God's desire is that people are restored to Him - they are drawn into the embrace of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Yet we know in our own lives we have things that go against that, that spoil relationship with God and each other.
Sunday, 25 October 2015
Sunday, 18 October 2015
Living Parables - 1 Thess 2:1 - 13
Paul, once a follower of Jesus, became a man who worked hard and went out of his way to work alongside people, telling them about Jesus. Despite opposition and insult, he continued his work. He didn't simply try to please people, but shared his life in order to talk about Jesus. He didn't give up, but carried on so that his whole life became a story of God's grace - the ability to live life to help other people discover God.
Sunday, 4 October 2015
Common Purpose - 1 Thess 3:6 - 13
Separation naturally brings anxiety - we want to know how the other is doing. Hence Paul was concerned for the Thessalonians. Not having phones or Facebook, he dispatched Timothy to visit and report back. The news was good: v6 talks of faith and love. I.e. they were still in Christ and still proclaiming the Kingdom.
Sunday, 13 September 2015
Discipleship by Imitation - 1 Thessalonians 1:2 - 10
Modelling and imitation is a concept seen several times in the New Testament. Hardly surprising in that Jesus set about modelling Kingdom life: gathering people around him, giving them hands on experience of the Kingdom, unpacking it for them, sending them to do the same, and then helping them make sense of it.
Sunday, 6 September 2015
The Story of Jason - Acts 17:1 - 9
In Acts 17 we see Paul and companions turn up in Thessalonica in the next phase of their outreach. They do the sensible thing by preaching Jesus the Messiah in the synagogue, i.e. where they are likely to find people ready to hear the good news.
Sunday, 5 July 2015
Glimpses of the Messiah - Zechariah 12 & 13 - Part I
One of the final 'chunks' of Zechariah starts at 12:1 and builds momentum, reaching v10 where God says 'and I will do this ...'.
Glimpses of the Messiah - Zechariah 12 & 13 - Part II
The chunk ends in 13:7 - 9 with a poem. Curiously this poem could apply to Israel before it was attacked by Babylonians, in other words pre-dating all the stuff we have looked at in Zechariah so far. The foreign attack would then be the 'striking the shepherd', and the exile the scattering of the people.
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