Sunday, October 17, 2004
TODAY: Lay Speaker Angela Wylie 10-17-04
TINNEY CHAPEL UMC HAS FOUR CERTIFIED LAY SPEAKERS: Left to right, Roger Schneider, Joe Dan Boyd, Angela Wylie, Donna Futral. Today's Laity Sunday sermon was delivered by Angela Wylie. Photo by David Stanton.
*****
ALWAYS WANTED TO BE A LAY SPEAKER?
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON LAY SPEAKER MINISTRIES IN THE PARIS-SULPHUR SPRINGS DISTRICT, GO TO:
http://www.ntcumc.org/PSS/PLayNews.html
*****
SUNDAY WORSHIP TODAY:
MORNING SERVICE, 9:00 A.M.
Greeters: Frankie Brewer & Mary Marrs.
Soundman: Bob Deitering.
Ushers: Mary Marrs & Frankie Brewer.
MUSIC
Pianist: Pat Hollingsworth.
Songleader for hymns: Certified Lay Speaker Angela Wylie.
Songs: Tis So Sweet To Trust In Jesus, What A Friend We Have In Jesus, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, God Is So Good, Bless His Holy Name, Thy Loving Kindness, Praise The Name Of Jesus, We worship & Adore Thee, Sanctuary, Draw Me Nearer (a Fanny Crosby hymn).
SPECIAL MUSIC BY TINNEY CHAPEL CHOIR (directed by Pat Hollingsworth):
In The Presence Of Jehovah/Like A River Glorious.
Morning Prayer & Lord’s Prayer: Certified Lay Speaker Angela Wylie
LITURGY BY CERTIFIED LAY SPEAKER ANGELA WYLIE:
Call To Worship
Offertory Prayer
Doxology
Gloria Patri
Apostles Creed
CHILDREN’S SERMON TODAY:
Certified Lay Speaker Angela Wylie’s sermon for the children today was a reading from a Max Lucado book, God Thinks You Are Wonderful. Among the points emphasized: If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. He brings you a sunrise every day. If you talk to God, He will listen! God could choose to live anywhere, but He chose to live in your heart. God knows your name: It’s written on His hand. He whispers your name on His lips.
Your heart is not large enough for the blessings God wants to give you. He put orange in the sunlight just for you. He cast the sky in blue for you. God made the squirrel’s tail furry for you. God wants you to know that you are neither an accident nor an incident. He wants you to know that you are a gift to the world. In her closing prayer, Lay Speaker Angela Wylie thanked God for the children of Tinney Chapel and for loving all of us.
*****
TODAY’S ADULT SERMON:
Certified Lay Speaker Angela Wylie’s sermon today involved her search for God’s presence, voice and will in the everyday events of her life. “Actually, the songs we sang today pretty much expressed the thoughts I want to emphasize today,” said Angela, who is currently undergoing training for participation in an upcoming Walk To Emmaus. “One of the other ladies, named Brenda, on my team recently told a wonderful story, and I have received her permission to repeat at least part of it here today.”
The story Angela repeated was a moving narration about a young Vietnamese boy named Neguen who was a Christian, but had been imprisoned for some time in a small cell. During his imprisonment, the jailers attempted to break his Christian faith and force him to deny the Name of Jesus. They used isolation, mind games and whatever they could to break Neguen’s spirit, and seemed on the verge of doing so. On the brink of recanting his beliefs, Neguen was assigned latrine duty, the most distasteful job his jailers could think of.
At the critical moment when Neguen was about to deny Christ, he discovered a small piece of paper in the disgusting liquids and solids of the latrine. Apparently, it was a page from a Bible that had been used as toilet paper, and Neguen’s spirit was fortified by the verse in Paul’s Letter to the Romans: Nothing can separate us from the love of God. He was in tears after reading that comforting line, but his spirit was soon lifted and he knew that he would not deny Christ. Over time, his morale increased to the point that he was collecting enough of the "toilet paper" to build a Bible.
Angela said that, in her own life, that story reminded her of times when things looked bad and her own spirits were very low. ”Something has always reminded me that God has not gone away,” she recalled. “He is always there for me, and for you, when we need Him and call on Him. No matter what! As a child, I recall losing a turtle in my grandmother’s house, and being very worried about what the turtle might do to soil her house if I didn’t locate it. So I promised God I would release the turtle if He would help me find it. When I found it, I was tempted, but kept my promise and released the turtle.
“On another occasion, I was older, in high school, and had not been driving very long,” said Angela. “On my way to a friend’s house, I was absolutely lost, and asked God for help. When I turned down a road, it was as if God told me to do it, and it was the right road. Much later, as a young mother, my son Kevin was a challenge as a very active youngster, and I was actually worried about his safety and if I would be able to handle him, so again I asked God for help. I trusted God and told Him I was putting this challenge of my active son in His hands. As a result, I became a better mother by allowing God to be in control.
“Still later, when my marriage was failing, I had to leave and carve out a new life,” Angela said. “It was scary; I felt my life was hopeless and helpless. Clinical depression was a real possibility, I thought. Again, I prayed to God for help, and soon received a job offer at the Winnsboro school system. Over time, with the help of God and my mother, I got a college education and that job which came from out of nowhere evolved into my present position.
“There have been so many other times in my life when God was there for me just when I needed Him,” Angela emphasized. “I think of those times as getting a soft tap on my shoulder from God to remind me that He is there. Early on in my Christian walk, I was NOT very big on prayer, but that has changed over time: I have become a praying person. I used to have trouble with the idea of asking God for things: Me bother God? But, with the help of Brother Duncan and my husband David, I overcame that attitude.
“One thing I’ve learned is that the brain is a lot like the body in that each becomes what we put in it,” added Angela. “So I expose myself to praise music in my car, uplifting spiritual literature and personal conversations with God to tap into His wonderful love. I’ve even got an electronic scrapbook of positive input.
“I’ve learned to be grateful for everything in my life: the successes and the failures,” Angela said. “We are to be thankful for all of our lives, everything that makes it up. All of that brought us to where we are today. If we see no reason to thank God, we may be sure that the problem is not with God. It’s with us. God instructs us: Tells us how to trust Him. So we need to acknowledge Him in all things. Look to Him to direct our paths. That’s how our trust in Him grows.
“So I have grown, and am still growing as a Christian,” concluded Angela. “My faith grows stronger, as does the peace I feel within myself. I still worry, question and second-guess God now and then. But I am becoming a more useful Christian, useful to God, as my patience grows: The calm assurance that no matter what I face, I am not alone. Not ever!
"At a concert recently, I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit, and here at Tinney Chapel as well during a cantata. Joy welled up within me at the very thought of a Living God who cares about me. How much I want to share that love with others. The love of the Lord of lords and the King of kings. Like the Vietnamese boy in Brenda’s story, we need to be patient, to persevere. I am even to the point where I find myself loving people I never intended to love, and that’s exactly what God wants us all to do.”
*****
BIBLE READINGS TODAY:
Readings for twentieth Sunday After Pentecost: Jeremiah 31:27-34; Psalm 119:97-104 or Psalm 19; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8.
*****
PRAYER CONCERNS TODAY:
Donations for the flood and hurricane victims may be made to The United Methodist Committee on Relief, (UMCOR). This committee is supported by church apportionments, so all the money that is donated goes to help victims.
For information on UMCOR, go to:
http://gbgm-umc.org/umcor/emergency/hurricanes/2004/
*****
CLASSES TODAY:
SUNDAY SCHOOL CLASS TOPICS:
WISE ONES, Frankie Brewer: Renewing Covenants.
*****
LADIES BYKOTA, Peggy Boyd: Fishers of Men.
*****
TINNEY CHAPEL MEN, Bill Knoop: The Case For Christ, a study by Lee Strobel.
*****
OVERCOMERS: Jenna Nelson: The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. (This is a multiple-week study.)
*****
YOUTH: Stephen Graham: Journey Through The Bible (Quiz) Continued.
*****
CHILDREN: Linda Hallman: In The Beginning (plants & trees of the Creation).
*****
PAIRS & SPARES, Joe Dan Boyd: Review of Paul’s Letter To The Hebrews: Without Faith No One Can Glorify God.
The Pairs & Spares handout is below:
MOMENTS OF TRUTH (Life lessons 239)
Take home lessons from a review of Paul’s Letter To The Hebrews [Ancient Aramaic wording used below (in which the name of Jesus is spelled Eashoa) is translated by Victor Alexander http://www.v-a.com/bible/project-report.html]
1. God spoke to our ancestors in every way, shape and form through the prophets of old, and in these last days, He spoke to us through His Son,...
2. To Whom was consecrated the inheritance to everything, and by Whom He created the universes,...
3. ... by the power of His Manifestation,And it was with that Essence of His Trinity ... that He cleansed our sins, He Who sits from the right of the Supreme throne in the Highest.
4. "You consecrated the earth's foundations ... from the beginning of creation, And the heavens You made with your hands.
5. He is, then, very little like the angels, for we have seen that He is Eashoa because of the Passion of His death, and the glory and honor that was consecrated on His head is, therefore, imposed by God in tasting death on behalf of every human being.
6. It was because of that He was sanctified, that He may resemble His brothers and sisters in every way, so that He may be master of the king priests, those who are of God's faith, and that He may obliterate the sins of the nation.
7. For in that He Sorrowed and was tempted, He was able to help those who fell under temptation.
8. For the Manifestation of God is alive and Supreme over all, and sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the point of differentiating between the soul and the Spirit, joints, brain and bone, and He judges the intentions of the heart and conscience.
9. Let us, therefore, approach His throne of Grace with open eyes and receive mercy and find grace to aid us in the season of tribulation.
10. "You are that eternal King Priest of the universe, in the likeness of the Righteous King."
11. He Who is our anchor, sinking into our soul so it will not be shaken,...
12. This Righteous King was the King of Peace, the King Priest of the Most High God, and He gave the land to Abraham as he turned away from the war of the kings, and He blessed him,...
13. And Abraham chose for Him tithes from everything that was with him. Neither His Father, nor His Mother were written of in the tribal annals; and neither the beginning of His days, nor the end of His Life [were written of,] except of as those in the likeness of the Son of God, thus his Kingly Priesthood is established forever.
14. And even more so it is known, in that it is said that in the likeness of the Righteous King there would rise another King Priest, All this magnifies the Covenant through which we gained Eashoa.
15. For it was such a King Priest that blessed us -- pure and without a trace of evil, without deceit and incapable of sin, and ascendant above the heavens.
16. Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. He entered with his own blood, one season, into the holy of holies, and He achieved Salvation for the universe. Because of that He is the Reconciler of the New Covenant,...
17. He entered heaven itself so as to be seen in the visage of God, for our sake. He retired the First [Covenant] so as to inaugurate the Second. He, however, offered one sacrifice on behalf of sins, and He sat from the right of God forever.
18. Let us, therefore, accept the offering with a sincere heart and through the testament of faith, as our hearts are sprinkled [with His blood] and our consciences are cleansed of evil and our bodies are washed by the cleansing Waters.
19. You know that you have a treasure in heaven that grows bigger and will not vanish. For the love of that Hope is what you have had, to do the will of God and inherit the Kingdom. Faith, then, allows what is anticipated by the Hope [of the Kingdom,] The faith that fulfills our soul. For it is through faith that we learn how to win eternal lives by the Manifestation of God,...
20. Without faith, then, no human being can glorify God. For a person is responsible for what is offered to God… Through faith when Abraham was called on, he listened and went out to the country that was destined for him to receive as inheritance, and he set off not knowing where he was going.
21. We have all these witnesses around us, like clouds circling us above, that we are relieved of our burdens, also of those sins that we are guilty of in every season, as we preach the hope [of the Kingdom] and run the course of the struggle that has been vouchsafed us,...
22. We gaze upon Eashoa who was the beginning and the fulfillment of faith, who instead of the joy that He possessed, He proffered the Crucifix, conquered its humiliation and sat at the right of the throne of God.
23. Do not lose your mercy toward strangers. For this is how a human being is deemed worthy to receive angels while awake. Remember those who are imprisoned, as if you were imprisoned with them.
24. Eashoa the Messiah is the fulfillment of yesterday, today and forever.
NEXT WEEK: Perspective on Paul after 2-plus years of study, by members of this Sunday School Class, about the Apostle's life, ministry and martyrdom.
*****
WES MAGRUDER PREACHES PEACE IN CAMEROON
Rev. Dr. Wes Magruder is a new Methodist Missionary to Cameroon. To view Rev. Magruder’s regular ongoing posts from Cameroon, go to:
http://preachpeace.blogspot.com/
*****
TO READ THE OCT. 15 ISSUE OF THE NORTH TEXAS METHODIST REPORTER ONLINE, GO TO:
http://www.ntcumc.org/ArcUMR/2004/041015mr.html
*****
For the “mother lode” link to Methodism go to:
http://www.umc.org/
*****
