[Did you miss last Sunday’s services? They can still be found at Worship Archive – January 17th 2021.]
Sunday Service from Connexion for January 24th 2021:
Sunday Services from Hillside Circuit for January 24th 2021:
Theme: A call to serve God
Occasion: 3rd after Epiphany
Psalm 62
Old Testament: Jonah 3: 1-5, 10
New Testament: 1 Corinthians 7: 29-31
Gospel: Mark 1: 14-20
[Click or tap on a Bible reference above to jump down the page to the Bible reading to listen and/or read it for yourself and then click or tap on Back to top to come back here.]
Songs:
Here are the songs for Sunday morning service. Click or tap on a song to open it in YouTube, or go to the Songs for worship webpage to find them embedded.
I want to walk with Jesus Christ.
There is none like You.
Here I am to worship (Light of the world).
Prayers:
You can listen and join in with prayers from the Methodist Service Book, they can be found at the Prayers for worship webpage.
Children’s Address:
Sermons:
Bible readings:
Psalm 62
5 Only God gives inward peace, and I depend on him.
6 God alone is the mighty rock that keeps me safe,
and he is the fortress where I feel secure.
7 God saves me and honours me.
He is that mighty rock where I find safety.
8 Trust God, my friends,
and always tell him each one of your concerns.
God is our place of safety.
9 We humans are only a breath;
none of us are truly great.
All of us together weigh less than a puff of air.
10 Don’t trust in violence or depend on dishonesty
or rely on great wealth.
11 I heard God say two things:
“I am powerful, 12 and I am very kind.”
The LORD rewards each of us according to what we do.
Jonah 3
1 Once again the LORD told Jonah 2 to go to that great city of Nineveh and preach his message of doom.
3 Jonah obeyed the LORD and went to Nineveh. The city was so big that it took three days just to walk through it. 4 After walking for a day, Jonah warned the people, “Forty days from now, Nineveh will be destroyed!”
5 They believed God’s message and set a time when they would go without eating to show their sorrow. Then everyone in the city, no matter who they were, dressed in sackcloth.
10 When God saw that the people had stopped doing evil things, he had pity and did not destroy them as he had planned.
1 Corinthians 7
29 My friends, what I mean is that the Lord will soon come, and it won’t matter if you are married or not. 30 It will be all the same if you are crying or laughing, or if you are buying or are completely broke. 31 It won’t make any difference how much good you are getting from this world or how much you like it. This world as we know it is now passing away.
Mark 1
14 After John was arrested, Jesus went to Galilee and told the good news that comes from God. 15 He said, “The time has come! God’s kingdom will soon be here. Turn back to God and believe the good news!”
16 As Jesus was walking along the shore of Lake Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew. They were fishermen and were casting their nets into the lake. 17 Jesus said to them, “Come with me! I will teach you how to bring in people instead of fish.” 18 Right then the two brothers dropped their nets and went with him.
19 Jesus walked on and soon saw James and John, the sons of Zebedee. They were in a boat, mending their nets. 20 At once Jesus asked them to come with him. They left their father in the boat with the hired workers and went with him.
Children’s Address for Hillside Circuit on January 24th 2021, with Mrs Talenta Chakoma:
I greet you all in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
Good morning boys and girls. I hope you are all safe and well.
Readings Jonah 3: 1- 10
1 Corinthians 7 : 29-31
Mark 1: 14-20
Theme : A call to serve God.
God calls his people to serve him that is to say to work for him.
Just like we do chores at home, we are sent by our parents to wash dishes, we clean our room. God wants us to do some chores for him too.
Remember he created us because he loves us. He wants to send us to do his errands here on Earth.
Now the question is How do we serve or work for God?
1 By telling others about God and how wonderful he is.
2 By listening to our parents and being the children that please God and people.
3 By worshipping God and thanking his blessings everyday through prayer.
Where we read heard how Jonah carried out the mission that God has sent him to do.
At first he failed to go because he was afraid of the people of the city of Nineveh. Because the people in that city were always doing evil, killing others and they just did not care about other people.
Finally Jonah went there and it is a good thing that he finally got there. Because if he had not done that they would have been destroyed and they would have perished. When Jonah got there he went around telling everyone the big and the small, he told them how God was angry because of their evil.
The wonderful news is they listened and stopped doing evil and they started praying and worshipping God.
God does not delight if his people are being destroyed because of the evil, so he sends us to remind them to stop and learn to please God only. Let us all do our duty of serving and doing chores for God that is what God calls us to do.
Let us pray.
Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of life. We thank you Lord for our Sunday School children in Hillside Circuit. Lord bless each and every one of them and help them to grow and learn to serve you only Lord.
We pray that you protect them from this pandemic of Corona Virus. In the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
Mrs Chakoma.
Message for Hillside Circuit on January 24th 2021 in English, with Mrs Gloria Nyamambi:
Our call to worship today comes from Psalm 62:- “For God alone my soul waits in silence, from Him comes my salvation. He only is my Rock and my Salvation, my Defence and my Fortress, I shall not be greatly moved. God has spoken once, twice I have heard this: that power belongs to God. Also to You, O Lord, belong mercy and loving-kindness, for You render to every man according to his work.
Let us pray. Our heavenly Father, we come before your throne of grace to honour you and glorify your name. We thank you for this opportunity to listen to your word. Speak to us your children O Lord today. Open our ears so that we may hear and understand your call to serve you. Give us the strength and wisdom to know and do your will. In Jesus’s name I pray. Amen.
Our theme today, ” A call to serve God”, is drawn from the three scriptures given. The first one is about the Prophet named Jonah, son of Amittai. He came from a town called Gath-hepher near Nazareth and was one of the few prophets who hailed from the Northern Kingdom of Israel. However, rather than direct Jonah to prophesy to his own people, God commissioned him to the Assyrian capital of Nineveh, whose cruelty to captives and other undesirables was well known in Israel, and its wickedness was before the Lord. This created an obvious need for Jonah’s message of repentance. At first Jonah was unwilling to deliver God’s message, so he fled to Tarshish. We know what happened to him on the way, until the big fish carried him and vomited him on the dry land. Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you”. Eventually God turned Jonah in the right direction, he obediently prophesied to the people of Nineveh who then turned from their evil ways. When God saw this, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.
The big idea of Jonah, is when the call of God came to him, he could not see beyond his own selfish desire for God to punish the Assyrians. How could God want him to take a message of mercy to such people who were not Hebrews like him. Before Jonah could relay God’s message, he had to be broken. He had to learn something about the mercy of God. Through his flight to Tarshish, his shipwreck and the time in the belly of the fish, Jonah was convinced in a powerful way that all salvation comes from the Lord. (Jonah 2: 9) And because of God’s supreme power, only God decides where to pour out his salvation and His mercy. (Jonah 4: 11)
Have we not found ourselves fighting God sometimes, our desires pulling us one way, God’s desires pulling us another. Jonah found himself in that position, but his desire prevailed over God’s for a time, so he thought. We see this in our lives too, but God always accomplishes His purpose through us even though it means Him doling out a heavy dose of humility on a proud and unwilling heart. When God calls us, which I believe he does to every believer as in 1 Corinthians 1:9 “God is faithful, by whom you were called into fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord,” we respond to him differently. Some respond immediately, some give excuses like Moses and Jeremiah, some like Samuel who did not yet know the word of God, have to be called three or more times and some like Jonah they run away.
The way in which we hear a call and understand the message will determine our response and how we will serve. We live in a busy world with so much noises that we sometimes fail to hear God’s call. Paul in his 1st letter to the Corinthians, addresses five contingencies of Christians living under distress that hinder them from serving God. Those that are married, those in sorrow, those in joy, those in business and those using the world. The issue is not to neglect the daily responsibilities of life but to put those issues in proper focus. We need to learn to hold what we have loosely for this world’s way of life will quickly come to an end. We need to hold on to the word of God that does not perish, Jesus Christ who lives forever.
We also learnt in the gospel of Mark, how Jesus called his first disciples to be fishers of men. They had families and businesses, they were not learned but only mere fishermen, but when they heard Jesus’s call, they left everything and followed him, ready to take instructions. This is a good example of how we need to respond to God’s call to serve. All ministry is the Lord’s work. God assigns the tasks and unique gifts to a variety of individuals to work together to fulfill his plan for His Glory. We need to note too that great opposition often accompanies effective ministry. We have to serve God wherever he has placed us, doing whatever He has given us to do. We should not be afraid to serve, as Jesus said to his disciples “I will make you fishers of men”, therefore he will train us first before he commissions us. He calls the unqualified so they cannot boast in themselves, but in Him who qualifies.
I will conclude with Paul’s words in 1st Corinthians 15:58, “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.”
Serving allows us to discover and develop our spiritual gifts, to experience miracles, to experience the joy and peace that comes with obedience, helps us to be more like Jesus, to be surrounded with other Christians who can help us follow Jesus, to experience God’s presence in new ways, it increases our faith and is good for one’s soul. With all these wonderful benefits of serving, I plead with you all today, to take heed to God’s call to serve in his vineyard with whatever gifts you have and go wherever he will send you, not forgetting that it is He who calls, it is He who commissions and it is He who empowers. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Let us pray. Heavenly Father we thank you for your word of the season, may it refresh us and light our paths always. Help us O Lord to hear your call to serve you according to your will. We ask all this in the mighty name of Jesus Christ our redeemer. Amen.
In His Vineyard- Gloria S Nyamambi
Methodist Church: Hillside Circuit 