August 23 ^rd , 2015

Today’s Services:

9:30 am -------------------------------------------------- He Went Out and Wept Bitterly – Matthew 26:69-75

10:00 am ---- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- --- The Substitute (Before Pilate) – Matthew 27:1-14

Wednesday 7:30 ---------------------------------- The Substitute (Barabbas Released) – Matthew 27:15-26

Birthdays: August: 31^st -- Roberta Sword & Betty Hodges

Cleaning Schedule: This week - Fannins

Nursery Today: 1^st Service – Irene , 2^nd Service – Mary, Alt. -- Wendy

“They shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them . . .” – Jeremiah 31.9

Oh how much is needed to bring the soul to its only rest and center! What trials and afflictions; what furnaces, floods, rods, and strokes, as well as smiles, promises, and gracious drawings! What pride and self to be brought out of! What love and blood to be brought unto! What lessons to learn of the dreadful evil of sin! What lessons to learn of the freeness and fullness of salvation! What sinkings in self! What risings in Christ! What guilt and condemnation on account of sin; what self-loathing and self-abasement; what distrust of self; what fears of falling; what prayers and desires to be kept; what clinging to Christ; what looking up and unto his divine Majesty, as faith views him at the right hand of the Father; what desires never more to sin against him, but to live, move, and act in the holy fear of God, do we find more or less daily, in a living soul!

And whence springs all this inward experience but from the fellowship and communion which there is between Christ and the soul? “We are members,” says the Apostle, “of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.” As such there is a mutual participation in sorrow and joy. “He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrow.” “He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” He can, therefore, “be touched with the feelings of our infirmities,” can pity and sympathize; and thus, as we may cast upon him our sins and sorrows, when faith enables, so can he supply, out of his own fullness, that grace and strength which can bring us off eventually more than conquerors. -- J.C. Philpot

PRAYER – By William Jay, England (1769-1853)

Some vainly ask, "Where is the purpose of prayer?" Can prayer be necessary to inform a Being perfect in knowledge? Or to excite, a Being always ready to do good? Or to induce a Being, with whom there is no variableness, to change His measures? But the ques­tion is beside the mark. What is not necessary as to God, may be necessary as to us. Worship is founded not in His wants, but in ours.

Many are the advantages arising from God's requiring us to ask, that we may have; and to seek, that we may find! The exercise of prayer keeps alive a sense of our indigence (need) and dependence. Every time I go to God in prayer, I am reminded that I am ignorant, and that He is wise; that I am weak, and that He is powerful; that I am guilty and miserable, and that He is merciful and gracious; that I am nothing, and that He is all in all.

Prayer, by bringing us into the presence of God, will, impress us with His excellencies; and the intercourse we have with Him will lead us to admire and fear and love and resemble Him. For we soon catch the spirit, and take on the manners of those with whom we are intimate; especially if they are above us, and we much esteem them. A man who is much at the throne of grace, will show it in a manner of feeling, speaking, and acting, that a religious pretender can never entirely exemplify.