Words for Reflection

God is not only the God of the sufferers but the God who suffers.  The pain and fallenness of humanity have entered into His heart.  Through the prism of my tears I have seen a suffering God.

It is said of God that no one can behold His face and live.  I always thought this meant that no one could see His splendor and live.  A friend said perhaps it meant that no one could see His sorrow and live.  Or perhaps His sorrow is splendor. 

And great mystery: to redeem our brokenness and lovelessness, the God who suffers with us did not strike some mighty blow of power but sent His beloved Son to suffer like us, through His suffering to redeem us from suffering and evil.

Instead of explaining our suffering God shares it.

Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son

 

Order of Worship, March 31 2013

Grace Presbyterian Church



Prayer of Confession
Father, we come to you this morning as people who need to be redeemed.  We need to be made whole.  We confess that we need you to heal us for we cannot heal ourselves.

We confess our wandering hearts.  We run after acceptance, prestige, wealth, order, pleasure and novelty in a desperate effort to heal our hearts.  None of these can redeem us, none of these can make us whole.  Yet we are slow to learn.  Forgive us we pray.

We confess our faithless hearts.  We have looked for redemption everywhere but in your arms.  We have not looked to you because we doubt your love for us.  Forgive us we pray.

Now, Father, accept our confession and receive us gladly.  We ask this not upon our deserving it, or even the honesty of our confession, but for the sake of Jesus.  You rejected Him, the innocent, in order to embrace us, the guilty. Amen.

Assurance of Pardon
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  Romans 8:1

Order of Worship, December 5 2010

Grace Presbyterian Church

This faith enables us to be at the same time realistic and hopeful.  We can be realistic, knowing that no human project can eliminate the powers of darkness as they operate in human life.  This realism delivers us from the Utopian fanaticisms which have condemned millions of people to misery and death in the cause of an imagined future.  But at the same time we can be hopeful, acting hopefully in apparently hopeless situations, not dreaming of an absolute perfection on this side of death, but doing resolutely that relative good which is possible now, doing it as an offering to the Lord who is able to take it and keep it for the perfect kingdom which is promised.

Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

Order of Worship, November 28 2010

Grace Presbyterian Church

Let there be no mistake.  To proclaim the lordship of Jesus in all the world can never be a matter of merely inviting people to embrace a personal salvation that leaves the power structures of the world untouched.  If it is reduced to that, then in the name of the whole New Testament we must say that the Jesus of whom such a message speaks is not Jesus of Nazareth, but an idol who has usurped his name and distorted his message.  And at the same time, we must say that to work for justice and peace in the world on any basis other than the declaration that the crucified and risen Jesus is Lord of the world, and that his Spirit is at work today to implement his victory, is to fight idolatry with idolatry.  Only Jesus, the real Jesus, is Lord; only by his Spirit is there victory, is there hope.  The gospel promises the life of the age to come, the hope of resurrection, to all who turn from idols and trust in this Jesus.  The same gospel promises that, because his victorious reign has already begun, the power of his self-giving love can challenge and dethrone the usurping idols that still enslave, distort and destroy human life.  There is one gospel, because there is "one body and one Spirit & one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, on baptism, one God and Father of all" (Ephesians 4:4-6).  There is one world, one God, one gospel.  And with this gospel we, however surprisingly, have been entrusted.  We are not spectators in this drama.  We ourselves are summoned to be God's agents in bringing this earth-shattering message to the world--and to the church!--that so desperately needs it.

N.T. Wright

God is a peacemaker.  Jesus Christ is a peacemaker.  So, if we want to be God's children and Christ's disciples, we must be peacemakers too. 

John R. W. Stott, Decisive Issues Facing Christians Today

Order of Worship, October 31 2010

Grace Presbyterian Church

Prayer of Confession
My God, You placed my sin on Your Son
And You credited His righteousness to me.
I rest in the Lamb, whose blood has washed me whiter than snow.

But, I confess that I am not holy in my thoughts, words, or deeds.
In my flesh I continue to put on the old rags of sin.
My prayers are stained with grumbling.
My tears are mixed with conceit and unbelief.

Help me to see my life as You see it.
Help me to grieve my sin and to trust the power of your redemption.

I confess my shallow and unthoughtful repentance.
I confess my weak and fickle faith.
Apart from Christ's life in me I can do nothing.

Hear my prayer.
Forgive my sin and continue to transform my life into Christ-like wholeness.
You are my Savior; in You alone I hope for salvation.
Amen.

Assurance of Pardon
What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all --how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.  Who is he that condemns?  Christ Jesus, who died--more than that, who was raised to life--is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Romans 8:31-34

Order of Worship, October 10 2010

Grace Presbyterian Church

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea.  We are far too easily pleased.

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Non-Christians get courage by forgetting reality; Christians get courage by remembering reality. 

Timothy J. Keller

True spirituality is not a superhuman religiosity; it is simply true humanity released from bondage to sin and renewed by the Holy Spirit.  This is given to us as we grasp by faith the full content of Christ's redemptive work; freedom from the guilt and power of sin. 

Richard F.  Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life

God's mission is nothing less than the sending of the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son into this world, so that this world should not perish but live.  The sending of the Holy Spirit is the revelation of God's indestructible affirmation of life and his marvelous joy in life.  

Jurgen Moltmann

Anyone who opens his personality to the living Spirit takes a risk of being considerably shaken. 

J.B. Phillips

Order of Worship, October 3 2010

Grace Presbyterian Church 

For us Christians, all truth is "relative," relative to this Jew named Jesus.  We really do not know what the world is, much less where it is headed, until we know him.

William H. Willimon in Exilic Preaching

The repeated promises in the Qu'ran of the forgiveness of a compassionate and merciful Allah are all made to the meritorious, whose merits have been weighed in Allah's scales, whereas the gospel is good news of mercy to the undeserving.  The symbol of the religion of Jesus is the cross, not the scales.

John R. W. Stott

Very few of us have any understanding of the reason why Jesus Christ died.  If sympathy is all that human beings need, then the Cross of Christ is a farce, there was no need for it. 

    We trample the blood of the Son of God under foot if we think we are forgiven because we are sorry for our sins.  The only explanation of the forgiveness of God, and of the unfathomable depth of His forgetting, is the Death of Jesus Christ.  

    The Death of Jesus Christ is the performance in history of the very Mind of God.  There is no room for looking on Jesus Christ as a martyr; His death was not something that happened to Him which might have been prevented: His death was the very reason why He came. 

    God could forgive men in no other way. 

    The greatest note of triumph that ever sounded in the ears of a startled universe was that sounded on the Cross: "It is finished."  That was the last word in the Redemption of man. 

Oswald Chambers

Order of Worship, September 26 2010

Grace Presbyterian Church