CHRIST being raised from the dead dieth no more : death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin: but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Rom. vi. 9.
This Week: No weekday services.
Sunday: Advent II St. Michael & All Angels Anglican Church Asheville Traditional Anglican/Episcopal Worship 2270 Hendersonville Road, Suite 5 Arden, NC 28704 [email protected] 828-702-1174 1928 Book of Common Prayer, 39 Articles of Religion, Homilies Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi
Check Out our Friends at: earthandaltar.standrewsalmanor.org Anglican Province of America
Welcome to St. Michael and All Angels
We are a fellowship of Christians seeking to bring others to know the transformative love of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, given to us by the Father through the motions of the Holy Ghost. God the Father calls us into His Presence today as we become members of the Mystical Body of His Son Jesus Christ. Through the Holy Spirit whom He receives from the Father, Christ Jesus everlastingly longs and desires for the redemption of His Word to be made flesh in us. He forever yearns for us to discover our place and calling in His Body. In His Body we are submitting to His Power; in His Body we are discovering His Wisdom; in His Body we are receiving and imparting His Love. In His Body we are making pilgrimage to our eternal destiny. His desire for us is our desire for you.
And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. (Rev. xii. 7,8)
The Bible and the 1928 U. S. Book of Common Prayer is the core of our Worship Service- find out more...
Click HERE to learn more about the eloquent 1928 Book of Common Prayer that includes the Psalter (or Psalms of David) .
Our Links Page provides other links you may be interested in reviewing.
Holy Week Schedule
Wednesday 11:45 Holy Communion
Sunday 10:00 am. Adult Sunday School 11:00 am. Sung Eucharist
A Message from Father Martin
Remove grace, and you have nothing whereby to be saved. Remove free will and you have nothing that could be saved.
Through the Church of England we trace our origins to the Church of the Apostles. Our lineage is both vertical and horizontal; through Doctrine and Discipline, through the Holy Spirit and Mother Church, we claim hypostatic union with One Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. With Christ Jesus as our Head,we, his Body, receive and tradition the truth, beauty, and goodness of God. What we believe and embrace is what we have seen and heard, inwardly and spiritually, from Jesus Christ. who has communicated and interpreted Truth to inspired minds in His Mystical Body down through the ages.
Jesus Christ is the Everlasting Word of God made flesh, crucified, resurrected, ascended, and glorified. As the Word of God he is the everlasting Reason through whom all things are made, defined, and related. As the Word of God he is the manifestation and revelation, the speech and communication of God's reason and desire to creation at all times and in all places. As Word he can lead man's mind to God through both science and revelation. Through science and philosophy he returns men to himself rationally. Human reason finds him as the necessary and sole cause of all being, thinking, and willing. Through Revelation -the communication of his Truth to inspired minds in Holy Scripture, he returns men to himself as the Word made Flesh who redeems and purifies our natural reason and our fallen condition. In and through himself as Word made Flesh he reconciles man once again to the Father through the dynamism of his Holy Spirit.
We are not saved by good works or by good intentions. We are saved when we begin to be cleansed in the all powerful Blood of Jesus. To be cleansed we must surrender. We surrender to obey. We obey so that God's Word alone will rule and govern us. All rights to self determination must be relinquished. We are called into union with our Maker and our Redeemer. In that union we serve Him alone and then our brother by Him.
So long as you continue to judge others and blame them for your own sloth, incompetence, dishonesty, and fraud the harder it will be for the Holy Spirit to make something good and useful enough to justify your salvation.
"Judge Not" means don't judge the sinner to be beyond the realm of help and salvation. Of course you must judge the sin. Christ in us does not put up with assenting to sin. That would be absurd. That would mean that you don't care. To care is to love. To love is to hold your family and friends up to Christ's high standard of excellence. To hold others up to Christ's standard means that you expect them to reach it. Christians never affirm others in their adolescent refusal to grow up and find God!
When are you going to stop healing others and look at your own sickness and sin and offer them to Jesus for a truer and more lasting remedy?
The problem with most Christians is that they think Christ is for others. Thus they judge, sentence, condemn, and kill those others who really are sent as angels to awaken them to their own need for salvation. The angels may very well be sinners. Yet theirs sins are usually a faint approximation of those that find a far more prominent place in the heart of the censorious Christian.
Christ has something in common with all creatures. With the stone he shares existence, with the plants he shares life, with the animals he shares sensation, and with the angels he shares intelligence. Thus all things are transformed in Christ since in the fullness of his nature he embraces some part of every creature. St. Bonaventure
Come Lord, Holy Ghost. Come alive in me. Teach me to overcome sin by discovering its root causes in the center of my soul. Teach me to see that I have indulged a disease and not sought out a cure. Help me now to seek out the cure. Assist me in applying the cure. Within the cure let me see the seeds of a health that I must will and desire. Help me to desire the health and then to perfect the cure. Lord Holy Ghost help thou me to see and embrace this thy Loving Grace. Lord Holy Ghost, rather than noticing the sickness of others, let me see that until Thou art healing me, I cannot bring thy healing love to my brother.
Secular humanism adores a variety of gods: the gods of sex, pleasure, money, lifestyle, military power, scientific technology, capitalism, and communism. Some secular humanists are atheists, while others even acknowledge the existence of the true God. Nevertheless, for practical purposes, all secular humanists put man first and therefore put man in the place of God. It's so easy to get involved in the cult of secular humanism. If we get caught up in it, we will go the way of all who worship false gods. We will be manipulated by Satan, become as perverse and empty as the gods we worship (Ps 115:8), and perish. The Lord is patient and merciful. He's giving us a chance to repent and get the plank out of our eyes (Mt 7:5). However, we have already missed countless opportunities to repent. Time eventually runs out. Repent now. (Presentation Ministries) Abba Joseph asked Abba Poemen: "How should we fast?" And Abba Poemen said: "I myself think it's good to eat every day a little at a time so as not to get full." Abba Joseph said: "Well, when you were young, didn't you used to fast for two days at a time?" And the old man said: "Believe me, indeed I did, for three days, and even a week. But the great elders tried all of this, and found that it is good to eat every day a little less each time. In this way, they showed us the royal highway, for it is light and easy." Abba Poemen teaches us that we should be careful not to undertake efforts too great for us. This gives the proper perspective in relation to the efforts praised in selections 3 and 4 above. It is better to make slow and steady progress with moderate efforts than to become discouraged or to miss the goal altogether with efforts too great for us. To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless. Gilbert K. Chesterton
Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less! C.S. Lewis
To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin.
There is a funny rumor flying about the world these days that everybody is going to be saved. Do we actually think that God would force salvation on those who don't want Him, don't trust Him, don't so much as believe that He exists, don't love Him, or don't even bother to search for Him? God doesn't force Himself upon anyone. That would constitute Divine Rape. No, God is so loving that He will reward those who want His absence, want distance from Him, and want His non-being with what they desire most of all, and have been embracing for the the whole of their lives -Hell. It is just life without God here and now that extends into eternity. So, many people will obtain forever what they never so much as felt after to find in this life -everlasting truth, beauty, goodness, wisdom, power, and love. -What was never forced but so freely offered by the one true and all loving God who desires that all men should be saved.
Christ did not come to affirm us. God would never do that. God cannot affirm what is contrary to His being. The absence of His Goodness is evident to all with the eyes to see. He came to save us from this an-enveloping satanic vortex. To say that God in Christ came 'to affirm' us is to make a mockery of the Cross. Christ dies to reconcile us to God. In order become living members of that Reconciliation, we must die in His death. That means that the under-developed, 'if it feels good do it', prepubescent or adolescent little ego has to grow up. To grow up we must mature in the knowledge and love of God. This can happen only when we surrender all rights to ourselves that He -God's Word, Desire, Intention, Meaning for us and Made Flesh, might come alive in us. The fist stage of His new life in us is death. Thus we must die to all that stands between our souls and our Heavenly Father's will for us. God doesn't come to enable us in sin or affirm our bad behavior. He comes that we might say "Yes" to Him in Jesus Christ our Lord. The wisdom, power, and love are all His. And all that is His when given to us is purely unmerited Gift.
Such as do not grow in grace, decay in grace. There is no standing at a stay in religion, either we go forward or backward; if faith does not grow, unbelief will; if heavenly mindedness doth not grow, covetousness will. A man that doth not increase his stock diminisheth it; if you do not improve your stock of grace, your stock will decay. The angels on Jacob's ladder were either ascending or descending; if you do not ascend in religion, you descend. Thomas Watson
A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. (Alexander Pope)
Humble we must be, if to heaven we go; High is the roof there, but the gate is low. Richard Herrick
The Book of Common Prayer contains the sublimest truths, conveyed in the most chaste and exalted language, throughout a Liturgy which must be regarded as the genuine offspring of piety impregnated with wisdom...I know of no good prayers but those in the Book of Common Prayer. (Samuel Johnson)