[Propertalk] Fwd: [propertalk.topic] Lent 2 - Romans reading

[Joe Parrish]

Forwarded:

Friends,
Here are some outline notes for a sermon on Romans 4.1-17, from a rural 
Australian perspective, for the second Sunday in Lent.
Howard
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Today is the 2nd Sun in Lent, the time where we try a little harder to 
become more like Jesus.
+ We don't have to do it all at once, just a little bit at a time, and
today we learn from the reading to the Romans that God accepts
us simply because we have faith;
- not because we try to do good things to impress God,
- not because we come to Church,
- not because we try to keep the 10 Commandments;
- but simply because we have faith.
+ And to help us understand what that means, Paul reminds us
about the story of Abraham out of the Hebrew Scriptures.
+ We are reminded that Abraham believed that God would keep
the promises made to him.
+ And those promises included the story about how God told
Abraham to leave the country he was living in and move to a
new country, and that God would lead him all along the way;
- so Abraham did just that: he set out from what we now call
Iraq, and moved to what we now call Israel.
+ A second promise was that even though Abraham and his wife
Sarah were pretty old they would become parents of a child
who would inherit all Abraham's wealth, and would go on to
have a large family, a family which eventually became the
Jewish people, and the Arab peoples.
+ Well, the story says Abraham believed that God knew what he was talking 
about.
+ So for us that can mean believing that God loves us, that God
forgives us, that God will be with us on our journey through
life, despite all the problems and difficulties we may have to face.
- Abraham certainly had a lot of them, but he kept trusting God.
+ That should give us great hope and great comfort;
- we don't have to try to impress God, or anyone else that we're worthwhile,
- we don't have to try to be "holy";
- we don't have to get disheartened because we can't keep the 10 
Commandments.
+ So during this second week of Lent let's practise believing that
God really does love us, that God really does forgive us, that
God really is with us all through our journey.
+ One way you can do that is to start and finish each day with a
little "thank you" type prayer: 'thank you God for your love, thank you God 
for your
forgiveness; thank you God for being with me'.
+ Because as we found at the beginning: God loves us, God
forgives us, God will be with us on our journey through life,
despite all the problems and difficulties we may have to face.



* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Rev'd Dr H.C. Smith
 Retired Anglican Priest
 Orange NSW
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
 




 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://stsams.org/pipermail/propertalk_stsams.org/attachments/20110315/8be34e5f/attachment.htm>