Wednesday, 27 January 2010 | Weekend Reflections
I was going to try and write a reflection on this weekends services, but someone else has said it better than I ever could.
Some reflections on Psalm 3 – Conquering Fear:
Hi Andrew
I know I’m probably stating the obvious but thought I would send these thoughts.
Absalom and David: How not to deal with anger and the importance of forgiveness.
Absalom was angry because David did nothing to help his sister Tamar after she was raped by his half brother. This anger led Absalom to murder his half brother and plot against David. A good example of how anger can lead to sin and the consequences for Absalom was his death and David, as said last week, was upheld by God because he turned to God in humility and submission.
Absalom allowed his anger to fester, he became bitter and resentful and sought revenge but his revenge did not bring peace and happiness quite the opposite, it gave him grief, misery and ultimately death.
Our way to life is to bring our hurts to the cross to the only one who has the power to heal giving it to God and having a forgiving heart towards those who hurt us and leaving God to "punish" the aggressors as He is the only one who truly knows all sides.
As Absalom allowed resentment to colour his feelings it destroyed his relationship with his father which he was never able to restore.
Absalom’s life is an example of wasted years and broken hearts that can result when communication breaks down within a family and major issues are not dealt with effectively and decisively. It also shows the consequences of allowing anger to turn to bitterness are hurts can never be healed while we harbour resentments.
As you might imagine I find the relationship between David and Absalom and the dysfunctional family of David very powerful but I do feel that it has a clear message of the damage of unforgiveness and the consequences of acting in anger and how destructive anger can be.
Anger has to be expressed safely so it can be used in a constructive manner as Ephesians 4 v26-27 says "Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry for anger gives a mighty foothold to the Devil"
Circumstances or events can make us angry and we need to find ways to let go of the initial anger so it does not fester to destroy relationships
Again Ephesians 4 v31-32 Get rid of all bitterness rage anger harsh works and slander as well as all types of malicious behaviour. Instead be kind to one another tender hearted forgiving one another just as God through Christ has forgiven you.
Just imagine how different Absalom and David’s relationship could have been if Absalom had been able to communicate effectively with David and David had listened and taken the appropriate action with his half brother and again though we aren’t told much about Tamar no doubt she felt rejected by David’s apathy!!
As you can probably tell David’s family strikes a deep chord in me.
Heather
Friday, 22 January 2010 | Haiti
Two new videos have been made available today by www.helphaitiheal.org highlighting the situation in Haiti and the impact on the Free Methodist Church there:
Please continue to pray and to give.
Thursday, 14 January 2010 | Weekend Reflections
This week we started out on a whole new series in or morning services looking at the Psalms. We’ve called it Life Stories because it links a Psalm with a particular moment in the life of those that wrote it.
know real joy from Psalm 18.
I love reading the Psalms, I love the wonderful mix of emotions. They aren’t a set of sickly nice platitudes, they deal with real situations, real struggles, wonderful exaltation, glorious highs and desperate lows.
Personally, it was great to be reminded that joy doesn’t depend upon the situation, it depends upon the person in who you trust.
We’re not having a set series in the evenings this term, we’re just going where the Spirit leads us. Our normal motto for evening services is Worship and Word, it’s a time of worship in which the word of God is allowed the time to speak to us.
Facing Life’s Giants series looking at the issue of debt.
I’ve just been listening to the radio where an economist was talking about the debt that each household in the UK is carrying around. The numbers are eye-watering.
There are many reasons that people are in debt, some of them self-inflicted, but many are as the result of circumstance or the greed of others.
God doesn’t want us to live in debt – and it’s good to know that He has an answer and the means to redeem our situation. That doesn’t mean that redemption is going to be easy, sometimes God does change things in the blink of an eye, at other times He wants us to walk a journey with Him.
If you are struggling with debt then there are things that we can do and people who can help you. Don’t struggle alone, reach out to the church office and someone will walk the journey with you.
As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts and stories so please do leave a comment letting us know what God is doing in your life.
Tuesday, 13 October 2009 | Weekend Reflections
One of the thoughts that occurred to me this weekend was how our relationship with Jesus is relevant to every part of our life. We divide our life into boxes – physical, spiritual, mental – but Jesus wants to be in all of them.
Chris looked at the practical Christian living that the letter to Philemon tackles. The background to this letter is that Paul is writing to his friend Philemon about one of his slaves who ran away and has since become a believer. A practical issue to which Paul gives practical advice in the name of Jesus.
The Holy Spirit has sometimes been called the Cinderella of the Trinity. Andrew used an encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus in John 3 to highlight the importance of the spirit in each and every new birth. Jesus often spoke in parables, but sometimes he spoke in graphic illustrations. When Jesus was talking about birth in spirit he wasn’t using a parable, he was using a graphic illustration where the parallels are deliberate.
For me personally Sunday evening was a significant time. I tend to be involved in some many practical things on a Sunday that sometimes it’s difficult to focus on worship. It was really nice to be in a God place.
Thursday, 1 October 2009 | Weekend Reflections
Last weekend we were involved in the national Back to Church Sunday campaign and it was great to have some people join us who we haven’t seen in a while.
A special thank you to everyone who invited a friend or a family member to come along. It’s not always an easy thing to invite someone to come back to something they’ve left.
And a special thank you to everyone who made the decision to come. It’s not always easy to return to something you’ve left.
The theme for Back to Church Sunday was “Come as you are”. Jesus had a wonderful way of including everyone; rich, poor, old, young, high society, low society. The people of Jesus are instructed to do exactly the same.
There is always a way back with Jesus and I hope that we will always reflect that in the way that we treat people. If your reading this and wondering whether you could return to church, I’d like to encourage you to give it a go, there’s a welcome waiting for you.
Wednesday, 16 September 2009 | Weekend Reflections
Recently I’ve had the phrase “radical transformation” going through my head quite a lot. It is so easy for us to loose sight of how radical and how transforming the life of a disciple can be. Sometimes we can read the words of the Bible and miss the shock and even disgust that the first hearers of those words would have felt. At other times we overlook the extent of the transformation that has been undertaken in the lives of the people impacted.
Jesus first disciples would have been a perplexing mix to those who would have known them. There is no way that Simon the Zealot would have been in the same room as Matthew the Tax Collector. They were sworn enemies, Simon as a Zealot would, under normal circumstance, done his utmost to kill Matthew. Perhaps a modern parallel would be for a member of Al Qaeda to be sat in the same room as an American Army Officer.
The Parable of the Lost Son in Luke 15 is just as radical. Those hearing it for the first time wouldn’t have regarded it as a “nice tale”, they would have thought that it was shocking. Chris highlighted the different perspectives to the story this Sunday and did a great job of bringing it to life afresh.
(Apologies for the sound quality that makes Chris sound like he’s shouting all of the time, it’s something we are working on).
We’re running a bit of a series at the moment, which hasn’t yet got a name. The ideas for the series came out of some questions that were asked to the men who attend our Men’s Breakfasts.
One of the areas that the men wanted to think about was the Holy Spirit. In much the same was as Ian did last term, Andrew has decided to run a bit of a mini-series on the Holy Spirit. He started this week by looking at the Holy Spirit in Creation.
I’m really looking forward to think again about the Holy Spirit, something wonderful happens when we uphold the trinity as Father, Son and Spirit. In our rational world it does me good to realise that there are thing beyond my comprehension, but also to realise that I don’t need to comprehend it to receive the benefit from it. Furthermore, I don’t have to comprehend it in order to be transformed by it.
If you can think of a good name for the new series please let us know.
And finally, if you’ve been wondering where the fourth part in Ian Higginbotham’s mini-series on the Kingdom of God has got to – we are working on it. We had another technical problem which means that the sound quality is very poor. We haven’t concluded what we are going to do yet, but as a last resort Ian has offered to re-record the sermon.
know real joy
Facing Life’s Giants
