Notes from talk by @PastorChoco Wilfredo De Jesus Prayer is necessary, but it’s not a crutch not to do anything. You cannot let your budget dictate your faith. You have to trust God that he will meet your needs. We must MOVE to action Ezek 22:30 God’s looking for someone to stand in the gap. Found NOBODY! Who would stand there. A gap = place of danger, vulnerability and danger. These days the gaps are wider. God’s still looking for those who will engage the gap. You must engage your community. See your city as your church. Jesus sat with the lost. People who didn’t look like him. Demon possessed men, Samaritan women. He went to them. He wasn’t afraid. What is sacred is the MESSAGE, not the METHOD. We can use all kinds of methods to reach people. Fear is the absence of faith. Nehemiah is living large, then he asks a question that changes the course of his life: ‘How’s Jerusalem?’ If you are not going to do anything, don’t ask! Nehemiah had to do something. With revelation comes […]
Tag: Bible
STAND IN THE GAP
When Jesus Got Mad @glynbarrett at Ivy Church
Glyn is a great friend doing an amazing work at !Audacious Church in our city and it was an honour to host him at Ivy Church (Kingsway) this morning. Here are my notes on a fabulous talk. Mark 11:15ff ‘My house will be called a house of prayer – but you have made it a den of thieves.’ This is that moment – when Jesus gets mad. When my wife gets mad I get nervous When my mum gets mad I get nervous But here’s where Jesus got mad – because he’s come to the house of God, expecting one thing – gets another. Like when you turn up to a holiday hotel, expecting something fantastic – and get a B & B. When the expectation is high, but it’s terrible when you get it. You buy the car and it breaks down in the first week. May our church, our house, never be a disappointment to Jesus! Church is a house, not a ceremony Royalty expects a ceremony. But Jesus calls this a house – it’s a place you […]
How old are you really?
Next year I’m 50. I’m a grandad to three boys. If you’d described someone like that to me when I was a kid I would have thought you didn’t have your own teeth and were on the way to the boneyard. I genuinely don’t feel ‘nearly 50.’ I’ve tried to eat well (thanks Zoe), go to bed every night forgiving everyone and wake up every day knowing I’m forgiven. I have very little stress in my life even though I’m busy because Jesus told me I don’t need to worry about anything. I try to keep fit by exercising hard 5 days a week, I have a day off. None of that necessarily means I’m going to live forever, and quite honestly I don’t want to because to be with Christ is as Paul says ‘Better by far.’ One day I’ll get a whole new body that’s not subject to decay. But right now this one is, and I’m going to look after it as well as I can – so I am going to go next door now and […]
GROWING – How different people change us into different people. Brad Jersak at Ivy Church Didsbury @bradjersak #Bgbg2
What if you don’t make particular people your target group for your church- but make the Trinity your target group, then God will come, and bring His friends.
TIME TO KICK THE ROOF IN!
In Luke 5 Jesus is in a house teaching, the crowd checking him out was so large inside and out that some friends bringing a paralysed man couldn’t get into the house. No disabled access! No way in, nobody moving to make a way through. It says there was NO WAY TO DO IT. So what did they do? ‘Sorry pal, we’ll have to take you home again?’ No! There was no way so they made a way. They got creative. Dangerous even. They climbed up on the roof and kicked the roof in so they could lower their friend down on a bed in front of Jesus! This appeals to me from ex police days, where one of my favourite jobs was to be ‘Donger man’ on raids. The Donger was what we called that battering ram which provided a useful key for the majority of locked doors with 14 stone behind it. I’m terrible at DIY, but if you want something smashing, I’m your guy. What those guys did to the roof and how Mark’s account says when Jesus saw […]
I nominate YOU for this challenge – what are you going to do?
It started with one person, having water poured all over them. It was because of a disease, 3 letters sum up the disease. That person challenges other people, calls them by name. If and when that person responds, they get water poured all over them too, then they challenge their friends and family and people and people they work with maybe. And it’s like, ‘What are you going to do about this?’
Catch some passion from Andy Hawthorne today.
I get to meet up for breakfast with him most weeks and he’s one of the people who inspires me to GO FOR IT, I don’t want you to miss out on connecting to this passionate, uncompromising and gifted man and catch that fire!
A Theology Of Leadership: Nurture and Protect for Flourishing. @gtomlin Graham Tomlin #LC14 HTB Leadership Conference
The Christian church was born into an era of emperors. You ascended the imperial throne because of seniority, heredity or military glory. Then you could do whatever you liked until unseated by a coup. Before 1949 in Germany Fuhrer just meant Leader. Since the war it doesn’t get used. It’s tainted. Similarly such leaders tainted it for the church. Also for OT – God was king, kings were something to be wary of. For NT – Jesus is only Lord. (Acts 17:7, Rom 10:9, Col 1:18) – HE is the Leader. The head of the church. Supreme. We hear ‘Lead Like Jesus’ – but if that means he’s just an example of a good leadership tip source, that won’t do. He’s no leadership guru, he’s the Lord. BUT God is working for the flourishing of creation. (Eph 1:10) Richard Bauckham ‘God’s secret purpose at work in the whole creation took visible shape in Jesus Christ.’ God’s care for creation is exercised indirectly; he chooses a part for the good of all. He chooses […]
Michael Frost at New Thing Gathering #exponential – Aslan on the move!
Michael Frost at New Thing Gathering #exponential Only one Australian has ever won the Nobel prize for literature; Patrick White A brutal, critical hater of the church in his biography he wrote about how he was with his gay partner of 40 years when he went out on the farm to feed his dogs, He fell on his backside, covered in mud and dogfood he heard a voice say ‘who the hell do you think you are?’ He thought God was speaking to him. So he went to church next week with his partner He went to the Anglican Church and sat at the back, where the Rector was telling people off for entering the jelly bean counting contest and being gamblers. ‘I realised whatever faith I had needed to be a private matter’ And too many churches are putting people like that off or telling them off Rather than being with them. Being their friends I And saying ‘that God who was taking to you, he’s my friend and he wants to be yours too.’ Canada – Another […]
Casting Crowns ‘Set Me Free’ & edit from Passion Of The Christ. #bgbg2
Powerful! This is what Easter means. Nobody took His life, but He lay it down for you and me.