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All Souls Anglican, Cherry Hill, NJ

September 2018 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.

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bible study

This coming Sunday: the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity

Join us this Sunday for Evensong at 4:00 PM for the sixty-fourth in a sermon series on Luke’s Gospel at Luke 14.1-14, where the Lord Jesus after healing a man who had dropsy teaches several principles of the Kingdom of God that recalls the Magnificat of Mary from Luke chapter 1.

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For Your Prayers

We do so need and thank you for your prayers. Here is our latest update.

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 month as we raise our voices in THANKSGIVING and in PRAYER to our heavenly Father:

   •    THANKSGIVING that Gabe and Grace have found a confessional church where the gospel is faithfully preached and the sacraments administered according to Christ's ordinance - All Souls Anglican. PRAY for the Rector who will make his first visitation with them on Thursday 9/27.

   •    THANKSGIVING that a new LARGE street sign has now been designed and purchased, raising our profile on the busy Kings Highway.

   •    PRAY for our Rector as he has begun autumn lecturing in homiletics at Reformed Episcopal Seminary. Pray for safety in travel to and from the seminary and for his students, all first years in their degree program.

   •    PRAY for one of our families that must prayerfully discern when the time is right to move to Georgia in support of their son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren.

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The Eclectic Society, Part 8

This year we’re reading selections from the discussions and the spiritual insights of the evangelical ministers who regularly met in London as “The Eclectic Society.” I hope you will find the time to read further around the section, so I have found the original volume for you in Google Books/Google Play. You can find the text by clicking this link.

When the ministers gathered on August 4, 1800 the topic for discussion proposed by the Society’s Secretary Josiah Pratt was the best method to comfort those of an afflicted conscience. All the minister’s present conceded that the pastoral care to a tender conscience was very challenging and required prayerful discernment before venturing further toward effectiveness because so much is hidden from the minister. One could wound inadvertently where God had not had not pressed the conscience or worse, one could apply a cure that his too weak, leaving the believer the worse off, now thinking that the issue is not as serious as first supposed.

Most significantly, the absolute worst error was to give consolation to a heart that remained unbroken, that more expresses sorrow at not being able to continue in sinfulness. Therefore, the minister must pray for some time in preparation, searching God’s Word to discern how the Law of God must wound before the gospel can cure.

The discussion then becomes much more specific in application. It is interesting that many conceded that a doctor’s diagnosis would be a great help, a concession that some form of what we would call clinical depression was present in the parishioner. Continuing in that vein, Thomas Scott commented that although comforting the afflicted may likely come in the context of visiting the sick:
   •   The most difficult case was to visit while family remained at the bedside. It was important to speak to the afflicted person alone, one-to-one.
   •   Since there is no specific precept for visiting the sick in Scripture, he suggested that clergyman think of himself more witness to the gospel, so as to pursue with clarity to your object, that the gospel be proclaimed afresh to the sick person.
   •   Rather than ask the person about their past life, it was more effective to focus on what reasons have put the person in such an anxious state.
   •   If the person remains unmoved by the gospel, consider giving your own testimony as to its effect on your own conscience, see Scott’s compelling personal narrative, Force of Truth published by the Banner of Truth Trust.
   •   Scott also suggests quoting the Anglican Bishop William Beveridge, from his well-known passage in his Private Thoughts Upon Religion:
“For my own part, I am resolved, by the grace of God, never to go about to confute that by willful arguments, which I find so true by woeful experience. If there be not a bitter root in my heart, whence proceeds so much bitter fruit in my life and conversation? Alas! I can neither set my hand nor heart about anything, but I still shew myself to be the sinful offspring of sinful parents, by being the sinful parent of a sinful offspring. Nay, I do not only betray the inbred venom of my heart, by poisoning my common actions, but even my most religious performances also, with sin. I cannot pray, but I sin ; nay, I cannot hear, or preach a sermon, but I sin ; I cannot give an alms, or receive the sacrament, but I sin; nay, I cannot so much as confess my sins, but my very confessions are still aggravations of them. My repentance needs, to be repented of, my tears want washing, and the very washing of my tears needs still to be washed over again, with the blood of my Redeemer. Thus, not only the worst of my sins, but even the best of my duties, speak me a child of Adam; insomuch that, whensoever I reflect upon my past actions, methinks I cannot but look upon my whole life, from the time of my conception to this very moment, to be but as one continued act of sin. And whence can such a continued stream of corruption flow, but from the corrupt cistern of my heart? And whence can that corrupt cistern of my heart be filled, but from the corrupt fountain of my nature? Cease, therefore, O my soul, to gainsay the power of original sin within thee, and labour now to subdue it under thee. But why do I speak of subduing this sin myself? Surely this would be both an argument of it, an addition to it. It is to thee, O my God, who art both the searcher and cleanser of hearts, that I desire to make my moan! It is to thee I cry out in the bitterness of my soul, O wretched man, that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? 'Who shall? Oh! Who can do it but thyself. Arise thou, therefore, O my God, and shew thyself as infinitely merciful in the pardoning, as thou are infinitely powerful in the purging away, of my sins!”
   •   Do not leave men deluded. Do not hide the truth from them.
   •   Where one can discern even in the smallest measure that there is more humility in light of sin than fear of what may occur in dying, then pour in the balm of the gospel.
   •   Pour more and more light. No man is discouraged because he knows too much his disease, but too little of his remedy.

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Latest Sermon Podcast

Our sermon this month is the sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity. The text is Luke 13.22-30 entitled, The Narrow Door.

Here is the link tothe sermon podcast. Share it by forwarding this link or email it to your friends.

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A Parish of the Diocese of CANA East

Worshiping Sundays at 4:00 PM at: 520 Kings Hwy South | Cherry Hill NJ 08034

Contact us:

Telephone: 856.671.1183 | E-Mail: church@allsoulsnj.org

Find us on the web: www.allsoulsnj.org

Follow us on Twitter: @allsoulsnj

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