All Souls Anglican, Cherry Hill, NJ

November 2016 Prayer Letter

We greet you in Jesus’ name. Every month or so we will send this prayer email to you, letting you know the most effective way you might pray for us. We do hope you will consider All Souls Anglican for your personal prayers that this new mission for the gospel may continue faithful to the gospel.

This coming Sunday: Sunday next before Advent

Join us for Evening Prayer at 4:00 PM this coming Sunday when we welcome Bishop Julian Dobbs, Bishop of our diocese, the Missionary Diocese of CANA East to our pulpit to conclude our series in 1 John at 1 John 5.13-21, Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine! Flautist Margaret Claudin joins us and will be ministering in music with her flute.

We do so need and thank you for your prayers

Please use the buttons at the bottom of our newsletter to share with your network(s) among the saints of God to increase our prayer support.

Join us this week as we raise our voices in thanksgiving:

•    The many believers who joined together to give thanks for the Reformation and for the music that supported the worship so well!
•    The gospel sermon preached on “Christ Alone” at our Reformation Day service by Dr. Peter Lilleback and for the unconverted that attended.
•    For the clear preaching and offer of the gospel by friend and colleague Pastor Don Painter at our Thanksgiving Dinner act of service among the assisted living residents and our food pantry clients of our boroughs on 14 November.

Please pray with us that:

•    That the Bishop’s visitation on Sunday, 20 November will be a time of prayer, of exhortation in the preaching, and of strengthening in our union in Christ.
•    Discernment as we begin the process of drafting our budget for 2016 this November.
•    Discernment as we prayerfully consider Warden and Vestry for 2017.

This is probably my favorite Martin Luther quotation, ever. I have quoted the italicized section in many sermons over the years. Let me set the quote in a bit of context that I read in Carl Trueman's book on Luther and the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom.

Most of us may know of his stand at the Diet at Worms, when he declared before the Holy Roman Emperor and the papal legates that his conscience was captive to the Word of God.

But I think if we were to ask Luther himself when in his life he truly knew the effectiveness of God’s Word, it would not be in April 1521 at Worms. Luther would point to the year after, beginning in March 1522. It was when he returned to Wittenberg after his year in hidden seclusion at Castle Wartburg. Wittenberg was in total chaos. Karlstadt and Zwilling had unleashed the forces of iconoclasm. Luther, abandoned by the middle-class of the city, was criticized on all sides. He was more vulnerable for the next fourteen months than he ever was again in his life. He could have been the victim of assault and murder every day. The Reformation had become a political Revolution. If this social chaos and riot continued, ruler Frederick the Wise would have had no other choice but to shut the Reformation down. In this situation, what did Luther do? He literally preached the Reformation back into line by means of the Word of God:

"Take myself as an example. I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philipp and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything. Had I desired to foment trouble, I could have brought great bloodshed upon Germany; indeed, I could have started such a game that even the emperor would not have been safe. But what would it have been? Mere fool’s play. I did nothing; I let the Word do its work. What do you suppose is Satan’s thought when one tries to do the thing by kicking up a row? He sits back in hell and thinks: Oh, what a fine game the poor fools are up to now! But when we spread the Word alone and let it alone do the work, that distresses him. For it is almighty, and takes captive the hearts, and when the hearts are captured the work will fall of itself."

— The Second Sermon, March 10, 1522, Monday after Invocavit. [Luther, M. (1999, c1959). Vol. 51: Luther’s works, vol. 51: Sermons I. (J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann, Ed.). Luther’s Works (51:III-78). Philadelphia: Fortress Press].