God is love. Yet how often is this glibly said – without giving thought to the implications? For God to love he must have someone else to love throughout eternity.

In a highly patterned and repetitive piece of writing, the first book of the Bible introduces six stages of God’s creating work with, “And God said,” and “Let there be…”

However, in the second part of verse 26 of Genesis chapter 1 this symmetry is broken. A significant plural verb is introduced, “Let us make…”. The break is emphatic. The us is not simply a royal plural. The decision to create men and women is the outcome of a conversation within the Godhead.

The Old Testament consistently says there is only one God. Yet, there is constant reference to the Spirit of the Lord. Furthermore, in the New Testament, the Gospel records speak of Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of God. John the Gospel writer speaks of the Word, who was with God and who is God, coming amongst us in human form (John 1:14).

Which brings us to Jesus’s words to his disciples on the night of his arrest. Jesus knew they dreaded the very idea of his departure. As so often happens, self-pity blinded them to the hidden but greater purposes of God.

“Nevertheless I tell you the truth,” he said, “it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (16:7). One of the Spirit’s tasks would be to awaken and convict men and women to the reality of their broken relationship with their creator – the God who is just in all his ways.

Furthermore, Jesus continued, “The prince of this world stands condemned”. Satan’s attempt to usurp God’s throne was confounded when Jesus was crucified (Colossians 2:15). The Spirit convicts us of sin, of the standard and triumph of righteousness, and of Satan’s defeat.

One God in three persons. We begin to see something of the significance of God being one, in three persons. He is a God of love who, in his love for us, is passionate about us loving him.

Can we be sure of this? “I still have many things to say to you,” Jesus said, “but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:12-15).)

These words explain why Jesus never wrote anything down. Most of the Old Testament prophets wrote up their messages, but Jesus didn’t. He didn’t pick up a quill (a pen) because he knew that the Spirit would ensure that the special revelation he had brought would not be forgotten or muddled.

Earlier Jesus had said, “He, the Advocate or Helper, will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26). The Spirit inspired the first disciples, the apostles, with accurate recall and a clear and correct interpretation of Jesus’s person and work.

Now in chapter 16, Jesus says the Spirit would guide the disciples into all the truth – not some of it. Subsequent generations would not be inspired to fill out more of the picture. Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit would ensure that the apostles would receive and rightly interpret all the truth about the person and work of the Christ.

Significantly, at the end of their ministry, we don’t find them telling God’s people to look for other apostles and prophets to reveal new truth. Rather, they warned their readers against false prophets and urged God’s people to transmit faithfully what they, the apostles, had taught and delivered to God’s people (Jude 1:3).

The speaking God. We can see the logic of all this. If we are made in the image of God, if Jesus is God in human form, then God is not just a remote, powerful intelligence. He is a speaking God. He is about building relationships in the way that we do – through verbal communication.

All this helps us in our study of knowledge (epistemology). It means that amongst the sources of knowledge there is revelation as well as human discovery.

A Chinese English professor tells of his experience in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. When he saw the guns of the people’s army turned on the people, Marxism and Maoism within him died. If there is such a thing as truth, he said, I realized it had to come from outside human inspiration and thought. That night he went home and read a New Testament that he had previously ignored. Reading it from cover to cover, he said, ‘Here is the truth’.

How then does God’s Spirit work within us today? We need to distinguish inspiration and illumination. The Spirit inspired the apostles to preach and write God’s truth. He now illuminates our minds as we read what the apostles have written – hence Paul: All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness… (2 Timothy 3:16); and Peter: …No prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation,… but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God (2 Peter 1:20f).

The God who is love. Can we be sure that God delights in us knowing him? The answer is found in our understanding that God is love because he is a Trinity. Throughout eternity the three persons in the one Godhead love one another. When we begin to understand this, we will sense the beauty and goodness, the generosity and overflowing love of God. Our life and our relationships, our lifestyle and our future hang on loving the one, ever true and eternal God who exists in three persons.

A prayer for Trinity Sunday: Almighty and everlasting God, you have given us your servants grace by the confession of a true faith to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and by your divine power to worship you as One: we pray that you would keep us steadfast in this faith and evermore defend us from all adversities; through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

© John G. Mason

Over the last twenty years or so God’s people have been increasingly put on the defensive about their faith. In a climate where people of faith are dismissed as intellectually inept, many are fearful of speaking up about what they believe.

Come with me to a significant scene witnessed on the day of Jesus’s resurrection. It’s recorded in John chapter 20, verses 19 through 23. That Sunday evening, the first day of the week, Jesus suddenly stood in the midst of his disciples. John doesn’t say how Jesus came to be there: he simply records, Jesus stood.

Last time the disciples had seen him, he was wounded and bleeding, wracked with pain, dying on a cross. When they had seen a spear thrust in his side and the fluid flowing from the wound, they knew he was truly dead. Yet here he was, not weak and limp but standing tall, speaking the very words he had uttered at the Passover meal: ‘Peace be with you’.And to show he was physically alive and not a ghost, he showed them his hands and his side.

Terrified and overjoyed they doubtless were, they knew, extraordinary miracle though it was, Jesus was truly alive again. ‘Peace be with you’, he repeated. On the night of his arrest he had said, ‘My peace I leave with you… Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Believe in me’ (John 14:27).

In a world of turmoil and injustice, the peace he held out to his followers was not meaningless comfort. His resurrection was now proof of that. Yet it was surreal. But then, as GK Chesterton observed, Truth is stranger than fiction.

The Commission: ‘As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you…’, he continued (20:21). More than once they had heard Jesus say, ‘As the Father has sent me…’ But now he was drawing them into this work as well.

Jesus had been sent to speak God’s words in person to the world. Supremely he had been sent to be lifted up on a cross at Calvary to rescue humanity (John 12:32). Now, he was sending his disciples and in turn, his people, to announce his life-giving news to the world.

And significantly they would not be alone: they need not be fearful. The peace of Christ would be with them at every twist and turn along the way. Consider what follows.

The Gift. Jesus breathed and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven, if they are retained they are retained’ (20:22).

Let’s think about this: Jesus’s words bring together the announcement of God’s gospel and the work of the Spirit. Neither God’s Word nor his Spirit work in a vacuum. They are necessarily interlinked.

We should notice that Thomas wasn’t present, and that John’s Gospel doesn’t record separately the events of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, the verb breathed doesn’t have an object – despite some English translations.

Jesus’s words peace be with you speak of his warm, personal relationship with them, even though they all had failed him. This is reinforced with his gift of his Spirit whom he had promised on the night of his arrest (14:16-24). As Paul the Apostle later says, the Spirit would assure them of their rich inheritance with Christ (Romans 8:14-17; Ephesians 1:13-14).

The Spirit’s presence was not only for the benefit of the disciples. As Jesus had promised, the Spirit would enable the disciples to remember and to interpret accurately all he had said and done (14:25-26). But he would also awaken the world to a spiritual awareness and convict it of its failure to honor the great high king who so loved us that he gave his life for us (16:8-11; 3:16).

Jesus’s reference to the retaining and forgiveness of sins is significant. Being in the passive voice, the two verbs indicate that it is not humanity, but God, who retains or forgives sin. When people fail to believe they remain isolated from the Lord. But when they turn in repentance to the Lord, they receive his forgiveness.

Bringing together the threads of Jesus’s words in the context of John’s Gospel as a whole, it is not our human prerogative to retain or forgive sins. Rather it is the outcome of the ministry of God’s Word, the gospel, and the work of his Spirit.

The ministry Jesus gave the disciples laid the foundation for our gospel ministry, namely the verbal announcement of God’s gospel that the Spirit uses to transform lives. This stands behind the Anglican Connection vision and mission:‘Connecting for Gospel Led Regeneration’. Our work is not tied one denomination but to like-minded, gospel-focussed ministers and churches.

It is the kind of gospel vision that the late Timothy Keller exemplified throughout his ministry. I experienced this personally when he, a Presbyterian in New York City unexpectedly invited me, an Anglican minister from Sydney, Australia, to talk with him about setting up a new church in Manhattan. Under God I was involved in setting up Christ Church NYC as well as what is now Emmanuel Anglican NYC. We thank the Lord for gospel-focussed leaders such as Tim Keller and pray the Lord will raise up many more.

Yet how often do we overlook Jesus’ words to his disciples in John chapter 20 and elsewhere in the New Testament. All God’s people have the wonderful privilege of being sent by Jesus to play our part in announcing his good news. Yet many today are fearful. Let me encourage you to pray that the Spirit will make real your experience of the peace of the Lord within you. Pray also that that God’s Spirit will awaken you to the riches of your inheritance with Christ, and open your eyes to opportunities to introduce family and friends to the Jesus of the Gospels.

Permit me also to encourage you to purchase a copy or two of my book The Jesus Story: Seven Signs. It is written as a refresher for God’s people and as a book to pass on to those who don’t know what to believe. It’s available everywhere through Amazon; if you are in the US you can use the button in the banner below.

Prayers. O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: do not leave us desolate, but send your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to where our Savior Christ has gone before, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for evermore.  Amen.

Almighty God, who taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending them the light of your Holy Spirit: so enable us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things and always to rejoice in his holy comfort; through the merits of Christ Jesus our Savior, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.

You might like to listen to, Holy Spirit Living Breath of God from Keith and Kristyn Getty and Stuart Townend.

© John G. Mason

Why don’t we pray more consistently than we do? And how often when we do pray, do we look to the model prayers we find in the Bible – and not least from the lips of Jesus?

Dr. J.I. Packer once commented, ‘I believe that prayer is the measure of God’s people, spiritually, in a way that nothing else is, so that how we pray is as important a question as we can ever face’.

Come with me to the prayer that Jesus prayed on the night of his arrest. We find it in John chapter 17. In verse 1 we read: After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you,…”

Knowing he was about to die, Jesus prayed that he would be honored in carrying out God’s previously hidden plan. His impending death was now a certainty, for John tells us that Judas had gone out into the night to do his dark work of betrayal. And now, as Jesus looked into the darkness of this evil, he prayed that he would not only remain faithful to his mission but would also be glorified.

The meaning of glory often eludes us for we tend to think of it more in terms of the splendor of fame or beauty. But the meaning of glory here is more subtle. It refers to the outward splendor of hidden, inner nature and qualities.

In praying, “Father… glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you”, Jesus was asking God to clothe him with glory because his cross would reveal for all time the nature and cost of God’s love.

Furthermore, he prays that as he himself is glorified, in carrying out this supreme mission, men and women will see the splendor of the extraordinary love of the Father for men and women, even though they choose to divorce him.

Ashley Null has observed that for Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, ‘The glory of God, is God’s love for the unworthy’.

The theme of glory through his crucifixion continues in verse 4: “I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do”.

Jesus is saying that he has completed the work God had given him to do. In his teaching he brought further revelation of God and in his miracles (signs) he revealed God’s compassion and power. One great work – his greatest work – remained. When he was lifted up on the cross at Calvary, he would bear in himself the sin of the whole world (John 3:14-15 and 16).

And John chapter 19, verse 30 records Jesus’s final words: “It is finished”. With his death, Jesus had completed his mission. He had offered the one perfect sacrifice for the sins of the world, once and for all time. To try and repeat it, is to diminish and dishonor his work.

Jesus’s prayer continues: “So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed” (John 17:5).

The words of John Stainer’s Crucifixion capture something of John’s record: “Far more awful in Thy weakness, more than kingly in Thy meekness, Thou Son of God… Here in abasement; crownless, poor, disrobed, and bleeding: There in glory interceding; Thou art the King!”

Prayer for the Disciples: “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word” (17:6).

The greater part of Jesus’s prayer is for his disciples. This tells us of their importance. They are to be the bridge between himself and the rest of humanity. Much will depend on their understanding of Jesus as the Christ – the Messiah – and their courage and loyalty.

So he prays that the Father will give them eternal life. In verse 11, he prays that the Father will protect them; in verse 15, that the Father will keep them from the powers of evil; in verse 17, that the Father will make them holy in the truth; and in verse 16, that the love God the Father has for the Son, will be true for them as well.

Jesus knows that the road ahead for the disciples will not be easy. Yet he doesn’t pray that they will be taken out of the world, but that they will be kept faithful and guarded from the powers of the evil one.

Prayer for his people: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one” (17:20-22).

In praying for his people through the ages, Jesus alerts us to the heart of his disciples’ mission. Their ministry is to be a declaratory (Word) mission. The content of their preaching and teaching will be that Jesus is God’s king who has come for us – to restore God’s friendship with us. Furthermore, Christ has come so that he might be in us – the oneness of God’s people (not denominational structures) will draw others to faith in Christ. In turn all his people through the ages will share with him as heirs in the glory to come.

Which brings me back to prayer and the theme of God’s glory. How often do we pray that God will be glorified? After all, Jesus taught us to pray, “Father, hallowed, glorified be your name” (Luke 11:2).

In this era of God’s mercy shouldn’t we be praying that God will glorify his name in the changing lives of his people – in you and me? Shouldn’t we also be praying that God will honor his name in drawing the lost to faith, turning hearts to their true home in Jesus Christ?

A prayer. Lord Christ, eternal Word and Light of the Father’s glory: send your light and your truth so that we may both know and proclaim your word of life, to the glory of God the Father; for you now live and reign, God for all eternity. Amen.

© John G. Mason

The loss of someone deeply loved awakens a profound anguish and grief within us. Even some time after a loved one has gone from us, we can unexpectedly find ourselves tearing up.

In the course of his last evening with his close followers Jesus told them he was going away and that they could not come with him (John 14:3). He knew what his going would mean for them and likened their state to orphaned children – destitute and alone. However, he didn’t offer glib platitudes about his going but promised them a Counselor – literally, a Comforter.

In chapter 14 verses 15 though 21, John the Gospel writer sets out the record of Jesus’s words of comfort and hope to his disciples.

“If you love me you will keep my commandments,” he said. “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him…” (John 14:16-17).

When we first read these words and the reference to the Spirit we might think that Jesus is speaking about an impersonal power or force. Indeed, in Acts chapter 8 we learn that Simon Magus thought the Holy Spirit was a force he could purchase (Acts 8:18f).

However, the personal pronouns ‘him’ and ‘he’ in John chapter 14, verse 17 with reference to the Spirit indicate that Jesus is not speaking about some impersonal force or power, but a person. In the original language the word ‘spirit’ is a neuter noun, an ‘it’ word. But John breaks the rules of grammar. He refers to the Spirit as ‘he’: He dwells with you…

The moment we think of the Holy Spirit as an ‘it’, we miss the profundity of Jesus’s promise. He, Jesus, is going away. ‘He’ is to be replaced, not by an ‘it’, but a ‘he’, the ‘Helper’, the ‘Spirit’.

Helper translates two words in the original text – the preposition alongside and the verb, called. The fact that Jesus promises another Helper implies that He himself has been helping. Now in this time of the disciples’ deep need he promises the Holy Spirit – a Helper, a Comforter.

Furthermore, this Helper or Comforter doesn’t provide comfort like Linus’s blanket, nor is the Comforter simply a hot water bottle for cold, hard times. He comes to strengthen our hearts and minds – putting ‘backbone’ into our lives. Jesus has been helping for three years; now the Spirit of truth comes to help.

‘The Spirit of truth is not known by the world,’ Jesus says (verse 17), but ‘you know him – and he will be with us forever’.

We are living in the age of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is not physically in the world now, but he is through his Spirit. This is astonishing and something we don’t usually think about. The Lord Jesus Christ is present and at work in the world now, not in a physical way that we can see, but invisibly through his Spirit.

It’s something that was foreshadowed in the Old Testament. There we read that God’s people dearly wanted God to live with them. Even so, they found the whole idea hard to grasp. In his prayer at the beginning of his reign, King Solomon asked: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you;…” (I Kings 8:27). To which the answer was ‘yes’; the Temple in Jerusalem was not only a place of worship, it symbolized God’s dwelling with his people, God’s special relationship with his people.

Furthermore, Ezekiel chapter 37, verse 27 says: “My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people…” What Solomon thought God was far too big for, God himself said he would do. He would come amongst his people.

The amazing thing is that the Bible tells us that God notices us and cares for us in a way far beyond our imagination. Remember, back in chapter 1, verse 14, John records: And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Now in John chapter 14 we begin to see the wonder of Jesus’s promise: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth…. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you…”

The Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ will not just be with us but also in us. Jesus takes his promise to another level here. He is saying that he is personally present with us in our lives. This is why Paul the Apostle writes in First Corinthians, chapter 6: Do you not know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit?

Jesus promises his followers a powerful companion who would comfort them and strengthen them.

For many, Christianity is little more than a moral code they must struggle to observe. But Jesus is saying, ‘I want you to understand that the faith I am talking about is, in its deepest essence, about a relationship, a relationship with the one who is at the heart of the universe.’ It’s about knowing Jesus and having him live with us through his Spirit. ‘God in the soul of men and women,’ is how one ancient writer put it.

Sometimes we can feel cut off from God by a sense of failure or unworthiness, ignorance or unbelief, or abandonment. Jesus is saying to his first followers, and to you and me today, ‘Do not despair: you can experience me in your life.’ We are not alone in life.

In his Letters Paul the Apostle develops this astonishing work of the Spirit. For example, in Romans chapter 8, verses 15 through 17: … You have received the Spirit of adoption as sons and daughters, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we might be glorified with him.

CS Lewis picks up this theme in his Narnia books with the analogy that the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve are the kings and queens of Narnia. The Bible tells us that God’s Spirit awakens us to the privilege God’s people have of being joint heirs with Jesus Christ in his inheritance.

A prayer. Heavenly Father, the giver of all good things, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and grant that by your holy inspiration we may think those things that are good, and by your grace and guidance do them; through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

© John G. Mason

Glen Scrivener’s book, The Air We Breathe (2022) compellingly explores ways Christianity has shaped the moral values of the West. It is a book for those who believe and those who don’t know what to believe. It alerts us afresh to the question of God and, if he exists, what he is like.

Of course, there are always those who tell us that there is no God – as did Nietzsche in the 19th century and scientists today like Richard Dawkins – although, interestingly, Dawkins says that he is a ‘cultural Christian’: he appreciates the heritage of Anglican Christianity.

History suggests that the idea of God is embedded in every culture that has existed for longer than three generations. It’s not surprising therefore that even in popular music, questions of God arise. Back in June 1996 the pop singer Joan Osborne came and went with a #1 single, ‘One of Us’. The lyrics asked some good questions: If God had a name, what would it be? If God had a face, what would it look like? In essence it asked the question, ‘What would God be like if he were flesh and blood?’

Hinduism tells us there are many different gods (Shiva, Vishna, and so on); Judaism insists that there is only one. Buddhism denies the notion of God and Islam insists that everything is directed by the will of Allah. So, who’s right?  Certainly not all of them. Perhaps none.

It’s this kind of question that makes Joan Osborne’s question so relevant. The only way we can really know what the creator God is like is if he lived as one of us. If he stepped into our shoes for a while we could see him from his birth to the grave. We might be able to find out where he was born and the school he attended. We’d hear of his interests and lifestyle, and perhaps what music he listened to and what social events and pubs he might check out. And we’d see the way he’d treat people – the politicians and the celebrities; the poor and the outcast; or just the average guy on the street like you and me. And if he had to die, we’d see how he would cope with it.

One of the striking things about Christianity is that it is grounded in history. The Gospel writers insist that Jesus of Nazareth not only lived but is unique. He was not just a prophet: he was more than a prophet. He was not just a man, he was God’s Messiah. He was not just an extraordinary man. He was both God and man.

In the hours before his arrest one of Jesus’ friends asked him a question that wasn’t very different from the one in Joan Osborne’s song. In John chapter 14, verse 9 we read Philip’s request: “Lord show us the Father. That’s all we need.”

Philip wanted to know what every religion has always wanted to know: What is God like? He wanted some tangible experience of God that would sweep his doubts away. Perhaps he was thinking of God’s special appearance to Moses in the burning bush. Or maybe he was influenced by the Greek mystery religions and had in mind some inner ecstasy, a spiritual trip that would lift him up to new levels of consciousness. Either way he wanted to see God.

Jesus’ response is electrifying: “He who has seen me has seen the Father…”

We would not have been surprised if Jesus had replied, ‘Don’t be silly Philip. You’re asking the impossible’. Rather he says, ‘Don’t you know me Philip, even after I’ve been among you for such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father’.

Yet there are many who think of Jesus merely as the ultimate good guy or one of history’s great teachers. Both ideas are no doubt true, but neither comes near what he is saying. He is saying that he is not just God’s emissary or ambassador, but God himself. He is claiming to be God in our shoes.

Consider how Jesus continues: ‘Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves’ (John 14:11).

Think about it, Jesus is saying: ‘You’ve seen me turn water into first-class wine; you’ve heard that I cured a young boy at a distance; you’ve seen me heal a man paralysed for 38 years, provide food for thousands at a word, restore sight to a man blind from birth, as well as bring a man dead for four days out of a tomb. Doesn’t that tell you something about me?’

It would have made sense, explaining many extraordinary events over the last three years – how Jesus could out-teach the academics of his day: he knew what he spoke about because he is from God; how Jesus could raise people from the dead, because he is the source of life.

The cumulative impact of Jesus’s life – the signs he performed and his revelatory teaching – exemplifies the truth of the opening lines of John’s Gospel: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men and women … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, … (John 1:1-4, 14).

Blaise Pascal, the 17th C French mathematician, philosopher and physicist, wrote in his Pensées‘: ‘People despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is just to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men and women wish it were true, and then show them that it is’.

In the opening lines of Psalm 98 – a psalm that bubbles throughout with praise and joy to the Lord – we are reminded of God’s supernatural intervention in human affairs:

Oh sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things!

His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him.

The Lord has made known his salvation…

To rephrase Glenn Scrivener’s words, ‘Is this the air you breathe’?

A prayer. Almighty God, you show to those who are in error the light of your truth so that they may return into the way of righteousness: grant to all who are admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s service that we may renounce those things that are contrary to our profession and follow all such things as are agreeable to it; through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

© John G. Mason