This Sunday we’re starting a series on the story of Samuel. As an adult, Samuel becomes a pivotal figure in the history of the Children of Israel but his story begins in his childhood. The Lord calls out to him and at first he doesn’t know that it’s the Lord. We too can struggle to distinguish the Lord’s call in our lives from a lot of other inputs. With Samuel we can learn what it takes to recognise the Lord’s call and what sort of messages the Lord has for us.
“Everything in moderation” seems like a sound rule for life. After all, anything, even something good, can become harmful when taken to an extreme. Yet this common-sense truth finds surprisingly little support in the Lord’s Word. As just one example, Jesus says, “no one can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24). There is no moderation or balancer here: rather pick a side and wholeheartedly follow it! This Sunday we will look at how a blind devotion to moderation can be harmful and why thinking in terms of prioritisation is a more heavenly outlook.
This Sunday we will be looking at the spiritual significance of the year of Jubilee. This was a law that the Children of Israel had that, every fifty years, they had to let the ground lie fallow and not plant seeds or harvest. Also, any land that had been sold during those fifty years had to then revert to the original owner. What is the spiritual significance of all of this for our lives and our need for fallow times?
This Sunday we will finish our series on the spiritual history of the human race by talking about the beginning of Christianity all the way until today. What happened that made it necessary for there to be a new church after the church started by Jesus Christ? And where do we go from here—what do we believe will happen in the next 500 years of the spiritual history of the human race.
In wedding ceremonies and love songs people talk about two people becoming one when they get married. That sounds beautiful and poetic but is it actually possible? To people who are in love it can feel very possible; to people in the midst of a difficult conflict or who have just drifted apart it can feel entirely impossible and naive. And what does “becoming one” even mean? Does it mean always agreeing with your partner? Does it mean you have to lose yourself in your relationship for it to work? These are the questions we’re going to be digging into this Sunday.
The final sermon of our series “The Spiritual History of the Human Race” will be on Sunday, 30 June.
In the lead up to New Church Day we are looking at the spiritual history of the human race, in other words, all the churches that went before and how they contribute to where we find ourselves today in the New Church. Last week Malcolm talked about how mankind began in a kind of purity and innocence, but then fell away from that when they decided to make their own sense of self more important than God. This week we’ll look at the next era in spiritual history: the Ancient Church. This is the time period in which people became disconnected from spiritual reality and the Lord had to find other ways of reaching them. By studying this process we can start to understand why God can seem so distant from us today.
On Sunday we’re starting a series on the spiritual history of the human race. This Sunday we’re looking at the earliest people. What does the Word teach us about what the earliest people were like? How were they different from us and how were they the same as us? And how can understanding what they went through all those thousands of years ago help us to understand ourselves better today?
We are bombarded with messages that we need to do more, give more, be more. Whether these messages are overt and intended or subtle and implied, they push us to ask ourselves, “am I enough?” Am I enough for my children? Am I enough for my spouse? Am I enough for my work? Am I enough for my society? And above all, am I enough for the Lord? The bad news is that we are all lacking; the good news is even in our lack we are enough in the Lord’s eyes.
If you have children, you probably spend a fair amount of time talking about parenting—how things are going for this child or that child, what you’re fighting with your children about (what they’re eating or not eating, screen time, homework, etc.), your worries about their future. But what is the goal? What is the role of a parent meant to be? And what about these children that we’re trying to parent—are they perfect, uncorrupted little angels, are they disrespectful brats that need to be brought into line?
There are many opinions about all of these things in the world but what I want to talk about on Sunday is what the Lord says about all of this in His Word. What does He teach us about the nature of children and how does He define the role of a parent? Gaining clarity about this can really help us hold the hard work of parenting in a better way.
This Sunday we continue our series on children. When we think of children our minds immediately go to parents as well. But children are not just the concern of parents. Whether we like it or not, all of us have some responsibility for other people’s children. As individuals, as a community, and as a church, how do we carry out this responsibility that we have not asked for and at times outright resent? All of us have a role to play in the lives of the young people who surround us.
