Covenant Sunday
Each year, on the first or second Sunday in January, it is our custom to renew our covenant with God. This was first encouraged by John Wesley, and has long been a part of the tradition of many sections of the Methodist fellowship.
Song:
I Am Thine Oh Lord, I Have Heard Thy Voice (By Sheffield Celebration Choir) (gospel Hymn) - YouTube
Reading:
Psalm 51, verses 1 to 12.
Song:
Climb, Climb Up Sunshine Mountain - YouTube
Reading;
1 John, chapter 5, verses 1 to 12
Song:
I Have Decided to Follow Jesus ~ Cedarmont Kids ~ lyric video - YouTube
Prayer:
Christ has many services to be done. Some are easy, others are difficult; some bring honour, others bring reproach; some are acceptable to our personal tastes and interests, others are contrary to both. In some we may please Christ and please ourselves, in others we cannot please Christ except by denying ourselves. Yet the power to do all these things is given to us by Christ Jesus.
Therefore, let us make the covenant of God our own, and in sincere dependence on His grace, and trusting in His promises yield ourselves anew to Him.
I am no longer my own, but yours.
Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will;
Put me to doing; put me to suffering;
Let me be employed for you or laid aside for you,
Exalted for you, or brought low for you;
Let me be full, let me be empty;
Let me have all things, let me have nothing;
I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
You are mine and I am yours.
So be it. And the covenant made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.
In this prayer, we are not asking God to make us suffer in the sense that the word is now widely used. The word has another meaning, that some of us will be familiar with in the words of Jesus, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me ” (Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 19, verse 14, King James’ Version) Here the word means allow, and in the context of this prayer, to allow things to happen (the opposite of “doing”) or to endure. The form of the prayer is a series of opposites, all of which can be ways of serving God.
Many of us are happy to do things for God, to be employed for God, but it can be very difficult to be waiting, enduring, or laid aside for God. At the present time, many of us are not able to do the things that we usually do, and this can be especially frustrating for those people who feel that what they normally do is what God has called them to do.
This is a time of enduring, of being laid aside, but we can make it a time for God, a time when we can learn and be refreshed in His service, where we can give thanks for the evidence we see of His presence and power in the world.
The quote “If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.” is attributed to Abraham Lincoln. But some of you will have seen the film “Pollyanna” in which a young girl turns this on its head and is always looking for reasons to be cheerful, believing that if you look for good, then you will find it. We need to be looking for the work of God in the world, expecting it to be there, and rejoicing when we find it.
Song:
Come, let us use the grace divine (Wesley) - YouTube
George Herbert (1593 - 1633) wrote several hymns, one of his well-known ones is:
Teach
me, my God and King,
in
all things thee to see,
and
what I do in anything
to
do it as for thee.
A
man that looks on glass,
on
it may stay his eye;
or
if he pleaseth, through it pass,
and
then the heaven espy.
All
may of thee partake;
nothing
can be so mean,
which
with this tincture, "for thy sake,"
will
not grow bright and clean.
A
servant with this clause
makes
drudgery divine:
who
sweeps a room, as for thy laws,
makes
that and the action fine.
This
is the famous stone
that
turneth all to gold;
for
that which God doth touch and own
cannot
for less be told.
In it he teaches us that we can serve God in the most mundane of actions. The “stone” referred to in the last verse is the Philosopher’s Stone, which as the classically educated (or those who have read or seen the Harry Potter story) will know, has the property of turning base metal into gold. Herbert proclaims that doing things for God, however mundane, makes those actions more valuable than gold.
Song:
The Celebration Choir - O Happy Day [with lyrics] - YouTube
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