St Jude's Mapperley Archive Blog

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...

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community Greetings! Yesterday, Dennis led us skilfully through Psalm 46 which is a wonderful psalm of confidence in God. I love the way that it shows God as our stronghold – the absolutely safe place we can run to, the place we can hide in, the place that gives us confidence to take risks because we are safe there and ultimately nothing can hurt us. Even if the whole world falls apart, we're still safe in God. But the great weakness of strongholds is that sieges there can get pretty horrible. It's great to have a safe place, but safe places are often uncomfortable; they are often unpleasant places to be. That isn't the case with God. The Psalm talks about a river whose streams make glad the city of God. Ezekiel and John (in Revelation) also have visions of God's holy city with a river in, and in both cases (Eze 47:1-12 and Rev 22:1-2), the river comes out from the presence of God. The city ...

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community Good Morning! Last Thursday, we celebrated one of the more frequently forgotten Christian festivals (largely because it's a Thursday, and doesn't get a Bank Holiday to go with it) – Ascension Day, when we remember that after he rose from the dead, Jesus ascended bodily into heaven. Actually, the ascension itself was for the benefit of the disciples, so they could see that he'd physically left; to get to heaven required some kind of cunning teleportation that I'm sure God could arrange. I'd just like to think briefly – what's the point of the Ascension? Two of the passages for the day were Acts 1:1-11 and Ephesians 1:15-23 , and they give us the same three answers. The Ascension means that God gives us the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4-5, Eph 1:17) In John 16, Jesus disciples were sad that he was going away, but Jesus told them it was for their good, because when he had retu...

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community Good Morning! Yesterday was one of those really encouraging days, or it was for me anyway! We had a great time at church in the morning, and then had a really good 20s/30s picnic in our back garden – it was great to see loads of people there including quite a few we hadn't met before! If you're not on the 20s/30s e-mail list and you'd like to be, please let me know... Yesterday evening, I was preaching on the Old Testament Law. I should probably have switched sermons at the last minute, but didn't – sorry. This is roughly what I think I should have said(!)... When you see the word "law" in the Old Testament, it usually translates the Hebrew "Torah", which is talking about the whole of Genesis – Deuteronomy, a lot of which is story and so on rather than just lists of rules. The stories set the scene for the rules; they give us a background to read them against a...

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community Good Morning! It's been a busy week! At the AGM on Monday, we were thinking about the future direction of the church, and especially some aspects of what we might need to do to join in with God's mission of finding the people in our community who don't know him and bringing them in. The theme of discerning direction for the future is one we're going to be picking up at the PCC Away Day on Saturday – please do be praying for us. It's also worth giving homegroups a mention, as we've been discussing them recently. We've agreed on a document (attached) which spells out what homegroups are for and what we do, and homegroups are starting to think about what it means for them to be God's people rooted in the local community where they meet. If you aren't part of a homegroup and would like to join one, please let me know by replying to this e-mail. Another thing we...