EChurch@Wartburg – 1.18.15

Welcome to a Gathering of EChurch@Wartburg

http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=47982&picture=kriz-a-svickyCross and Candles

Here is our Order of Worship

Ignatius Loyola (circa 1500s) 
The Complete Book of Christian Prayer

"Dearest Lord, teach me to be generous;
Teach me to serve you as you deserve;
To give and not to count the cost,
To fight and not heed the wounds,
To toil and not to seek for rest,
To labor and not to seek reward,
Save that of knowing that I do your will.
Fill us, we pray, with your light and life,
That we may show forth your wondrous glory.
Grant that your love may so fill our lives that we may count nothing too hard to near."
Amen

A prayer of Irenaeus- Early church father @200 A.D. Link 
 
“Give growing maturity to beginners,
O Father; give intelligence to the little ones;
give aid to those who are running their course.
Give sorrow to the negligent;
give fervor of spirit to the lukewarm.
Give to the mature a good end;
for the sake of Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen.”

Romans 12:5 (NASB Bible Gateway)

so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

A Prayer for Discouragement Link

Heavenly Father, I know I am close to despair.
I feel so tempted to give up, to withdraw from life and religion and let the world simply carry me along.
Everything seems so meaningless and nothing appeals to my better instincts.
Help me to remember that Jesus gave meaning to everything in the world.
Let me bank on that fact and get over this time of despair,
to really believe in the depths of my being that there is a reason for living.
Show me the reason for my life and tell me what I must do.
Bring home to me that I am never alone, but that You are with me even in the depths of despair.
Remind me that no matter what I may endure now,
an unending joy awaits me in the future if I but cling tightly to You 
and your Son Jesus in the unity of the Spirit.
Amen.


The Aaronic Blessing

Unto God’s gracious mercy and protection we commit you.
The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face to shine upon you,
and be gracious to you.
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
(Numbers 6: 24-6)

Comments

EChurch@Wartburg – 1.18.15 — 5 Comments


  1. Notice: Undefined variable: button in /home/guswo2wr8yyv/public_html/tww2/wp-content/plugins/quote-comments/quote-comments.php on line 127

    I offer my point of view, I have often been so angry with God, I hated God, but I have come to understand I was actually angry and hating of my “view” of God and not God. In the quiet moments on the units late at night when a client / patient cried out God seemed to answer through the touch or a word from a person. Christians’ of all stripes when on the level ground of death seem to hope the same thing. I have been there fare to many times, my mother far more. I was not there when my mother drew her last breath but I had been there during her illness, the illness of my sister, my father and the death of my brother. I was there in the raising of my sister’s son. I remember it all, maybe that is not a good thing.

    I remember my time on the burn unit and El Camino Hospital as a six year old, I remember the skin floating to the top of the bathtub as my eldest brother told me the story of the three bears. I remember the ride to the hospital, every single red light, I still have a thing about red lights, I remember my mother trying to put underwear on me after she put me out with a rug and the hall catching fire where she tossed the clothes. Her guilt, I remember that, I also remember trying to aswade that guilt, a pathetic trait I carried on in adulthood and I admit that. A real man would never, nevermind.

    I remember my family looking through the glass as I was in isolation, being in a wheelchair and the guilt of my parents because of my injury. Dont you see the symmetry? This view of life allowed me the holy pleasure to be able to serve those I work with. Is this not God, God took my pain and made it a portrait to help others color their lives. I shudder thinking on such things, God is just so worthy of praise, God does not need praise God wants us to have the opportunity to praise God so we can see the puzzle pieces fit in the wonderful tapestry which is God’s creation. God takes all the pain and God will heal it.

    I am not much of a disciple but I could not be an atheist, I am sympathetic with some of their concerns but when I watch Dawkins and Hitchens etc I cant help but chuckle and even pray for them. God is not found in the lofty apologetics of the truly reformed or any other such communion, God is found in the gutters and the day to day pains that most of us deal with. God always meets us where we are at, God always does. Yes God is holy but God is loving, Oh my we cant understand it, well duh. God is well God.

    Where I find God it is in each of you, on PP, Spiritual sounding board, and above all, at Agnews God had a loud speaker there. unending love, of course a Father would do no less. God will do what God said, God will restore all. My Prayer God let me make a dent.


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    Thanks for this it really was helpful. I really appreciate it. Please pray I give my students my best service they are worth it. Thank you Happy Lords Day.


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    @Pastor Wade,

    Thanks for putting together the E-Church service every week with Dee and Deb here at The Wartburg Watch. I appreciate it.

    I was recently excommunicated and shunned from my independent Bible-believing church where I had been a member for 8+ years here in Silicon Valley (California). My “crime”? Accidently discovering, while doing legal research, that a fellow church member was a convicted sex offender on Megan’s List, whom the pastors/elders would not protect our children from or inform all adults of his presence; they insisted that he’s ‘harmless’. I am all for carrying The Gospel to people who have committed the vilest of sins; I am all for being prudent as well when doing that, having good boundaries in place, and not putting innocents at risk. They are not mutually exclusive responsibilities in my opinion.

    My church’s pastors/elders also espoused patriarchy, all of this ‘submit’ and ‘obey’ stuff (and extra-Biblical nonsense), and they demanded blind obedience from their wives and from grown adults. Prior to my excommunication and shunning, a godly doctor (married for 40+ years) was ordered to be excommunicated and shunned. His “crime”? He had spoken to the pastors/elders about how they were leading the church and Biblical error. For giving generously of his time, talent and treasure to our church, that was the thanks he got from our pastors/elders.

    I have gone back and apologized to all of the people that I know of that those pastors/elders have harmed, since they have not done it. Those surprised folks said I’m the only one to have reached out to them from that church and to have apologized. I told them that I always knew what was done to them was wrong, I knew they were good folks, and I had never seen this in a church before.

    By the way, I just got a copy of your book Hardball Religion from amazon. Perhaps it will shed some light on the ‘car crash’ experience I just had at this church (a combination of 9 Marks/Mark Dever from Capitol Hill Baptist/John MacArthur at Grace Community Church/and other beliefs from the homeschooling movement).

    Many thanks from Silicon Valley, California.


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    @ brian:
    “God took my pain and made it a portrait to help others color their lives”

    Brian, thank you for sharing some of your story with us. What an incredibly painful experience you went through! And what a lovely way to look at it, that God colors other lives.


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    This wasn’t a sermon, yet it is so important. I live in a community where something awful happened. There was a wedding at a church. A woman involved in the wedding had an estranged boyfriend. The estranged boyfriend vowed to kill the young women and others in the wedding party at a church. The pastor called the police. The ex boyfriend was waiting outside the church. The police tried to apprehend the young man and he ran. He dropped an item and attempted to pick it up. He was shot. The item he dropped was a loaded automatic weapon. My community is in shock. There is so much to pray about in this situation. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Some of it is the unanswered question of why?