Pray for workers in the harvest

Matthew's Gospel records:

Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field." Matthew 9:36-38

Our missions focus this post is on the urgent need for more missionaries to take the Gospel to neglected frontiers. We are all so aware of the need all around us in Australia, that it it is harder to be aware of the large groups of people who have never heard the name of Jesus Christ even once.

Recently the International Director of OMF has put out an appeal for 900 new workers for East Asia by the year 2011. He asks us to consider the 10 million Hui people in China where there is no church at all. And what about the 23 million people in North Korea still closed to the Gospel but open for professional Australian Christians to work there. He points out that in modern Japan there are 628 towns and villagesw without a church, including 64 towns or cities with a population of more than 20,000. There are 15 million working class people in Taiwan who are the backbone of their highly industrialised society but are unreached with the Gospel.

Then there are the one million ethnic Khmers in NE Thailand and the 1.9 million Rakhine people in Myanmar. And I have not completed the list because I fear you will be overwhelmed by the figures. But it seems so wrong that there are so many of us who know and enjoy our relationship with our Saviour Jesus Christ and yet there are so many in other parts of the world who have never been able to make that choice - because they have never heard.

Let us pray, as the Lord indeed instructed us to pray, that more workers would step up to the plate and go and tell the Gospel to the people in the neglected frontiers. OMF is praying for 900, other mission agencies are praying likewise for more workers. Let us join with them in this prayer and Go!

Blodwyn

Godly voting

Sandy's 5 tips (not in order) to help Christian vote Christianly

1. The importance of character
The privacy of politicians should be respected. But the Bible says a leader’s character and beliefs, including religious beliefs, will effect how he or she acts. If a political leader breaks a promise to his wife, why would we expect him to keep a promise to the electorate? Ditto for drunkenness or the physically and verbally aggressive. And where will a defiant atheist get his or her values from? The public-private split cannot be total.

2. The importance of an attitude of glad tax-paying
See Romans 13; Luke 20:20-26 etc. Christians shouldn't just vote for whomever will reduce taxes most or otherwise give them the biggest electoral bribe. If we want good services (health, education, police, roads etc.) we should be willing to pay. Self-interest, though everywhere present, is a bad way to determine what is right and good and helpful for a nation.

3. The importance of the dignity of all human life

The Bible notes the crucial importance for a nation’s leaders to act with justice and compassion and especially to defend the defenceless (widows, orphans, the unborn, elderly, disabled, refugees, detainees, etc.)! This has implications for abortion and euthanasia debates, but also for foreign aid and immigration policies. I suspect that we must even defend the rights of those with whom we disagree or feel threatened by (e.g. terrorist suspects), if those same rights are to mean anything for ourselves in the long run.

4. The importance of Christian (& other religious) liberties

1 Timothy 2:1-6 urges our prayers for leaders, but also indicates the advantage of a society which is ordered so as to enable Christians to lead quiet and peaceful lives in all godliness, rather than in a climate of hostility or persecution. This part of the Bible seems to imply that there are consequent advantages in an orderly society for the spread of God’s life-giving gospel, which Christians believe will benefit society.

5. The importance of family friendly policies

This operates both at a morality level (e.g. Christians will not wish to see gay marriage or adoption; and prefer policies that make reconciliation in troubled marriages more likely than divorce). But it also operates at an economic level, e.g. by making it easier for mothers (or fathers) to stay home rather than having to work for a second income; also easier for single parents.

This is an extract from Sandy Grant's full Article "Why we must vote christianly..."

http://your.sydneyanglicans.net/indepth/articles/why_we_must_vote_christianly_and_not_just_for_the_cdp/

39 Articles on the Value of God's Word

Article VI, Of the sufficiency of the Holy Scripture for Salvation, immediately establishes Holy Scripture as the final authority in matters of salvation. The article sets forth:

Holy Scripture contained all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation… .

Earlier Cranmer wrote in the preface to the Great Bible of 1540, the Holy Scriptures were “the fat pastures of the soul,” and the “most holy relic that remain upon the earth.” The 1553 Ordinal, as a particular ceremony of the church, further captures this aspect of the doctrine of Scripture articulated by The Articles:

The Bishoppe: Be you perswaded that the holy Scriptures contein sufficiently al doctrine required of necessitie for eternal salvacion, throughe faith in Jesu Christe? And are you determined with the saied scriptures, to enstructe the people committed to your charge, and to teache nothyng, as required of necessitie, to eternal salvacion, but that you shalbe perswaded may be concluded, and proved by the scripture?

Aunswere: I am so perswaded, and have so determyned by Gods grace.

How does this change the way we read the Holy Scriptures?

Gavin

Your King Comes: Zechariah 9-14

11/11 Study 1 Your King Comes
Zechariah 9:1-17


18/11 Study 2 The cornerstone, the peg, & the bow
Zech 10:1-11:3

25/11 Study 3 The Good Shepherd
Zechariah 11: 4-17

2/12 Study 4 Gaze upon the pierced One
Zech 12:1-14

9/12 Study 5 Strike the Shepherd
Zechariah 13:1-9

16/12 Study 6 Our God Reigns
Zechariah 14:1-21

Stay Tuned For this Talk Series, It will also be accompanied by a brief study Book to help you think things through. We will be looking at how the Prophecies of Zechariah Speak of Jesus and apply to us !

Gavin

The Parsons have gone fishing......

The Parsons have gone fishing....

See you when we get back !

Miniute 4 Mission: Palestinian territories

Imagine that your parish is in the centre of a city of 200,000 people, 199,000 of them Muslim. Imagine that your parish is in a city that has been surrounded by military checkpoints for the last six or seven years and that to enter or leave your city involved waits of hours or days..or month...or years. Imagine that the streets you walk each day are the haunt of angry young men with access to guns. Imagine that many nights, you wake to the sound of tanks and jeeps rumbling past your house - or even worse the souns of gunfire. Imagine that you live in Nablus and are part of the remant Christian Arab population. You as an Anglican are a minority within a minority within a minority.

What would you do?

If you are the Anglican Church in Nablus, you seek to build God's Kingdom by every means open to you. You say to the population through actions and words that you are here to stay. You keep your hospital open to serve the poor. You open a new church building to proclaim that God is faithful and that this is your home. The Rev. Hosam Naoum has led the church in Nablus right rhough the terrors of the second Intifada and declares that the Gospel is the hope of the nations. He sees a new church building as a sign of the indestructibility of the Church. It means that the new life in Christ is continuing: and it means new hope for the Christian Arabs who see themselves as living sones of the Holy Land.

Great courage and faith is being displayed by our Christian Arab friends in the Palestine territories. In the face of such extreme conditions day after day, we need to look away from our own local lives and embrace in prayer those who are tested daily and retain their strong trust in God.

Pray for them

Blodwyn

On Church Councils

I have been reflecting on the Thirty-nine articles with respect to an Anglican doctrine of Scripture....

Article XXI Of the Authority of General Councils


....And when they be gathered together, (forasmuch as they be an assembly of men, whereof all be not governed with the Spirit and Word of God,) they may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God. Wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of holy Scripture.

According to Art XXI Church councils come under the Word of God
and do not sit over the Word of God.

O' Donovan writes "The books of Scripture are not authoritative because the church views them in a certain way; the church views them in a certain way because they are authoritative."
Pray for our Synod that it humbly sits under Scripture and does not lord it over Scripture, especially in its efforts to advance a strategic plan.
Pray for humility for our Synod


GP