St Jude's Mapperley Archive Blog

Ben here with this week's Monday Morning Mail:   Yesterday we continued our studies in the book of Proverbs as we explored the topic of Friends and Neighbours.   Today we live in a highly connected world where instant communication across the globe is possible at the click of a mouse. Yet despite the fact that we're probably more connected than ever, a recent survey indicted as many as 20% of adults feel lonely. Life is also chaotic and relationships with friends and neighbours are rarely easy or uneventful.   Proverbs speaks into this situation with God inspired insights on how to live wisely, how to live life well. As we've seen over the last few weeks, it begins by saying put Jesus at the centre and then listen to his wisdom about how to be wise friends and neighbours. In Proverbs these relationships can be both close personal friendships and people we come into regular contact with like next door neighbours and work colleagues.   Proverbs has lo...

Here are this week’s notices:   Thank you for your generosity in giving to World Vision’s work with Syrian refugees , which has so far raised over £1,100. Helping those in difficulty is an important part of shining with God’s light in his world, so it’s great to take this opportunity to support those in need. If you’d still like to give, there are some envelopes available at the back of church.   John and Lydia are delighted to announce the birth of David "Davey" Joshua Allister , born at 1:30am yesterday, mass 3.65kg (around 8Ibs). Mother and baby are both well. This also means that John is now on paternity leave for the next two weeks – as I’m sure you’ll understand they’ll both appreciate some space as they adjust to having a new member of their family. For any urgent church matters please either contact myself or the church office. This week : Thursday Weekly Prayer Meeting 8.30am-9am (Church Lounge) 321 Cont...

Yesterday morning, we looked at the story of David & Goliath from 1 Samuel 17. It's one of those stories that is so well-known that we often miss the point of it. Here are a few quick thoughts. 1. You can never find safety in human strength or wisdom. One of the key characters in the story is Saul. After all, Saul was the king the people wanted because he was so impressive. He was a head taller than anyone else (1 Sam 10:23) and was a great military leader. The people thought they would be safe with him as their king. But the problem with trusting in human strength or wisdom is that there is always someone stronger, someone wiser or cleverer or more beautiful. Or in this case, taller . Saul was a head taller than any of the Israelites; he was the impressive soldier who should have fought as the people's champion. But he was used to trusting in his size, in his armour and weapons, and 1 Samuel makes the point that in all those categories the new Phili...

Yesterday we began a new short series in Haggai. It's one of the less-famous books in the Bible, but it's still got a really powerful message for us today. It helps to understand the context. For hundreds of years, God's people had been an independent country, living in the kingdom of Judah, with its capital at Jerusalem. The Temple (as built by Solomon) was the centre of their society – it was where they met together to hear God's word; it was the one place on earth where God had promised to be; it was where they went to pray; it was where the sacrifices happened so that they could be put right with God when they had messed up; it was at the centre of all their festivals as well. Because this was before Jesus, it was much more important even than church is today. But then in 587BC, disaster struck. Nebuchadnezzar, emperor of Babylon, captured and destroyed Jerusalem. The temple was in ruins; the people were deported to Babylon – a period know...

Hi all, Here are this week's notices! Tuesday 7th, 7:30pm - Welcome Service for +Paul at St Mary's in the Lace Market Wednesday 8th - 10:30am Midweek Communion Service Thursday 9th , 8:30am Weekly Prayer Meeting Next Tuesday (14th July), 8pm Church Prayer Meeting Holiday Club - 26th-28th August Booking forms are now available – the club will run from Wednesday to Friday and on Sunday 30th there will be a special service and BBQ. If you would like to help with Holiday Club please either speak to Paula or come to the meeting on Tuesday 21st July 7.30pm in the church Lounge. Sunday 12th July 9:15am Holy Communion 11am All-Age Baptism Service - starting in the large hall followed by Bring & Share lunch - celebrating baptisms and welcoming Ben & Jackie All the best, John -- Rev. John Allister Vicar, St Jude's Mapperley revjohnallister@gmail.com

Greetings! Yesterday at St Jude's we were thinking particularly about how to share God's love and the good news of Jesus with our families and close friends. I said I'd found one book in particular really helpful, which was Bringing the Gospel Home by R. Newman (the link is to the IVP online bookshop, where it's only £5 at the moment...) Incidentally, Newman's earlier book Questioning Evangelism is also really good for thinking through how to share the good news in our conversations more generally. We looked at the theme yesterday through the lens of Jesus' conversation with the woman of Samaria in John 4 . As so often in John's gospel, the story serves to illustrate a lot of what has already been said about Jesus. So in John 3:17 we read that "God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him", and in John 1:17, John sums up Jesus' message as " Grace and truth ". An...

Yesterday, we were continuing in our series looking at some of the basics of the Christian faith from a slightly different angle, and we were looking in particular at Faith and Doubt from Psalm 77 , which was written by David's chief musician, Asaph. A lot of people today seem to think that faith is the opposite of doubt, but that isn't how Asaph saw it at all. Instead we'll see that faith is something we choose (or don't), and that the opposite of faith is pride. But I'm getting ahead of myself a little... Asaph was in a very difficult situation (v1-6). He doesn't explain exactly what was happening, but he tells us that he couldn't sleep, and that his spirit "refused to be comforted". It feels like God is a million miles away; all that he has left of faith is a memory of times gone by when he enjoyed singing to God, and that memory hurts. More than that, Asaph probably didn't see it himself at the time, but he had becom...

Hi folks, This one is slightly late in the day! (Quick notice - there's a meeting at 12:15 on Sunday for all helpers at Holiday Club - let Paula know if you can't make it). Yesterday was Trinity Sunday, when we particularly remember one of the key doctrines of the Christian faith. It's sometimes seen as being dull and irrelevant, but it's anything but. On Sunday I hopefully showed how it comes from the very first chapter of the Bible into the very last chapter. Here's some of what I said about why the Trinity matters. The Trinity is Key to Understanding God because it shows us that God is all about relationships. T he Bible shows God to be a Trinity, three persons in an eternal relationship of love – always working together, always seeking one another's glory. He does not need anyone outside himself, and yet he is a God who is loving and can make the universe for love not because he is insufficient in himself, but because true love wants that love to o...

Greetings! Yesterday was Pentecost Sunday when we remember God sending his Spirit on the disciples in Acts 2. Here are three quick thoughts on what difference Pentecost makes. It means that we can know God directly . The prophet Jeremiah wrote this about God's gift of his Spirit. (Jer 31:33-34) ' I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbour, or say to one another, "Know the Lord," because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,' declares the Lord. 'For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.' We can know God directly because he lives in us; we can hear from God directly and share his word with others. Having the Holy Spirit in us means we can have transformed hearts . Here's God speaking to the prophet Ezekiel about the gift of his Spir...

Good morning all! Yesterday morning we continued our "back to basics" series looking at some of the basics of the Christian faith from different angles. We were thinking in particular of different ways that people relate to God at different times in their lives. Of course God is the same God, Jesus is the same Lord. We all need to keep doing the basics of meeting together as Christians, meditating on God's Word and praying. But we are also all different, each with our unique personality and gifts, and that shapes the way we pray and so on. Theologian Gary Thomas (in his book Sacred Pathways ) identified 9 different ways of connecting with God. All are valuable, but some people are better at some than at others: Naturalists love being outdoors and feel much more connected to God when they are surrounded by the natural world. Sensates find that awe, beauty and splendour, in art, architecture, music and so on are often paths which lead them to God. Traditional...

Good morning! Yesterday at St Jude's we began a new short series looking at some of the basic "how to"s of the Christian life and we started by looking at probably the number one habit recommended in the Bible – meditating on Scripture . Christian meditation is different from Buddhist meditation; the point of Buddhist meditation is to empty yourself because they see desires as fundamentally wrong and the aim of life as nirvana. Christian meditation might start with emptying yourself (and it sometimes does) but it is with the aim of being filled by God and his word. The word used in Psalm 1 for meditation is literally "muttering": Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who mutters his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water...

Greetings all! I thought it would be good to share a few thoughts on the General Election this week. Some people seem to think that the church should stay out of politics. Certainly the way it's involved in the US isn't always helpful – culture wars between the church and society are a bad idea and tend to twist the Christian message into being about Law rather than about Grace. But even so, the Christian message is profoundly political. The first Christian profession of faith was "Jesus is Lord", but that was in a world where the normal affirmation of citizenship was "Caesar is Lord"; worshipping Jesus as God meant that many Christians could not take part in the standard political-religious ceremonies where they worshipped Caesar. One of the big reasons Christians were persecuted in the first few centuries was their stance against Caesar's political claims to absolute authority. And one of the big reasons they won in the end was the...

Every year, I try to give us some thoughts about what God is calling us to do and who he is calling us to be. This year, I kept on being drawn back to Paul's incredible prayer in Ephesians 1:15-23. Paul has just spent the first 14 verses telling the Ephesians how blessed they (and we) are in Jesus. We have every spiritual blessing in Christ v3, God has chosen us to be adopted as his children v5. We have redemption through Jesus' blood v7. We've been let into the secret of how this story ends, so that we know how to live now v9. If we trust in Jesus we have been given God's Holy Spirit to live in us and seal and protect us for our future inheritance v13. So it's right that Paul spends v15-16 praising God for that. And yet there's something missing. The Ephesians have everything, but Paul prays for more. They are like millionaires who don't realise that they have the money, and live like paupers. They have God's Spirit living in ...

Yesterday was Palm Sunday - the start of what is often called Holy Week . In the morning services, we remembered Jesus entering Jerusalem as king. Not as a king coming for war, but as the king coming in peace and riding on a donkey, as Solomon had done (1 KIngs 1:38-40) and as Jacob had predicted over 1000 years before for the king that would come from Judah (Gen 49:10-11) and Zechariah had famously predicted in Zech 9. In Mark the account starts in Jericho with blind Bartimaeus calling out "Son of David, have mercy on me!". Son of David was a title for the coming king the Jews had been hoping for - the Messiah. Before Mark 11, Jesus has been keeping his Messiahship a secret. When he went to festivals, he did so in secret (e.g. John 7) so that there wouldn't be too much fuss around him. But now he casts all that aside. He rides into Jerusalem on a donkey (pilgrims were meant to walk!) as a king, with people throwing their cloaks in front of him. There is a festival atmosp...