Given all that is going on in our country right now, we as followers of Jesus, need to allow him now more than ever to search our hearts and direct our actions. The work that must precede all other action is the work of repentance. This is not easy for us to hear. But let us be people of courage and humility. And let us grasp the opportunity to be people of change for the sake of God’s kingdom being seen here on earth.
Genesis: What Does It Say About Women
If we want to stand on the steadfast knowledge that the gospel of jesus proclaims one-ness - absolute inclusion, unity and justice for all - we HAVE to know what the Bible has to say about it. Hagar (slave, foreign, female) became the very first theologian in the story of god’s people… Every single martriarch (Sarah, Rebekah, Leah and Rachel) was met in her deepest need, by a God who showed them he was different: by blessing her, by including her in the story (a culturally unheard of thing at the time) and by saying, in the context of desperate need: I remember you. They may have been read to us otherwise. But THIS is what they’re about.
Genesis: The Rescue Begins - Fighting with God
Jacob is no saint. His name is deceiver and he spends most of his time looking after number 1, fighting with the world, and tricking his way through life. That is until he gets in to a fight he can’t win and he can’t trick his way out of.
It’s ok to be mad at God and to wrestle with him. But ultimately a fight with him is one we’ll never win. But it is the best one we’ll ever lose. Because when we’re weak, he is strong. And when we bow down, he lifts us up.
Genesis: The Rescue Begins - The Sacrifice Was Never Ours to Make
Genesis: The Rescue Begins - We're All Abraham
Genesis: The Rescue Begins - Cain and Abel
Hannah kicks off a new teaching series on the book of Genesis, our original origins, that reminds us what these massively misunderstood introduction stories are really all about. Cain and Abel is about injustice, pain, and our work not being rewarded - experiences every one of us go through, now maybe more than ever.
Ask a Therapist - Blake Answers
Blake is a practicing psychotherapist, city group leader at Bread, and all-round kind, compassionate human familiar with the messy journey we’re all on at this time. She chats through some answer to the anonymous questions that have been posted on our site.
Chances are someone is feeling something similar so don’t be shy. Ask Blake! The only bad question is the one you can’t ask!
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?
Easter Sunday: What the world needs now, and always has.
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.
Is God your friend?
The Holiness of Health 7: Bringing it to God
The Holiness of Health 6: Loving Well
We all know the importance of love. Without it our lives can be withered and empty. But it’s one thing to know the theory and quite another to actually put it into practice. So how can we learn to love well? This talk is an attempt to go beneath just surface theory and help us work out how we might love in meaningful, christ-like, incarnational ways.
The Holiness of Health 5: Grief and Loss
The Holiness of Health 4: Brokenness and Vulnerability
The Holiness of Health 3: Work from Rest
What stops you from giving yourself a break? God created us to work from a place of rest, and yet so often we do the opposite - we rest from work. We toil and strive, working too long hours with no enough fulfillment, and find ourselves collapsing into the weekend, trying to recover before work starts again.
The Holiness of Health 2: Go Back to Go Forward
What makes us what we’re like? Why do we behave in the ways we do? In order to go forward in life, we often have to go back to revisit some of the painful experience in life which have been most formational. We don’t do this to ‘heal ourselves’ or for a spot of self-indulgent naval gazing, but rather to let the Holy Spirit in so that he can bring his supernatural power to heal and restore us. The more we’re able to do this the more we can live free from the power of the past and become the whole people we were created to be.