obeying the Law, the Mosaic Code, as it is also called, It will, however, invigorate, strengthen, and confirm our faith and help us to grow to be more like Jesus and to live our lives according to his teaching and example.
Among the distinctives of Wesleyan Methodists is what are traditionally called the “Four Alls.” They include the belief that “there is no limit to what the grace of God can do in us.” This belief is grounded in the words of Jesus, as well as the Angel Gabriel. When Gabriel spoke with Mary, Jesus’ mother-to-be, telling her God had chosen her to bear the Messiah, Gabrel spoke these words, “… there is nothing that God cannot do” (Luke 1:37, GNT). Jesus himself said the same thing to his disciples. “What is humanly impossible is possible for God (Luke 18:27 GNT).”
This leads us back to what may be the stirring of revival at Asbury University and elsewhere. Revival, a time when an interest in the Christian faith starts again stronger than before, accompanied by a hunger for God, and a yearning for a deeper relationship with God, is not something that we ourselves are able to cause. It is a work of the Holy Spirit. The best we can do is to encourage it. Whether anything comes from it depends upon the grace of God. Because revival is a work of the Holy Spirit, it is a good idea to keep an open mind and not be too quick to dismiss what is happening. The passage of time will reveal what lasting effects this development will have upon the lives of the young people involved.
While it may be possible to find a naturalistic explanation for what is happening, such an explanation does not rule out that God’s hand is behind this development. I believe that we would be wise to not make too greater distinction between natural processes and supernatural ones. God works through both. I suspect that God does not make a distinction between the two.
I also do not think that we should dismiss as the Holy Spirit’s work what is happening because God is to our way of thinking not acting how we think that God should act. If we are honest with ourselves, there is far more what we do not know than there is what we do know. We are often too quick to put God in the dock, as C.S. Lewis put it, and pass judgment on God.
The Judaizers of Paul’s time struggled with the revelation that we are made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ because it did not fit with the way that they had come to think God should act. They were not comfortable with the thought that everyone is made for relationship with God and none one was outside of God’s love and grace. However, when we read the Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, we discover that through a series of events God made it clear to the early Jewish Christians that the One whom they believed is their God is the God of all people and the Jesus whom they believed is their Savior is the Savior of all people. God takes one of the worst Jewish persecutors of Jewish Christians, turns him into a believer, and makes him an apostle to the Gentiles, to non-Jews.
I believe that we can safely conclude from the testimony of the Holy Scriptures that everyone needs Jesus. All people can come to know Jesus. Everyone can live their lives rooted in a deep relationship with Jesus. All people can grow as followers of Jesus. We are saved by grace by faith in Jesus. But coming to a living faith in Jesus is just the beginning. The Holy Spirit awakens and arouses faith I us in order to transform us and in transforming us to transform the world.
Silence
Hymn of Response:
Open this link in a new tab to hear Ben Fielding and Reuben Morgan’s “Mighty to Save.”
Well, everyone needs compassion
A love that's never failing
Let mercy fall on me
Well, everyone needs forgiveness
The kindness of a Savior
The Hope of nations
Savior, He can move the mountains
For my God is mighty to save
He is mighty to save
Forever, author of Salvation
He rose and conquered the grave
Jesus conquered the grave
So take me as You find me
All my fears and failures
And fill my life again
I give my life to follow
Everything I believe in
And now I surrender (I surrender)
Savior, He can move the mountains
My God is mighty to save
He is mighty to save
Forever, author of Salvation
He rose and conquered the grave
Jesus conquered the grave
Savior, He can move the mountains
My God is mighty to save
He is mighty to save
Forever, author of Salvation
He rose and conquered the grave
Jesus conquered the grave
Shine Your light and let the whole world see
We're singing for the glory of the risen King, Jesus
Shine Your light and let the whole world see
We're singing for the glory of the risen King
Savior, He can move the mountains
My God is mighty to save
He is mighty to save
Forever, author of Salvation
He rose and conquered the grave
Jesus conquered the grave
Savior, He can move the mountains
My God is mighty to save
He is mighty to save
Forever, author of Salvation
He rose and conquered the grave
Jesus conquered the grave
Shine Your light and let the whole world see
We're singing for the glory of the risen King, Jesus
Shine Your light and let the whole world see
We're singing for the glory of the risen King, Jesus
Shine Your light and let the whole world see
We're singing for the glory of the risen King, Jesus
Shine Your light and let the whole world see
We're singing for the glory of the risen King
Shine Your light and let the whole world see
We're singing for the glory of the risen King, Jesus
Shine Your light and let the whole world see
We're singing for the glory of the risen King
Concerns and Prayers
The following is prayed, during which any person may offer a brief prayer of intercession or petition.
After each prayer, the leader may conclude: Loving God and all may respond: Hear our prayer.
Pray for the Church throughout the world – that the Spirit will revive and refresh the Church in every part…
Pray for our local church and the churches in our area – that we may be waiting attentively for the ways God is speaking through the Spirit…
Pray for those who come to our church, and for those on the fringes - that they may have an assurance of God’s love and know that they are saved through Christ…
Pray for those who are in leadership in the Church - that they may be strengthened and upheld in their ministries…
Pray for those whom we know who do not know of God’s love – for friends or family, for neighbors or colleagues, that God’s Spirit may fill their hearts…
Pray for the Kingdom of God - that it may break through in us and among us, that the earth may be filled with the glory of God…
Pray for ourselves - that God’s Spirit will speak in our hearts, that we may be bold to proclaim the gospel in our words and actions…
Other biddings may be added here to reflect local circumstances.
We make our prayers in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, as we join in the words that he himself has taught us:
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.
Closing Hymn:
Open this link in a new tab to hear Trevor Hodge’s musical setting of Bessy Porter Ann Head’s “O Breath of Life, Come Sweeping through Us.” [WAS #3146]*
1 O Breath of life, come sweeping through us,
revive your church with life and power.
O Breath of life, come, cleanse, renew us,
and fit your church to meet this hour.
O Breath of love, come breathe within,
renewing thought and will and heart.
Come, love of Christ, afresh to win;
revive your church in every part.
2 O Wind of God, come bend us, break us,
till humbly we confess our need.
Then in your tenderness remake us;
revive, restore, for this we plead.
O Breath of love, come breathe within,
renewing thought and will and heart.
Come, love of Christ, afresh to win;
revive your church in every part.
Revive us, Lord! Is zeal abating
while harvest fields are vast and white?
Revive us, Lord, the world is waiting,
equip your church to spread the light.
O Breath of love, come breathe within,
renewing thought and will and heart.
Come, love of Christ, afresh to win;
revive your church in every part.
O Breath of love, come breathe within,
renewing thought and will and heart.
Come, love of Christ, afresh to win;
revive your church in every part.
Coda:
O Breath of life, come sweeping through us,
revive your church with life and power.
*This is a different musical setting from Carlton R. Young's setting in Worship and Song.
Benediction:
May the Lord bless us and keep us,
May the Lord make his face to shine on us and be gracious to us,
May the Lord look on us with kindness and give us peace. Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment