Trusting when it's going pear-shaped

I was reflecting on Jacob this morning. I wonder how he was able to hold onto God's promise when all around him seemed to be going pear shaped?  Perhpas it's the same for us at times too! Yet I guess it's at these times when we need to hold onto God's promise even more. The commentary this morning mentioned that we are all deeply flawed yet we put on a brave coping face - how true is that!  I wonder if we can learn to be more vulnerable with each other, I know this requires deepening relationships and trust. But I am sure if we do then we can all, with God's grace, uphold each otehr to trust in God's promises in the bad times as well as the good.

Joseph - an arrogant young man

I am pretty sure that if I was one of Joseph's brothers I may have reacted in just the same way to him.  I didn't think he came across as a very attractive person - and he seemed to use his favoritism to his advantage.  Yet God took this young man and used him for his plan and purpose and in turn he changed.  From this arrogant young man we see at the beginning of the story we see at the end a man of humility and authority.  Those awful situations that Joseph found himself in were used to change him and refine him for God's purpose. Often when we face difficulty we are quick to either say woe is me, or even to blame someone else and become bitter and twisted about it. But what seems to be a God given gift are those who say - I wonder what I can learn from this experience, or how is God going to use my experience to help others. 

Sermon 3 - Joseph- Plans and promises

This is a sermon to be delivered by Andrew Miles on Sunday 23rd January.

Plans and Promises

Genesis 45: 1-18  (and Genesis 37-47)

I predict that....England will win the world cup cricket having beaten Bangladesh in the semi-final and NZ will win the world cup rugby having beaten England in the semi-final.

I promise my sermon won’t last more than 45 minutes!

What’s the difference between a prediction and a promise? Both look to the future but only one has a sense of certainty and even then when we promise something sometimes we are powerless to fulfil the promise or sometimes we just don’t because we are weak willed or lazy.

It would be much easier for us to be confident in making or accepting a promise if we knew the future. God doesn’t make predictions, he only makes promises. He knows what will happen therefore when God makes a promise it is 100% guaranteed.

God made a promise to Joseph’s father Jacob, during his dream about angels ascending and descending into heaven in Genesis chapter 28, God promised that ‘I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go’. I wonder if Jacob was tempted to wonder whether God was going to keep his promise, as his beloved son was as good as killed, as the famine worsened, as the Egyptian ruler demanded that Benjamin went to Egypt too.

We all know the story of Joseph – it’s a great story. It includes separation, suffering, redemption, forgiveness and reconciliation. Courtesy of Andrew Lloyd Webber and subsequent productions of his hit musical on stage and screen most of us can sing, or at least hum, many of the tunes that tell this story nowadays.

I am not planning to retell the story, or to simply lay out the structure of chapters 37-47. For those of us who are using the E100 readings that will be clear. No instead I want to ask three simple questions today and the first is

What can we learn from Joseph?

The story can be summed up in the phrase, he remembered the Lord in the land of Egypt and the Lord remembered him. Joseph never gave up on God, despite so many setbacks.

How many of us, like Joseph, can with hindsight see God slowly working out his plan. In Joseph’s case he tells his brothers that it was God’s plan that he should be sold into slavery etc. in order that he would then be able to manage resources and so save thousands of people during the famine.

He trusted in God even when he might have been tempted to doubt. When he was thrown away by his brothers, when he was jailed for a crime he didn’t commit, when the cup bearer forgot about him, all this time he trusted in God, his faith remained intact. He even trusted in God’s great plan for his people even though he had just caused the entire Israelite nation, all 80 or so of them to leave the Promised Land. Notice Jacob and his whole family left Canaan to come to Egypt, even though God had promised them the land of Canaan. (This is why the Israelites were in Egypt and why Moses had to take them back home, but that’s another story.) But Joseph was adamant that his bones should be buried in the land that God intended for his people and indeed Moses carried them out of Egypt and in Joshua Chapter 24 Joseph’s bones are finally buried with those of his Fathers back in Canaan. Joseph trusted in God’s promised land. He knew that God kept his promises.

Throughout the story Joseph never takes the credit for his success but continually makes it clear that God is on his side helping all that he does go well and giving him interpretations of dreams. He is always giving glory to God – do we? Or are we more inclined to puff ourselves up when we have success?

How hard did Joseph have to work in order to fulfil God’s plan? Answer very, first as a slave to Potiphar where he rose through the ranks by working hard and being loyal, secondly in prison he did the same sort of thing and finally he ended up running a country for many years through troubled times, God was with Joseph certainly, but this was no reason for him to work any less hard. The same applies to us; the fact that we are trusting in God will not mean that we have to work less hard.

So Joseph trusts in God and never gives up, he works hard and gives glory to God.

What can we learn about the New Testament?

This may seem an odd question but the Old Testament often points us forward to the New Testament and helps us understand more fully what we read in the New Testament.

Joseph’s story has many echoes of the greatest story of salvation ever told – the story of Jesus. God is once again using the great stories of the Old Testament  to point us to his ultimate plan to save all mankind.

Who am I talking about? One man is sold for silver but stays true to God, even through a time of apparent abandonment and so through that man many are saved and there is reconciliation. Does this sound familiar? In Jacob’s eyes Joseph is dead but is brought back to life and through that resurrection God’s people, the Israelites are saved. God stays true to the promise he had made Jacob all those years ago, in a way that Jacob could never have dreamed of.

Joseph realised that throughout so many bad things God had a plan to save many. Jesus knew God’s plan for his life in advance and continued even when he could hardly face it. I sometimes think we are so fortunate to not know what the future holds.

What difference does this make for us?

God makes promises for us that we can trust. Even when things seem way out of control and far from ideal, God is in control. Often we can only see this with the benefit of hindsight, remember though God really does have foresight.

Will he always act the way we would like him to? No, God does not pander to our whims.

So there are two things to beware of:

·We need to beware of trying to persuade God to act according to our plan. For example prayers such as, bless this good idea of mine, or to put it another way please God may my will be done. We need to be like Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane and however hard, we must say “not my will, but thy will be done”. We have to hand over our desires to God and release our future plans to his control, trusting God to know the best plan.

·Beware of assuming that God can’t act through ungodly people, situations or events. Potiphar’s wife, Pharaoh’s cup bearer and indeed Pharaoh are all integral to God’s plan to rescue Joseph and through him to save whole nations. Yet none of those three is in the remotest bit interested in doing God’s will. God is much bigger than we think sometimes. As we read the whole story this week, think of all the sinful acts that God uses to make sure that Joseph is in the right place at the right time to save many.

Is it any more valid to question God’s plan when things don’t go as we’d like to than when things do go smoothly? Deep down we are so self-centred. We never question God’s plan when things go the way we’d like them to, only when they don’t suit us.

To summarise

God has a plan for everyone. He had a plan for Joseph and Joseph trusted in God even when he was so far from the comfort of home and far from the rest of God’s people.

Joseph is a model for us. Not only he does he point towards God’s ultimate rescue plan. He also shows us what it means to trust in God. Even when left to rot in a prison cell in a foreign country.

God is 100% trustworthy, he doesn’t make predictions, only promises.

To finish here are three of God’s promises to us.

Never will I leave you nor forsake you (Heb 13:5)

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. (Heb 13:8)

I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. (John 10:28)

Day 7 - Trust for each day

God's promise to Abraham remained but Abraham's faith must have been tested to the limit. God spoke to him of things that were to happen many years in advance. It must have been difficult for Abraham to have the faith to believe that these things would happen when the very possibility of having descendents even was still hanging over him. Sometimes I find it difficult to think too far in advance to see what God might do perhaps like Abraham it's too difficult to imagine or even to worrying to think about - but then I look back on what God has done and I see how far he has led and guided me. Perhpas for most of us we need to accept the bigger picture - the promise that God has given us  - and then trust for each day in turn. 

United to hear God's word

Today I seem to have been thinking a great deal about unity.  It saddens me when I see further afield and close at hand examples of Christians not being united. After all one of the great things about being part of the Christian Church is the way that despite the fact we are such an eclectic group of individuals we follow a common purpose of worship and mission.   We are all different and there are times when we will certainly rub each other up the wrong way but we need to work on our tolerance, forgiveness and compassion.  It seems to me that God works through our unity, through the relationships we have with each other to speak to us and bless us.  Psalm 133 speaks so clearly of this when the psalmist writes: "How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity ... For there the Lord bestows his blessing."  We see in our reading from Abraham the openness that Abraham has to hear God speaking to him. This always makes me think how does  God speak to me?  When I think this I go back not only to that still small voice but in the voice of God speaking through one of my Christian brothers or sisters. Surely this is one way that God extends his blessing to us when we live in unity with each other.

Sermon 2 - A promise you can trust

There is someone in our household who we give a huge amount of trust too. You see she can be trusted to always give us good advice and guidance.

She may get a little annoying at times because she is so perfect – but as long as we give her the right information in the first place she always guides us the right way. Her name is Serena and she is the voice of the Sat Nav! And I have to say she is remarkably accurate. The things is as well is that we may decide not to follow her and to go off track – we may take the wrong turn, but when we do she just simply says “RECALCULATING” in a strange voice and she will bring us back into line to get us where we are supposed to be going. The other thing is that all though we may get annoyed with her inane voice she never actually gets cross with us even though we may completely ignore her- I long sometimes for her just to say something to me like – what on earth do you think you are doing I told you to turn right back there not left – you stupid idiot. 

So Serena is very reliable and trust worthy but guess what – she is actually a computer generated voice and even if I were to talk to her and to tell her how I was feeling – she would probably just say to me – take the next left turn.  She is trustworthy but I have no relationship with her.

So who else can I trust. Well I am fortunate that I have a lot of people in my life that I can trust. Members of my family, good friends, people who I know I can go to for advice, for guidance and I can trust there reactions because they know and love me.  But even within these people who I have a good relationship with there are times when they get things wrong, when my trust or their trust in me can be damaged by something stupid that is said or done. 

So we can trust a machine without a relationship as long as we give it the right information in the first place and it’s maps are up to date,  or we can trust our relationships with the proviso that sometimes we all get it wrong. BUT when we look at our readings for this week and the story of Abraham perhaps we are pointed to see trust in another way – the trust we can place in God who will actually always be right and who we can too have a relationship with.

So let’s get back to our readings and in particular this morning the promise we see given by God to Abraham – a promise that is pivotal to us all even now as Christians.  In Genesis 12 we read the promise that God gave:

            I will bless you and make you into a great nation

            …….and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

This is a promise that still applies today- that all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. Through God’s relationship with Abraham and his descendents all people will be blessed – not just the chosen few but all people. God’s promise of blessing is to us all and of course this is revealed fully in the person of Jesus Christ.  We see that in Luke 4 when Jesus says of words in Isaiah – today this scripture has been fulfilled.   Man might have fallen and have failed but God promises renewal through Abraham – God promises his blessing to all people.

What does this promise mean to us now? Well it ultimately means relationship again with God  through Jesus Christ, and all the blessings that this brings us.  That following in his way will bring peace, that he will guide us the right way, that he will be with us – that he will never leave us or forsake us.  These are just some of the blessings that we receive and the whole of scripture is littered with words that show these blessings in so many different ways.

So this is the promise that is at the heart of our faith. At the heart of Abraham’s faith was this promise too –that God would fulfil this promise.  But our readings this week look further than just this promise to look into the lives of Abraham, his wife Sarah and their descendents their Son – Isaac and his children Jacob and Esau. And as we look into their lives we see how even though this promise was there they acted in ways that were wrong. That even though they had received this promise they still got things SO wrong.  They acted in ways that showed no faith in God at all. Abraham hadn’t long received the promise and he fled to Egypt due to a drought and even put his wife into Pharaoh’s household to protect himself.  When he was promised a Son in his old age he was convinced that this wouldn’t happen through his wife who was also old so he had a Son with a slave girl instead.  His faith was shaky at times we see.

And then they acted in ways that were very against the ways of righteousness and truth. We see this particularly in the deviousness of Jacob stealing the birthright of his brother Esau. Disguising himself with hair so he could appear more like him, and in turn getting the blessing that was due to his older sibling.  The story of Jacob and Esau is full of treachery not only by Jacob but also by his mother Rebekah –wanting the best for her favourite Son and deceiving her husband in the process. 

It’s a pretty awful story in many ways, a tale of what many would now would refer to as a dysfunctional family. But through it all is the underlying promise that God gave to Abraham, and we see God’s plan coming out of the mess and disaster of human relationships– or perhaps despite the mess and disaster of human relationships.  Because God’s plan and presence continues through this story and we will see it continue as we look on to the story of Jacobs’s descendents in particular his son Joseph – which we will look at in another week’s time.

So we see through all these passages this week – God’s promise and man’s reaction – sometime in faith and sometimes getting things wrong. So what can we learn from this ourselves. Well firstly and fundamentally is the truth that God is with us despite what we do and who we are. His promise is something we can trust in despite how we act. His promise isn’t dependent upon anything we do it is all about him.  We are so much into a culture of reward for what we do then we expect this not to be the case.  We are suspicious of anything that doesn’t require anything from us. We have to make sure we read the small print.  You can win a free holiday by just entering your name and postcode and then the small print tells us we have to go to a presentation, and then we can have a free holiday but it is only at this or that time, and then it’s free but we have to pay a fee for taxes for each person.  No wonder we are suspicious because a great deal of things in our lives are not free! Most things in our lives we either have to earn or pay for.  But God’s promise to us is free.  God’s promise to us as it was to Abraham was not dependent upon him leading a good life necessarily and we saw that in him getting things wrong, but God’s promise was all about that a promise based on the trustworthiness of God not on anything we could ever do to receive that.

And you know the amazing thing is that when we begin to grasp this – and I think this is something we need to go back to time and time again, or at least I do – when we begin to grasp this then it’s very liberating. We think we have failed in our faith, we think we have got it wrong perhaps monumentally wrong like Jacob or even Abraham, but God’s promise is still as true even after our mistakes as before. We can come back to God time and time again and ask for his forgiveness, we can come back to God time and time again and he will promise to lead us and guide us despite the mess we may have made in our lives. We can come back to God time and time again and say we are sorry and he will forgive us.

We started by thinking about the Sat Nav and the fact it was reliable but we had not relationship with it, and I think this helps us think about our second point of application too today. You see when you read through these passages in Genesis and you see the mistakes that the individuals made you see also several amazing encounters with God. God’s promise to us is personal – he wants us to encounter him and to learn from him.  When Jacob did wrong to his brother he fled from him. It was then that he encountered God in a dream.  When Jacob was wanting to return to his brother he set up an elaborate way of giving presents to Esau – he was concerned again as to how he would be received. It was at this point that he met with God again and we are told he wrestled for God’s blessing.  These encounters with God happened when he was low and vulnerable, when he needed the assurance that God was with him.  And it can be the same for us. Sometimes when we are at our most vulnerable, when we have made the biggest mistakes it is there that we can encounter God. Perhaps its something to do with us being able and willing then to receive from him, being open that perhaps we can’t do it on our own and we can only do it with him.  For whatever reason though the truth is there, even at our points of most vulnerability when we have failed big time, when in any human relationship we would be so embarrassed to even see the other person because we feel we have hurt them so much,  these are times when God is still with us. These are the times when he will reassure us once more of his promise to us. These are the times when perhaps we can grow in our faith and understanding of God more.

So this week as we read the passages about Abraham and his descendents we can see God’s promise for us all shining through. And as we see this promise we can realise that this is trustworthy and true. That God will never let this promise go and that he longs for us to know the reality of his promise and even though we may fail in our faith, he wants us to grow and experience his blessings  more and more in our lives.

Day 3 - Noah my new hero!

I wonder what sort of bloke Noah was?  We are told that he was "righteous" but that's about all. But he must have been pretty different from those around him for God to notice him. That can't have been easy for him can it?  In Holland there is a man who has created a replica of the Ark.  (You can google it - Noah's Ark Holland to have a look at pictures etc, didn't want to include one incase there was a copyright issues!)  When you look at this you see what an incredible feat it was to build it and you can just imagine the reaction of those around Noah when he was doing so- are you mad they must have thought even if they didn't say. Yet Noah was faithful to God despite what was going on around him. I find this a real challenge,  I like most people hate criticism and it is easy to give in and change your mind when someone criticises what you are doing. Yet, Noah kept going he was obedient to God. I have always thought this story a difficult one to come to terms with but I think now Noah may become one of my heros! Despite the sin of the people around him he was faithful to God, despite criticism and I am sure rebuke he was obedient to God - oh to have his faith!

Day 2 - Broken relationships

I am often saddened when i spend times with families who have been bereaved to find that there are members of the family who don't talk to each other.  Often these relationships are broken over such little things but after time the hurts and pain of the broken relationship become a huge gulf that cannot be overcome. Even the pain of bereavement in some cases doesn't bring people back together again. I am very blessed that communication in my own family is very good,  but even then there are many opportunities for misunderstanding.   In Genesis 3 we see the breakdown of the relationship between God and man, yet in hindsight we know the rest of the story and we rejoice that this disaster didn't end here as God took the initiative to restore this relationship through Jesus Christ. If we believe this then we have to believe in a God of restoration. Perhaps I need to trust him more to help me in those relationships which I know i have to work at or even to take time to mend.  

Day 1- Red sky in the morning!

Did anyone else notice the sky this morning? It was an awesome patchwork of colour and a beautiful red. This week we look at the creation of the world and we are reminded of God’s pleasure in his creation. “It was good” seems one of the key phrases in Genesis 1.  I wonder though when we look at this creation – the beauty of the world in which we live, whether or not we take time to see and experience the God behind it all. I know I struggle from one of the man made diseases of our modern world – too busyitis! When I struggle with this I don’t have time to notice what’s going on around me let alone to reflect on it.  Perhaps one of the first steps is to take time to notice; to appreciate our creation, to wonder at the intricacies of the flower, or the beauty of the skies. I know that doing this draws me back again to the centre of life itself and to the creator who reveals himself to us in so many different ways.

In the beginning - Sermon 9th January 2011

Are you sitting comfortably …then I shall begin….Once upon a time –

Isn’t that how all the good stories start? Or at least it used to be when I was a small person. Now however, when I open a book to read I would be surprised to read those sort of words, instead I would open a book in anticipation of what was going to unfold as I read. What characters were to emerge, what was going to be the twist in the plot. And as I opened the opening chapter I would expect to be given a foretaste of this. I would expect to be exposed to the lead character and get a hint of the plot.  I would hope that the opening chapter would give me a bit of taste to wet my appetite to carry on reading, to give me just enough intrigue to motivate me to carry on rather than simply turning to the last chapter to see what happened in the end.

This week as we start with the E100 bible reading challenge are readings are set at the beginning of what has to be the greatest book ever written – the Bible.  And as we start these readings just like we would expect from a good read we are exposed to the key characters within it, we are exposed to what the story is going to be about, and we are invited to discover more. And as we do this I hope that you will find like me that you want to discover more and your appetite is wetted to do just this. The readings from this week are set at the beginning of the Bible – like the opening chapter of a novel. So do we get an inclining from these readings about the key themes and characters? Well very clearly yes, as our reading this morning from Genesis has shown the central characters we are going to see within the bible are two – God and mankind. This is going fundamentally to be a story about the relationship between the two. And as we start our readings we see clearly that the central plot is all about God’s love of mankind whom he created and his desire for Mankind to respond to that relationship. Within this we are invited to find out more and the big question underlying this - how do we as individuals now fit into this plot- what does any of this have to do with me?

This morning I want to look at an overview of our readings this week but also to think how the stories we will be reading help us to understand more about God and how words that we read that were written so many thousands of years ago we can still learn from, and the lessons we learn can have application for our lives now.

The readings as we have said start at the beginning of the bible and this week cover creation, the fall of mankind, Noah and the flood and the tower of Babel. In many ways they are difficult readings for us in the 21^St Century. Our own scientific advances have made us question the reality of these stories. So before we look at them in more detail I want us to pause just at this issue. How do we as Christians now look at these accounts in terms of whether or not they are a true reflection of what happened at the beginning of time. Obviously we all have to come to terms with this in our own particular way but I have found what is helpful is to think in terms of the stories representing the truth of God’s plan for the world. Even if we do not think the events took place exactly as represented by the Bible, the truth is that this is God’s word to us and this word represents God’s truth. In other words even within these accounts a true picture is represented of what God is like and the stories represent great truths of God to us today.

So with this in mind let’s just have a quick overview of the readings for this week. Genesis starts with the creation of the world. Key to this is the words that are spoken of how God views his creation. What struck me as I read the account in Genesis 1 was the pleasure that God took in his creation. It was good, comes time and time again. It was good. God created a good world and he created it for man to enjoy and to live in. He creates man clearly in his image – man is different from the rest of the created world. And man has a special place in the world and a special place with God. Man is created to live in relationship with God and man is created to be God’s representatives on the earth.  This was God’s intention. But he didn’t create man as robots but he created man with free will and therefore the first humans decided that they knew best, they thought they could be independent from God and this in turn led to the fall of creation and humanity. The consequence of their rebellion was alienation from God and the created world now being disrupted – “cursed is the ground because of you” – Genesis 3: 17

What a start to our story,  it started so well there was so much love and such perfection and it ended so badly ….is there any hope? Well as we read on this week we will see just that. As we read on we see God’s pain but also a hope for once again the world in relationship with him. Our next story is the difficult story of Noah, a story which we see represented in so many children’s bible story books but a story which leaves us with huge questions. But the hero of the hour is the man Noah who we are told clearly in the text is obedient and faithful to God – Noah is a righteous man we are told. And it is this obedience to God that is noticed and even though God is deeply grieved by what has happened to humanity and how they have turned away from him he sees in Noah faith. And it is through this faith that Noah is saved from the flood, and we then get God’s covenant with Noah that this will not happen again. The story of Noah although difficult for us perhaps to understand points to a story of salvation that we will be seeing much later on in our readings when we move to the New Testament and see the story of salvation through Jesus Christ.

And then our final story this week is the little account of the tower of Babel seen in Genesis 11. The tower of Babel shows God’s response to the pride of Mankind in building this tower. But God’s response is clear he knows that this pride will lead them away from him. So he demonstrates that he is ultimately in control of what happens to humankind and he wants to restore the proper relationship between himself and us again.

So what do we learn about God in these passages? When we look at these pictures we begin to get a picture of what God is like, what he finds pleasure in, what gives him pain.  Some people say I can’t believe in a God that sits and controls us… where we are merely his puppets and he is pulling the strings. Or some people say I can’t believe in a God who allows such pain and suffering in the world; perhaps leaving us with a picture of a God who just sits and watches and perhaps enjoys seeing us getting things wrong.  Well here I get a picture of a very different God to any of these perceptions.  The God I see within these passages is a God who is a God who deeply loves and cares. A God who is affected deeply by what he sees in the world. A God who grieves for our sin because he knows what pain this leads us into.

In the beginning God created the world and it was good. He took great pleasure in what he had created. And we know also he took great pleasure in the crown of his creation humankind. He created us in his image for a purpose. Perhaps we too get more of an understanding of his purpose when we see the first recorded words of God: “Let there be light”. Yes, in this case he was creating the heavens and the earth, the stars and the sky, but it seems also that this light can be seen in more than just the physical sense of light. God’s desire above all else if for us to know light in our lives, light in the physical sense yes, but light too in the way to live our lives, the way of finding God for ourselves, light in sense of knowledge and truth. And through these stories we see hope that one day we will find that knowledge again – that light in the darkness as we saw echoed in John 1. – The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not been able to overcome it.

So God takes pleasure in his creation and in his relationship with humankind and he desires us to find this again through the light of the world. But we see also how God is pained by the behaviour of Humankind and the sin that comes with this behaviour. God doesn’t just not care about what is going on – he cares deeply. He sees the pain that we are in and he cares. He cares because he knows that this sin leads us to feel pain not only through our own actions but through the actions of others. Psychologists will tell you how what we do and have done and indeed what has been done to us can have an influence on our lives for many years to come.  That’s the reality of sin and God doesn’t just not care – he cares about this deeply, because of his amazing love for us as our creator.

           

So these passages give us an inkling of the rest of the story as we see the key characters and the relationship between them – God and humankind.

So how can any of this apply to our lives today 9^th January 2011.  As we see the picture of God in these stories, as we realise his creative power, his absolute love and care for creation and particular his desire for us to be in relationship with him; God gives us an invitation. This invitation isn’t to some one off event, but this invitation is for life, because God invites us to experience his grace – his love for ourselves. Noah was a man who was found righteous who lived by God’s rules even though the culture of the day was not. Then Noah through his obedience to God was saved.  God has promised not to do the same again in terms of a flood, but God invites us like Noah to enter into his grace and live in obedience to him. The big question for us all is are we willing to accept this invitation.

Beginning the E100 challenge

Well this is the first time i have done anything like this and i am slightly nervous about it! But i thought it would be good as we start the E100 challenge to share my thoughts with the world and of course for those who miss one of the Sunday sermons to be able to catch up.  So here we go..........
We have almost finished Christmas - the turkey is finished and the quality street tin only has a few orange creams and toffees left in it, as we come to the end of this season i look back with fondness at the times we have had this year as a family; the fun times like getting the grandparents to play on the Wii, and memorable times like watching the London eye fireworks from a friends balcony in Battersea on New Years Eve. Relationships with those i love are important to me and it is good to have spent time this holiday enjoying these relationships. As i look at my faith though i see relationships as key to this too; not only my relationship with God but relationship with others in the Body of Christ. So it is with great excitement that i start this E100 challenge in our churches. It seems to me that as we work through these readings seperately and together  on Sundays and in small groups we should be able to work on both these aspects of relationship. I hope and pray that as we do so then we would all grow in both.
Happy New Year and Happy reading!