St Jude's Mapperley Archive Blog

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community Good Morning! Last week we very much enjoyed having Marcus and Tamara Throup visiting us – Marcus encouraged us strongly to take Jesus with us wherever we go, whether to work or visiting family or on holiday! Yesterday, at the 9:15 and 6:30pm services, I preached on 1 Peter 5 . The big idea in the passage is that God's kingdom is coming, but isn't fully here yet – in posh theological language it's inaugurated but not consummated – it's started, but we don't always see it. And that means that sometimes in the present we find ourselves with the opportunity to live in ways that show we are looking forwards to God's kingdom being fulfilled. In the passage, Peter highlights three main ways this works out. All of them point back to Jesus' first coming to establish his kingdom, and all of them look forwards to when he will return to complete it. They are: Eager Service – esp...

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community Good Morning! Yesterday morning was the last in our series on the first few chapters of Joshua – we'll be coming back to carry on the story next year. One thing that really struck me is that we think of Joshua as all about the invasion and conquest of Canaan, but actually it's much more about the people's relationship with God. So as we looked at chapter 6 yesterday, we only just got to the first battle, and even that is completely overshadowed by God's conversation with Joshua. As Christians, we find it really easy to just assume that God is on our side. We've been watching the BBC drama The White Queen for the last few weeks, and last week they made a point of showing several different sides in the Wars of the Roses all praying to the same God before the same battle and asking for his help. But that's not how God works. He isn't a slot machine God who we can mani...

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!

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community Good Morning! Yesterday was another really encouraging Sunday at St Jude's. I had an e-mail this morning from a member of St Jude's who said that Andy Murray winning Wimbledon was an anti-climax after the morning, and I think that just about nailed it! For those who didn't make it, we had 2 baptisms and 5 people wanting to publicly reaffirm their baptism vows, which grew to 10 during the service! There's a line in the baptism liturgy which we said yesterday that goes something like this: Fight valiantly as disciples of Christ against sin, the world and the devil, and remain Christ's faithful soldiers and servants to the end of your lives. That whole idea of fighting isn't something we tend to talk about much these days. But it ties in well with what I've been reading in my personal devotional times lately. These days, I often seem to find myself in the "fig...

Greetings! It's been a really encouraging weekend! The Day of Prayer on Saturday seemed to go very well, and yesterday morning we enjoyed looking at Joshua 5. Joyce and Dennis both preached on the passage, and I had a Sunday off preaching for once! Both sermons focused on the importance of making sure that you're in the right place with God. Israel had just crossed the Jordan river, and we'd have expected a quick attack on Jericho. Instead, the nation stops, and celebrates their "sacraments" - they circumcise the men and then share the Passover meal. They see that getting right with God is more important than sorting out their food supply, or their safety with enemy armies around. There's a thing in psychology called Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It says that we try to get the basics of life – food, drink and so on sorted first, then security, and only move on to other stuff once we've got the basics sorted. Joshua and the Israelites don't see it ...

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...