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Tag Archives: Church
New Zealand National Anthem
In New Zealand we have two national anthems of equal status: God of Nations and God Save the Queen. God of Nations was written as a poem/prayer by Thomas Bracken of Dunedin in the 1870’s and was set to the music of John Joesph Woods of Lawrence in 1876. On Christmas Day that year it was first performed in Dunedin but did not become an official national anthem until 1977. A Māori version was written in 1878 and today the first verses of both the English and Māori are commonly sung at events where as a nation we are stressing our national identity – ie before a sporting test. But I also like to sing it as a prayer.
Please consider it carefully and pray it. For those of us in the Wakatipu, especially as we seek God’s guidance in establishing the Wakatipu Global Community, this is a particularly appropriate prayer. These old words speak to our situation today. We seek to worship together, men and women from the nations, our responsibility before God is to call all people of every race to come and know God, to worship God and to grow in faith.
| God of nations! at Thy feet In the bonds of love we meet, Hear our voices, we entreat, God defend our Free Land. Guard Pacific’s triple star, From the shafts of strife and war, Make her praises heard afar, God defend New Zealand Men of ev’ry creed and race Peace, not war, shall be our boast, |
Let our love for Thee increase, May Thy blessings never cease, Give us plenty, give us peace, God defend our Free Land. From dishonour and from shame Guard our country’s spotless name Crown her with immortal fame, God defend New Zealand. May our mountains ever be |
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Transformational Disciplines: Fasting that pleases God
SERMON 3 OF 5 IN A SERIES EXPLORING SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE, PREACHED 04 November 2012. READ Matthew 6:1-18
You don’t hear much about fasting these days, in fact in the worship surveys conducted at the start of the year some here noted that they knew little about fasting and that they have never heard teaching on it.
Well that is about to change!
I guess as we look around our culture we can understand why fasting may be out of favour.
It doesn’t fit!
Seemingly in NZ and much of the world we’ve become conditioned to comfort, excess and instant gratification and that direction is only increasing.
If we want fast food – we want it now, and if they can’t serve us in only a few minutes we complain. Following trends set overseas we increasingly upsize our orders, and at a eat all you can buffet we end up eating more than we need, even more than we should – just because it’s there.
This attitude of having what we want when we want it extends to most aspects of life: texting, FB, entertainment. There is little we have to wait for. And we believe it’s our right to satisfy our desires whenever we want. So excess marks our landscape: and in the busyness of satisfying ourselves where is God?
God of course is where God has always been. Continue reading
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Lessons from Joseph: Family Baggage
a sermon from Sunday 5th August. Read Genesis 37:1-11; James 2:1-9
What a story! Today’s text from Genesis reads like a modern-day soap opera, even though it was probably written 3500 years ago.
Over the next 5 weeks we will follow the story of Joseph, the son of Jacob and his favourite wife, Rachel. You’ll note as we explore their stories that God achieves God’s purposes despite seemingly terrible situations and despite the fact that the people often at the heart of the story are the least likely of people to be doing great things for God.As you listened to the beginnings of this story of Jacob and his sons you’d quickly recognise that they had a few problems. These days we talk of ‘dysfunctional’ families – Jacob and family tick all the boxes. Serious counselling was needed. Continue reading