Monday Morning Mail, 11th November 2013

By -


Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community

Good Morning!


Yesterday morning we had our All Age Remembrance Service. It was great to see so many folk there (over 150), including lots of children and young people and our Brownies as well as representatives from the Army, Navy and Air Force.


The Remembering Service in the afternoon was 10% up on last year as well and had a great atmosphere of loving and supporting one another. Thanks so much to all of those who helped out at either or both services!


But for today's thought I'd like to think back to the evening service, where Andrew preached on the first few verses of Luke 18. Jesus told his disciples a parable to show that they should always pray and not give up.


What sometimes makes us give up praying?

There are some good reasons for giving up praying for something – like if God gives us what we ask for, or if we see that it isn't what's best for us. But a lot of the time, I think we give up because we don't really trust God to be our loving heavenly Father. Part of us thinks that he doesn't really care about us, so we stop asking him.


So Jesus told a parable about a widow who doesn't have anyone to stand up for her and yet has an enemy who is trying to exploit her in some way. To make matters worse, the local judge doesn't care about God, people or the law. But the widow pesters and pesters and pesters him, and eventually he makes sure she gets justice, even if it's only so he can have some peace!


The picture is a powerful one. Even if God didn't care about us or about his word, we should keep on pestering him. But God does care. He is our loving heavenly Father; he has given us his Son and shown us what he is like and what his priorities are. So when we pray to him for justice – for things which we know he loves – for friends and loved ones to come to know him, for rescue for the oppressed, for revival in the church – then we can have confidence he will answer. We don't need to pester him, but he loves us to pour out our hearts to him in prayer, and he knows that we benefit so much from the process of growing more and more reliant on him as we keep on praying and asking him for what matters to us and what is on his heart.


So if we're asking God for something, until he says "yes" or shows us "no", always keep on praying and don't give up!


God bless,


John

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Any Questions?

By -
There is one sermon slot free in the Autumn service rota, and I'd like to use it to answer a question that we have about Christianity - a point of doctrine, how to respond in a certain situation, anything along those lines. If you've got any ideas, just post them as comments on this post - completely anonymous!
Read more

Book of the Year?

By -
Image
I read quite a lot of books. The best book I've read this year is probably The Good God by Michael Reeves. It's a book about the Trinity. The big point is that the Trinity is central to understanding who God is, to understanding the difference between Christianity and other religions, and to understanding how we can be saved. Reeves doesn't say anything new, but he explains the theology very accessibly and clearly, quoting and explaining "big name" theologians like Athanasius, Augustine, Luther and Richard of St Victor in a way that is accessible to all, and he does it very well. It would be my top recommendation for anyone wanting to understand the Trinity and why it matters, whether they were a new Christian or training for ordination. My one criticism of the book is it could be very good for ecumenism as well - building links between evangelical theology and the Roman Catholics and Orthodox, but the end lets it down in that sense. Trinitarianism is tru
Read more

Monday Morning Mail, 7th April 2014

By -
Image
Good Morning! Yesterday morning, we looked at John 12:1-11, which is the story of Mary anointing Jesus' feet with perfume that cost a year's wages. We saw that Mary's grateful, responsive, loving, extravagant, disgraceful love was exactly the right response to Jesus, even though it left her with no money, no provision for the future and her reputation in tatters. In contrast, Judas was shown to be hiding his real sin behind trying to look pious. One of the ways we applied it was by thinking about whether we hold back from worshipping God for fear of what other people think, whether that's when singing at church or when speaking to our friends at work or at the pub, or even whether we're sometimes, like Judas, people who sit on the sidelines and snipe at those who are putting their hearts into worshipping God. We also saw how Mary's action predicts what Jesus is about to do – that she becomes the servant who washes Je
Read more