Happy New Year and welcome to our first service of the year
God’s covenant and promises and the criticism trap
Amanda, Ian and Abbey led worship today. Songs this week were “I speak Jesus”, “Holy Water”, “God’s Great Dancefloor”, “Spirit of God, Unseen as the wind”, “God of Wonders”, “Thankful”, “Graves to Gardens” and “Holy of Holies”
Matty brought us some thoughts and reflections from his week. He had found it particularly difficult to highlight what message he wanted to share. He eventually decided to speak around Numbers 12:11 “Please my Lord I ask you not to hold against us the sin we have so foolishly committed”. In this passage we see the result of falling into criticising others, and Matty reflected on the times when he has been critical of others and outlined a situation in his life where he had heard the result of someone being criticised by others when simply attempting to do the best job that they were capable of.
Despite his own reflections on this topic, he still found himself in discussions with a fellow dog walker about recent actions of the council. It is all too easy to be drawn to the criticism trap.
Amanda brought us the word today and gave us a tour of the seven covenants made by God,
A covenant is an agreement between two parties to work towards a common goal and normally sets out roles, responsibilities and consequences when the agreement is broken.
She started with the Adamic covenant which was a general covenant instructing Adam and eve not to eat from the tree of good and evil. Not following the covenenant led to consequences, death and the pain of childbirth etc. If we are disobedient the vine will be pruned.
Another covenant promise was given to Noah, that God would not use floods to drown man again. The rainbow was left as a sign of that promise.
Covenants were also made to the twelve tribes of Israel and within our communion service Amanda used 12 pieces of unleavened bread to signify the tribes.
Finally Amanda also drew people’s attention to the covenant promises given to the people of West View Baptist Church. They pre date her time at West View yet we can all see how folks from West View have spread out across the world to share the good news of God’s work and promises.