Last Sunday morning our service was led by Mr Paul Bishop. This was the first Sunday in Lent and steward Bunty Hodgkins remembered the bread and wine, symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, before giving a welcome to us all. Paul used a short prayer to call us to worship and after our opening hymns he led us in a prayer of thanksgiving, adoration and confession. ‘Confession is good for the Soul’ was his service theme.
There were two bible readings, the first read by Margaret Maxwell, was Psalm 32 which spoke of the happiness of those whose sins are forgiven and whose wrongs are pardoned. The second, read by Gerry Maxwell, tells of St Paul writing about Adam and Christ as he said, “all who receive God’s abundant grace and are freely put right with him will rule in life through Christ”. Prayers were said for others remembering those who lost everything in the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, the suffering in Ukraine and the poverty in our own country.
Recalling his own failures down the years and remembering ours, Paul reminded us that “confession is good for the soul”. Unconfessed sin is like a creeping cancer. This was acknowledged by King David some thousand years before Christ, as he confessed his sin before God when he saw the light. God is our hiding place and he is our rock and now we have the assurance of Jesus who is also our mediator. Paul spoke of guilt saying the burden of unconfessed sin is heavy and this causes us to feel guilty, and while we hold on to sin, so we provide fuel to the enemy. But God reminds us time and time again of his infinite mercy and he says “give it to me” and his truth will set us free. There is no need to carry guilt for the victory is already won by Jesus on the cross. “Let us live in the truth of it and in the victory which is ours through Christ” said Paul.