DIY Sunday Service Kit 05/06/2022 - Jubilee, Pentecost and Knowing what love is

 

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Welcome to this DIY Sunday Service Kit for Pentecost 2022 on the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Weekend.

This week the Word for the Week video addresses both those issues and the Sermon takes us into 1 John 4:7-10 on the big, misunderstood matter of 'Love'.

So ... here we go!

"Yours, Lord, is 

    the greatness and 

    the power and 

    the glory and 

    the majesty and 

    the splendour, 

            for everything in heaven and earth is yours. 

Yours, Lord, is the kingdom; 

    you are exalted as head over all."

1 Chronicles 29:11

Let's pray

We give you thanks Lord and Heavenly Father for the stability and the order in our government over the last seventy years of our constitutional monarchy.

We give you thanks the there has been such a measure of peace in our time.

We acknowledge that whilst we have a great deal to be thankful for in the stability of our institutions and politics, it is from your goodness and favour that we are given these things and enjoy the freedoms that we enjoy.

Please grant a gratitude to our God to this land in which we live, and inspire us to rejoice in this kindness which we acknowledge we have received from your hand.

We ask for Jesus' sake.

Amen.

Here's our topical Word for the Week

Might you be able to share it with friends?

Let's sing

Prayer points

Yemen

We give thanks to God this week for the improvement in the situation in Yemen, which we prayed for last week.

The BBC World Service reported this week that the truce agreed for the Moslem feast of Ramadan has been extended, so that there will be no air, land or sea hostilities and the port of al-Hudaydah and the airport at Sanaa will remain open.

This is good news for the arrival of aid and for the halt to the bloodshed in Yemen.

Africa

• Over 40% of wheat consumed in Africa usually comes from Russia and Ukraine.
• Ukraine's ports in the Black Sea have been largely blocked for exports by Moscow since the conflict began. 
• "Failure to open those ports will result in famine," the UN's crisis coordinator Amin Awad said in Geneva, adding rain shortage could affect 1.4 billion people and trigger mass migration.
• There are existing shortages in Africa caused by bad harvests and insecurity. 
• Food prices have shot up across the continent since Russia invaded Ukraine 100 days ago, pushing huge numbers towards hunger.
• The World Food Programme says 80 million people in Africa are acutely food insecure, up from about 50 million people this time last year.

We pray for the food situation in Chad, where a third of the population needs food aid, according to the UN, the government has declared a food emergency and appealed for international assistance.

We pray for the food situation in Senegal, where the changing weather in the Sahel caused by global warming has already disrupted food production.

Senegal's President Macky Sall also leads the African Union, and he spoke to the 27 EU leaders meeting in Brussels and to President Putin about freeing up grain exports from Ukraine.

President Sall said the price of fertiliser was now three times higher than in 2021, while cereal yields in Africa were forecast to be 20-50% lower this year.

He also blamed EU sanctions on Russian banks for exacerbating the problem: “When the Swift system is disturbed, this means that even if the products exist, payment becomes more complicated, even impossible.”

We pray for a diplomatic breakthrough

Lithuania has proposed that a naval 'coalition of the willing' should lift the Black Sea blockade. Under the Lithuanian plan, the UN would call on Russia to ensure safe passage for ships and Ukraine to remove mines from the port of Odesa, a defensive measure to protect the strategic site.

The President of the European Council, Charles Michel said opening the Black Sea maritime route “should be the first priority … but we are not certain it will work”.

The European Commission wants to get 20m tonnes of wheat out of Ukraine before the end of July, half of the amount currently stuck in the country. 

But finding alternatives to sea transport is a huge logistical challenge, as trucks and trains cannot take the same quantity of goods, and face an average wait of 16 days to cross the EU border.

Let's ask the Lord to do what the politicians fear they might not be able to, to lift the log-jam in the delivery of crucial grain supplies to the poor of this world.

The UK

We pray ...

• For the Queen and all those in authority
• For leaders in industry, commerce, education and the arts
• For our health service personnel and those who work in social care
• For those with responsibility for our food supply: for farmers, for suppliers and distributors of the food we depend on to be able to eat
• And we pray for those who speak to the emotional, moral and spiritual needs of our people, that God may be known, that His Word might be heard, that His authority might respected and that the new birth that is necessary for all this to take place will be brought in a great outpouring of Heavenly love and grace to our land.

We pray all these things for Jesus' sake and for His Glory.

AMEN.

Let's read the Bible

Here's a sermon-taster for what's coming soon ...

The Gettys now lead us in our pre-sermon worship

The sermon studiocam is here

 

Let's pray

"So then, brothers and sisters, 

stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you, 

whether by word of mouth or by letter.

May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, 

who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope,

encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word."

(2 Thessalonians 2:15-17)

And may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus.

AMEN.

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