Preaching with a purpose

It's not easy writing a sermon.  It would be easy to write something that related to a passage of scripture but the fact is a sermon should be a message from God to the people of God.  It has to be His message for the particular people you are speaking to.  It doesn't require you to know the people particularly well but it does require you to listen to God.  Most of my best sermons start coming to me when I am in bed.  I have put aside the cares of the day and begun to relax.  Often after about an hour of rehearsing my sermon in bed I will get up and write some of it down.  If I don't do it then I can lose it.  Losing a little sleep does me no harm as I am retired and can catch up in the day if necessary. I am currently preparing a sermon for next week.  It is proving quite difficult.  I am having to tease out the meaning little by little.  I am almost there.  It is on John 17 which is a very special chapter where Jesus is pray...

If you put every effort into your life to be rich and famous or very wealthy, what will you end up with?  A body in a grave, and a soul lost for eternity.  If you put your effort into following God, byt putting your trust in Jesus, you may have very little in this life but in the next you will share the glory of Jesus with Him as He has promised. It is right to put a certain amount of effort into this life but it is the next that really matters.  Where are you putting your effort? You cannot serve God and money.  You will serve one and despise the other.  Money could do with being despised a little more in your life.  You dare not despise God.

Mammon is Fame and fortune, things and status.  The bible says that if we crave for those things we cannot please God.  If you are running after money you will have no time to search for God. In our Bible study this week we were learning that God is beautiful, totally awesome and wonderful, totally good.  Money promises us so much but does not deliver.  It is fickle and can slip through our fingers in a moment.  Do you really want to spend your energies chasing after it when instead you should repent of your sin, and especially the sin of ignoring God and be secure in this wonderful God who will never let you down? I want to have my treasure in heaven where it is safe with Jesus my Saviour.

There are those who preach that if you give lots of money to God he will reward you with still more.  This hardly matches up with what Jesus said about money.  He said,"Do not lay up for yourselves riches on earth where moth and rust corrupt and thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven so that where your treasure is there will your heart be also." We are not here to collect wealth but to glorify God in our lives no matter how much or little we have.   We all have these ideas of how nice it would be to be wealthy but it is not the way to follow Christ.  In Britain I would be considered relatively poor, but I am like a queen in a castle compared to third world people.  I have everything I need plus things I don't even really need.  Do not rush after riches they are false and can leave you in a moment.  Instead seek to gain the perfect peace and forgiveness that can only be found in Jesus.  He is the only true t...

This afternoon I will be going to my writer's group. We are six women from various backgrounds who enjoy writing.  It is great to swap stories and encourage each other to carry on writing.  As with  many people I have a half written novel hidden away in my PC.  It would be nice to finish it.  The lady who runs the group was a County Adviser on Drama in our educational system.  She gives us lots of encouragement. We all need encouragement.

Tuesday is the day I meet with five other ladies to spend some time looking at some subject from the Bible.  We start with a cup of something and lots of general chat, catching up with what has happened since the last time we met.  We share our problems and our joys.  After about 20 minutes I call the meeting to order and we start with a short prayer, asking God to bless our time together and teach us from the Bible. Tonight we read in Acts, Romans and Corinthians about Priscilla and Aquila who were friends of Paul and shared his trade of tent making.  They met in Corinth after Priscilla and Aquila had moved there from Rome as Emperor Claudias had expelled the Jews from Rome. They spent 18 months together there living in the same accommodation. How would you like that to have been you, spending time learning about the christian faith from the great apostle Paul? You could ask him about all those letters he wrote and get him to explain them more fully to you. Don't de...

Although Jesus became the baby at Bethlehem, we should never see Him as a little child in relation to God the Father and the Spirit.  Bethlehem was not a beginning for Jesus as our birth is for us. He is the eternal Son having no beginning and no ending and co-equal with the Father and the Spirit. On the cross He was not an unwilling victim, but He was fulfilling what God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit had planned together before the world began, in order to bring about this costly salvation for His children. Such salvation could not be obtained in any other way, the Sinless One must give His life for the salvation of the lost. This teaching of the cross is to many foolishness and to many a stumbling block and they will coin crass phrases to belittle it, but for those who will believe, it is the pure water of life. I hope reading this blesses you today.

Do you treat the bible as history or allegory?  Take for instance the prophecy of Jonah.  You will no doubt be unsurprised to hear that I treat it as history. However I have made an interesting and important discovery about allegory; in order to get the most out of an allegory you have to treat it as literal.  Do you remember your drama teacher telling you that in order to fully appreciate a play you have to "suspend your disbelief"? If you go to watch Hamlet it is no good saying to yourself,"This man is not called Hamlet at all.  He isn't even in a real castle, and that woman certainly isn't his mother and in the programme notes it says Ophelia has appeared in "Casualty" and "East Enders" so she's much too smart to drown herself." No, when watching this play you have to "suspend your disbelief" and then you will be able to see what Shakespeare had to say about life and tragedy.  And so it is with Jonah.  If you don't do...

Let me tell you why I am a believer in creation by Almighty God.  My parents were creationist and I followed in their footsteps despite all the evolution talk at school.  When I reached the sixth form at school I felt that perhaps the scientists did know a thing or two and I became a theistic evolutionist.  Then I went to university at Cardiff in Wales and went along to the Christian Union and found they had books about the whole subject of creation with reasoned arguments against evolution.  I was delighted to be able to go back to my roots and read up on why there is a strong case for creation. If you believe in God you should think just how mighty He is and then there is no problem in believing He made everything just as written in the Bible.  The atheist needs evolution to try to do away with the need for a God, but even if there had been a Big Bang there would need to have been a creator to set it off. Life is so beautiful in its design, surely this speaks ...

Many years ago I was driving through torrential rain when I came to a place where a small river had burst its banks and was flooding the road.  Nothing too dramatic. I decided I could cope with driving through it.  Halfway through the engine cut out.  I prayed a quick prayer,"Please help me." And immediately the thought came,"Keep pretending to drive."  I turned the ignition on and put the car in gear and was amazed to find the car moving forward and out of the flood.  Many of you will know that you can drive your car forward on the ignition for a short distance, but I had no idea you could do this.  No it wasn't really a miracle, but it was an answer to prayer for which I was very thankful.  I arrived home safely with no damage done to the car.    So what would you say was the greatest miracle? We under-estimate the dreadfulness of sin and its power to keep us separated from God.  The greatest miracle was when Jesus died on the cross ...

Life can get very tough at times and we may be in battles.  Then is the time to hang on to your faith.  I f your trust is in Jesus alone the battles may be severe but the final outcome is certain, victory in Jesus.  And if things are really tough you may not be able to hang on, just ask Him to hang on to you and He will.  You are safe.