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SUPPORT PLEXUS IN PRAYER

The Plexus team’s prayer is that, as you read, a name will pop into your head: someone that you know who might enjoy being part of this pioneering online community – that person might even be you!

Pray for Major Ian Emery in his leadership of the initiative

Pray for members of the steering group and leadership group for direction and holy discernment

Pray that those who join this online community come to faith or strengthen their faith

EO CREATORS

focus on building friendships, community and church, giving opportunities for members to find and develop their relationships with Jesus.

How does it do this, I hear you ask? CVC is hosted on the social platform Discord, which provides an easy way for members to interact however they feel most comfortable – voice chat, video or text. Conversations that take place can range from video requests to discussions about the meaning of a song to prayer requests. There is a constant aim to encourage deep and meaningful conversations, with the Holy Spirit at the centre of everything that we do.

We aim to join people in community by cultivating discussion about technology and faith. We pray that through these relationships we will see and feel Jesus at work in their lives as they come to know him for themselves.

The aim is to create a new space for people who don’t fit into traditional formats of church

Find out what CVC is for yourself – scan the QR code and accept your personal invitation!

Zechariah’s song of salvation

Captain Mark Cotterill discovers silence is broken with a sign that God is birthing something new

LUKE 1:5–80

IN Jerusalem, a city under Roman occupation, Zechariah, a priest, is carrying out his duties in the Temple. He and his wife, Elizabeth, both from priestly families, are described as ‘righteous in the sight of God’ (v6). Although they have longed for and prayed for a child, ‘Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old’ (v7).

Over the years, in response to their childlessness, tongues would have wagged questioning what sin they had committed for God to punish them in this way.

Their situation appears hopeless, but Zechariah is faithful in service to God and patient in prayer and sustained by old songs of hope that God would come to the rescue of Israel once again.

PAUSE AND REFLECT

Is faith just about longing, hope and trust? Or are there some things we can know or be assured of?

As Zechariah burns incense in the Temple and ‘the assembled worshippers were praying outside’ (v10), he is totally freaked out by an encounter with the angel Gabriel. The news is staggering. Gabriel announces that God has heard their prayers. Elizabeth will bear a son, John, who will be ‘filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born’ (v15) and who will ‘make ready a people prepared for the Lord’ (v17). John is to play an important role in the salvation of Israel.

You may sense echoes and parallels with older stories such as Abraham and Sarah and the birth of Isaac in their old age – this is exactly the connection that Luke is wanting his readers to make.

As this centuries-old story comes bursting out of the darkness into the light, coupled with racing thoughts of becoming a father, Zechariah finds such good news hard to believe. He questions: ‘How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well on in years’ (v18). He is silenced until the child’s birth.

PAUSE AND REFLECT

Why do you think Zechariah questioned Gabriel’s message?

Zechariah’s silence also mirrors what was going on in Israel at the time. People believed God’s prophets had been silent for a long time and, sensing God’s absence, many increasingly felt they had no one to turn to. In the midst of seemingly overwhelming injustice and irreversible oppression, Elizabeth gives birth to her son.

On the eighth day – when the child is

Through the week with Salvationist

– a devotional thought for each day

by Major Philippa Smale

SUNDAY

‘Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them.’ (Luke 1:68)

MONDAY

O unexampled love!/ O all-redeeming grace!/ How swiftly didst thou move/ To save a fallen race:/ What shall I do to make it known/ What thou for all mankind hast done?

(SASB 88)

TUESDAY

‘He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago), salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.’ (Luke 1:69–71)