Preaching with a purpose

I’ve just been watching programmes about the chances of meteors falling and causing devastation, or a mega tsunami devastating Europe and America.   The scientists were proposing bombing a meteor to set it off course.   Man’s efforts are puny against such things.   There is only one disaster to be afraid of and that is the disaster of having to meet God without the protection of the righteousness of Jesus. If you are trusting in Jesus you have nothing to fear and a meteor or tsunami can only send you into His arms in Paradise. God is Almighty and in complete control of the disasters that may strike. We all deserve His wrath, but if we turn to Jesus His wrath is turned away and we experience His love instead.

The Methodist church prides itself on being a broad church, including all manner of opinions.   It sees it as one of its strengths.   For me it became a stretch too far.   I have always known I was at a far end of the scale, whether right or left I would not know. I began life in a country Baptist church and belonged to that church until I was fifty.   At that point I left my first husband for another man and felt unable to continue in that church.   I was shunned by various churches but welcomed by my local Methodist church.   I will always be grateful to them for helping me at a difficult time.   My problem is not with the ordinary members of the churches in my circuit, instead it is the attitude to doctrine and the Bible that filters down from higher up in the denomination. I have pondered staying in the denomination for the sake of the folk in the pews, but I now feel i need to make this break as a warning to them that things are not as they should be and their beliefs are

Do you find yourself agreeing with people when inside you disagree?   Do you try to keep the peace at any price?   Then your conscience is not working properly.   Paul spoke about having a conscience seared by a hot iron.   If you burn your skin it will hurt at the time but later not be sensitive to touch. Your conscience can be like that and stop warning you when you are doing wrong.   It is important for you to stand up for what you believe in.   We all compromise at times, wanting not to upset other people, but there comes a time for action; a time to make ones voice heard; a time to stand by the gospel; a time to put Jesus first.

Before we can have the good news we must have the bad news.   That is why the Bible begins with Genesis.   We have to read the account of Adam and Eve’s behaviour in the Garden of Eden.   God their Creator had placed them in a beautiful place with a great variety of fruit to live on.   He told them they must not eat the fruit from one tree only, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.   So what did they do and what would each one of us have done?   They ate that fruit.   This was not some tiny misdemeanour but wholesale rebellion against God. We all inherited their sin and stood condemned at that moment, but God was not taken aback, He had already made a plan of salvation. Centuries later His Son Jesus was born a human baby at Bethlehem, fully God and fully man. He grew up and taught His followers the way of salvation to be offered to all who would believe. He told Nicodemus 3:14 Just as 31 Moses lifted up the serpent 32 in the wilderness , 33 so must the Son of Man

Some of you who read this will be my friends and colleagues in my local Methodist circuit.   I regret any pain I am causing you, but after much heart searching I feel i am making the right choice in leaving.   I have been with you for sixteen years and was supported by you at a difficult time in my life.   However I consider what I believe, to be undermined by the increasing way in which words and phrases dear to me and underpinning my faith are used to mean something other than   I believe. In this way the gospel is watered down and becomes unrecognisable. This is increasingly the case in all the main denominations.   It has taken me a long time to come to this decision and I have thought long and hard on the consequences.   I have found great blessing in my time as a local preacher and will particularly miss the small congregations who have always received me gladly. I do not know if God is calling me to continue as a preacher, if so He will provide the listeners.   I am con