Dead and Alive – Colossians 3 Read Col 3:1-3 If your version starts with ‘If’ in verse 1, I think the versions that start with ‘Since’ make more sense, following the flow of argument from the previous chapter. ‘SINCE you have been raised with Christ…’ Discuss: You only get raised with Christ if you died with Him first! Do you know or are you aware of anyone who had a ‘near death’ experience, a close shave with death etc (like Fabrice Muamba for instance) and got a second chance at life? Anyone in the GG had that kind of experience personally? How would you live after you experienced such an incident? How might your perspective, priorities and plans change? Read Col 3;1-17 Paul is probably referring to baptism here as a symbolic experience of ‘putting to death’ the old life and passing from death to life. The early church actually gave baptismal candidates a new set of clothes to symbolise the new life they were entering. Discuss: This is a very dramatic picture If you were baptised as an […]
Author: Anthony Delaney
I speak, I write, I lead.
@mattyhawthorne – Sharing God’s Story
Sharing in God’s story for our life God uses the ordinary things He is in the salvage business Like Wall E Check the video Wall E’s job is to salvage – and our God fixes what’s broken Romans 8 The creation is waiting for that to fully happen There’s not many noble or wise here. God chooses nobodies to do some of his greatest stuff. Those who have nothing without God. God gets you back on track. Your sat nav directs you on the perfect route (well it should!) God has a good and perfect plan If you go a long way off track He recalculates. Do you believe there is a purpose to your life? How will you find it if you don’t find Him? Jeremiah 29:11 lays it out. John 16 – Jesus says how we find out the plan and live it- it’s all about the Holy Spirit. When God’s story becomes your story – God brings you home.
@mattyhawthorne – Sharing God’s Story
Sharing in God’s story for our life God uses the ordinary things He is in the salvage business Like Wall E Check the video Wall E’s job is to salvage – and our God fixes what’s broken Romans 8 The creation is waiting for that to fully happen There’s not many noble or wise here. God chooses nobodies to do some of his greatest stuff. Those who have nothing without God. God gets you back on track. Your sat nav directs you on the perfect route (well it should!) God has a good and perfect plan If you go a long way off track He recalculates. Do you believe there is a purpose to your life? How will you find it if you don’t find Him? Jeremiah 29:11 lays it out. John 16 – Jesus says how we find out the plan and live it- it’s all about the Holy Spirit. When God’s story becomes your story – God brings you home.
@mattyhawthorne – Sharing God’s Story
Sharing in God’s story for our life God uses the ordinary things He is in the salvage business Like Wall E Check the video Wall E’s job is to salvage – and our God fixes what’s broken Romans 8 The creation is waiting for that to fully happen There’s not many noble or wise here. God chooses nobodies to do some of his greatest stuff. Those who have nothing without God. God gets you back on track. Your sat nav directs you on the perfect route (well it should!) God has a good and perfect plan If you go a long way off track He recalculates. Do you believe there is a purpose to your life? How will you find it if you don’t find Him? Jeremiah 29:11 lays it out. John 16 – Jesus says how we find out the plan and live it- it’s all about the Holy Spirit. When God’s story becomes your story – God brings you home.
What are your FIG leaves? @lynnswart at Ivy MCR
Cliff Richard said its so funny that we don’t talk any more But it’s not funny We share – but mostly online. Time on Facebook grows as face to face stops. We are living in a generation where heart communication needs to be relearned. God loves to share. Sometimes we feel our lives are formless and void. But one word from him changed everything – it still does. And humanity was made to share and be open. But they listened to the other voice and were lured by his lies. Gen 3:7 They realised they were naked. Sewed fig leaves. Wanted to hide from God and each other We’ve been on the run ever since. What are our fig leaves? What stops our honest communication – stops us taking risks. F.I.Gs what does that stand for? F – Fake Actor in Gk = hypocritus. Many nations have dances etc with masks. When you have a mask on you can’t see clearly, speak freely, hear clearly etc. Be authentic – then you are free to be who God made you to […]
Do You Know How Much You’re Loved?
TRUE MATURITY Colossians 2 – Ivy Grow Group Notes
Would the people who know you best say you’re becoming more like Jesus in that area now than you were a year ago?
The Inner Ring, by C.S. Lewis:
I’ll be speaking about this on Sunday evening. It’s fascinated me since I first read it 15 years ago Home | About Us | About C.S. Lewis | Events | Membership | Articles | Interviews Books | Video and DVD | Audios and CDs | Quotes | Links | Contact Us The Inner Ring By C. S. Lewis* May I read you a few lines from Tolstoy’s War and Peace? When you invite a middle-aged moralist to address you, I suppose I must conclude, however unlikely the conclusion seems, that you have a taste for middle-aged moralising. I shall do my best to gratify it. I shall in fact, give you advice about the world in which you are going to live. I do not mean by this that I am going to talk on what are called current affairs. You probably know quite as much about them as I do. I am not going to tell you—except in a form so general that you will hardly recognise it—what part you ought to play in post-war reconstruction. It is not, […]
Colossians 1 – Ivy Grow Group notes
I’m going to be kicking off a new evening series based on Paul’s letter to the Colossians tomorrow – and I’m really excited about the chance to dig in to one of my favourite books of the NT. It was written around 63 AD but it’s bang up to date for us Read Col 1:1-8 Discuss: Here Paul lists the characteristics of an authentic, Christ-honouring church. Can you list them? Discuss: Paul writes about fruit that is the evidence of true salvation (compare Mt 13:23). If someone is not bearing this fruit – are they still a Christian? I’ve called our series ‘Inside Out’ because Paul is writing from prison to a church he didn’t found, but was a church plant started by one of his ‘spiritual sons,; Epaphras. Epaphras apparently had heard the Gospel of Christ from Paul at Ephesus and had taken this life-changing message back to Colosse (v. 7) Colosse was in what today would be known as Turkey, in Paul’s day it was known as Asia Minor. Actually these days it doesn’t […]
Billy Gilvear at Ivy MCR; when the going gets tough.
Happiness is not determined by what’s happening around me but what’s going on inside me. You are about as happy as you choose to be. Life is tough. Jesus said Blessed are those who persist in times of persecution. Many throughout history have lost their lives for declaring that Jesus is Lord. Billy’s father was barely spared as a missionary in the Congo – he had to go home unexpectedly; the Simba rebels killed everyone on his station, because they wouldn’t say other than that Jesus is Lord. The men were shot, the women and children were marched into the rivers to be eaten by crocodiles as they sang ‘Jesus is very near.’ Billy himself went to preach in various places in Pakistan- where they put a fatwa on him. He had to be smuggled out in the boot of a car. He had just a taste of what ‘our brothers & sisters everywhere’ are going through. We can be dragged down by the inevitables of life. Jesus said ‘in this world you will have trouble but take heart, I […]