April 19: The Secret Life of Us
Welcome to St Mark’s Home Church, wherever you are in the world! As you scroll down you can follow the form of the service at your own pace with space for interaction, Bible readings, song and prayer as you feel led.
If you’re doing this with your family, head over here to access content for kid’s church today. You can work through together! Parents can come back to this page at a later time.
Take a moment to prepare your heart to worship God. You might like to pray silently or have a brief time of prayer with the people you’re with.
Worship
Feel free to continue in worship if there’s a favourite song you want to sing. Musicians might like to get out their own instruments. We had a lot of fun worshiping God on our Easter Sunday live stream. For our next live gatherings we’re planning a Q&A session and a live kid’s worship time.
Reading: Matthew 6:1-18
Message
You can use these questions for personal reflection, or discussion in your household or online connect group. For those doing personal reflection, you may like to use a journal to write down your responses.
What do you make of that tension between letting your light shine before others (5:16), and not doing good “to be seen by others” (6:1)?
What do you think is the underlying motivation of doing good “to be seen by others”? In what ways does this motivation find expression in your life?
How does the gospel enable us to find a different motivation? What can we find from God that helps us overcome the desire for human approval?
Take some time to read 1 Corinthians 4:1-5.
What surprises you about this passage?
What would it look like for you to be able to say this with Paul?
How might the secret disciplines help you get through this time of change?
In each example (giving, prayer and fasting), Jesus says “Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you”. In what ways might God reward our secret practices?
Take some time to quietly reflect on your own secret practices. Is God’s Spirit prompting you to make a next step in giving, praying or fasting in secret? What tangible step can you make to act on this
Take some time to respond in prayer.
Prayers
Give
Thank you so much to those who have switched to online giving to support the ministries of our Church. If you’d like to set up online giving, click the link below.
For those at other churches who are using this as a resource, we encourage you to continue giving to your local church :). We continue to pray for those who are experiencing unemployment and financial strain at this time.
Letters to God
We asked the kid’s in our Church family to write letters to God, sharing what is on their hearts at this time. We’ll be sharing these during the pandemic period. If you’d like to contribute a letter, or have another creative way to encourage others, send us a picture.
Thank you!
Thanks for joining us today
If you’ve responded to today’s message you can comment below or get in touch directly via email at homechurch@laurenipsum.co.
If you’re interested in joining us for Alpha online, or would like to give it a try to see what it's like on Wednesday 6th May, please let Gayle know by emailing gayle.goninon@hotmail.com.
If you’ve got a short greeting or photo that you want to share to encourage the community you can also put it on Facebook.
Closing Prayer
The love of the Lord Jesus
draw you to himself;
the power of the Lord Jesus
strengthen you in his service;
the joy of the Lord Jesus fill your hearts;
and the blessing of God almighty,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
be among you and remain with you always. Amen.
See you next week.