The Worlds Lighthouse No.4 The Labour of Love

Now, the Apostle Paul, he was a man who got into a lot of pressure and difficulties as a result of his proclamation of the gospel. Listen to him writing to a church whose letter we're going to be looking at in a moment, but don't reach for your Bible because this is a fairly up-to-date paraphrase, and later on we'll read it as it's dynamically translated in the NIV. But I'd like you to listen to Howard as he speaks out what Paul wrote to an early Christian community so many hundreds of years ago.

This particular passage is titled, No Hidden Agendas. God tested us thoroughly to make sure we were qualified to be trusted with this message. Be assured that when we speak to you, we're not after crowd approval, only God approval.

Paul, since we've been put through the battery of tests, you've guaranteed that both we and the message are free of error, mixed motives, or hidden agendas. We never used words to butter you up. No one knows that better than you, and God knows we never used words as a smokescreen to take advantage of you.

Even though we had some standing as Christ's apostles, we never threw our weight around or tried to come across as important with you or anyone else. We weren't aloof with you. We took you just as you were.

We were never patronizing, never condescending, but we cared for you. The way a mother cares for her children, we loved you dearly, not content to just pass on the message we wanted to give you our hearts, and we did. You remember us in those days, friends, working our fingers to the bone up half the night, moonlighting so you wouldn't have the burden of supporting us while we proclaimed God's message to you.

You saw with your own eyes how discreet and courteous we were among you, with keen sensitivity to you as fellow believers, and God knows we weren't freeloaders. You experienced it all firsthand. With each of you, we were like a father with his child, holding your hand, whispering encouragement, showing you step by step how to live well before God, who called us into his own kingdom, into this delightful life.

And now we look back on all this and thank God, an artisan well of thanks. When you got the message of God we preached, you didn't pass it off as just one more human opinion, but you took it to heart as God's true word to you, which it is, God himself at work in you believers. Friends, do you realize that you followed in the exact footsteps of the churches of God in Judea, those who were the first to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ? You got the same bad treatment from your countrymen as they did from theirs.

The Jews who killed the master Jesus to say nothing of the prophets and followed it up by running us out of town, they make themselves offensive to God and everyone else by trying to keep us from telling people who've never heard of our God how to be saved. They've made a career of opposing God and have got a mighty good at it, but God is fed up, ready to put an end to it. Well, I don't know whether the liberty was a little bit too great in referring to the experience of another friend of mine who I was trying to contact in the Middle East yesterday that is working secularly in order to stay in a country where to preach openly the gospel is dangerous, then I reckon I'll go along with that.

Acts chapter 17, when they, that is Paul and his companions, had passed through a place called Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica where there was a Jewish synagogue. As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. This, Jesus, I am proclaiming to you as the Christ, he said.

Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and not a few prominent women, but the Jews were jealous. So they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. They rushed to Jason's house in search of Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd, but when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some other brothers before the city officials, shouting, these men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here, and Jason has welcomed them into his house.

They are all defying Caesar's decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus. When they heard this, the crowd and the city officials were thrown into turmoil. Then they put Jason and the others on bail and let them go.

As soon as it was night, the brothers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. Now let's move to Thessalonians in chapter 2 and the passage that we heard a paraphrase of. You know we never used flattery, nor did we put on a mask to cover up greed.

God is our witness. We were not looking for praise from men, not from you or anyone else. As apostles of Christ, we could have been a burden to you, but we were gentle among you like a mother caring for her little children.

We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us. Surely you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship. We work night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preach the gospel of God to you.

You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous, and blameless we were among you who believed. For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting, and urging you to live lives worthy of God who calls you into his kingdom. Amen.

Glory. Well, this little passage, which is replete with practical meaning and gives us insight into the life of the apostle, is not only the portion for our study right now, but we're going to take it up and develop it further and apply it more in our groups on Wednesday as we meet in many locations around the town. And that's one of the reasons why the back of Notes and News, the handout you received with a missionary release as well this morning, is contained the outline of my thinking, at least as it was up to the point of Thursday.

Further developments have taken place since, as you can perhaps understand. But on Wednesday, we go back on this passage and we talk about it, pray it through, and apply it even more. Therefore, we do invite you warmly to be present at one of our groups.

And if you're just a visitor, but you happen to be in town, write through to Wednesday and beyond and call at our welcome desk and they'll give you a location which will be convenient for you to visit and address where some of our friends will be gathering later this week. The Apostle Paul doesn't often give us much of an insight into his life and lifestyle, but here he does. In these chapters, writes Dr. John Stott, perhaps more than anywhere else in his letter, he discloses his mind, expresses his emotions, and bears his soul.

No one who is engaged in any form of pastoral ministry can fail to be touched. What has the Apostle been through? Well, I made reference in the first reading from the NIV version of the Scriptures to his time prior, obviously, to the sending of this letter, when he was actually in Thessalonica. Someone has said that to trace the missionary exploits of the Apostle Paul in those developing years of the saga of the Christian church is like following the bleeding footprints of a rabbit as it's, in a wounded fashion, made its way through the snow.

For the Apostle, there was great difficulty almost everywhere he went, and not least at Thessalonica, where he wasn't treated too well, and indeed had even been treated more severely in his previous port of call. And it looks as though what happened in Thessalonica, the riot, the assembly of the civil court, and Paul having to leave fairly quickly with his companions, gave some degree of tittle-tattle in terms of the misuse of what happened and the representing of it in a different way from what really had occurred. There were those who said of the Apostle Paul, he's left you Thessalonian Christians in the lurch.

Here he was, he was really just after his own end. He came to Thessalonica, he'd been to Philippi, and things didn't go too well, and what happened? Well, he fled, he left you. And you Thessalonians have to realize that Paul, well, he's no more than the ordinary charlatan type of teacher who's constantly going from Philippi to Thessalonica and across to Athens making a buck for himself, interested in only what he can get out of things both sexually and also financially.

The Apostle Paul has to cope with this lifeless comment that has been made, and there are those who are trying to cause seeds of discontent within the Thessalonian community. So Paul, although he has every confidence in those true Christians, he writes this letter, and he releases this piece of biographical information which, as I say, is most unusual for him to engage in. And he tells us something about what really happened and what he expects from those early Christian believers.

You know, misrepresentation as far as the gospelers are concerned is as old as Jesus himself. They said of the Son of God when he was declaring the gospel, he is a wine-dibber, he's a drunkard, he is a glutton. When William Carey found himself in North India, he had problems, not only in India where rumors were rife as to his personal life, but even back here.

When you proclaim the gospel of Christ when you are a Christian, you run the risk of misrepresentation. And the apostle recognizes this, and so he starts to tell us a little bit about his motive in coming to Thessalonica and indeed generally his objective as a proclaimer of the gospel. You know, he says, verse 5, we never indulged in three things that some of the more popular teachers engage in.

We didn't use flattery. We were not superficial, putting on a mask to try to indicate to you that we were other than we really were. We did not ingratiate ourselves in order to get praise from men.

We're not superficial, says the apostle. What we unpacked before you, we really believe. And how we lived, well, that you have in your recall, and it is our testimony.

Says the apostle, there are those who, when they engage in influencing ordinary folk, are actually concerned only to get the praise of men. But not us. Christian people are concerned not to win the applause of men, but rather to gain the approval of God.

The story is told of the presentation of one of the operas of Verdi. And this happened, I believe, if memory serves me right, in Vienna. And on the occasion when this opera was first put on, at the end, the audience to a man rose and they cheered the conductor.

And the conductor, instead of his face being wreathed in smiles, was worried and upset and became extremely distressed. The reason was, in the far gallery, in the center, was none other than Verdi himself, the composer of the opera, and he remained seated. The conductor's concern was not to please the audience, but to please the person who had given the opera to the world.

Paul's concern was not to win the applause of the Thessalonians or the Philippians or anyone else. His concern was to please Almighty God, because he believed that everything he did was inspected by the Lord. We are not trying to please men, but God who tests our heart.

So I barely can ask you this, who are you trying to please? What is the yardstick by which you measure the success of your life? Whatever field you're engaged in, in terms of business, whether you're a husband or a wife or a single person, whether you have parented children or you have never been used to bring offspring into this world, whose applause are you trying to gain? The apostle here, as he talks about his life, which we have summed up in terms of being a labor of love, tells us for starters in this fifth verse, as far as our passage is concerned, that his eye is on God and on God alone. Writing to a community of Christians who also had in their midst slaves, the apostle in his letter to the Colossians and to the Ephesians says to these slaves, do not try to be men pleasers. And in a somewhat different context here, he illustrates that he's not guilty of that himself.

He wants to please, he wants to bring joy to the heart of God. And so in these verses in which he tells us a little bit more about himself and his psyche and his attitude, he exposes what he was, an apostle, verse seven, an apostle of Christ. He tells us about his conduct, how he behaved, verses seven to nine.

And then he tells us about who were witnesses to his ministry, verses ten to twelve. You are witnesses and so is God. So let's have a look for a moment or two at that first heading.

Who was Paul? Well, he is an apostle, an apostle of Christ. Paul was not a weak man, but he was a meek man. His meekness was such that though he realized that he had been called by Jesus to be one of the founding apostles of the Christian church, though he was quite happy to acknowledge God's gift of grace of apostleship to him, as well as to the other apostles, nonetheless, he refused to pull rank.

He would glory in his office. He would tell the Corinthians as he's writing to them that Jesus had propelled him into this particular ministry and he was utterly unworthy of it. And though the apostle could, as a result of his office, have been a charge to the church, he refused so to be.

He's glad he's an apostle. He tells you in Romans. He tells you in the first verse in Corinthians.

He tells you in Galatians. He tells you in Ephesians, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the grace of God, proud to be an apostle, but not pulling rank in order to get people to flatter him, in order to get people to be obsequious. Oh, Paul is amongst us, therefore we must do that or the other to the advantage of this man.

No, says Paul here, as the apostles of Christ, he is also incorporating Silas and Timothy, who were his companions in this statement, as apostles of Christ, we could have been a burden to you, but we weren't. Instead, he did his best to live a life amongst them, whereby what would influence them would be his character and his conduct, not the charge that he might have imposed upon them. Now, don't misunderstand me.

The apostle Paul recognizes that when a man is called to declare the gospel of Christ, there is an authority that accompanies his words, his message, and he expects that what he has to say is to be respected. Because it is not the word of man, it is the word of God, proclaimed not just in word only, but in the power and the demonstration of the Holy Spirit. And when a community of people are confronted by a man or men who have that particular responsibility, who wear that badge of office of being proclaimers of the word of God, what they have to say carries its own inbuilt authority, and the people who reject that do so at their peril.

So witness Aaron and Miriam, brother and sister of Moses, both displeased at one time in Moses' life because, well, he has married a woman who perhaps was not of their choice, and as a result they lead a rebellion against their brother. And because of that, Miriam finds that she has leprosy, and Aaron for a while is silenced in his ministry. When a man comes in Old Testament times or in New Testament times or in twentieth century times, when men and women come to declare the glorious gospel, there is an authority in the message that they bring, and those who despise the message, who reject it, and perchance ridicule the ambassadors, they find themselves in a grave and serious position before the Lord.

So you see, whether or not you come carelessly into the tab, I have to disabuse you of the notion that being in a church like this on a Sunday morning or a Sunday evening means that you can just sit and in cavalier fashion listen to what is said. That is completely wrong. When you find yourself in a church, in a community, where the word of God is proclaimed, you immediately have a responsibility placed upon you in the reception of that word and in the correction of your life as a result.

The authority is in the message. What am I, says Paul, I am an apostle, but I deal with you not in the fashion of the Egyptian taskmasters, but rather as someone who is gentle amongst you, which leads me into the next section as we look from the seventh verse and onwards. How he behaved.

We've seen what he was. How does he behave? What about his conduct? Well, we were gentle, he says. Verse eight, we loved you.

On into the heart of verse eight, we were delighted to share with you. Far from being severe, far from being an autocratic, Paul was a people's man. And any man or woman who is to be used in the service of God has to be a people's person.

They have to love people. I don't think that Paul was austere. I think that one of the most wonderful pictures that you have of our Lord Jesus is when children come to him and feel at home with him and he can take them in his arms and bless them.

The person who is going to pour out their lives in a labor of love, by very definition, have to be people persons. They have to be dedicated, loving people, wanting to help them, being alongside them, winning their confidence, but always recognizing that they have an authoritative message for which they are seeking not only an audience, but reception and response. So, with apostolic authority, there is a parental tenderness.

As apostles of Christ, we could have been a burden, but we were gentle among you. Gentle? Well, gentle to the extent that Paul will speak about his caring and his sharing. Verses 7 and 8. And his toiling and his teaching, verse 9. As for caring? Do not honor the office of mother.

Now, obviously, including myself, we haven't all been mothers. It would be rather difficult. Some of you mothers, relatively young mothers, at times your patience must be stretched to breaking point.

I mean, there you were, controlling a responsible job in an office or in a school, you find yourself to be with child, the child is born, nine months later your life is completely different. And the intellectual stimulus that used to get at your office, well, you have to wait until your husband comes home, and maybe even then it's not quite as high. And for hours you're looking after your child, and it can be a very, very stressful and frustrating thing, I'm sure.

And yet one of the greatest offices is the office of the mother. What does the mother do? She comes down to her child. She speaks to her child.

She fondles her child. She loves her child. Here's Paul, a mighty intellect.

When I was in Thessalonica, I came to you as a mother. Nothing more wonderful fell, at least a few things more wonderful, fell from the lips of our Lord Jesus than on the occasion when he's at Jerusalem, at least just outside Jerusalem, and he looks down on the city, and he speaks of his own heart's concern for the citizens, and he says, oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered you under my wings as a mother hen gathers her chicks. This is almighty God revealed in the person of our Lord Jesus, speaking of his strategy as a preacher.

I'm like a mother. I want to be a mother bird with you coming under my wings. This is how Paul approaches the ministry at Thessalonica and elsewhere.

There was the sharing. There was the caring. I can think of no more horrific experience, can you, than to be a mother and find that your child has been taken from you.

I mean, that does happen. Out in India, it happens to the degree that it causes me to weep. Children who are abducted from villages in North India, sometimes from remote spots in Nepal, and by men for whom even the blood of Christ is stretched to forgive them, though his blood can cleanse the foulest, clean.

These men take these girls and they put them on the streets in Bombay, in Calcutta, and they become sexual fodder for men. What about the mother back in the village? The heartache, this maternal longing, one of the most forceful things in the world today. Now the apostle Paul says, when I'm away from Thessalonica, the care that I have for you, for you, my spiritual children, is like the care of a mother.

We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you. There is an affection for you which is unbreakable, affectionately desirous of you. The caring and the sharing, willing to give our own lives for your benefit.

You know, a true mother would never think of anything else. The option between the preservation of her life and the life of the child, it's always the child that wins. That doesn't just happen generally in the human species, it happens in the realm of nature.

Such a strong bond between the mother and the offspring, thus the apostle. He says when we were amongst you, though we were apostles, though we had this gifting of the Lord, we cared for you, we shared for you, with you, just like a mother. The caring and the sharing, the toiling and the teaching.

You remember, brothers, verse 9, our toil and hardship? You see, here is Paul and he's been put up by Jason. Whether Jason was a particularly rich man or not, I'm not sure. But here is the apostle and it would seem that he doesn't have enough support coming in from the other churches for his ministry.

In any case, personal support is not something that attracts him. He's a tent maker. Whether the others were tent makers, Silas and Timothy, I'm not sure.

But when Paul is in Thessalonica, then by day it seems he repairs and makes tents and by night he preaches. They're a strain. After all, he's limped into Thessalonica having been brutalized in Philippi and yet this man will still pour himself out doing secular work as well as spiritual work in order to advance the gospel.

And he says to these Thessalonians, all these rumors, this tittle-tattle about me, think it through, remember what we did, who we were, how we behaved when we were amongst you and let that be the evidence that causes you to make conclusions differing from the rumors that are percolating. Why did Paul live at this level when he could have had an easy time, presumably as a professor or as some chair of theology or philosophy at one of the universities? Well, you see, it's all got to do with how he evaluates the message that he preaches. We worked night and day, verse 9, in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preach the gospel.

He doesn't just say that. The gospel itself, euangelion, well it means good news and there's a certain amount of good news that is not necessarily religious and there's a certain amount of religion that's got good news to it but it's not Christian. But you see, this is where the apostle narrows down his message.

It's not just the gospel, it's not just good news, it's not just general good news, it's special good news, it's the gospel of God. God revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ, this great God of the prophets and of the patriarchs whose message is found in the Old Testament Jewish scriptures. This God has come into the world in the form of Jesus and what Jesus has had to say, it's been passed on to me.

I received it, I know a right to receive it, I didn't deserve it, I didn't deserve this honor to be a preacher, to be an apostle, but it's been entrusted to me. It's the gospel, the gospel of God and there is no price too great for me to make for him who gave his life for me. Thus, the caring and the sharing, the toiling and the teaching.

So what was he? He was an apostle. How did he behave? We've looked at his conduct. Who looked on? Who were the spectators? Who were his court of appeal? Well, we've touched on it because although I give you little structures in terms of trying to hang this address on headings, these verses are not watertight.

But from the tenth verse particularly, he emphasizes the point, who looked on? Who were the spectators? Well, you, you were witnesses. And so is God. And there were two witnesses, the human and the divine, the fallible and the infallible.

You see, human opinion counts for something, but it's not absolute, it's not infallible. Here is Samuel, pick out one of the sons of Jesse to be the king of Israel. And you remember the story, all the sons pass in front of him and one by one Samuel is impressed, but not one actually meets the requirements of God until the young ruddy-faced shepherd boy is brought in from the hills, the youngest, the one who is the most despised, the least popular, and little David or young David is appointed to be the future king.

And Samuel is told, God looks on the heart. Men are superficial in judgment, but God is infallible. So it wasn't just the human to whom the apostle appeals, it is the divine, because as Paul is moving from pillar to post, from one difficulty to another difficulty, he's not absent from the presence of God.

You see that little run around the world I engaged in last night in calling various people who are part of our TAV fellowship here. One of the things that was a common denominator with all whom I was speaking was their sense and knowledge of the presence of God, whether it's in the Middle East where the phone conversation was bugged, in one of the countries where it's not free to preach the gospel, or out in Pakistan or with Stephen Alfred in Bombay. They know, they know the presence of God.

They live their lives out in a Hindu society, in an Islamic society, but in the presence of God. His eye is upon them. So says the apostle.

You are witnesses and so is God. Well, what are they witnesses to? Well, total integrity. How holy my relationship to God, righteous my relationship to human beings, and blameless my final reputation is.

You are my witnesses. Holy, righteous, blameless. How do you measure on the HRB factor yourself? Holy in your relationship to the Lord, righteous in your dealings with humankind, blameless in your reputation.

That's your goal. Even if you've missed it, it is still your goal. And the apostle is able to say, well, you people in Thessalonica, you saw something of this? And he can make this tremendous appeal to the court of God himself.

Total integrity, verse 10. Scrupulous care, verse 11. For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children.

Now isn't this wonderful? You see, he's talked about maternal love, and there is a maternal instinct in the heart of God. We must not, in a reaction to those who want a feminine Bible, go to the opposite extreme of believing that God is totally masculine, simply because of the accident of pronouns. There are characteristics within the person of God which are perhaps better understood, I speak with respect, by our women folk.

There is a sensitivity and a tenderness. And here is the apostle saying, when we were amongst you, we were as a mother with her children, but moreover, he brings the men in. For we dealt with you as a father deals with his own children.

We dealt with each of you, scrupulous care. We did not deal en masse with you, but with each one of you as a father. Paul, how do fathers behave? Well, says Paul, it's a silly question that.

Fathers, they have, and he presupposes, a ministry of encouragement, comfort, and the urge, their children. A word to fathers, what's your goal? Oh yes, to please the Lord, but let's take that for granted for a moment. What about your lad? Do you encourage him? You see, a father, it seems to me, if I dare speak in an area where I have only experience by proxy, a father's goal is to honour the Lord, love his wife, and make his son or his daughter or his children his best friend.

You see, the greatest tribute that can ever come from a son on the death of his dad is I want to be like him. So the father who only gives his children the fag end of his time is in great difficulty, not only family-wise, but also biblically. Now let me unhook the guilt just for a moment.

It's not easy being a father in these days, when some of you are hounded in your professional life and the tyranny of employment is a very, very strong thing today, and I sympathise with that. In fact, sometimes I think those of us in the full-time ministry don't understand the pressures that there are in the secular realm, for our programme can be more flexible. But when you've made all those allowances, you still have a responsibility as a father to your boy, to your girl, encouraging, comforting, urging them, commending them to the extent that they get a confidence not always down on them, neither applauding them when they need to be corrected.

The Apostle Paul has got this wonderful balance in his teaching on family life. You find it in Ephesians as well as what you find it, by way of illustration, here. We have problems with the so-called generation gap.

There's only one thing you can say about the generation gap, it's a war in which everyone changes sides eventually. One of the things we need to do within our families is to ensure the intimate relationship between husband and wife and children. And within the family of God's church, the same principle obtains.

We are not building a block of flats. We are not here for a filing cabinet with one slot there and one slot there. The Apostle Paul doesn't admit to this at all.

He uses this intimate illustration of family life, the mother, the father, the children, together. And this is the local church. It works at the nuclear family level, and it is to work at the fellowship level within the redeemed communities as they gather together in their specific locations.

Two things, as Jill Tweedle, I remember about my parents, they stand out more than, they stand out head and shoulders. They had me as a child in Egypt, and they set me a vivid example of everything I didn't want to be when I grew up. I can think of few more tragic comments, perish the thought that any child should say of his mom or dad, standing head and shoulders in my memory, is that they gave me an example of everything I didn't want to be when I grew up.

The Apostle here says, no, you friends, you remember how we were amongst you as a mother, as a child, as a father? We encouraged you, we exhorted you, we did our best to bring you to maturity, not only by our word, but also by example. You know that we dealt with each one of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting, urging you to live lives worthy of God. So let's bring this to a conclusion.

What does Paul want for his church, Thessalonica, the church that he's helped to establish? He wants them to maintain their credibility. He wants them to please God. He wants them to please the gospel by way of illustrating it.

He wants them to please himself, the gospeller, the humble man who with Silas and Timothy brought the message. So he invested his life in this, it was the pouring out of a life in terms of a labor of love. And as it was for Paul, so it is for you and me.

You say, you know something, you've disturbed me this morning. I tell you something, it disturbs me too. You see, here is the ideal, and some of us have fallen short of that ideal.

Some of us have not been the fathers we should have been, or the mothers we should have been, the husbands we should have been, the wives we should have been, the single people, the sisters and the brothers that we should have been. We haven't all attained to this ideal which the noble Paul seems to have achieved in a remarkable fashion only second to that of our Lord Jesus. But one of the reasons why Paul writes his letters is that he's writing letters of correction.

He's showing what you're aiming at. And you can always stand up and start again and endeavor to be a better dad, spending time with your children, giving priority to that, spending time at your home, spending time with your partner. But the way forward for some of you is the way back, and maybe the way forward for our church in some areas too is the way back.

God has called us to be a family, for us, some of us, to minister to each other as mothers and fathers. For us, God has called us to live a life holy, blameless, and righteous. To the extent that we failed, there is power in the blood of Jesus to forgive us all our sins.

This is the first day of a new opportunity in your life. Whatever category you find yourself in, as far as my explanation of these verses from Thessalonians is concerned, try you and God, we stand in your presence, you've seen everything in our lives, things that we would not have anyone else here see, things that shame us, you have been a spectator on. And some of us, Lord, we would that you would rip pages from the diary of our life, we would that weeks and months perhaps had never been lived in the way that we did.

Now we're praying that you will cleanse us from our sins, we're asking that you will give us a new start, help us to be better brothers and sisters, better church members relating to one another, young to old, male to female, elder to the youngest child that's here in our creche. Lord, bless this church, make us a family, help us to be gentle and loving with each other and continue, Lord, to bless each natural family circle, each natural husband and wife, each natural brother and sister and all within our church family. Lord, may this be a place where love abounds, where rumour has no position at all, enable us to love you more clearly, see you, love you more dearly, see you more clearly and follow you more nearly, all our lives, Amen.