10w for July 3rd Why oh Why, NL.

The following is a 10 minute worship for July 3rd Why oh Why, NL.  You can listen on the flash player below. You now also have the option of receiving these notices each week and on festival days by signing up for the 10W constant contact email list on the right side of the 10W blog where it says "Please Join our Email List or you may text 10w to 2828 to sign up, The song for the day is Cry Mercy by Dakota Road from the CD All Are Welcome, Used with permission you can find this and other gifts for ministry at dakotaroadmusic.com

10w for July 3rd, Travel Light, P7.

The following is a 10 minute worship for July 3rd, Travel Light, P7.  You can listen on the flash player below. You now also have the option of receiving these notices each week and on festival days by signing up for the 10W constant contact email list on the right side of the 10W blog where it says "Please Join our Email List or you may text 10w to 2828 to sign up, The song for the day is Traveling Mercies by Bryan Sirchio from the CD Something Beautiful for God.  Used with permission you can find this and other gifts for ministry at Sirchio.com

10w for June 26th, Gimme Shelter, P6.

The following is a 10 minute worship for June 26th, Gimme Shelter, P6. You can listen on the flash player below. You now also have the option of receiving these notices each week and on festival days by signing up for the 10W constant contact email list on the right side of the 10W blog where it says "Please Join our Email List or you may text 10w to 2828 to sign up, The song for the day is Show the Way by Ed Kilbourne from the CD Show The Way.     Used with permission, you can find this and other gifts for ministry at www.edkilbourne.com

10w for June 26th, Generousity, NL.

The following is a 10 minute worship for June 26th, Generousity, NL.  You can listen on the flash player below. You now also have the option of receiving these notices each week and on festival days by signing up for the 10W constant contact email list on the right side of the 10W blog where it says "Please Join our Email List or you may text 10w to 2828 to sign up, The song for the day is Abundant Life by Hans Peterson from the CD Harvest of a Heart.    You can find this and other gifts for ministry at hanspetersonmusic.com

Opening Litany based on Psalm 16

Worship Leader: Keep me safe, O God, for I have come to you for refuge.

Congregation: We said to the LORD, “You are our Master! Every good thing we have comes from you.” The godly people in the land are our heroes and we take pleasure in them!

Worship Leader: Troubles seem to multiply for those who chase after other gods.

Congregation: We will not take part in their sacrifices or pretend to follow in their ways for the LORD alone is our inheritance, our cup of blessing.

Worship Leader: You guard all that is ours. The land you have given us is a pleasant land and a wonderful inheritance!

Congregation: We will bless the LORD who guides us; even at night our hearts instruct us to follow the ways of the Lord. Therefore we know the LORD is always with us and we will not be shaken, for the Lord is right beside us at all times.

Worship Leader: No wonder my heart is glad, and I rejoice. I rest in safety knowing the Lord walks with us and will not leave us to the powers of death.

Congregation: The Lord will show us the way of life, granting us joy of living in the presence of the Lord forever.

Poem based on Luke 9:51-62

But first

But first just

But first just let me…

just let me find one more reason

I can’t do

that which I really need

                                want

                                                to do

one more reason to avoid

                change

one more reason to know

                have

                                hold

                                                plan

                                                                control

                tomorrow

one more reason to lay my life

in my hands

and still say I trust you

                with my words

Jesus simply said

                follow me

laugh, and sometimes cry

Sunday June 26^th, Luke 9:  57 As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." 58 Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." 59 He said to another man, "Follow me." But the man replied, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." 60 Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God." 61  Still another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family." 62 Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God."  The Call to follow God is a call to love one another.  The call to love one another is a call to put God first in our lives, ahead of our own desires.  That sounds good on paper, but don’t ever kid yourself that it is easy.  It takes a lifetime, day after day, one day, one moment at a time.  And it always requires a good natured look at our own foibles first and foremost along the way.  Being a child of God requires a good sense of humor to laugh, and sometimes cry, at ourselves most of all, and to put God ahead of self.  

none of us escape

Saturday June 25^th, Luke 9:  51 As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. 52 And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; 53 but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. 54 When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?" 55 But Jesus turned and rebuked them, 56 and they went to another village. When Jesus got to Jerusalem, he was eventually rejected there by the powers that be also.  The Gospel is a threat to all who want to draw lines in the sand, and that is some of us all the time and all of us some of the time.  As the children of God, we are still sent into foreign territories to get things ready for the coming of Christ.  These foreign lands do not always require a passport however, sometimes these foreign lands are the neighborhood grocery, the athletic club, half way around the world, and sometimes even our own families and congregations.  Every time our anger seems to beckon us to call down God’s wrath on someone or some group, it is good to remember that none of us escape judgment in total.  Often the call for God’s wrath says more about who we are than it does about the other for whom we wish to call down the wrath.  In God’s world what you call down is far more difficult to live with than wrath, it is love..  but in the end, it is the only thing worth living for and we are not left standing there alone.

ungodly is ungodly

Friday June 24^th, Galatians 5:    25-26 Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original. In the beginning God created all that is and called it good.  The sin of humanity is that we are always trying to rend asunder what God has joined together (Coffin).  When we compare ourselves to others with the assumption that we, or our group, or party, or ethnicity, or religion, or, or, or are better, we are in essence saying that we are a better judge of “goodness” than God.  When we pursue policies that create second class citizens of the world or take away decision making power from minorities or women, we are in essence saying that our view of God is “second class.”  In the end, we say more about ourselves than the other.  God doesn’t do border fences and papers please, whether they be in Berlin, Jerusalem or the Arizona.  Perhaps if we see one another as an original creation of God, and treat one another as an original creation of God, and accept one another as our brothers and sisters through Christ we wouldn’t feel the need for the fences. I often hear the immigration debate sloganed as Illegal is illegal, yes tis true, but so is the phrase ungodly is ungodly and it falls, as it did with the Pharisees in Jesus’ day, with the basic Godly truth, we are all brothers and sisters in the family of God whether we like it or not. 

process

Thursday June 23^rd, Galatians 5: 19-21 It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.  Paul, it sounds so bad when you put it that way, it sounds like the political rhetoric in the just say no to everything culture.  All I was trying to do was watch out for old number one.  Or perhaps all I was trying to do was insert myself as number one instead of holding God in my heart as number one, which is like putting a one-way valve in the wrong way.  Here is the way it goes, love comes from God, if we are connected it flows through our hearts and out into the world around us.  If we try to put ourselves as number one, all we succeed in doing is stopping the flow that was meant for our heart.  Nothing good in, nothing good out.  We don’t stop God however and perhaps one time or another the network of God’s goodness flowing through others will come back upstream and flood our heart enough to prompt us to turn the valve around.  Until then we are set to suffer with who we are rather than live with who God called us to be.  But someday, someday, God will win and I just pray that you may live long enough to enjoy the process.    

skeleton

Wednesday June 22^nd, Galatians 5: 14 For everything we know about God's Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself.  If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then? The book, “Wishful Thinking” by Fredrick Buechner has been stolen from me more than any other book.  To date, I have purchased 27 copies and have one in my library.  I call that an excellent endorsement of the book as well as a testimony to my poor managing skills.  From that book I will share with you the definition of “Anger.”  Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun.  To lick your wounds, to smack you lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back – in many ways it is a feast fit for a king.  The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself.  The skeleton at the feast is you.  

scars

Tuesday June 21^st, Galatians 5: 13 It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don't use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that's how freedom grows.  For a young child, learning to ride a bike is an exhilarating sense of freedom.  One of the essentials for learning to ride a bike is balance.  You maintain that balance by looking ahead, where you are going.  The minute you look down, where you are at, or focus on yourself instead of the ride, you lose your balance and fall.  I have the scars, both on my knees and on my ego, to prove it.  Our exhilarating freedom in Christ also requires balance, and that balance comes from looking ahead to where Christ is leading us.  The minute we look down, focus on our situation, or our needs, or our wants, or our desires, or our pity party, or our, our, our, we lose our balance and fall.  And I also have the scars to prove that.    

phobias

Monday June 20^th, Galatians 5:  1&2 Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.  I am emphatic about this. The moment any one of you submits to circumcision or any other rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ's hard-won gift of freedom is squandered. The question for Paul and for the Galatians was whether someone “had” to be circumcised in order to be a Christian.  It is the law vs. grace argument that dominated Paul’s ministry and much of Christendom today.  Circumcision itself may not seem like much of an issue today but the world if full of “You are saved by grace and all you have to do is….” Christianity, which is really the same argument.  What is at issue today are the many other litmus test the children of God have devised to prove you are a true Christian.  Keep in mind that any litmus test is always for the other and is devised for the strengths and/or phobias of the giver of the test.  Christ made you free so that you could bring that freedom to others.  Christ did not make you free so that you could impose a new slavery on someone else and in the process burden yourself.  But all of us do it some of the time and some of us do it all the time.  Just ask your friends who don’t go to church why they don’t go to church, or if they say they don’t believe in God, ask them to tell you about that God they don’t believe in.  You will get a vast array of assumptions, true or not, about the rules and slaveries of the Christian walk.  In the face of this, our calling is to preach salvation by Grace, nothing more, nothing less.  What difference would it make in how you live your life today if you knew, really knew, Jesus loved you and you were going to spend eternity in heaven?  Now go live it in grace.  

10w for June 18th, Foreign Fear, P5.

The following is a 10 minute worship for June 18th, Foreign Fear, P5. You can listen on the flash player below. You now also have the option of receiving these notices each week and on festival days by signing up for the 10W constant contact email list on the right side of the 10W blog where it says "Please Join our Email List or you may text 10w to 2828 to sign up, The song for the day is Be Not Afraid by John Michael Talbot from the CD Table of Plenty.  Used with permission, you can find this and other gifts for ministry at johnmichaeltalbot.com

10w for June 18th, Reconciliation, NL.

The following is a 10 minute worship for June 18th, Reconciliation, NL. You can listen on the flash player below. You now also have the option of receiving these notices each week and on festival days by signing up for the 10W constant contact email list on the right side of the 10W blog where it says "Please Join our Email List or you may text 10w to 2828 to sign up, The song for the day is: Restore to Life by Dakota Road from the CD Boundless Love.  Used with permission, you can find this and other gift for ministry at Dakotaroadmusic.com

10w for June 12th, Walking By Faith, NL.

The following is a 10 minute worship for June 12th, Walking By Faith, NL. You can listen on the flash player below. You now also have the option of receiving these notices each week and on festival days by signing up for the 10W constant contact email list on the right side of the 10W blog where it says "Please Join our Email List or you may text 10w to 2828 to sign up, The song for the day is: The Best is Yet to Come by Celia Whitler from the CD On the Way to Somewhere.  Used with permission, you can find this and other gifts for ministry at celiamusic.net

10w for June 12th, Mercy Judge, P4.

The following is a 10 minute worship for June 12th, Mercy Judge, P4. You can listen on the flash player below. You now also have the option of receiving these notices each week and on festival days by signing up for the 10W constant contact email list on the right side of the 10W blog where it says "Please Join our Email List or you may text 10w to 2828 to sign up, The song for the day is: All Are Welcome by Dakota Road from the CD, All Are Welcome.  Used with permission, you can find this and other gifts for ministry at dakotaroadmusic.com

Poem based on Luke 8: 26-39

Jesus heals a demon-possessed man

In this foreign land

Far across the lake

Where we find people of strange values

------ language

----------- ungodly ideas

We follow Jesus

And encounter

As expected

One wild and filled with evil

And as unexpected

One love by Jesus.

What have you to do with us

Jesus

Son of the Most High God?

Who do people say I am

Who do you say I am

As the disciples

And you and I stand

Not understanding what has just happened

As the many descend in uncleanness

To the depths of the chaos waters

And the followers stand in jaw dropping fear

That God’s love might

Just might

Extend

Even across the pond to the other side

Where the people react

As we react

In fear of our bottom line

What is in it for me

And how do I measure

Economy

The cost

While the disciples

You and I

Still stand jaw dropped

While the new evangelists

Gets to work in the Kingdom

Which just became visible

As near.

Opening Litany based on Psalm 22

Worship Leader:  I will declare your name to my people O Lord and in the assembly I will praise you. 

Congregation: Let all who live in awe of the LORD, praise the holy name of God. All the descendants of Jacob and Israel, all the peoples of the world Praise the Holy name of God! 

Worship Leader:  For the Lord has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted ones but has listened to their cry for help.

Congregation: From you O Lord comes the very essence of my praise in the great assembly before all who live in your grace I will fulfill my vows. 

Worship Leader:  The poor will eat and be satisfied; those who seek the LORD will live forever in a life of praise. 

Congregation: All the ends of the earth will remember God’s loving grace and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations will bow down before the Lord, who is ruler of all. 

Worship Leader:  All the blessed of the earth will feast and worship, All mortals will bow before the Lord of all creation. 

Congregation: We will use the blessings of this world to serve, so that all future generations will know of the righteousness the Lord has done. 

demon state of mind

Saturday June 18^th, Luke 8: 38 The man from whom the demons had gone out begged to go with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, 39 "Return home and tell how much God has done for you." So the man went away and told all over town how much Jesus had done for him.  After all the training and seminars we go to that help us design our evangelism programs, what it really takes is the passion of lives changed.  I believe Luther put it this way; we are simply beggars telling other beggars where to get food.  Perhaps our passion should be on changing lives and letting evangelism happen naturally.  Changing a demon state of mind as well as a demon state, Godly, one life at a time.  

economic bottom line

Friday June 17^th, Luke 8:  34 When those tending the pigs saw what had happened, they ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, 35 and the people went out to see what had happened. When they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone out, sitting at Jesus' feet, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. 36 Those who had seen it told the people how the demon-possessed man had been cured. 37 Then all the people of the region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them, because they were overcome with fear. So he got into the boat and left.  The demons were dispatched, lives were set right and salvation offered, all good God stuff, but damn it Jesus, don’t mess with the economic bottom line or we will run you out of town again.  Things haven’t changed much.  What’s next, the Supreme Court saying corporations can act as persons in campaign spending?  Oh, they already did!

some wretch in Baghdad

Thursday June 16^th, Luke 8:  26 They sailed to the region of the Gerasenes, which is across the lake from Galilee. 27 When Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a demon-possessed man from the town. For a long time this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tombs. 28 When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of his voice, "What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?  The disciples didn’t get it, the religious leaders didn’t get it, and even John the Baptist sent a message asking if Jesus was the one or if he should wait for another. It was the poor naked, demon-possessed man in the unclean foreign land that got the fact that Jesus was the Son of the Most High.  Sometimes you wonder if Jesus were to come back today, if the church would get it, or if it would be some wretch in Baghdad, Beijing or Mogadishu to say, truly you are the son of God. Perhaps we should start seeing these wretches as the children of God, as well as our brothers and sisters now.  Perhaps that would be a step toward that maturity Paul talks about in Galatians.  

In Christ’s eyes

Wednesday June 15^th, Galatians 3: 25-27 But now you have arrived at your destination: By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God. Your baptism in Christ was not just washing you up for a fresh start. It also involved dressing you in an adult faith wardrobe—Christ's life, the fulfillment of God's original promise. 28-29 In Christ's family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal.  If our baptism dresses us in an adult faith, most of us spend a lot of time trying to get naked.  If this sign of maturity is to recognize there can be no divisions, humanity in general spends a lot of time and energy getting naked.  Wars, vast income differentiations, health insurance discrepancies, insane increases in CEO pay while the debate for a living wage on the bottom goes on and on.  The old days of slavery may be gone in the U.S. but the new attitudes of economic slavery through vast disparities in wealth are growing. Every major religion has as one of its basic teachings some form of the Golden Rule, do onto others as you would have them do onto you.  We say it, we say we believe it, but when it comes to the rubber meeting the road it once again becomes all about “Me” which is the very essence of sin.  In Christ’s eyes there is no difference, all are the children of God.  The differences we see are the brothers and sisters being mean to each other.     

ongoing process

Tuesday June 14^th, Galatians 3: 23-24 Until the time when we were mature enough to respond freely in faith to the living God, we were carefully surrounded and protected by the Mosaic law. The law was like those Greek tutors, with which you are familiar, who escort children to school and protect them from danger or distraction, making sure the children will really get to the place they set out for.  When our children are young, we need to deal with them with lots of love and limits, which is another way of saying the law.  Don’t touch the stove, Don’t play in the street, Don’t hit, and sometimes there is a time out or some toys taken away.  As they grow in years, they learn to make their own good decisions (hopefully).  Part of the process of learning to make good decisions is having gone through the process of making some bad decisions.  Until we as individuals, as cultures, and humanity in general, reach the state of maturity where we can freely respond in faith to the living God, there are always some of those laws to keep us in line.  It is an ongoing process.  One sure way to know you have not reached maturity is to think you have reached maturity. True maturity always knows there is more growing to do.  In the meantime, we live in the tension between Law and Gospel and are lead forward by grace. 

temper tantrum

Monday June 13^th, Isaiah 65: ⁸ This is what the LORD says: "As when juice is still found in a cluster of grapes and men say, 'Don't destroy it, there is yet some good in it,' so will I do in behalf of my servants; I will not destroy them all. ⁹ I will bring forth descendants from Jacob, and from Judah those who will possess my mountains; my chosen people will inherit them, and there will my servants live.  We can prune trees, cultivate gardens, even practice animal husbandry, but the cultivation of the human species is best left up to God.  We have tried, and we are all too familiar with the results of trying to play god by our rules.  The results are often ethnic cleansing, war, genocide, gas chambers and draconian immigration policies. The difference between our attempts of societal cultivation and God’s attempts at human cultivation is that God loves all of us and takes the spoils of the messes we have created and tries to work them for the good of all.  Humanities attempts are only thinly disguised attempts of tyranny and often look like a two-year-old having a temper tantrum.  

sign of grace

Sunday June 12^th, Isaiah 65:  ¹ "I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me.  To a nation that did not call on my name, I said, 'Here am I, here am I.' Several years ago there was a rash of bumper stickers with the words, “I’ve found it.”  I always found it to be an interesting example of anthropocentric arrogance.  It reminds me of the time in the store when one of my children wandered off.  I followed them, remaining somewhat out of sight just to see how long it would take for them to notice they were lost, and then be near and use it as a teaching moment about the need to stay near.  The goal is that when they finally realized they are lost and cry out, you can descend on the scene and use the moment to comfort and teach.  Sometimes however, my children would simply respond with “O there you are” as if they had found me and then they would prepare for their next getting lost session.  So it is with humanity.  We wander away through the aisles of life, unaware of being lost until some calamity strikes, we cry out, God appears and we assume that God was the one who was distant and we somehow, through our own holiness, found God.  The reality is that God is the one combing the aisles of life waiting patiently for us to realize we are lost and need God in our lives and then we open our eyes to see the God that has been there all along. When we open our eyes, or hearts or heads or spirits to the presence of the God who is already there, it is to us, a sign of grace.  

10w for June 5th, Reason to Live, P3.

The following is a 10 minute worship for June 5th, Reason to Live, P3. You can listen on the flash player below. You now also have the option of receiving these notices each week and on festival days by signing up for the 10W constant contact email list on the right side of the 10W blog where it says "Please Join our Email List or you may text 10w to 2828 to sign up, The song for the day is: The Healing Hand of Jesus by the Jay Beech Band from the CD Everyone Who is Thirst, Come. Used with permission you can find this and other gifts for ministry at Baytonemusic.com

10w for June 5th, Clay Jars, NL.

The following is a 10 minute worship for June 5th, Clay Jars, NL.    You can listen on the flash player below. You now also have the option of receiving these notices each week and on festival days by signing up for the 10W constant contact email list on the right side of the 10W blog where it says "Please Join our Email List or you may text 10w to 2828 to sign up, The song for the day is: Earthen Vessels by John Michael Talbot from the CD City of God.  Used with permission, you can find this and other gifts for ministry at Johnmichaeltalbot.com  You may also want to listen to Leonard Cohen's Anthem at:  https://youtu.be/mDTph7mer3I