God equips us

Holy Trinity Church, Huddersfield, Sunday 24th May 2020

I shouldn’t be here.

That’s the third time I have started a blog about the Sunday service with those four words. The first was on April 26th, the trip to Belfast to celebrate our wedding anniversary had to be cancelled. Then on May 3rd I would have been in Halifax watching the start of the final stage of the Tour de Yorkshire, followed by the finish in Leeds. This weekend would have been our Church Weekend; now postponed until June 2021.

As it is another lockdown Sunday and another YouTube service. They are good, but I have a few niggles due to being autistic.

Firstly there is too much eye contact for me. In church preachers and worship leaders will seldom look at one person for any length of time, so that is fine, on Facebook the delivery is straight to camera which I find uncomfortable. Fortunately, no one can tell that I am looking away, looking at the tree across the road move. Today is windy.

The other one is the same as I have mentioned before. The commercially produced songs we are using have moving images behind the text, I find that distracting.

Bev was taking the service, using the empty church to her advantage, leading from in front of different stained glass windows to illustrate what she was saying. The preacher was Chris, ordinands (trainee priest) from Mirfield. The sermon was recorded in one of the lecture rooms in the College of the Resurrection.

The sermon was about living our faith, how we live out a life of faith in the good news of resurrection and have been put right with God. We are called to be holy and live our transformation by the Gospel.

Some say that Christianity is about doing good, others that it is just about being saved. Both are distortions. We are saved and then God equips us to do good works. We believe first and then behave, through the God who equips us.

The reading was about the armour of God in Ephesians chapter 4, which is about walking in the power of God but also walking in the right direction. As we walk there will be oppositions and attacks in many forms. When our heart becomes divided we can look to Jesus. Jesus is with us in the storm and establishes his peace within us. God says, “I am equipping you.”

We are equipped with heavenly armour and we are with Christ in heavenly places and he is in us. How this is lived out on Earth is about how we put on the armour of God, especially the armour of prayer.

As we pray he clothes us in everything we need. The superior strength of our God equips us so we can stand strong in him.

How?

Belt of truth is the reality of God’s truth. Live and speak consistently. Work for right and justice

The Sheild of faith is to resist and stand firm. It is not a mental capacity, only a small amount of faith it is about who we have faith in

There is the message. the sword, the word of God. It is easy to depend on other things but the way to advance the kingdom is that God equips us.

The sermon concluded with a prayer of thanks and a request that God will reveal what gets in the way. Lord, make us more dependant on you.