Welcome
Good morning! Glad you could join the First Church of Squantum for worship. Of course, the beauty of this medium is that you could be worshiping any time, any day. I trust that wherever and whenever you are, that through our music, God’s word and our prayer time, that God will come to You in a way that can change your life and draw you closer into relationship with Jesus. In a sense, though mine is the face you see, mine is the voice you hear, the real host of our worship today is Jesus Himself, because He promised to come whenever two or three gather in His Name. So here we go!
Call to Worship
One: Come, dare to leave ye4sterday behind…
Many: But yesterday is comfortable and familiar — we want to stay.
One: God calls us to set comfort aside, with the promise of a tomorrow that shines brighter than we can even imagine.
Many: We will follow, then, and trust in God to lead us. Let us worship God!
Opening Hymn O God, Our Help in Ages Past
Opening Prayer
Holy Spirit, come and lead us into all truth today. Come and remind us of how You desire to work in our lives—speaking through us words of kindness, doing through us works of justice, working through us lives of steadfast love. Come, Holy Spirit, come, and fill us who worship the Lord! Hear us as we pray as Jesus still teaches us to pray, saying, “Our Father…”
Song Nothing Without You
Stewardship Minute
Are you anxious enough yet? Boy, it’s really stressful out there. We are worried about coronavirus itself and our physical safety. We are worried about the effects the virus is having on our communities and our country as a whole. I don’t know about you, but the differences of opinion about whether to re-open now or wait, only ratchet up my anxiety levels. And we haven’t even talked about how much more anxiety you must have if you’ve lost your job, and if you’re working from home for the first time. And that’s just for starters! Because our kids are stressed and wound up and missing their friends and routines too, and when they are stressed, our stress levels and anxieties rise too. So I’ll ask you again, are you anxious enough? We are looking for security, so our anxieties can shrink. You’ve heard of the COVID-19? It’s the extra 19 pounds we are all picking up from eating extra to pass the time or to quiet our anxiety. Sometimes we worry about money—perhaps with good cause—but ultimately, neither food nor finances, neither drugs or buying stuff, or anything else brings true security. Jesus said, “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” When we make God first in our lives, we recognize that our true security rests with God. Giving is one of the ways we plant God’s flag on our lives. When we give we declare that God is the source of all we are, all we have, and all we will ever have. God can give us more. If you would like to plant God’s flag on your life today, I want to encourage you to pause this video and take a moment to give to our fellowship’s ministries. If you go to the church’s website, www.firstchurchsquantum.org, you’ll find a donate button. Thanks for being a blessing!
Hymn of Preparation Hallelujah (Your Love Is Amazing!)
John 14:12–28
Devotion
Pastor James Doyle tells the story of how he walked to and from church. He writes: It was about 1 mile each way. Being little wasn’t my problem. The length wasn’t my problem. I enjoyed the walk with my family. However, my older brothers teased me by telling me that in one of the fields we’d walk through there was a “boogey man” who would “get me”. Now that frightened me! We have lots of reasons to be afraid in our world, but as our passage today suggests, we have some great promises that make all the difference.
The first promise Jesus gives is: “Ask anything in my name and I will do it.” That’s a pretty amazing promise. There was once young boy in church who was praying really hard. The pastor saw this, but to his surprise, he heard the boy say from time to time: “Tokyo, Tokyo, Tokyo.” So the preacher approached the boy after he had apparently finished his prayer and said, “Son, I was very pleased to see you praying so devoutly, but tell me, why did you keep saying ‘Tokyo, Tokyo, Tokyo?”
The boy replied, “Well, you see sir, I just finished taking my geography test in school, and I have been praying for the Lord to make Tokyo the Capital of France.” Ask anything doesn’t mean to ask for anything WE want, but anything that Jesus would want to put his name to. When we learn to pray for what God wants, our desires are more like God’s, and it’s amazing how fruitful our prayers can be.
The second promise Jesus gives is “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth” One of the things I realized as a teen ager is that no matter how consistent someone was in my life, they were all human, and they would all die or move away, or I would. At first this made me feel profoundly lonely, but then I realized that I would always have God, that Jesus would always walk with me, that the Holy Spirit would always guide me. That’s the promise Jesus has in mind here—whatever the changes and shifts in your life, the one constant is that you will always have the Counselor, the Spirit of Truth.
The third promise Jesus gives is that the Holy Spirit “will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” There are always gaps in our knowledge, aren’t there? Indeed, if we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that really, we can never know enough. So God invented “just in time education” headed up by the Holy Spirit. When we need it, God gives us what we need to know and say and do, in order to accomplish what God wants. So if you don’t have all the answers to life’s questions, that’s ok. Let God lead.
Our world is full of things to worry about—especially these days—like the field was for Pastor Doyle told him about. Pastor Doyle remembers that one night while he was at church, he really fell asleep. He writes:
Dad picked me up. I woke up right away but continued to pretend to be asleep as he carried me. That night we went right through that frightening field and I was not one bit afraid. I felt the warmth, the strength and the protection of my dad’s arms. To this day, some 50 plus years later, I can still “feel” his arms and “hear” his breathing as I remember his ultimate protection.
My friends, lots of people will try to spook us by telling us of all the things we have to worry about. Jesus has promised that He will always be with us, that the Counselor will teach us all things (even things we don’t know about yet!), and will always be there to help us. The real key is being in the Father, relaxing in His arms, and realizing that the Father is in us, doing works of steadfast love and justice in us. Indeed, people will know that the Father is in us and we are in the Father in the same way as Jesus: by what we do. We are more than ourselves. Trust the promises—Ask and receive, trust God will always be there, and that the Spirit will lead. If the Spirit is in us, then under God’s direction, we can relax and let God do the heavy lifting. With God’s help, doing our part will allow resurrection power to flow through us. We have nothing to fear, for by God’s grace at work in us we are becoming more than ourselves…so that others might become more in Christ.
Pastoral Prayer
Closing Hymn #433, Rise Up, O Church of God
Unison Benediction