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How to Receive the Lord's Light in Our Lives
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 17 Dec, 2017
This Sunday we'll be talking more about the Christmas story according to the Gospel of John, with a focus on theme of darkness and light. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Witness to the Light
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 10 Dec, 2017
Before Jesus could begin His ministry He needed John to prepare the way first. The world at the time was in such a bad state that people could not have taken in Jesus teachings if John had not first prepared them and filled them with hope for Jesus' coming. John did this by bearing witness to Jesus' Light, so that when that light did come people could recognise it and embrace it. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn , Westville, RSA
To God be the Glory
Worship Service: Informal Family - 3 Dec, 2017
Singing is one of the most powerful ways to express joy, and this is no more true than at Christmas. The teachings of the New Church tell us that going back thousands of years, the people in ancient times delighted in singing songs about the Lord's future coming and the salvation He would bring. Today we do the same as we not only look back to the Lord's birth but also forward to His birth into our own lives. After a short talk on the joy of singing to the Lord we will join together to celebrate the joy of the Lord's Coming and the Christmas season in general. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn , Westville, RSA
How Wealthy is Too Wealthy
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 26 Nov, 2017
As Christians is it our duty to shun wealth? Jesus says that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. So should the wealthy among us be ashamed of their wealth? Should the poorer of us take pride in their poorness? Not exactly. The problem with money is the use to which we apply it. Money is heavenly when we see it as an opportunity to serve others and hellish when we see it as a way to love ourselves. All of us, rich and poor, need to take stock of the gifts we have been given in abundance and ask how we can use that abundance to make the world a better place. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn , Westville, RSA
Facing Floods, Part 4 - Rebuild
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 19 Nov, 2017
What do we do after a crisis? How do you go back to normal? This Sunday we're going to talk about what happens after Noah and his family can finally leave the ark after the flood and what we can learn from the story about how to rebuild our lives once a crisis has passed. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Facing Floods, Part 3 - Ride it Out
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 12 Nov, 2017
Two weeks ago we talked about seeing the floods, or challenges, coming and understanding that there is a better life on the other side. Last week we talked about preparing for the floods, or challenges, by making sure hat we are walking hand in hand with God and following Him wherever He leads us. This week we are going to talk about being in the middle of the flood itself, coping with the challenges as we experience them. In the midst of struggle we suffer from doubt but the Lord's promise is that He has prepared you and that He will bring you through alive, to find a new beginning. There is no challenge that you cannot overcome. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn , Westville, RSA
Facing Floods, Part 2 - Get Ready
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 5 Nov, 2017
Noah has been told by God that a flood is coming that will destroy everything and everyone, except for those people and animals that God saves on the ark that He tells Noah to build. There are times when we know something big is coming. The Lord can help us to get ready and help us to keep safe what is most important. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Facing Floods, Part 1 - See it Coming
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 29 Oct, 2017
Spiritual growth is a destructive process. Without the destruction of old habits, old ways of thinking, old wants and desires, there would be no room for the Lord to build us up as angels. Over the next four Sundays we will be exploring this topic of spiritual destruction and reconstruction using the story of Noah's Flood. This story offers powerful insight into how we deal with the spiritual floods that come our way. In the course of this story we'll talk about seeing the flood coming, how to get ready for it, riding it out, and then the beautiful things the Lord creates when we get to the other side. For this Sunday our focus will be on the first part: seeing the flood coming. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn , Westville, RSA
Get More Out of Reading the Bible: Part 3: New Testament
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 22 Oct, 2017
The New Testament is the last section of the Bible that we haven't talked about yet in our series about getting more out of the Bible. On Sunday we'll talk about things like how the New Testament differs from the Old Testament, whether all the books in the New Testament are equally authoritative, why there are four Gospels, etc. It will be fun and I hope it will help you to get more out of reading the New Testament. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Get More Out of Reading the Bible: Part 2: Prophets and Psalms
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 15 Oct, 2017
Some of the most difficult parts of the Bible can be found in the Prophets. It can be hard to get much out of these sections. The teachings for the New Church say that this is because in the prophets the real spiritual meaning is often hidden under layers of symbolic language. So what do we do with this? Do we have to decode the prophets? Can we avoid them altogether? This Sunday we will explore how we can get more meaning out of reading the prophetical books of the Word. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn , Westville, RSA
Get More Out of Reading the Bible
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 8 Oct, 2017
A lot of people when they open the Bible find it hard to get much out of it, particularly the Old Testament. There are hard to pronounce names and strange and sometimes disturbing stories. What are we supposed to do with it? How do we make sense of it? The goal of this 3 part sermon series is to help you have a better understanding of what you're looking at and how it can have relevance to you today. This Sunday we're going to be focusing on the first big chunk of the Bible, the Old Testament stories in Genesis through 2 Kings. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Healing Spiritual Leprosy
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 1 Oct, 2017
This Sunday we are going to talk about the disease of leprosy in the Bible. Having this disease would result in becoming an outcast, cut off from the community and from God. Yet the Lord reached out to a leper, even physically touching him, to bring him back into the community and into a relationship with God. When we have made choices that cut us off from the Lord and from others, this is the miracle that He can perform: to reach out to us in our shame and draw us back into His loving embrace. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn , Westville, RSA
Healing Spiritual Blindness
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 24 Sep, 2017
This Sunday we're going to be looking closely at an amazing story of the Lord healing a man who was blind from birth. It's an amazing story because the Lord did an amazing miracle but also because it's clearly also about people who are spiritually unable or unwilling to see. With the help of this story we're going to try to understand how we might be spiritually blind and how the Lord can heal us and help us to see in a new way. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
In Our Own Space
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 17 Sep, 2017
Our sermon is based on the famous words of Joshua to the Israelites shortly before he died: "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (Joshua 25:15). Each of us has a public life and private life. For most of us, our private lives center on our homes and the people we live with there. this facet of life also includes our circle of close friends, or the times when we are by ourselves. The Lord urges us to pay attention to the ways we tend to act in our private lives, and to serve Him in this "center" so that our inner qualities, which tend to be exhibited there, become more and more heavenly. | By Rt. Rev. Peter Martin Buss, Jr. , Westville, RSA
God's Healing Forgiveness
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 10 Sep, 2017
We all have times when we become paralyzed by evil and falsity. We want desperately to be good but for some reason we cannot seem to let go of harmful thoughts and feelings. The Lord's forgiveness offers us a way out of this spiritual paralysis: when we raise our thoughts to Him. He heals us through His forgiveness, and in that healing we find freedom for our minds. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn , Westville, RSA
Helping Each Other: Part 3 - Offering Spiritual Support
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 3 Sep, 2017
In this sermon we are concluding the Helping Each Other series by talking about how to offer spiritual support. It sounds so good–offering spiritual support. And it is so good and can make such a difference when it’s done well. But offering spiritual support can also be done badly–people can be arrogant, controlling, clueless, etc. in the ways they approach "trying to help" and they can end up actually making things worse. But the answer isn’t that we should stop trying. Let’s learn what the Lord teaches about how to avoid common pitfalls and how we can best approach offering spiritual support to others. Download the workbook and other resources for doing this program at http://newchurchwestville.co.za/helping/ | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Helping Each Other: Part 2 - Getting Spiritual Support
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 27 Aug, 2017
We know that the Lord has created us to love others; but what about ourselves? Can that love also be from the Lord? All of us have needs that must be met but it can be hard to ask for help. We worry about putting a burden on others or opening ourselves up to criticism. Yet the Lord is clear that we are to love ourselves. If we cannot love ourselves enough to get the help that we need, we lose the ability to help others. When we ask for help we are not being selfish, but rather are taking the first steps towards helping others. Download the workbook and other resources for doing this program at http://newchurchwestville.co.za/helping/ | By Rev. Joel C Glenn , Westville, RSA
Helping Each Other: Part 1 - Challenges and Opportunities
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 20 Aug, 2017
This Sunday we begin the sermons that go along with the Helping Each Other: How to Serve Spiritual Needs programme. Helping each other sounds great in theory but it can also be really challenging. We're going to start this series by looking at the challenges involved and how the Lord's teachings can help us to overcome them. For Part 2 by Rev. Joel Glenn search by date: August 27, 2017. For Part 3 by Rev. Malcolm Smith search by date: September 3, 2017. Download the workbook and other resources for doing this program at http://newchurchwestville.co.za/helping/ | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Retaliation, and Taking Risks to Give
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 13 Aug, 2017
When people offend us or attack our intentions or motives, what should we do? Our tendency is to hit back, but He has a better way. And why did He say we should turn the other cheek? Did He mean it literally? | By Rt. Rev. Peter Martin Buss, Sr. , Westville, RSA
Heavenly Union - Part 2 - Marriage on Earth
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 6 Aug, 2017
Last week we looked at the marriage that exists between love and wisdom. This marriage is not static but exists in a continuous cycle: love motivates us to seek wisdom, wisdom teaches us to express love, and that love in turn motivates us to seek even more wisdom. This week we will explore this cycle and how it expresses itself in the marriages that we see around us. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn , Westville, RSA
Heavenly Union - Part 1 - Spiritual Balance
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 30 Jul, 2017
Everything in the universe reflects the Divine marriage between Love and Wisdom. Without these two qualities everything would fall apart. Over the next two weeks we will be exploring this union. This week, we will focus on our need to marry love with wisdom if we want to be truly useful. Either one on its own is weak, but together they can do amazing things. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn , Westville, RSA
Why Heaven and Hell are Relevant Today - Part 2 Hell
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 23 Jul, 2017
Hell is something a lot of people would rather not think about and not talk about. And it makes sense: who would want to contemplate the idea that they or people they love might end up in a place of suffering for eternity? That's terrifying. But ignoring hell or pretending like it doesn't exist also doesn't work. Just like we talked about last week with heaven, hell is a reality that we can experience on a daily basis and so we need to look at it squarely and try to understand how best to deal with it. That's what we're going to try to do on Sunday. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Why Heaven and Hell are Relevant Today - Part 1 Heaven
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 16 Jul, 2017
Heaven and hell can seem like fuzzy, distant, old-fashioned ideas - something from a different era, like fairytales with heroes and monsters. A lot of people today aren't sure that heaven and hell even exist and those that do think they exist often think of them as something that will only be relevant later in life, when they're getting ready to die. The New Church perspective is that heaven and hell are realities that we deal with every day and that what we believe about them can have a profound impact on our lives. Come and hear the New Church perspective on heaven this Sunday. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Fear - Both Hellish and Heavenly
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 2 Jul, 2017
We tend to become paralyzed when we feel fear. It holds us back from taking risks. But the Lord says do not be afraid. Even when the storms of life rage around us we have nothing to fear. In contrast is Holy Fear: this is the fear that we might let harm come to things that are good. When we feel this fear it does not paralyze us. Instead it inspires and empowers us to protect the good things in our lives. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn , Westville, RSA
An Open Invitation - Part 4 - An Open Door
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 18 Jun, 2017
This Sunday we conclude our series on the letters to the seven churches. We have explored how each church stands for some quality that the Lord wants us to work on so that we can enter His kingdom. The last two churches are Philadelphia and Laodicea, which stands for the best and worst of humanity. In both cases the Lord uses the imagery of a door: for the first, an open door that no one can shut; for the second, a closed door that He is eager to enter through. The lesson for us is that no matter where we are spiritually, the Lord is putting before us a path that leads to heaven. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn , Westville, RSA