St Jude's Mapperley Archive Blog

Hi all, Yesterday, we finished off our series in Paul's letter to the Galatians looking at 5:26-6:18 . It seems a bit odd to start with 5:26 – it's the last verse in its chapter, and the (sometimes helpful) NIV section heading comes at the start of ch 6. But actually looking at chapter 6 in terms of the last few verses of chapter 5 really shows how it hangs together. In 5v25 Paul tells the Galatians to keep in step with the Spirit – to keep up with what God is doing in their lives by his Spirit. In chapter 6 Paul shows some examples of what that looks like. In 5v26, Paul tells the readers not to be "vainglorious" (or "conceited" in the NIV). Don't be puffed up like a balloon which might look impressive but is actually empty. One way of looking at chapter 6 is by seeing what "Mr Vainglorious" would do, and that we are called to do the opposite. Mr Vainglorious doesn't seek to restore people who have messed up v1 Whe...

The All-Age service yesterday was on the theme of "mothers in the Bible". And on my table, we got talking about the story of Leah in Genesis 29 . I mentioned that one of my all-time favourite sermons is by Timothy Keller on the story of Leah. (And you can read it online here .) Maybe we'll revisit it at some stage, in which case you'll know where I got it from... I thought it would be worth giving a brief overview of the sermon. Keller does it much better than me though! Keller draws out three bits of bad news, then three bits of good news, but the good is much stronger than the bad. Bad News 1: Sin Does You We often talk about people sinning, but sin isn't something we do. It's something that does us, and then rebounds around and keeps on messing things up for ages afterwards. We see that here with how Isaac favouring Esau rather than Jacob has echoed through the generations. The less-favoured son is now playing favourites with his wive...

Good morning! I wonder where you'd put Christianity in a Sunday newspaper. Would you put it with the headlines, or in the lifestyle section with the magazine? It might seem like a silly question, but actually it makes all the difference in the world, and Paul talks about it a lot in Galatians 3, which we looked at yesterday morning. You see when the Galatians started out, they would have put it clearly in the "news" section, but by the time Paul wrote them, they'd have moved to the "lifestyle" section, and Paul gives them two big reasons why it needs to be back in "news": First, Christianity begins with news . It begins with the great news of Jesus – God become man, crucified for us and raised from the dead. It begins in our lives with God himself coming to live in us by his Spirit, not because we follow the right lifestyle but because we hear the good news and respond by trusting it. And even though there's a...

One of the things I love about my job is the chance to sit down with folk and listen to them tell me about their walk with God. And they'll often say something like "I'm not a very good Christian..." Of course, on one level there may well be things to discuss or ways that I can help. On another level, it's brilliant that folk recognise that, because in this world there aren't super-duper Christians and awesome Christians and totally obedient Christians, there are just "not very good" Christians, and when we let him, God works through us anyway! I remember I used to have a big problem with this, and, being me, I'd talked it up into a big intellectual conundrum. "How can I promise to follow God," I would ask, "when I know that I will let him down and fail to keep my promises because I'm still sinful?" And for a year or so, I let that question paralyse me in my Christian life. The answer, when it ca...

Good morning! Yesterday was our Church Day of Prayer. Many thanks to all those who came along and prayed, or who stayed at home because of the ice and prayed there instead. This morning, I'd like to share with you one of the things we were praying and praising for on Saturday. In January 2014, I challenged us to pray for 5 new Christians at St Jude's in 2014; 5 people to step up into new leadership positions and for the church to grow by 5%. What actually happened? Two adults became Christians at St Jude's in 2014, but the picture is quite a bit more complex than that. Quite a few follk came back to church having been away or started attending church for the first time. Several children were also born into Christian families, and our policy is clear that we count children in Christian families as Christians (hence baptism, etc) unless they decide otherwise. 5 new Christians - target probably met . Around a dozen people stepped up into new positions of leadership or responsi...

Good morning! Yesterday, we began a new series in Paul's letter to the Galatians, with Gal 1:1-10 . It's a letter I haven't heard preached very often, but it has a lot to teach us about how God sets us free in Christ and about the centrality of the gospel. I've written a bit about the background to Galatians, and how we can tell that it was written during the events at the start of Acts 15 here . For now, the important features are that Paul had only recently planted the churches in Galatia (cities like Iconium and Lystra), but that he heard they were already abandoning the gospel and following a different message. Paul couldn't visit them because he had an urgent visit to make to Jerusalem to find out where the different message was coming from, so he wrote Galatians to them instead. The passage has a lot to say to our culture, where we often like to think that the detail of what we believe doesn't really matter and where we often let our ...

Good morning! When we're desperate for something, when we see that we really need help, we pray about it far more than we do at other times. I've seen that in my own life, and we've seen it in the life of St Jude's as well over the years. In fact, God sometimes allows difficult things to happen so that we can learn to depend on him more. One of the big dangers is that when things improve, when they get more comfortable, we stop seeing our need for God as much and so we get complacent and stop praying as much. One of the big dangers for us as a church is that we are far too easily satisfied with our own spiritual lives, with the state of our church, with seeing God at work in our community. We saw that yesterday at 11am when we looked at Philippians 3:7-14 . Philippians is the letter where we see real Christian contentment the most clearly. Paul is hungry and in prison and he writes that he has learnt the secret of being content in any and ever...