28 June 2020 - 11am Service

Living Inside Out | Hope

Welcome to Woodlands Church Online - today is all about hope! Nigel is hosting this morning and this service will include worship led by Mark and April with our Woodlands worship team and some creative spoken word about hope. Tim will sharing a message with us as part of our series 'Living Inside Out' on being hopeful looking at Romans 8:23 and Allan Macleod shares about his role in the city office with Bristol being a City of Hope.

STUDY NOTES

Introduction
Lock-down and Covid-19 has certainly made us think about cleanliness and hygiene. I've never washed my hands as much in my life! Jesus teaches in Mark 7 that holiness is an inner thing. What is our spiritual hygiene like in a time of Covid?

The Old Testament had lots of laws about cleanliness and hygiene, food laws etc. The people of God were learning to be Holy, which means to be 'set apart'. What is the difference between 'ritual' holiness and 'moral' holiness?
Do we get confused like the people of Jesus's day between outward appearances and behaviour, and inner purity? If so in what ways? How can we tell what's going on on the inside with people we may feel judgemental of?
How do we keep clean hearts? The Psalmist prays 'Create in me a clean heart O Lord'? How does God clean us up?
In physical hygiene terms we try to prevent dirt and 'foreign bodies' entering us through wounds or orifices by good hygiene. How can we stop spiritual pollution through anger, bitterness, lust, anxiety etc entering in?
How much is the practice of 'keeping short accounts' forgiving and seeking forgiveness part of our discipleship? How does Holy Communion help us activate forgiveness? Do we need to be forgiven or to forgive?
Has lock-down caused you to become angry or hurt by someone? Has isolation made you more vulnerable to allowing poor spiritual hygiene in your life?

Practice
In Matthew 6: 12-15 Jesus teaches us to forgive so we can be forgiven. Are you able to identify precisely where you might need forgiveness, or need to forgive someone? Could you this week make an inventory of such things and in secret practice asking forgiveness for anything God shows you and forgiving others.