For me, The Lord’s Prayer is something that I call upon constantly in my life as it reminds me to stay true to my beliefs and to live my life for God. This passage is especially good at helping to share beliefs as it shows how you should go out and carry out the word of God. The line “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” is the part of The Read more…
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has chosen me” (v18). As a new steward in my home church, I waited anxiously for the appointed preacher to arrive one Sunday; I was due to lead the small Sunday school class that morning and needed to complete my preparations for that before the service began. Alongside me, the other steward started searching for the emergency sermon, filed deep in a drawer in the Read more…
Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. As a leading Pharisee, he wouldn’t want anyone to know that he was associating with the controversial travelling preacher and so he brought his questions under cover of darkness. When I first began to train as a Methodist minister over forty years ago, my father was not pleased. He was a decent, ordinary working man, but church had no part in his life, and he felt that I was Read more…
Have you ever been thrown in at the deep end? Have you ever been in a situation where you have been asked to say something about your faith and how you have come to be where you are? How did that feel? Were you ready? Sharing faith is not an easy task because our journey can be personal and precious to us. We carefully choose what to say and prepare ourselves very well. However, is Read more…
An Invitation to stillness “Deep calls to deep” – Psalm 42 Contemplation is a word that is not used regularly in Methodist worship and practice. A common interpretation of Luke 10.38-42 is that Mary is the contemplative and Martha is the activist. We Methodists are activists aren’t we? Yet, the word ‘contemplation’ is explicitly about action. The word comes to us from the Latin. The prefix ‘con-‘ literally means ‘acting together’. ‘Template’ is to do Read more…
The passage begins by telling us that the believers were of one heart and mind. They had contentment because they had faith in the Lord. The Apostles were still telling everyone about the resurrection of Jesus. As disciples, we too should be telling everyone about what the Lord has done for us. Those who believed were willing to give up what they had. They were happy in their faith, trusted in God and knew where Read more…
We would love the mission of the Church today to be effective and successful, to be able to ‘catch’ people for Jesus as easily as an angler can catch a salmon for his supper in the River Tweed. We would love our friends to recognise Jesus as the Son of God as quickly as Nathanael appeared to do. We know that Jesus called sinners to repentance, and that the twelve went to the villages bringing Read more…
In the last few days, we have been looking at the calling of the disciples when they left everything behind and followed Jesus. Today, Jesus has called them again and sent them out to proclaim the Kingdom of God without taking anything with them. This is where their faith is being tested once again. Faith is more than believing. Sometimes we just have to take a step of faith in order to experience God’s grace. Read more…
Luke suggests that Jesus speaks with Levi after He has just healed the paralysed man: there were so many people gathered in that place that the man’s friend had to climb on the roof to gain access to Jesus. We also know that Levi was a tax collector, who, according to some commentators, could legally set up a toll booth anywhere and start collecting taxes on imports and exports for the Romans and would often Read more…
A story worth sharing… Daffodils are my favourite flowers as they bring their boldness and cheer year on year in spring, regardless of how bleak or harsh a winter we have experienced. Early on Easter Sunday (2015), local Churches worked together to place over 1000 daffodils around the village of Lanchester, and left them at the homes of those who were house bound, the local nursing homes and hospice. Each daffodil had a tag on Read more…