Saturday, July 23, 2016

The God of All Comfort


Comfort is a word which in modern speech has lost all of its New testament meaning. It suggests to us a kind of sedative, a palliative for pain of body or mind. But the comfort of God is no narcotic. The word "comforter" applied to the Holy Spirit really means "strengthener" (John 14:16). It has the same root as "fortify." We comfort a sufferer when we give them courage to bear their pain or face their misfortune.

Friday, July 15, 2016

Paul - Roman, Greek, Jew, Christian.


We continue our journey through the Acts of the Apostles and find ourselves at Acts 22.23-30. We ended two weeks ago with the crowd in Jerusalem shouting for Paul's blood after he told them that God had sent him to minister to the Gentiles: ‘Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!’..... and the Romans taking him into custody.

Friday, July 8, 2016

The Faithful Keeper of Promises


We continue our series on The Nature of God and this week's title is Hope (Promise Keeper) and there were a number of readings to choose from (1 Kings 8:56Jeremiah 31:31-34 Micah 5:2,
Matthew 16:13-18Matthew 26:33-35, Matthew 26:69-75, John 3:16, John 5:14, John 6:35John 14:1-3, John 21:15-17,Acts 2:1-12Acts 2:38-39, Hebrews 11:32-12:1, James 1:16-17, James 4:81, 2 Peter 3:8-13) and a perusal of them touches on some of the promises which God has made and kept in the Scriptures and what one lifts from all of these is that because God is a Promise Keeper, we can have Hope ... but more than that, we can be filled with hope now, a hope that

Friday, July 1, 2016

Saul/Paul's Turnaround, Britain's Turnaround, Your Turnaround


What a week it has been in British politics ... talk about a turn around, a change of direction, which, you might remember from previously, is what is at the root of the word repentance. The New Testament word translated as repentance is the Greek word metanoia which is not a confession of sins but a change of mind (here is an excellent article on this subject) implying a change of direction from moving away from God to now moving towards God. As I said: "What a week of mind changing, direction changing, we've had."