St Jude's Mapperley Archive Blog

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community Good Morning! Yesterday was another really encouraging morning. We had almost record attendance at both morning services (certainly for my time here and away from Christmas / Easter) – helped by Isaac Lennon-McCalla's baptism at the 11am service. We continued in our series on the first few chapters of Joshua, looking this time at crossing the Jordan river at just about its widest point when it was in flood. We looked at the three different responses that we can make when God calls us to do something. We can fear, we can forget or we can follow in faith. Fear is an understandable response, especially when God calls us to do something outside our comfort zones or (as in Joshua 3-4), something seemingly impossible. I guess things we're often afraid of today are when we are worried that people will think worse of us because of how we are following Jesus, or when it means we lose some of...

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community Good Morning! Yesterday was another really encouraging day of services. In the morning, we looked at Joshua 2, and saw how beautiful and wonderful God's love for us is – that he even took a pagan prostitute who trusted him, forgave her, included her in his people and used her as part of his plan to bless the world. If you weren't there, people say it's well worth a listen – do check it out on our sermons website . Yesterday evening, Andrew did another great sermon as the last in our series looking through the different genres in the Bible, with a look at Revelation 4-5. It's also well worth a listen. One detail which struck me from Andrew's preaching last night was from Revelation 4:7-8. Andrew (rightly) didn't go into it in much detail, because it's not the main point of the passage, but I thought it was worth teasing out this morning. John is seeing a highly symbolic...

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community Good Morning! Yesterday, Brian and Dom started us off in a short series looking at the first few chapters of the book of Joshua. One of the big themes of the book is that Joshua is called to lead the nation in a military campaign. We might expect him to be called on the basis of being a great leader or tactician or even a fighter, but actually Joshua is called first and foremost to be someone who is committed to studying and following God's Word. God says to Joshua: Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. (Josh 1:7-8) Joshua's success comes through his dependence on God and his word. And that ties into o...

Dear all, I'm just back from a week off (and already submerged in work!). On Saturday, Lydia was bridesmaid at the wedding of one of her best friends. As we were away from home, I decided to do something I don't do as much as I used to, but which is well worth doing - I decided to learn a few Bible verses - in this case Psalm 36:7-9, because I was reading Ps 36 that morning anyway. Learning stuff by rote isn't very fashionable these days - after all we can access pretty much any information we want at the touch of a button and so if I ever wanted to know what those verses say it wouldn't be difficult to find out. But even without modern technology, I've still got a Bible within reach most of the time, and I can read fairly well, so what's the point of learning verses? One of the great strengths of learning verses is that it helps truths come to mind more often, which helps me to think about them and pray them. Yes, I know I can find out what Ps 36:7-9 are ea...