Manchester Firsts.

Just reading the 4 page pull out in todays Manchester Evening News about the Urban Heroes awards ceremony we attended to celebrate the great work of the Message Trust got me feeling great about the city and hopeful for a fantastic future for people like Steph the overall winner and many more. So here’s a quiz. How many of these statements are true about the city I love to live in? Vegetarianism was founded in Manchester Suffragettes were founded in Manchester The TUC was started in Manchester The First Law of Thermodynamics was discovered in Manchester The world’s first Industrial Estate was built in Manchester The first computer was built in Manchester The first canal was made in Manchester The first Railway was in Manchester Rolls Royce started in Manchester The first submarine was made in Manchester The first British aeroplane was designed and flown in Manchester The first Transatlantic flight was from Manchester, by Mancunians The first permanent professional orchestra was in Manchester Top of the Pops started in Manchester Roget’s Thesaurus started in Manchester (bonus point – what’s […]

Daniel Fast : Consistency Counts

When you pray, when you worship – do you go for GOD?! Surely we want to encounter GOD!? We don’t just want answers – we want the One who is the Answer. We want His face not just his hand. We don’t just pray to meditate and think things through ourselves . Of course we want understanding and revelation and strength and wisdom and answered prayer– but not for their own sake!

Daniel Fast day one: Entering the King’s service!

We’re going through a series on Bible heroes at the moment on Sundays. Yesterday’s focus was on Daniel. If we were going to look for longevity in consistent wisdom in the Bible, I’d probably want to make a case for Daniel. Lots of other guys started out well and finished badly. Or they had a very chequered past and came through at the end. But Daniel had the kind of testimony sometimes people underplay – they feel they have to leave the church maybe and get into drugs or something so they come back having made good, then they’ll really have a testimony. I often counsel teens in church – YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THAT! You can have a story that says, “God has been faithful to me all my life, and he’s helped me live faithfully too.” That is a powerful story! He was just a human being like us, but Daniel’s exemplary character leave him as one of very few people in the Bible who gets 5 stars all the way through his life, one of a […]

Efficient or effective?

We aren’t to waste any more time rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic. The devil wants to distract and diffuse our effectiveness by having to do things which are in the end ineffective and counterproductive, and eventually without vision or hope. Energy is dissipated, power is lost.

KEEP THE MAIN THING THE MAIN THING!