GRACE TIMES Vol. XII/10 July 2009

Pulpit Calendar

All services begin at 9.30 a.m.

5 HOLY COMMUNION Preacher: Pastor Kuru 12 Preacher: Pastor Kuru 19 Preacher: Pastor Kuru 26 Family Service with Indu & Jürgen Eisenberg

Women’s Prayer Time July: Sunday 12th after the Worship Service

SUNDAY SCHOOL

From July 12 Parents, bring your children to Sunday School and attend worship yourselves.

Friday, July 17th, 7 p.m. At the home of the Sarwans: E 16, Mahanagar Extension.

Can’t we sing faster?

from the pastor

Dear People,

It was good to get a long break from routine and work, but it’s even better to be back.

Just as all of you were apprehensive about how you will cope without my pastoral care, I had my fears for all of you. I prayed desperately that no one would have a critical illness or some other crisis while I was away.

At the same time I was confident that with Indu, Jürgen, Rev J T Raja and Dr Usha Solomon filling the pulpit faithfully, you would not starve for the Word of God.

I was assured also that all of you would give each other love and care, having taken in the truth that has been preached for all the years that Grace Bible Church has been around. I knew that the seed sown would not fall to the ground without bearing any fruit. My being away has proved marvelously that you don’t need me to go on being a church.

But now that I’m back, would you please allow me to serve you? I’m a preacher and need a congregation. I need you.

In Christ’s love, Kuru

Suseela still house-bound after her fall in May injured her spine. Needs a few more weeks of rest to restore her spinal column

Martha Khan has recovered well after gall bladder surgery. Ajit was here providentially. After some hiccups he got his visa to return to China.

Usha Antin had a fall in May and fractured her left elbow, but has recovered well.

Manji Phillips is battling a lingering chest congestion. Nalin is under treatment after hurting his back climbing too many stairs, and falling down in a separate episode.

Pooja Modwell is down with typhoid in Bangalore where she went for her summer trainee job.

Elsie Thomas (in Dehra Dun) has to go in for surgery to remove a fibroid

The chicken pox epidemic is finally over among our kids.

Cindy to have her baby this month, Naomi in August and Shwetha in September.

Sarwans were able to move into their new home in May.

Riya Jacob here for six months, while Richie going to Poona to join studies for clearing Chartered Accountancy exams

Roshini and Kuru back from visiting Elishba and Joe in England.

Kuru has been battling pain and has now been diagnosed with osteoarthritis in his knees. Treatment will run for 3 months. Advised against climbing stairs, long walks—except in an emergency.

Birthdays

11 Ajit Khan 24 BunnyPhillips 29 Rufus Raja

The Holiest Moment of the church service is the moment when God’s people—strengthened by preaching and sacrament—go out of the church door into the world to be the Church. We don’t go to church; we are the Church.

—Ernest Southcott

The Christian Church is not a static institution. It is men and women who flesh out in daily life the meaning of faith, the reality of the risen Christ.

—Myron S Augsburger

Income statement June 30, 2009

	Jan-Jun 2008	May 2009	June 2009	Jan-Jun 2009	Budget 2009	Projection 2009
General offer	66,051	7,759	8,651	61,126	95,000	1,22,200
Donations	4,800	120	2,200	14,020	20,000	erratic
Pledged giving	1,42,270	19,400	10,500	1,11,520	2,85,000	2,23,000
Missions	23,570	3,800	2,900	24,600	70,000	49,200
Lent/Christmas	6,474			9,160		erratic
Sunday School	1,924	1,235	100	6,379
Village Church			500	1,500
Kids’ Club			100	500
Building	3,000			500
TOTAL	2,51,089	32,314	24,951	2,29,205	4,80,000

For pastoral care contact Pastor Kuru: Karunalaya, C-99, Sector J, Aliganj, Lucknow 226 001, INDIA Phone: +91-522-2745865/4049392 e-mail: reverendkuru@aol.com

www.gracebiblechurchlucknow.org

VILLAGE & CITY GRACE BIBLE CHURCH BAPTISMS

Sunday, May 17, 2009.

In the afternoon a few people gathered from both the village and city congregations to witness the baptism of three men from the village church and one young man from the city congregation.

As Nishal Eisenberg, of the city congregation, was ready right away, and was baptized first, while the others went to change.

Mother's Day, May 10, 2009

With Sunday School kids going up, Esther wanted to go up to the mike too.

At the end, Roshini gave the message for Mother's Day. She talked about Hannah, the mother of Samuel, who prayed for a son to be born, and dedicated the unborn son to God's service, and how she kept that promise even though she had no other children, and had no promise of there being anymore children to fill the place left empty by giving Samuel up to the Lord.

Mother's Day 2009

Most of the Sunday School kids read prepared statements. They were mostly girls. In these pictures Fizza, Suchetha, Pixie and Sukriti are seen.

Sukriti had all of us in splits with her spontaneous remarks.

MOTHER'S DAY, May 10, 2009

The service on May 10th had Indu and Jurgen Eisenberg along Nivedita leading in the opening songs
to the accompaniment of Esther drinking milk from her bottle.

Three of the Sunday School children sang a special song:

Fizza, Nive and Noel. Accompaniment for the song was provided by Noel on the guitar, Jurgen on the keyboard and Bunny on the drums.

Various kids came up to share something they had written about their mothers. Arpit was one of the boys who came up.

WHAT THE DOCTOR ORDERED

Message preached on Sunday, May 3, 2009

How would you define what essentials are? They are things one cannot do without. Life would not be sustainable without essentials. People have two kinds of essentials that they need met. Some are material essentials and others are emotional essentials.

Last year I had a regular eye check up. The doctor hinted that I had the very beginnings of cataracts in my eyes. To my question about what precautions I could take to slow down their progress, he said that there was nothing to be done. He did say that there was no urgency. It could take a year or ten or twenty for them to mature.

Elishba (my daughter), now a medical student, insisted that I get a second opinion. So I went to a doc who had a much bigger setup. At the second clinic not only was I made to wait for three hours past my appointment, but the doctor pretended I could be a candidate for glaucoma and wanted to do a more expensive test.

The special clinic was far away from my home. While I was trying to arrange for someone to take me there and bring me back, one of the members of the church asked me if I would be willing to wait until she got me an appointment with a doctor she knew. I was only too happy to get out of the clutches of the doctor who wanted to do the glaucoma test.

The doctor my member took me to has a nice place. The clinic is run very professionally and people from different socio-economic levels come to him. There were several examination tables and special instruments.

The preliminary tests started on schedule and within half an hour I was sitting in front of the specialist. There were three instruments in a row. The doc was behind the instruments and he rolled his chair from instrument to instrument as he saw his patients. While I was waiting for my turn, I heard him counselling the woman at the next machine.

The woman had had some surgery earlier, but she said that her scalp felt funny and she had frequent headaches. One good thing about this doctor was that, unlike most doctors I’ve known, he would take time and trouble to explain things to patients using understandable terms.

In the case of the woman, the doctor explained that pain is largely a non-physical feeling. Most of the time it had no real cause but people would worry themselves and think pain into existence. He assured the woman that her surgery was a success and there was nothing wrong with her eyes physically. So, said the doctor, the uneasiness and pain that she was experiencing were merely some negative feelings that were making her think that there was something wrong. He told her that if she insisted he could prescribe some medication for her, but she really didn’t need it.

The doctor then told the woman that she needed just two things in her life: shukhar (gratitude) and sabar (patience). As I sat there listening to the doctor I thought to myself, “This doc should be a pastoral counsellor.” What the doctor had prescribed are the emotional essentials of our lives.

Gratitude
When you are not grateful, then you feel that you are a person who “is deserving”—who deserves better. You are guilty of having the attitude that God owes you. Instead of appreciating all of the grace that crowds your life, your attitude leads people to think that God hasn’t done enough for you according to all that you deserve. Truth is, we deserve nothing. The only thing we deserve is punishment for being rebellious toward God by our repeated acts of disobedience. To then claim that we deserve better from God is not just ingratitude, but despising His grace.

The second aspect of the ungrateful is that they suffer from a sense of destitution. They face their situation of need and/or problems with a sense of being all alone. They feel that God isn’t there for them. They are not atheists, but they might as well be. They don’t say that there is no God, but they say that God is not there in their own lives. They are practical atheists.

Someone who is ungrateful is a desecrated person. The ungrateful look at their lives and feel that they are not consecrated and blessed. Indeed they are, but they just don’t feel blessed. Instead of feeling that they are consecrated under God’s will and blessing, they feel that their lives are unblessed. This is the surest way to lose God’s blessing.

Ten men with leprosy were healed by Jesus. Nine never came back to acknowledge that they had been blessed. Jesus remarked that the one who came back was the least likely one—a despised, ostracised outcast of a man:

One of them, when he realized that he was healed, turned around and came back, shouting his gratitude, glorifying God. He kneeled at Jesus’ feet, so grateful. He couldn’t thank him enough—and he was a Samaritan.
Jesus said, “Were not ten healed? Where are the nine? Can none be found to come back and give glory to God except this outsider?” Then he said to him, “Get up. On your way. Your faith has healed and saved you” (Lk.17:15-19, TM).

Someone pointed it out that Christian theology is all about grace and Christian ethics is all about gratitude. We have been given grace on grace (Jn.1:16, NRSV), and there is nothing we can do in return for God’s grace, except to express gratitude. To not be grateful is to trample on grace.

Patience
When you are not patient, you distrust God. You feel that you cannot depend on Him and you must go ahead and take care of things for yourselves. There are many who feel they have to fix their own problems instead of counting on God.

On the other hand, God wants people to wait for the right time—His time.

For moderns waiting is the hardest thing to do. While we wait, we feel our time is running out. What if God doesn’t act? Meanwhile the time we could have used to do something to solve the problem is gone.

When the Israelites reached the Red Sea they despaired because they were caught between the devil of a Pharaoh and the deep blue Red Sea. God commanded Moses to hold his staff above the water and have Israel step forward on the promise that the water would part and they would walk on dry ground (Ex.14:15-16). Similarly, when they reached the flooded River Jordan, the Lord told Joshua that Israel’s priests were to march into the river bearing the Ark of the Covenant on their shoulders and when the priests stepped into the water, at that very moment the flow was stopped and the people of Israel walked across without getting their feet wet (Jos.3:15-17).

Can God do that? Will He do something like that now in our day? Will He do it for me? What if He doesn’t? Maybe God wants me to take care of my problems myself. Believe me, patience is all about being patient with God and trusting God.

On the other hand, it could also show a hidden dislike for God’s methods and solutions. There are people who feel that if you left it to God, He is just going to do something unpleasant. When you are in the mood to hit back at someone, you fear that God is going to work on you and have you do something kind. Or, He may tell you that you need to endure the problem for more time. Maybe He is planning that you live with the problem. That’s the reason we want to get things in our control quickly. Waiting for God could spell trouble. Instead of God doing what we want, we would end up doing what God wants. What a dangerous position to be in.

The second thing about impatience is that there is disappointment with God. When I don’t want to wait for God, I’m also saying that God hasn’t done according to my expectations. My situation provided an opening for Him to do something. He didn’t, and I can’t wait for God anymore.

Gratitude and patience are essential in our lives if we are going to be people who are blessed and feel blessed, because in the final analysis both gratitude and patience have to do with our relationship with God. Gratitude is toward God for what He has done and keeps on doing, and patience is being patient with God waiting for Him. Without gratitude and patience, we will feel disconnected, and it is a disconnection with God. Those who are blessed don’t need to say anything to let people know they are blessed. Their lives will be marked with two deeply sublime qualities. They will show that they are deeply grateful and they have great patience.

Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary General of the UN 1953-1961 was the 1961 posthumous winner of the Nobel Prize in Peace. Hammarskjöld was a godly man and he didn’t hesitate to indicate that his life had been influenced by the gospels or that he considered himself to be under God. After his death in 1963, his journal was published with the title Markings. His journal included a profound line that he is most remembered for:

For all that has been, thanks. For all that will be, yes.

Gratitude for all that has been and patience for all that will be. Say, “Yes.” Say, ”Amen, Lord.”

Sixtieth Birthday

April 26, 2009.

We had a special service with P Abraham, the Editor of Light of Life as the preacher. Mr Abraham is seen in the first picture looking on while Ishaaq speaks at the end of the service.

Yes, the big surprise was Ishaaq turning up without any hint whatever. Jess suggested it and encouraged him to surprise Pastor Kuru and Roshini at the celebration of Pastor Kuru's 60th birthday,

Ishaaq brought a special gift from Jess, who has been taking a photography course. The gift was a photograph of a sea anemone that Jess had photographed and had then personally framed.

Our young friend Melissa also came from Poona and sang a special worship song at the service.

At the end we had a catered lunch for all who attended the service.