{"id":1552,"date":"2020-06-16T10:29:35","date_gmt":"2020-06-16T09:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/?p=1552"},"modified":"2020-07-27T14:45:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-27T13:45:00","slug":"message-from-the-minister-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/?p=1552","title":{"rendered":"Message from the Minister"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Sunday 21<sup>st<\/sup> June 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dear all,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I hope and pray that this letter finds you\nwell and looking forward to greater freedoms in the coming weeks.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Families it is said can be a source of\ngreat comfort and joy but also can drive us up the wall!&nbsp; Not just those members we live with but ones\nin our wider family too.&nbsp; You may be\nthinking that during lockdown some of your family members have really been\ndriving you crazy whilst others who are on their own may be thinking the opposite.&nbsp; Families take many forms and every culture\nhas a different way of treating family members with varying expectations and\nconcepts.&nbsp; The ancient Middle Eastern\ntradition of family meant when someone was ill, or widowed or unemployed; the\nexpectation was that the family would rally around to help.&nbsp; In practice this often meant having family\nmembers move into your home to be looked after.&nbsp;\nRemember Jesus on the cross exhorting John to look after Mary and treat her\nas his own mother, this was despite Jesus having other living siblings.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our gospel reading today continues in\nMatthew 10; verses 24 \u2013 39, with this very stark and &nbsp;challenging assertion that we should love our\nmother or father, son or daughter less than the love we show for the Lord Jesus\nChrist otherwise we are not worthy of Him.&nbsp;\nBoth words \u2018love\u2019 and \u2018worthy\u2019 are direct translations from the original\nGreek, the translators have not added emphasis or changed terminology, this passage\nhas always been this hard hitting.&nbsp; Jesus\ndoes not mince His words at all here.&nbsp;&nbsp; He\nis asking us to put love for God above and beyond that of our family.&nbsp; However, He does not stop there but calls us\nto take up the cross and follow Him.&nbsp; In\nother words, to give our all in our service to Him and in doing so lose our\nlife.&nbsp; This does not necessarily mean\nmartyrdom but serving and following completely the plan to which God has called\nus.&nbsp; I also should point out here that\nthis does not mean we shouldn\u2019t love and care for our family too, but it must\nseem like that in comparison to the devotion that we show for God.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, how can we, give our life so that we\ntake up our cross daily to follow God.&nbsp; I\nbelieve it means that our focus should we always on God, He is the One we\nshould start out day with in both prayer and scripture reading, He is the One\nwe should turn to when making important decisions, He is the first call on our\ntime, finances, resources and talents.&nbsp; I\nam not pretending this is not a tremendous challenge because it is.&nbsp; We are told that when we give wholeheartedly\nto God, that God will bless us; this should not be the motivation though\nbecause we should serve God because we both love Him and want to.&nbsp; Who or what motivates you, who do you\nprioritise in your life?&nbsp; Does God\nfeature in your most treasured list?&nbsp;\nJesus challenges us all; make me your number one.&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>May the Lord Jesus; who is the same,\nyesterday, today and forever, bless you and your family today and always.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Every blessing in His precious Service,\nAndrew.&nbsp; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday 21st June 2020 Dear all, I hope and pray that this letter finds you well and looking forward to greater freedoms in the coming weeks.&nbsp; Families it is said can be a source of great comfort and joy but&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1552"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1553,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552\/revisions\/1553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}