Theme: Expectation
Hymn 58
Elizabeth C. Adams
Father, we Thy loving children
Lift our hearts in joy today,
Knowing well that Thou wilt keep us
Ever in Thy blessed way.
Thou art Love and Thou art wisdom,
Thou art Life and Thou art All;
In Thy Spirit living, moving,
We shall neither faint nor fall.
Come we daily then, dear Father,
Open hearts and willing hands,
Eager ears, expectant, joyful,
Ready for Thy right commands.
We would hear no other voices,
We would heed no other call;
Thou alone art good and gracious,
Thou our Mind and Thou our All.
In Thy house securely dwelling,
Where Thy children live to bless,
Seeing only Thy creation,
We can share Thy happiness,
Share Thy joy and spend it freely.
Loyal hearts can feel no fear;
We Thy children know Thee, Father,
Love and Life forever near.
Readings from the Bible.
Psalms 9:1,2,4 (to ;),9,18
the expectation
I will praise thee, O Lord,
with my whole heart; I will shew forth all thy marvellous works. I will be glad and rejoice in thee: I will
sing praise to thy name, O thou most High.
For thou hast maintained my
right and my cause;
The Lord also will be a
refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble.
the expectation of the poor shall not perish
for ever.
Psalms 27:1‑14
The Lord is my light and my
salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom
shall I be afraid? When the wicked, even
mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and
fell. Though an host should encamp
against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in this
will I be confident. One thing have I
desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of
the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to
inquire in his temple. For in the time
of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle
shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock. And now shall mine head be lifted up above
mine enemies round about me: therefore will I offer in his tabernacle
sacrifices of joy; I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the Lord.
Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice: have
mercy also upon me, and answer me. When
thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I
seek. Hide not thy face far from me; put
not thy servant away in anger: thou hast been my help; leave me not, neither
forsake me, O God of my salvation. When
my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up. Teach me thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a
plain path, because of mine enemies.
Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies: for false witnesses
are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty. I had fainted, unless I had believed to see
the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord: be of
good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.
Psalms 62:1,2,5‑8 (to 1st
.),11
Truly my soul waiteth upon
God: from him cometh my salvation. He
only is my rock and my salvation; he is my defence; I shall not be greatly
moved.
My soul, wait thou only upon
God; for my expectation is from him. He
only is my rock and my salvation: he is my defence; I shall not be moved. In God is my salvation and my glory: the rock
of my strength, and my refuge, is in God.
Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him:
God is a refuge for us.
God hath spoken once; twice
have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God.
Proverbs 24:13,14
My son, eat thou honey,
because it is good; and the honeycomb, which is sweet to thy taste: So shall
the knowledge of wisdom be unto thy soul: when thou hast found it, then there
shall be a reward, and thy expectation shall not be cut off.
Matthew 21:22 whatsoever
whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing,
ye shall receive.
Romans 8:12‑19
brethren,24,25,28,31 If
brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to
live after the flesh. For if ye live
after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the
deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God,
they are the sons of God. For ye have
not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the
Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our
spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of
God, and joint‑heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may
be also glorified together. For I reckon
that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the
glory which shall be revealed in us. For
the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the
sons of God.
For we are saved by hope: but
hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope
for? But if we hope for that we see not,
then do we with patience wait for it.
And we know that all things
work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called
according to his purpose.
If God be for us, who can be against us?
Romans 13:10‑12
Love worketh no ill to his
neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. And that, knowing the time, that now it is
high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we
believed. The night is far spent, the
day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put
on the armour of light.
II Corinthians 5:1‑9 we
we know that if our earthly
house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our
house which is from heaven: If so be that being clothed we shall not be found
naked. For we that are in this
tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but
clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame
thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore we are always confident, knowing
that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (For we
walk by faith, not by sight:) We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be
absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or
absent, we may be accepted of him.
I John 4:16‑19 we
we have known and believed the love that God
hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God
in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day
of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love
casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made
perfect in love. We love him, because he
first loved us.
Romans 15:13
Now the God of hope will fill you with all joy and peace in believing that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.
Romans 15:13
Now the God of hope will fill you with all joy and peace in believing that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.
Readings from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.
2:15‑16 np
Prayer cannot change the Science of being,
but it tends to bring us into harmony with it.
Goodness attains the demonstration of Truth. A request that God will save us is not all
that is required. The mere habit of
pleading with the divine Mind, as one pleads with a human being, perpetuates
the belief in God as humanly circumscribed,‑‑an error which impedes spiritual
growth.
God is Love.
Can we ask Him to be more? God is
intelligence. Can we inform the infinite
Mind of anything He does not already comprehend? Do we expect to change perfection? Shall we plead for more at the open fount, which
is pouring forth more than we accept? The unspoken desire does bring us nearer
the source of all existence and blessedness.
Asking God to be God is a vain repetition.
God is "the same yesterday, and to‑day, and forever;" and He
who is immutably right will do right without being reminded of His
province. The wisdom of man is not
sufficient to warrant him in advising God.
Who would stand before a blackboard, and pray
the principle of mathematics to solve the problem? The rule is already established, and it is
our task to work out the solution. Shall
we ask the divine Principle of all goodness to do His own work? His work is done, and we have only to avail
ourselves of God's rule in order to receive His blessing, which enables us to
work out our own salvation.
The Divine Being must be reflected by man,‑‑else
man is not the image and likeness of the patient, tender, and true, the One
"altogether lovely;" but to understand God is the work of eternity,
and demands absolute consecration of thought, energy, and desire.
131:26
The mission of Jesus confirmed prophecy, and
explained the so‑called miracles of olden time as natural demonstrations of the
divine power, demonstrations which were not understood. Jesus' works established his claim to the
Messiahship. In reply to John's inquiry,
"Art thou he that should come," Jesus returned an affirmative reply,
recounting his works instead of referring to his doctrine, confident that this
exhibition of the divine power to heal would fully answer the question. Hence his reply: "Go and show John again
those things which ye do hear and see:
the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, the lepers are
cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the
gospel preached to them. And blessed is
he, whosoever shall not be offended in me." In other words, he gave his benediction to
any one who should not deny that such effects, coming from divine Mind, prove
the unity of God,‑‑the divine Principle which brings out all harmony.
167:20
The "flesh lusteth against the
Spirit." The flesh and Spirit can
no more unite in action, than good can coincide with evil. It is not wise to take a halting and half‑way
position or to expect to work equally with Spirit and matter, Truth and
error. There is but one way‑‑namely, God
and His idea‑‑which leads to spiritual being.
The scientific government of the body must be attained through the
divine Mind. It is impossible to gain
control over the body in any other way.
On this fundamental point, timid conservatism is absolutely
inadmissible. Only through radical
reliance on Truth can scientific healing power be realized.
218:27‑22
The Scriptures say, "They that wait upon
the Lord . . . shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not
faint." The meaning of that passage
is not perverted by applying it literally to moments of fatigue, for the moral
and physical are as one in their results.
When we wake to the truth of being, all disease, pain, weakness,
weariness, sorrow, sin, death, will be unknown, and the mortal dream will
forever cease. My method of treating
fatigue applies to all bodily ailments, since Mind should be, and is, supreme,
absolute, and final.
In mathematics, we do not multiply when we
should subtract, and then say the product is correct. No more can we say in Science that muscles
give strength, that nerves give pain or pleasure, or that matter governs, and
then expect that the result will be harmony.
Not muscles, nerves, nor bones, but mortal mind makes the whole body
"sick, and the whole heart faint;" whereas divine Mind heals.
When this is understood, we shall never
affirm concerning the body what we do not wish to have manifested. We shall not call the body weak, if we would
have it strong; for the belief in feebleness must obtain in the human mind
before it can be made manifest on the body, and the destruction of the belief
will be the removal of its effects.
Science includes no rule of discord, but governs harmoniously. "The wish," says the poet, "is
ever father to the thought."
367:30
Because Truth is infinite, error should be
known as nothing. Because Truth is
omnipotent in goodness, error, Truth's opposite, has no might. Evil is but the counterpoise of
nothingness. The greatest wrong is but a
supposititious opposite of the highest right.
The confidence inspired by Science lies in the fact that Truth is real
and error is unreal. Error is a coward
before Truth. Divine Science insists that time will prove all this. Both truth and error have come nearer than
ever before to the apprehension of mortals, and truth will become still clearer
as error is self‑destroyed.
397:8‑22
Suffering is no less a mental condition than
is enjoyment. You cause bodily
sufferings and increase them by admitting their reality and continuance, as
directly as you enhance your joys by believing them to be real and
continuous. When an accident happens,
you think or exclaim, "I am hurt!" Your thought is more powerful than
your words, more powerful than the accident itself, to make the injury
real.
Now reverse the process. Declare that you are not hurt and understand
the reason why, and you will find the ensuing good effects to be in exact
proportion to your disbelief in physics, and your fidelity to divine
metaphysics, confidence in God as All, which the Scriptures declare Him to
be.
409:20‑9
The real man is spiritual and
immortal, but the mortal and imperfect so‑called "children of men"
are counterfeits from the beginning, to be laid aside for the pure
reality. This mortal is put off, and the
new man or real man is put on, in proportion as mortals realize the Science of
man and seek the true model.
We have no right to say that life depends on
matter now, but will not depend on it after death. We cannot spend our days here in ignorance of
the Science of Life, and expect to find beyond the grave a reward for this
ignorance. Death will not make us
harmonious and immortal as a recompense for ignorance. If here we give no heed to Christian Science,
which is spiritual and eternal, we shall not be ready for spiritual Life
hereafter.
"This is life eternal," says Jesus,‑‑is, not shall be; and then he defines everlasting life as a present
knowledge of his Father and of himself,‑‑the knowledge of Love, Truth, and
Life. "This is life eternal, that
they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast
sent."
426:5
The discoverer of Christian Science finds the
path less difficult when she has the high goal always before her thoughts, than
when she counts her footsteps in endeavoring to reach it. When the destination is desirable,
expectation speeds our progress. The
struggle for Truth makes one strong instead of weak, resting instead of
wearying one. If the belief in death
were obliterated, and the understanding obtained that there is no death, this
would be a "tree of life," known by its fruits. Man should renew his energies and endeavors,
and see the folly of hypocrisy, while also learning the necessity of working
out his own salvation. When it is
learned that disease cannot destroy life, and that mortals are not saved from
sin or sickness by death, this understanding will quicken into newness of life. It will master either a desire to die or a
dread of the grave, and thus destroy the great fear that besets mortal
existence.
Silent prayer followed by the audible repetition of the Lord’s Prayer.
Hymn 350
Mary Peters – Adapted
Through the love of God our Saviour
All will be well;
Free and changeless is His favor;
All must be well;
Precious is the Love that healed us,
Perfect is the grace that sealed us,
Strong the hand stretched forth to shield us;
All, all is well.
Though we pass through tribulation,
All will be well;
Ours is such a full salvation,
All must be well;
Happy still, in God confiding,
Fruitful, when in Christ abiding,
Holy, through the Spirit's guiding;
All, all is well.
We expect a bright tomorrow,
All will be well;
Faith can sing through days of sorrow,
All must be well;
While His truth we are applying,
And upon His love relying,
God is every need supplying,
All, all is well.
Sharing of experiences, testimonies and remarks by members of the congregation.
Hymn 351
Bernhard S. Ingemann – S. Baring‑Gould, Tr.
Through the night of doubt and sorrow
Onward goes the pilgrim band,
Singing songs of expectation,
Marching to the promised land.
Clear before us through the darkness
Gleams and burns the guiding light;
Brother clasps the hand of brother,
Stepping fearless through the night.
One, the light of God's own presence,
O'er His ransomed people shed,
Chasing far the gloom and terror,
Brightening all the path we tread:
One, the object of our journey,
One, the faith which never tires,
One, the earnest looking forward,
One, the hope our God inspires;
One, the strain the lips of thousands
Lift as from the heart of one;
One the conflict, one the peril,
One, the march in God begun:
One, the gladness of rejoicing
On the far eternal shore
Where the One Almighty Father
Reigns in love forevermore.
