Posts from 2019 (Page 2)
Contained within the walls of God’s sovereign purpose
I’m finally getting it! After days, weeks even, of having new and exciting snippets of God’s truth seep into my dull brain, I’m finally seeing a clearer picture. I need to begin way back when I was a child growing up. All of my life I’d had the security of my parents’ love and the knowledge that they would do everything in their power to protect me. Even at school I had the discipline and boundaries of routine. But around…
Pastors Ponderings
Last Week Daniel announced that Rob Jacobs has decided not to seek re-election to his position on the Oversight Team (OT) and that we will be nominating Jeni Ward and Ben Morton to both be appointed as OT Members at the November AGM. Daniel explained that both Jeni and Ben are already leaders in the church with Ben leading much of the work with playgroup and young adults as well as Alpha and Jeni taking on the vision for Missions…
By the rivers of Babylon
The Church is weeping. No, not for lost souls but for the loss of something that we hold dear. And, as I thought of this, these familiar words came into my mind: “By the Rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, Yea, we wept, when we remember Zion” And the more I thought about it the more likeness I could see between the Church today and the Jews back then as they wept in Babylon; captured, defeated and taken from…
Pastors Ponderings
I’ve always loved reading about Abraham and Sarah. They are the Patriarchs of the faith and they are rightly honoured for their steadfast loyalty to God. Most of you know the story. God promised that a generational line as numerous as the stars would come through them and that from Abraham’s descendants would come the means for God to bless the whole world. And even though it was physically impossible for Abraham or Sarah to have children, they believed God…
Pastors Ponderings
I loved hearing the truth of Romans 3:21-26: The righteousness of God is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this…
Being Transformed into His Image…
Mmm… I’m not sure if I agree with that… I thumb through my Bible searching for a passage I read just a few days ago that will prove my point. Sound familiar or is that just me? The other Sunday Daniel reminded us that our focus… our desire needs to be to know God more. I don’t think I’ll ever understand how great is God’s desire for us to know him more. It keeps coming back to being all about…
Another Perspective
I hesitate…I stop and start as I try and put this together. Why? Because it’s different…I’m different. Isn’t this what Julie’s been telling us? Isn’t this what makes unity in Christ unique? Yes, I know all that but… I set my laptop aside and wander into the kitchen. Pulling down my jar of licorice-allsorts I glance through them and suddenly notice that there are two identical ones. Well, guess what Julie, I think CBBC might even beat that! Why? Because…
Pastors Ponderings
The ponderings this week comes via Mrs Jesus Follower: The Happy Game’s not Working ☹ I’ve always been a ‘Pollyanna’. You may not know that story but, to put it simply, I think my role in life is to make everything and everyone happy. I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to change things; to make everyone happy; to make things look good. Life’s not like that. I’m not sure how often you’ve read Ecclesiastes but I usually find…
Pastors Ponderings
Recently, Daniel continued our series on Romans by preaching a message from Romans 2. In it Daniel pointed out how carefully we need to read the book as Paul uses many literary devices in his letter. Particularly he draws his audience in regularly by saying things he knows they will agree to so that he can swing his argument around to them. Initially they are led to believe that Paul is saying how bad ‘the other’ people are living the way they…
To love or to condemn?
How do I respond to those living a lifestyle that makes me uncomfortable? How do they see me? What attitudes am I conveying to them? Praise God for leaders with the courage to speak up and put these challenges out there for us to face. Praise God for those who continually make us think, read, pray, search your Word and ponder the questions from which we’d like to run! I’m scared, I’m uncomfortable and yet I’m excited and not wanting…
Pastors Ponderings
When we started our study of Romans, I said that Paul wrote this letter in a deliberate attempt to persuade us to change our behaviour. So, what is Romans Chapter 1 pointing to and challenging us to change? Romans Chapter 1 is a brilliantly crafted argument. Paul has us, his readers, agreeing with him for most of the chapter. He catches us with the bait; “Look at what that person is doing, it’s awful.” “Look at her, can you believe…
Pastors Ponderings
Have you seen the memes for autocorrect, where people send totally inappropriate messages simply because the autocorrect changes the spelling? Most of them are rude, although I found one clean one: It is ok for us to send written communication, it’s an easy fix. It wasn’t the case when Paul was sending letters in the first century. Letter writing was an art and very expensive. So, Paul would have had a secretary (an amanuensis) who would write on the papyrus…