As much as we want to be looking forward to what lies ahead this year, we believe God is speaking to us about grief. Life is, of cours, full of beauty and wonder, but it is also - start to finish - full of loss (It’s hard to imagine there are many among us who haven’t lost something meaningful in the last 12 months!) Jesus’ life shows us that there is only one holy and right response to loss, and it is grief. There is no way to bypass or shortcut this often painful process, but we must fight the cultural lie that sadness is shameful, and mourn, like Jesus mourned, for what has been lost. At the end of it all, it’s not just about our recovery or healing, it’s about what He can plant in the fertile soil that grieving tills.
Leave It At His Feet
2021 - What a Start!
Advent - What We All Need Right Now
What does everyone need right now? A bunch of hope. Which is what the whole of Christmas is about. It’s hope despite our circumstances. It’s hope even when the rest of the world is hopeless. Because this is hope that comes from outside this world. When the world is mundane, it’s miraculous. When the world is lonely, it's intimate. When the world is constrained, it’s free. And when the world is banal, it’s divine. This is what Jesus has come to earth to bring us and it’s ours if we want it!
How Can I Find the Presence of God?
Five weeks of ‘safer at home’. Our days may feel that they are merging into one, our emotions continue to be unexpected and there are daily developments in information. Amidst everything that comes with this worldwide experience, feeling a sense of peace can feel difficult. But, we know that God is here, that He is good and that He promises to provide rest for our weary souls. So- how do we experience His peace, that surpasses all human understanding, for ourselves?
How Does God Feel About Coronavirus?
As things continue to unfold around the world and in our city, what many of us are increasingly aware of is that we’re in a grieving process. Even if we haven’t lost anyone we know, we’re grieving plans, security, the safety of loved ones, and - to greater and lesser extents - life as we knew it before. It is safe to say, that grieving isn’t always something we’re comfortable with as a culture, and there are many things about the biblical tradition of lament that just don’t come easily to us. So this talk is all about that. As we continue to work out how to work this out in our faith, it has to start with a close look at what God thinks about all pain and suffering in his glorious creation.
How Can God Always Be There?
How to Trust God in the Trench.
We’re isolated, and yet so together in the fact that (almost certainly without exception) we’re now having to trust God for things that used to feel like ours to control. A couple of verses in Romans 12 are very good ones to hang onto in all this: Be Transformed By The Renewing of Your Mind… This talk is about WHY it is we need to be transformed, whose job it is to do the transforming (hint - the answer is the holy spirit), and how we can allow him to do that.
How To Face Trouble.
In the midst of uncertainly, anxiety and threat, it’s more important than ever that we learn how to best respond to, and allow God into, our troubles. We’re all equal in the face of coronavirus. We’re all fragile, but God treats us with great care. He cares more than we could know, and He has the power to calm every storm, heal every disease, and comfort us in every trouble.