Preaching with a purpose

Being in denial can be a very cosy place to be, but can be dangerous. Anxiety can come upon you like the flu. You may have your life sorted, be fully trusting in Jesus and yet be afflicted by anxiety. Don't beat yourself up for being anxious. Jesus tells us to cast all our anxieties on him, so he knows we will get them, we are not letting him down by being anxious, it is what we do next that matters, that is to take all our anxieties to him and let him deal with them. When in denial we will never cast our cares on Jesus and will cosily treat the downwards path to Hell. Anxiety is our best friend if it leads us to Jesus.

I am mildly bi-polar. Last week was a bad one. I had lots of anxiety. Usually I am very philosophical about life and not a care worries me. I don't have a lot of money but enjoy managing on what I have. So I am going merrily on through life when, suddenly "WHAM" the anxiety gets me and I have to retire to bed and let the world pass by. My family were great and just let me do my own thing until it lifted. What a stupid useless thing this anxiety is. Feeling like that doesn't do any good at all. But sometimes it comes and knocks me off course. Do you have a problem like this? Can you tell me what you suggest to help?

I've just finished reading this lovely Post-War novel set in Brixham Devon. I know the author and have a great deal of respect for her on a personal level. It's great to see she has published her first novel. You can find it on Feedaread.com. It tells of two young would-be artists, who met in POW camp and their struggle to find a way to gain a living from their art. There is a back wash of country life after the wa,r when things were still difficult and food still rationed. It tells of family struggles and fall outs but mostly of reconciliation and help for one another. Well done Marian it's a masterpiece.

What would Jesus have to say about the events in Boston? We must remember God is not an absentee landlord. He is in control of all things that happen. Evil men who perpetrate these horrors are in league with the Devil, but always ultimately God is in control. Of course we care about those who have died and been injured and our sympathies are with their loved ones, but there is something very important for us to learn from this. Well we do know exactly what Jesus would have said about this event. We find something similar happened in Luke 13. People asked Jesus if the 18 people who died when the tower at Siloam fell were more wicked than other people. Jesus didn’t say that they were not sinners or that it didn’t matter. He said that they were not worse than the rest of us but that we too would die in a similar fashion, if we did not repent of our sin. The main message is that we are all sinners and we need to repent and put our trust in Jesus alone. In another bible story...

Daily the Christian gospel is under attack. From where is this attack coming? From within. What is assumed to be the Christian Church, but no longer is, is breaking down the time honoured doctrines of the faith. Many of us still believe that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone, in Christ alone, but many are relentlessly chipping away at these wonderful doctrines. They say we will offend other "faiths", but the gospel of Jesus is there for all who will believe regardless of their ethnic origins. Jesus says to all who will believe,"Come unto me." It is not the other faiths we have to fear but those modernist infiltrators who have wormed their way into all denominations and chipped away at the foundations of our faith under the guise of making it easier for those outside to feel accepted. We are not in the business of making people feel comfortable in our churches, we should be preaching Jesus crucified which will indeed make people feel uncomfortable....