Tag: God

For or Against

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Luke 6:27-30

Love for Enemies

27 “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 
28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 
29 If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. 
30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.
VERSE 1: You were the Word at the beginning
One with God the Lord Most High
Your hidden glory in creation
Now revealed in You our Christ
CHORUS 1: What a beautiful Name it is
What a beautiful Name it is
The Name of Jesus Christ my King
What a beautiful Name it is
Nothing compares to this
What a beautiful Name it is
The Name of Jesus
VERSE 2: You didn’t want heaven without us
So Jesus You brought heaven down
My sin was great Your love was greater
What could separate us now
CHORUS 2: What a wonderful Name it is
What a wonderful Name it is
The Name of Jesus Christ my King
What a wonderful Name it is
Nothing compares to this
What a wonderful Name it is
The Name of Jesus
What a wonderful Name it is
The Name of Jesus
BRIDGE:
Death could not hold You
The veil tore before You
You silence the boast of sin and grave
The heavens are roaring
The praise of Your glory
For You are raised to life again
You have no rival
You have no equal
Now and forever God
You reign Yours is the kingdom
Yours is the glory
Yours is the Name above all names
CHORUS 3:
What a powerful Name it is
What a powerful Name it is
The Name of Jesus Christ my King
What a powerful Name it is
Nothing can stand against
What a powerful Name it is
The Name of Jesus

A medal on his chest

Christ walked to Calvary alone,

Each bone-jarring, bruise bumping yard,

Every pain-plodded inch.

And wicked faces carved from stone

Made even Jesus flinch

And search for company to cheer

The garden-hammered promise, sealed

With blood soaked, bleeding tears.

Though gutsy – God – still longed to hear

The gratitude of those he’d healed

A drug to numb his fears.

Is my blood pumping heart a fool

To keenly fill my veins, and beat

The body on it’s way?

Perhaps the glands that coward cool

And chicken sweat away spare heat

Should early close today.

The body needs each tiny cell

Each worn out ear, each limping limb,

Each thinning greying hair.

And when I find myself in hell

And I need Christ and you are him,

I hope that you’ll be there.

I’m not afraid. Though service scares

The Christian in the garden

Who cries just like his Christ;

Who, though he doubts, the threat still dares

His God-lost heart to harden.

Thus, all is sacrificed!

Call him gutless? No! let him wear

His need for Christian prayers and friends

A medal on his chest;

And pray we learn like God to care

For those whom Satan gladly sends

Gethsemane to test.

(AB)

What kind of a world?

God, what kind of a world is this that the adult people are going to leave for us children?

There is fighting everywhere, and they tell us we live in a time of peace.

You are the only one who can help us.

Lord, give us a new world in which we can be happy, in which we can have friends and work together for a good future.

A world in which there will not be any cruel people who seek to destroy us and our world in so many ways.

Amen.

You Love Me? |


Malachi 1:1-5 New International Version – UK (NIVUK)
1 A prophecy: the word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi.[a]
Israel doubts God’s love
2 ‘I have loved you,’ says the Lord.
‘But you ask, “How have you loved us?”
‘Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?’ declares the Lord. ‘Yet I have loved Jacob, 3 but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his hill country into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.’
4 Edom may say, ‘Though we have been crushed, we will rebuild the ruins.’
But this is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called the Wicked Land, a people always under the wrath of the Lord. 5 You will see it with your own eyes and say, “Great is the Lord – even beyond the borders of Israel!”
We all go through difficult seasons in life. We may be tempted to question God’s love for us during those times. Let’s recall the many ways He’s shown us His unfailing love. When we stop to consider His goodness, we find that He is indeed a loving Father. Let us all remember that in times of darkness there is a light telling us God loves you

Christian morality

People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, ‘If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing. ‘ I do not think that this is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life you are slowly turning this central thing into either a heavenly creature or or into a hellish creature.

Saved to do Good

Titus 3 New International Version – UK

Saved in order to do good

3 Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, 2 to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and always to be gentle towards everyone.

3 At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. 4 But when the kindness and love of God our Saviour appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Saviour, 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. 8 This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone.

9 But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless. 10 Warn a divisive person once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them. 11 You may be sure that such people are warped and sinful; they are self-condemned.

Depth of mercy! Can there be
Mercy still reserved for me?
Can my God His wrath forbear,
Me, the chief of sinners, spare?

I have long withstood His grace,
Long provoked Him to His face,
Would not hearken to His calls,
Grieved Him by a thousand falls.

Whence to me this waste of love?
Ask my Advocate above!
See the cause in Jesus’ face,
Now before the throne of grace.

There for me the Savior stands,
Shows His wounds and spreads His hands.
God is love! I know, I feel;
Jesus weeps and loves me still.

God’s Love

1 John 4 New International Version

God’s love and ours

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7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 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. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: in this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

God so loved the world,
God so loved the world,
that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whoso believeth, believeth in Him
should not perish, should not perish
but have everlasting life.

For God sent not His Son into the world
to condemn the world,
God sent not His Son into the world
to condemn the world;
But that the world through Him might be saved.

God so loved the world,
God so loved the world,
that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whoso believeth believeth in Him
should not perish, should not perish
but have everlasting life, everlasting life,
everlasting, everlasting life.
God so loved the world,
God so loved the world,
God so loved the world.

To Serve

In you my God, so true and tender

I know my life is but to serve,

Within your light of glorious splendor

The path is lit and well preserved

Within your love is safe abiding

Far away from every tear

Sacred words gently entreating

Lest I forget that you are here

You banish every self made sorrow

Every anxious thought and care

Your message rises up before me

Now I see it everywhere

Joseph McTaggart

The Stoning of Stephen (Book of Acts)

Oh the years without a creed

With stone in hand to hurt and bleed

I thought no Saviour did I need

Twas the same thought aimed at Stephen

Each day began with crowds and fears

Conditioned hatred, screams and tears

With stones in hand I marched up near

Twas the same thought aimed at Stephen

And with fear, in thought and mind,

Other people did I bind

With rage and anger to mankind

Twas the same thought aimed at Stephen

I threw my stones with strength I found

And watched them tumbling to the ground

No power can hurt what God has crowned

Twas the same thought aimed at Stephen

And as I learnt to leave my woes

And trust in God oh sweet repose

Through the Saviour’s blood we know

The example of St Stephen

Joseph McTaggart

Strength and Power

Isaiah 40 New International Version

25 “To whom will you compare me?
    Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One.
26 Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
    Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one
    and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
    not one of them is missing.

27 Why do you complain, Jacob?
    Why do you say, Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord;
    my cause is disregarded by my God”?
28 Do you not know?
    Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
    and his understanding no one can fathom.
29 He gives strength to the weary
    and increases the power of the weak.
30 Even youths grow tired and weary,
    and young men stumble and fall;
31 but those who hope in the Lord
    will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
    they will run and not grow weary,
    they will walk and not be faint.

“He Will Give The Weary Strength”

Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength
They will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint
And like a flight upon an eagle’s wings, He will give the weary strength

Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength
They will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint
And like a flight upon an eagle’s wings, He will give the weary strength

So lift your eyes up to the sky
To the one who hears you when you cry

Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength
They will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint
Like a flight upon an eagle’s wings, He will give, He will give
He will give the weary strength