Matthew 6:7-13, Luke 11:3 “Give us our daily bread” is about being open to the Lord providing us with what we need to sustain our lives. That’s quite different to asking the Lord to give us what we want. As we pray for the Lord to provide in the ways that He sees best, we […]
Matthew 6: 1-10; Luke 11:2 A vital part of our prayer lives is that we understand the intimacy it brings between us and God. To be able to pray “Our Father” is an awesome privilege, and one that we must not take lightly. It binds us in relationship to God. Then we can pray “Lord, […]
Luke 18: 15 – 17. Jesus invites us to come to Him as a child who is able to trust easily, and so establish faith in an uncomplicated way. How can we recapture a childlike approach to our relationship with Jesus, yet still know the deep significance of a relationship with Him?
Matthew 28:16-20; Acts 1:1-11. Let’s not be too hasty to move on from Easter without noticing the implications for us today of the words of Jesus in “The great commission” (Mt. 28), and the commissioning of His church “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8)! We don’t have any comment in Matthew about a […]
Matthew 28; Mark 16; Luke 24; John 20. N.T. Wright asks: “Why does Jesus’ resurrection matter?”. One review of a film about the resurrection said this: “the resurrection is the final event of a compelling life, a stormy trial and a vicious death. Paul said he proclaimed Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Here the resurrection […]
Luke 24:1-12 Where will our focus be today? Will we be jubilantly celebrating that Jesus is alive, as we respond to knowing that we are “Alive in Christ”? Or will we be standing in the margins not really too sure what to make of it? As part of our Easter celebrations we will see and […]
Matthew 16:13-28. “Why?”. That has to be one of the easiest questions to ask, but one of the hardest to answer! And especially so with apologetics. So many questions are raised as we tread tentatively towards the word “Suffering”. For example, “If there is a God, why does He allow suffering?”; “Where is your God […]
Matthew 26: 17 – 30, 69 – 75. Due to weather conditions there were a number of people unable to get to church, so we had a time of testimony regarding God’s faithfulness; and then around the Communion Table we were reminded of how we, like Jesus’ disciples, can be reluctant followers of Christ.
Luke 4:14-30; 20:1-26, 22:16-25. We know that Jesus was despised and rejected. That includes examples of personal denial and rejection (e.g.: Peter, Judas), as well on the larger stage of society in general. Why did the dominant culture of the first century reject Jesus? Is their example enough to convince the dominant culture of our […]
Matthew 16:13-20; Mark 8:27-30; Luke 9:18-27; John 14:1-14 We’ll be pausing here to take stock, but also to ask more questions: “So what?”. What difference does apologetics make to my understanding of Jesus? How does that enable (or otherwise!) me to know that “It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what […]