Teaching from Steve and Michelle Addison from their Follow and Fish Seminar at Ivy Church Manchester WHY should we share about Jesus? COIN: Look at it – it has two sides. There is the Sovereign on one side. The coin is indivisible. Mark 1:17 tells us there’s a command and a promise to every disciple. Follow and Fish. You can’t separate them. You can’t be a follower who doesn’t fish. Has the penny dropped? There are simple ways to connect to people far from God, do that, give them a challenge and disciple them. WHO should we share with? Start with your relational world. People you know. You can draw a map of your relationships, this is very practical -put your name in the middle, circle it. Think of people you’re connected with in your FAMILY. Put their names and connection points down. FRIENDS and NEIGHBOURS Gym class? We want to work with God – ask him who he is already at work with. Pray for about 5 of them for 5 minutes a day – every […]
Tag: Bible
So What If Everyone Just Did Without God?
(My Talk Delivered at Ivy Kingsway This Morning) I sometimes wonder, what would my life have been like if I hadn’t become a Christ follower nearly 30 years ago.It’s a long story and you have already heard it but it started when I opened my mind and opened my Bible, then Jesus Christ showed how real he is, so I opened my life to him and he changed everything. I don’t know whether you’d say you are near to God or far away, but the Bible says ‘Draw near to God and he will draw near to you’ and that’s a promise and that’s what I did. And that’s what He did. And He will do it for anyone here today, so today I want to invite you – like we do all the time round here at Ivy and over 50 people have done it since September – to pray with me to fully give control of your life and come back to God. To receive his love, believe his promises, turn from everything you know to be wrong […]
Work Life Balance? Impossible! Do This Instead
I spoke today to the ‘Ivy Professionals’ Group – a bunch of people who meet to discuss how to get the best out of working for God, whatever they do. They asked me to speak on ‘Work/Life Balance’. Numbers were down, probably effected by the terrible news of terrorist attacks in Paris which leaves us all with a sense of numbness and the need to just reflect, pray and perhaps be with people we love. The people who were there asked me to share my notes on here and I hope they help you too. I have benefitted from a lot of training over the years from the fantastic Franklin Covey organisation and much of what I do has been shaped by their materials. I recommend them 100%. Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has probably been my number one ‘Go back and read again’ leadership book over the last fifteen years. Once of the central concepts is of course the story of the teacher who fills up a glass storm jar, first with 7 Big Rocks, then with […]
A Ring, a Robe and Sandals: How your Father welcomes prodigals!
This video was played at our Ivy services last Sunday morning as part of our Finding Your Way Back To God series. I highly commend the book written by my friends Dave and Jon Ferguson for anyone wondering about God, or trying to help point someone home. Following the message in two of our congregations more than 20 people publicly stood to say they knew they were lost, but now they’re going to make the journey back to the Father’s house. Watch the video, and if you’re ready to come home, the door’s wide open, the party banner has your name on it, and a fat calf looks nervous…. Please let me know if the video’s helped you.
10Minute Podcast – Smile In A Trial (1)
I said today in my talk at Ivy Kingsway, Joy is not a way you feel, it’s a way you think. (The podcast of that talk will be available free shortly on www.ivychurch.org – why not subscribe? And if you listen on iTunes, please give us a review) The reason people miss out on joy is they’re looking for the wrong thing in the wrong places! In this quick encouragement I want you to listen in on how happiness is different than Joy. Grab a cup of what you fancy, then put your feet up and press play above to find out how you can experience joy, even in troubles, temptations and tests.
Ugly Duckling – Get Ready To Fly
I used to always sing this to the kids at bath time. I loved it whether or not they did! As I write the talk now for this coming Sunday at Ivy Church I finish up thinking about our living out our potential. But if we think about our potential as only being for this life, we miss out so much of what God has prepared for us. The Bible says about Jesus, ‘When we see Him, we will know Him,’ (How?) ‘Because we’ll be like Him.’ We live as citizens of heaven. This world is not our home, we don’t always fit in. Some days more than others we feel that don’t we? But our Christian hope is that one day soon, we’ll stand before Him. We would be ashamed of our ‘grubbiness’ as we focus on ourselves, until he says, ‘Look at who I have you!’ The perishable will be clothed with the imperishable. We’ll never waddle again, but soar!
Want To Grow A Great Church? Do Nothing!
The Bible says if you want a great church – do nothing! The Bible really says that. We are in a series at Ivy right now called the Summer of Joy, going through the New Testament letter Paul wrote to the Philippians. As I continued to study it, something he wrote to that church (which we learn later had false teachers coming from the outside and fall-outs on the inside) jumped right out at me. What you have to do, to build a great church, perhaps the best thing you can do if like the people he was writing to you have disunity, dissensions and factions starting to develop – DO NOTHING. It really is! Maybe some of you are really glad I say that because that’s what you want to do. But I don’t mean what you think I mean. Maybe some of you Type As are mad now, and you think that can’t be in the Bible. But it is. The Bible says if you want a great church, Do Nothing. Don’t believe me? Read it for yourself. […]
Good Questions (2) Who is Good?
Your Bible might headline the meeting in Mark 10 as the rich young man, he’s also referred to as ‘The Rich Young Ruler’. He is everything our culture aspires to be wrapped up in skin and riding a posh donkey with go-faster stripes, but really he’s a self-satisfied, self-centered seeker. The gospels say he’s rich, but he probably didn’t think of himself as Rich. We never do. Materialism hides well in a heart and keeps you from seeing yourself as rich, however much you have. If someone from my world were to go to the poor parts of the same world – you discover you’re a world apart. In Haiti where I have been a number of times and will visit again next year, if you’re ‘Blanc’ – they see you as a millionaire. Why do we never see ourselves as rich? Because of who we compare ourselves with and come into contact with. We compare up not down, and feel better about ourselves as a result. I’m not as rich as Beyonce, Rooney, lottery winners, or MPs. They should do something! […]
Good Questions (1) What is Good?
Despite what many people in our culture may think, anyone who reads the Bible will soon discover that Christianity is NOT a system for Good people trying to live good lives. When people say, ‘I don’t believe in God or Jesus – but I’m just as much a good Christian as you..’ You can be sure that probably through no fault of their own they either missed the point or were given a description of Christianity that was about religion and rules and quite rightly rejected it. But the REAL gospel – the good news, starts with the bad news that you’re not good. You’re more sinful than you ever dared believe; and more loved than you ever dared hope. Because of the cross of Christ, if we exchange our own messed up record, we get his spotless one. That’s how we end up being ‘counted or reckoned as good.’ Justified, the Bible says. Because of Jesus taking the punishment for my sins, I’m justified – it’s ‘justasifI’d’ never sinned. If that’s all news to you, please get hold of […]
The Joy Paradox – Krish Kandiah at @myivychurch @krishk my notes on a great talk
Everyone on the planet is on a search for joy, but paradoxically most of those searching for it end up with broken lives and disappointment. Bertrand Russell had lots of money, sex and power, yet said ‘The centre of me is always and eternally a terrible pain – a curious wild pain – a searching for something beyond what the world contains.’ Where do you find what he (and everyone else) was looking for? Well CS Lewis said, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” Do you find yourself longing for home? Lonely in a crowd? You were made for more! You were made for joy! Joy that’s not dependent on circumstances. Krish once lived in Albania. He saw an eagle – the national bird – but it was in a cage, slowly disintegrating itself because of being bound in its circumstances. The apostle Paul was not confined by his circumstances. We can learn from him. Paul was in prison when he wrote […]