For the week of March 9 – 1st Sunday in Lent
Morning Prayer: O God our deliverer, You led Your people of old through the wilderness and brought them to the promised land. Guide now the people of Your Church, that, following our Savior, we may walk through the wilderness of this world toward the glory of the world to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and forever. Amen. (United Methodist Hymnal #268)
Opening Hymn: #384 Love Divine All Loves Excelling
- Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven, to earth come down;
fix in us Thy humble dwelling; all Thy faithful mercies crown!
Jesus Thou art all compassion, pure, unbounded love Thou art;
visit us with Thy salvation; enter every trembling heart. - Breathe, O breathe Thy loving Spirit into every troubled breast!
Let us all in Thee inherit; let us find that second rest.
Take away our bent to sinning; Alpha and Omega be;
end of faith, as its beginning, set our hearts at liberty. - Come, Almighty to deliver, let us all Thy life receive;
suddenly return and never, nevermore Thy temples leave.
Thee we would be always blessing, serve Thee as Thy hosts above,
pray and praise Thee without ceasing, glory in Thy perfect love. - Finish, then, Thy new creation; pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see Thy great salvation perfectly restored in Thee;
changed from glory into glory, till in heaven we take our place,
till we cast our crowns before Thee, lost in wonder, love, and praise.
Proverbs 1:1-2, 6:16-19 (CEB)
1 The proverbs of Solomon, King David’s son, from Israel:
2 Their purpose is to teach wisdom and discipline,
to help one understand wise sayings.
Proverbs 6:16-19
16There are six things that the Lord hates,
seven things detestable to Him:
17 snobbish eyes, a lying tongue, hands that spill innocent blood,
18 a heart set on wicked plans, feet that run quickly to evil,
19 a false witness who breathes lies, and one who causes conflicts among relatives.
Prayers of Intercession: Thank You, Lord, for hearing our prayers for those dear to our hearts. We now pray as You have taught us: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us, not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Offering spotlight: Withrow College greatly appreciates all of the support that Lightstreet UMC has provided over the past 20 months: a significantly updated website, computers for students, and funds for new bathrooms. And, of course, scholarships for our students. It could not have been done without your support!
Last spring, Bill Bien updated our website which has resulted in more than 350 applications being downloaded. We now have an enrollment of 200, and will soon be graduating a new class. The Valedictorian from the Nursing program will receive a digital stethoscope that was donated by a member of Lightstreet LUMC last year. The computer room has been renovated. Regrettably, it is not yet fully up and running. It’s a slower than desired process to get all of the laptops connected to both electricity and the Internet.
This year, we seek to upgrade the library with two air conditioning units and to purchase a 10K generator for both the classrooms and the dorm. Unfortunately, frequent electrical outages are an all too common occurrence in a developing country such as Ghana.
Again, I—Dr. Yaw Nsiah (en-SEE-ah) —on behalf of the entire Withrow College community thank you for any support you may provide. God bless you for your generosity.
Offering prayer: Faithful God, who journeys with us through the wilderness of our lives, as we offer these gifts, we remember Your sustaining presence. In this period of spiritual renewal, strengthen us to resist temptation and guide us to live in community with love and grace. May these offerings be signs of hope and acts of compassion that reflect the love You have shown us in Christ. Empower us to rise together, supporting one another on this journey of faith and transformation. In the name of Jesus, our Redeemer, we pray. Amen. (Discipleship Ministries)
Hymn of Preparation: #384 I Surrender All
- All to Jesus I surrender; all to Him I freely give;
I will ever love and trust Him, in His presence daily live.
Refrain: I surrender all, I surrender all, all to Thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all.
- All to Jesus I surrender; humbly at His feet I bow,
worldly pleasures all forsaken; take me, Jesus, take me now. (Refrain) - All to Jesus I surrender; make me, Savior, wholly Thine;
fill me with Thy love and power; truly know that Thou art mine. (Refrain) - All to Jesus I surrender; Lord, I give myself to Thee;
fill me with Thy love and power; let Thy blessing fall on me. (Refrain) - All to Jesus I surrender; now I feel the sacred flame.
O the joy of full salvation! Glory, glory, to His name! (Refrain)
Scripture: Matthew 5:29-30, 16:24-26 (CEB)
29 And if your right eye causes you to fall into sin, tear it out and throw it away. It’s better that you lose a part of your body than that your whole body be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to fall into sin, chop it off and throw it away. It’s better that you lose a part of your body than that your whole body go into hell.
Matthew 16:24-26
24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “All who want to come after Me must say no to themselves, take up their cross, and follow Me. 25 All who want to save their lives will lose them. But all who lose their lives because of Me will find them. 26 Why would people gain the whole world but lose their lives? What will people give in exchange for their lives?
Message: Give Up Something Bad for Lent Pastor Becky
What are you giving up for Lent? Chocolate? Soda? Something else? My roommate from college gives up Middleswarth BBQ potato chips. She has done this every year, for as long as I have known her. Honestly, she loves them. It is her go to snack, without fail. Right around Holy Week, she will post on Facebook about how much she is looking forward to Easter morning. Her excitement has nothing to do with the Resurrection; it is about being reunited with her favorite snack.
The problem isn’t giving something up. It is that we look forward to picking it back up again. Our time denying ourselves of things has us looking to the end of Lent, yet our heart desires to go back to our lives we had before. Yet, Lent is meant to ready us for Easter, the celebration of Jesus’s resurrection. If it weren’t for Jesus’s resurrection, none of us would be here, let alone be Christian. Because He Lives … makes Jesus different from every prophet. It confirms, affirms, verifies Jesus’s relationship to God. If it weren’t for the resurrection, we would be Jewish, druid, pagan. We wouldn’t be Christian – because there would not have been the anointing and commissioning for the disciples to share the good news, baptize, or fellowship as the church. But we are. We are called together to prepare ourselves for the resurrection, to be prepared to be raised into a new life, transformed believers into a closer likeness to Jesus.
Lent, observing the 40 days before the celebration of the resurrection goes back to the early church. St. Iraneus (d.104) wrote about it. There wasn’t a uniform code, but a unity around the sacredness of these days. The days were marked with prayer, fasting, and penance. Special calls to prayer and self-denial we have come to expect as we move closer to the resurrection. It is a time of deliberate reflection. We reflect on our relationship with God, our relationship with ourselves, our relationship with our families, our relationship to others, and to the entire creation. In our reflection, the Holy Spirit will speak to us, convicting our hearts of where we have come up short and what we are to do in response.
This is because the focus in Lent remains: 1- to repent of sin, 2- renew our faith, and 3- prepare to celebrate joyfully the mysteries of our salvation, namely the proof of life after death because of the resurrection of Jesus.
This is the work ahead of us, observing a holy Lent, so we are transformed as we move closer to God and allow ourselves to be made over into the image of Christ. We start by giving up something bad for Lent. This bad thing is something we need to shed in order for us to be made new, so we can embrace the new life Jesus offers us. But first we have to empty our hands and hearts of the things we are carrying that keep us from embracing what God has for us.
The writer of Hebrews puts it this way: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of faith.” Hebrews 12:1-2
You see, to repent of sin isn’t merely to confess it – although that is the starting point – repentance is completely turning away from it. Leaving the sin behind and walking away from it into a new life.
What is it, that we could give up for Lent? What is it we need to walk away from that would make our lives better? James Moore, in his book Give up Something Bad for Lent, begins with some life crushing human tendencies we all, at one time or another, embrace as part of who we are. His suggestion of the first thing to give up is bitterness. Giving up those grudges and grievances we hang on to that don’t improve our lives, but destroy our ability to live into the future new life Jesus offers us.
We look to the example of Naomi in the book of Ruth. She has lost her husband and her two sons. Her bitterness shapes all the relationships around her; she changes her name to Mara, which literally means bitterness. This is more than grief over her circumstances. It affects how she perceives herself and others.
Esau’s bitterness is vividly captured in Genesis 27:41 when he vows to kill Jacob after their father’s death. Through the interaction between Jacob and Esau, we can see how unchecked bitterness can lead us on dangerous paths and destroy our relationships.
Herodias’s bitter heart got John the Baptist killed. (Matthew 14:6-11).
Bitterness within us, ends up becoming bitterness in the world. We experience the world through the lens of our heart. When we give up the bad, God’s healing begins. It now has the room to take hold in the space bitterness once held.
Right up there with bitterness is apathy. Apathy is quitting on life, not caring, not trying – just merely going through the motions. But what is worse is that apathy is spiritual apathy, it represents a state where we become numb or indifferent to the needs of others and our spiritual responsibilities.
We are warned of this in Revelation 3:15-16: “I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of My mouth.”
Jesus gives us the example of spiritual apathy in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The priest and the Levite showed their indifference to the suffering of another. It should serve as a warning to us against the dangers of neglecting our moral and spiritual duties. So spiritual apathy would be something bad to give up for Lent, that would be good for us.
How about discouragement? We all have times we get down, when we are discouraged, the days we feel sorry for ourselves. And that is to be expected, nothing ever comes out perfectly every time, but we can’t just give up. We must learn to temper our discouragement so it doesn’t over take us and we find ourselves in despair.
Remember Elijah? He was the prophet of the Most High God assigned to King Ahab. King Ahab was married to Jezebel. Elijah challenged Jezebel’s prophets of Baal and destroyed them. Jezebel’s reaction was to call for the death of Elijah. Elijah fled because he thought he was utterly alone. There in the desert God came to Elijah to encourage him to continue in the work Elijah was doing. God also revealed 5000 fellow believers to Elijah so that he would know he wasn’t alone.
The Psalms of lament are the biggest source of what discouragement can look like. Psalm 13:1 “How long, O Lord will You forget me?” and Psalm 22:1 “My God, my God why have You forsaken me?” Both psalms continue in long discourses of discouragement and “how long” is a cry from our heart. We recognize that by the time we ask, we know it has been too long. It has been too long to have not received an answer, a healing, or a just resolution.
Giving up discouragement changes us and our relationships with God and with others. In the same way bitterness pollutes our soul, so does discouragement.
In the coming weeks, we will look at other bad things we need to give up – either personally or corporately. It is our holy world as we strive to rise into the new life in the resurrection of Jesus.
Closing Hymn: #420 Breathe on Me, Breath of God
- Breathe on me, Breath of God, fill me with life anew,
that I may love what Thou dost love, and do what Thou wouldst do. - Breathe on me, Breath of God, until my heart is pure,
until with Thee I will one will, to do and to endure. - Breathe on me, Breath of God, till I am wholly Thine,
till all this earthly part of me glows with Thy fire divine. - Breathe on me, Breath of God, so shall I never die,
but live with Thee the perfect life of Thine eternity.
The blessing: May the Lord bless you and keep you and make His face shine upon you this week.
