Pastoral Letter 150
Dear Members of St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Friends and Adherents,
Grace and Peace to you all.
Here we are in the first week of February and by God’s grace we are back to our normal programs, activities and meetings. We resumed Time4You on Wednesday 1 February and we will watch the 101st movie on Tuesday 7 February. Come, join us, enjoy delicious Pizza and a good movie. The next Movie is titled “I am Sam”. On Sunday 12 February, after the Church Service, we will convene to have our AGM meeting. Please join us. Naturally we will not have Morning Tea next Sunday morning.
On Wednesday the Elders and the Church Council will have their first meeting of the year to take care of business as usual.
The Lower North Shore Zone Uniting Churches are organising Ash Wednesday Service on 22 February at 6:00 pm, either in the Willoughby Armenian Evangelical Church or here at St. Andrew’s. Ash Wednesday Service, which puts us in the right mood to move forward in Lent, a time of preparation to the triumphant entry of Jesus Christ to Jerusalem, the Holy Week, Good Friday and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
On Friday 3 March 10:30 am the World Day of Prayer will be held here, at St. Andrew’s. This year the program is prepared by the women of Taiwan. The guest speaker will be Rev. Myung Hwa Park. Rev. Park is currently the Minister of Leura Uniting Church and the President of the NSW Ecumenical Council. She was the Moderator of the UCA NSW and ACT, before the current Moderator Simon Hansford.
Sadly, it will be 55 days for the blockade of Artsakh and its 120,00 Armenian inhabitants have been under siege and the only access road to Armenia, which we have called it “The Road of Life”, has been blocked since 12 December. It is the only passage that connects Armenia with Artsakh, which provide tons of food, medication and building materials daily. The appeals to the international committee to put pressure on Azerbaijan to unblock have not found hearing ears, causing a major humanitarian crisis for the people into more dire situation.
The AMAA is planning its AMAA month activities between 1-29 March and all the programs are dedicated to Artsakh and its courageous people. May God protect the people and precious children in Artsakh and grant them an everlasting peace.
If you will not be able to join us for worship tomorrow, please light a candle, have a small roll of bread and cup of wine or juice and worship with us from home following the attached Order of Service.
Be safe and well, continue to pray, remembering those who need care, support and love and let me know if any member of the congregation that you know of needs our help and prayers.
Here are some prayer points for this week:
- Pray for our church services and activities, as we are back to our normal programs.
- Pray for the people of Artsakh, men, women, young, old and children, as they face humanitarian crisis with the blockade continuing for the 7th consecutive week by Azerbaijan.
- Pray for the poor, the sick, the vulnerable, the struggling and the stressed.
- Pray for those who are unwell and struggling with different kinds of medical issues.
- Pray for world peace and ask for God’s blessings.
Please let me know if you or anyone else has prayer points.
Best Regards,
Krikor
MERSSAGE
Spirit – Power of God
1 Corinthians 2:1-2:5
The church needs to be revived before it is too late. We, people who call themselves Christians, need to change before it is too late. Without this change and revival, the church in the 21st century will eventually die and cease to exist.
Therefore, what must the church do to be truly revived?
How does this true revival happen?
Simply two points:
1. It always begins in the hearts of individuals as an individual flame and then grows to be a firestorm as the flames of others are joined together. When the fire of God starts burning inside us, it refines and gives us a special power.
2. It always meets opposition from the others. Satan would like nothing more than to see the Church remain ineffective and not able to act in the way it should act. He throws all kinds of things our way to discourage us from moving deeper into the things of God. The church always comes under a tremendous amount of spiritual attack, be it from outside or inside.
Therefore, we should know that we need a message of revival as the church in Corinth needed, because the evil had already put the believers in a position of not respecting each other and forgetting to put Christ the crucified at the centre of their ministry.
As we look today to 1 Corinthians 2:1-16, we see that Paul came not with eloquence or superior wisdom or rational talk and wordy cleverness, he placed no confidence in such methods to bring about life change. He clearly understood that in order to bring the message of the crucified Lord, one must rely upon spiritual means and the Holy Spirit Himself.
He has resolved to know nothing except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He came to the people in weakness, in fear and with much trembling. He did not preach with wise and clever words but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power so that their faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.
Today, so many churches try to accumulate information, convinced that the mission of the Church will be accomplished through giving people the right information. Many believe that if they can do a better job educating people, fill them up with more information, then they will fulfil their commission. There is nothing wrong with doing this, but the danger is that we can reduce the Christian faith to just another educational program.
Paul did take the time to study, prepare and seek the Lord before standing up as God’s ambassador. He clearly understood that in order to bring the true message of Christ, one must rely upon spiritual means and the Holy Spirit Himself. As we said last week, his main goal was to preach Jesus Christ and Him Crucified.
He came in weakness, fear and with much trembling recognising his own shortcomings and incapacity without God’s power to carry out the work to which God had called him.
There is some indication in 2 Corinthians 10:10 that Paul may have been less than spectacular by worldly standards in both appearance and speaking ability. There we read the arguments of some of his critics: “For some say, ‘His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing’.”
The message and preaching of Paul was proclaiming the gospel and declaring the life of Christ to the world. One of his main strengths was using persuasive words. We find a good example in the letter of Philemon, where uses this method to persuade Philemon, one of his converts to accept the runaway slave Onesimus as a brother. He did this relying on good arguments, but he did it with the power of the Spirit.
We find another good example of his practice of ministering the gospel in 1 Thess. 1:4-5: “For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake”.
Paul may have been unimpressive in how he looked and spoke, but there was an element about him which no one could deny or negate, when he ministered, it was with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power.
If we honestly examine our hearts, we will probably see that sometimes we have been denying the power of the Spirit and relying only on our knowledge, wisdom and experience. If we do that, somehow, we stop the Spirit from acting and through us with its power.
Our faith should not rest on our wisdom, rather on the power of God.
It is easy to fall away from the faith if it only rests on our knowledge, wisdom and experience.
We should remember that wisdom is in Christ. Therefore, we should only preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
We know that we are weak as Paul accepts his weakness. We fear and tremble; hence we need the power to be able to perform and act. Human wisdom is important but not essential in the service of the Lord. To serve the Lord we need power.
Remember Jesus promised His disciples to be with them to the ends of the world with the power of the Spirit and we have the proof that His promise came true.
We need God’s wisdom to comprehend or understand truth.
We can get that wisdom from Christ our Lord and the power to be the active church comes to us from the Spirit.
Our main concern today should be to seek God’s presence through His Spirit. Without the Spirit we and the church has no chance to survive and what it is expecting to be done, as the body of Jesus Christ, for whom Jesus died on the cross and brought hope of salvation to this dark and sinful word. He gave us hope to have our place in His Kingdom for ever. This is only possible, if we do our part and play our role as His ambassadors. And we can do this only through and with the power of the Spirit, which He promised to His disciples and us; and the Spirit came and gave to power to change the whole world, with the promise of eternal life.
Amen!