We have begun our studies on the Lord’s Prayer and this week my plan is to talk about the significance of God’s name and how understanding and honouring God’s name reduces the stress of everyday living. Our second prayer is the ‘prayer of recognition’because it’s by our names that we are most uniquely recognised. God has many names each define His character and capacity to meet our deepest needs. The ‘prayer of recognition’ is also a prayer of perspective because we all need someone greater than ourselves to give us the security to make it through each day. When I reflect long enough on the ‘hallowedness’ of God’s name I remember that I am not the centre of my world any more. It’s not up to me to hold everything together, this is God’s job and gradually my focus shifts from the problem to God, who loves us and cares for us – He is ‘the rock that is higher than I’.  See You Sunday!

This Sunday I want to begin a series on the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ to help us to better understand this wonderful prayer; its one thing to say the Lord’s Prayer every week in our worship but ‘what did this prayer mean to Jesus and his followers when he first taught them about prayer in answer to their question ‘Teach us to pray’? My second goal is to try to address the question of stress which is one of the major health epidemics of our age including here in Malaysia. This prayer, which is actually made up of eight smaller prayers each one offering an antidote to a common everyday cause of stress, is as available to us as is our heavenly Father who to quote Paul ‘is not far from each of us. Come and lean how to pray the way Jesus did.

See you Sunday

One of the most difficult things in life is to sit in God’s waiting room i.e. the place we wait for God to do something for us, which only He can do. On Sunday we are going to finish our series on faith by looking at how to continue trusting while we are waiting on God. We are going to look specifically at the life of Abraham because if ever there was a man who was kept waiting for God to act it was Abraham. Helplessness is something that human nature recoils from and yet it is ofter the beginning of faith. Don’t focus on what you can’t do, focus on what God can do. We have a miracle working God who can bring back to life our dead marriages, dead careers and dead dreams. God loves us all and when we face delays and dead ends be assured that God allows them for a reason that is ultimately for our good.

See you Sunday!

It was great to see so many people last Sunday and thank you for the positive feedback. This week I plan to return to last years theme of ‘Growing our Faith’. One of the lovely insights into what excites Jesus is recorded in Matthew 8:5-13 which records the story of the Roman Centurion who came to Jesus on behalf his sick servant and spoke with great confidence and faith. He didn’t understood much about grace but he knew, better than anyone else, about authority and obedience. Jesus looked at the man, astonished by what he had heard and he answered, “This is the greatest faith I have ever seen in Israel”. The ‘greatest faith’, that should be something we are all interested in and on Sunday I plan to explore the relationship between obedience and faith.

See you there!

After an enjoyable few days of r and r spent with Frances and Matthew on the beautiful island of Langkawi I now feel refreshed and happy to be back at my desk preparing for Sunday. God has graciously designed life in such a way as to provide us with new days, new weeks and months and years which lend themselves to new beginnings. If we could somehow relive last year I imagine that we would all do some things differently-hindsight is a wonderful thing and when do make mistakes we tend to focus on our failure more than our success. But God’s not like that; the Bible says that God celebrates our success, forgets our past and focuses on our future. God wants a relationship with us and so he is concerned about how we are going to spend the rest of our lives. On Sunday I want to share a way of thinking that’s in line with God’s thinking and approach to life.

See you Sunday!

An essential quality for ‘growing in faith’ is persistence – finishing what we start. Unfortunately very few people finish the race of life strongly. We get discouraged, and hurt and distracted. As a result we become sidelined and eventually give up. We finish our earthly lives with unrealized dreams and unfulfilled potential.

The Bible gives us four things that we can do to finish the race of life well.

If your life is littered with broken relationships and unfinished project or if you feel that you are flagging a bit in your Christan life come and join us on Sunday.

See you Sunday!

This week the children of the 8.30am Service will lead the worship for that service in and through their presentation of a Christmas story called ‘No Room’ and next week the children of the 11am service will do the same at their service. The rest of us will continue our worship focusing on Mary the mother of Jesus. Have you ever wondered how God chooses some people and not others to do the very wonderful things He accomplishes through them? The Bible say that ‘God is looking for people He can use’ and this will be our subject with particular reference to Mary.

See you Sunday. 

This Sunday is the first of the four Sundays of Advent which we celebrate over the four weeks leading up to Christmas. Advent reminds us of the great Christmas themes of joy, hope, love and peace and provides us with a very helpful way of preparing for Christmas. My theme this Sunday is ‘Celebrating Jesus’ which we do every time we participate in the Lord’s Supper.

What we discover in the language of the Bible is that the Greek word for joy ‘chara’ is the result of grace ‘charis’, which is why again and again we read words like, “Rejoice in the Lord always” and “The joy of the Lord is my strength?”                                             

Perhaps the most wonderful of Jesus parables is what is often called the parable of the ‘prodigal or lost son’ however I don’t think that we should let the lost son capture the whole message of the story. If we go to the dictionary we will find that the word prodigal means lavishly extravagant, which accurately describes, in different ways, the behavior of all the people in this parable. For example lavishly extravagant describes the kind of love God’s has for us. So come and celebrate all that God has done and is doing for us in the only appropriate way we can. See You Sunday!

One of the best known promises of God comes from Philippians Chapter 4 verse 19, “My God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. This is a very bold statement but what does it mean? Its meaning is often misunderstood. You may think to yourself, “I have needs in my life that are not being met”, so why doesn’t this verse work for me”? The first thing I want to say is that the problem does not lie with God. Behind every promise in the Bible is a premise.  God says “If you will do this then I will do this” and this Sunday we are going to look at those conditions. These are some of the most important words I will speak on the subject of faith.

See you Sunday!

Have you ever wished that you could live your life over again? While we are unable to relive our past we can make a new start and this Sunday I will be preaching on the story of blind Bartimeaus. We will learn about the way he was able to seize the moment and through faith receive a brand new start to his life.  Grace isn’t just for salvation we need God’s grace to survive each day of life. Spiritual blindness is a greater malady than physical blindness because it robs us of spiritual power.

When was the last time you asked God for grace? If you are not confident in doing this, learning from Bartimaeus will give us a new measure of faith and courage to ask God for grace everyday.

See you Sunday!