The evening service would have been an interesting listen too, it was, from what I understand, more of a discussion between Andrew Gardner and Chris Drury on questions sent in by people via SMS text message. I always like to see a bit of innovation.

I can, however, comment on the morning service. This week Andrew Gardner looked into the encouraging words of Philippians 4.

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:4-7

Every time I read this passage the words that speaks to me are “do not be anxious about anything”. I am, by nature, a busy worrier and God has spoken to me about it many many times.

Every time I feel myself getting over-busy or over-anxious (the two things often go together) I remind myself of some things.

I help to lead a programme called Celebrate Recovery and one of the things that we say there is that worry is form of not trusting God enough. If we trusted God enough we wouldn’t be anxious, so we need to trust.

A few years back I read a great book by Bill Hybels called Too Busy Not to Pray, the title of the book comes back to me over-and-over again. Trying to do life in my own strength will only result in more frustration, more busyness and more anxiety.

Sometimes I also remember the words of the poem that Andrew mentioned (once he had remembered it):

Said the robin to the sparrow,
“I should really like to know,
Why these anxious human beings
Rush about and worry so.”

Said the sparrow to the robin,
“Friend I think that it must be,
That they have no Heavenly Father,
Such as cares for you and me.”

~~Unknown Author

I’ve recently had conversations with people that have gone along the lines “how come you’ve got it all together”, the simple answer is that I haven’t and I still need reminding, as Andrew put it, to:

• Stop, don’t keep going make space to pray
• Tell God everything – what is happening, what you feel.
• Thanks God for provision, grace, strength and possibilities
• Ask God to change things but…
• Trust His will, His wisdom, His ways.

We do have a Heavenly Father and He does care for us in abundant love grace and patience.

• Encouraging Prayer: Andrew Gardner.

At the end of the service on of our number felt that God wanted them to share these words:

This is what the LORD says: 
"Cursed is the one who trusts in man, 
who depends on flesh for his strength 
and whose heart turns away from the LORD.

He will be like a bush in the wastelands; 
he will not see prosperity when it comes. 
He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, 
in a salt land where no one lives.

"But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, 
whose confidence is in him.

He will be like a tree planted by the water 
that sends out its roots by the stream. 
It does not fear when heat comes; 
its leaves are always green. 
It has no worries in a year of drought 
and never fails to bear fruit."

Jeremiah 17:5-8

I must admit that I’ve never really got my head around the meaning of the Kingdom of Heaven. I’m not saying that I don’t understand it at all, but I’ve always felt that my understanding falls a long way short of what it should be.

My suspicion is that Jesus is looking down on me and feeling a bit like He did with the disciples when he realised that they hadn’t quite got what He was talking about:

One day some parents brought their children to Jesus so he could touch and bless them. But the disciples scolded the parents for bothering him.

When Jesus saw what was happening, he was angry with his disciples. He said to them, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children. I tell you the truth, anyone who doesn’t receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.” Then he took the children in his arms and placed his hands on their heads and blessed them.

Mark 10

So I was really pleased when I heard the Ian was going to try and explain it a bit for those of us who are a little slow on the uptake. It’s a great talk and well worth a listen:

• The Kingdom of Heaven (1) – The Clash of the kingdoms

I particularly liked Ian’s closing thoughts:

• You are a citizen of a different Kingdom.
• God’s Kingdom is where His will reigns.
• Nothing in your life will stop you from being in His Kingdom.
• It’s deep within God’s character to serve.
• Kingdom’s have all got boundaries.
• Live and work for the long-term

Truly words of hope.

There are times when I’m glad I’m not a preacher. That feeling is particularly acute when the subject means that it doesn’t matter what the preacher says someone will hear them wrongly and someone will be offended.

It seems that it doesn’t matter how you tackle certain subjects an adverse reaction is almost guaranteed from someone – and one of those subjects is giving. Giving is where Andrew took us to on Sunday evening.

I’d like to commend Andrew for tackling this tricky subject in a wonderfully gracious and uplifting way. Mention giving and some people will always assume that you are pointing the finger, but I know that nothing could be further from Andrew’s heart. As he explains – giving is about grace, it’s certainly not about law.

I’ll not say any more for fear of walking into my own minefield.

• Laugh while you are giving!

This Sunday was also our annual church picnic. It was really great to see so many people down at the park. Sue did a little round up afterwards and there was definitely over 190 people there and probably a few more.

Church really isn’t about 10:00am on a Sunday morning or 6:30 on a Sunday evening, it’s about being a community together and the picnic is a great example of that. Perhaps we should do more of them? Anyone?

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m the Father to two teenage children, who are fabulous, but there are still times when I find it a challenge to be a Father. Like many people, I suspect, I have the body of a 41 year old, yet in my mind I am still 21, so the responsibility of being a Father isn’t always one that I relish.

Andrew’s challenge to us as Fathers was this: “Seeing is Believing!”

What do our children see?

• Do they see you read the Bible?
• Do they see you pray?
• Do they see you worship God?
• Do they receive God’s love through you?
• Do they see you giving?
• Do they see you serving God and others?

It’s a challenging list.

One of Andrew’s big calls was for Fathers to give their children a hug. After the service my son came up and gave me a big hug, someone commented that it was good to see me putting the sermon into practice, actually I’m very privileged that this is something quite normal in our family.

His conclusion was this: Practise + Consistency = Believability and Credibility.

If you aren’t sure about what it means to have a Father, or your view of Father isn’t what you would like it to be then you should listen to Viv’s sermon on Psalm 139.

Viv isn’t one of these people who is talking out of a life that has been full of roses, she’s got quite a story and this message came right from the heart of who God has made her.

Some of my notes:

• Who am I and how much have I accepted what the world is telling me about who I am?
• There is no “one size fits all spirituality”
• This world is full of vast corporations who know everything about me – but don’t know me.
• You were created and individual – unique. Step outside the target market.
• You are not there to repeat the words that others have given you to say on the stage of life.
• We all need to be taken seriously and God knows thought and is there as your guide.
• He wants to help by listening – “Come let us reason together”
• We all have a persona. We all build an idea of what is acceptable and build ourselves around it.
• We have to have the courage to become the person God made us to be.
• You can’t con God.
• God love me the same today and tomorrow.
• It should be a thrill to know that you are cherish and wonderfully made.

There are certain messages that we need to hear over and over again because they need to seep through the thick exterior that we build to stop ourselves being hurt. But that thick exterior also stops us from feeling and knowing who we are truly meant to be; a knowledge that is born out of understanding who God truly is.

Viv’s message was an eternal one – God loves you as a Father; a loving gracious Father.

Andrew’s message was that we need to model that Godly loving gracious Father to our children day by day. Was there ever a higher calling?

We started off by having the Still Time Band on Saturday evening. It was a great evening with around 150 people gathering together for some Gershwin and some gospel music.

A big thank you to goes out to Mike and the team, I personally received lots of very positive feedback.

The strawberries and cream at the interval and the abundance of flowers from the wedding the day before gave the whole evening a wonderful summer feel.

On Sunday we were joined by Cristi Murgu for both our morning and evening services. Cristi is originally from Romania but currently working as a Pastor in Carnforth.

Cristi used the film Sliding Doors as an way of illustrating the importance of the decisions  that we make. He then looked at the decisions that Blind Bartimaeus and the Samaritan Woman made.

How many choices do we each face every day?

How many of them are truly significant to our future?

It’s a very interesting thought.

As I look back at my own life some of the really significant decisions stand out loud and clear – job, marriage, house, etc. In some of these decisions the leading from God was clear.

Before we lived in the house we live in now we lived in a smaller house not far from here. We had a growing family and knew that we needed something bigger.

We spent some time looking around at the options and couldn’t find anything we could afford, or something we liked. We were looking for an older house with character, and didn’t really want a newer house.

One day we were nosing around the houses on the new estate they were building up the road from us. We looked at one particular house and wondered. We even spoke to the sales person to find out how much it would cost, but neither of us were convinced. It wasn’t an issue because we couldn’t afford it anyway.

One day while Sue was praying she felt a clear prompting from God to go for it, later on she was reading her Bible and again got a clear prompting.

To cut a long story short we went to the sales people and offered them significantly less than they were asking. They smiled politely and said that they would have to speak to Head Office and would get back to us in the next 24 hours. Not expecting any reply, as it was early evening and Head Office would be closed, we went home. Before we could even get home we had received the confirmation we were looking for via the mobile phone and we were moving.

There have been other times when I have wondered whether I have missed out on something wonderful because I wasn’t willing to step out and go for it.

I can be too timid and Bartimaeus stands as a shining example of dogged determination not to miss an opportunity even in the face of opposition. The Samaritan Woman is another example of someone who encountered Jesus in such an amazing way that she wasn’t willing to carry on being the outsider. And that is the fundamental difference, these people met Jesus and He changed everything for them – Bartimaeus no longer blind; the Samaritan Woman no longer an outcast. They took their opportunity.

I was particularly touched by Cristi’s description of the evens of the Romania revolution and his involvement in it. He had choices that day – life and death choices.

What choices are you facing today? Will they be Jesus choices or just choices?

• Sliding Door – Part 1
• Sliding Door – Part 2

Both Andrew and Allan touched on it again this weekend.

Andrew in particular encouraged us to think of ourselves as sons (and daughters) not as slaves.

Romans 8:15 and 16 says this:

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

NIV

This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him!

The Message

God’s Spirit doesn’t make us slaves who are afraid of him. Instead, we become his children and call him our Father. God’s Spirit makes us sure that we are his children.

CEV

I’ve posted a few different versions to try and help us to get the full meaning of what is being said here.

Our position is quite clear – we are not fearful slaves we are children by faith.

Sometimes it’s best just to let the Bible speak for itself and that’s what I’m going to do this week. So that is where I am going to finish other than to leave you with a few questions:

• What is it that you are fearful of?
• What are you going to do about that fear because fearful isn’t where God wants you to be living?
• How can we help you to move from fear to faith?
• How can you celebrate being a child?

It was Pentecost Sunday so we were thinking about the Holy Spirit.

Ian and Andrew both did a great job:

• Make this Pentecost your Pentecost: Ian Higginbotham
• Pentecost Stories: Andrew Gardner

My notes from Ian’s talk:

• Pentecost is an early morning prayer meeting and then they party.
• They met to celebrate one kind of fruit and they get another.
• Pentecost happened in a house – the Holy Spirit can meet us anywhere.
• Everyone of them were declaring the glory of God.
• They must have spilled out into the streets. This seems to happen naturally and certainly didn’t require any planning.
• If God does touch your life – don’t stay in the room – get out there onto the streets.
• The Holy Spirit wants to do through me – not just in me.
• Peter stood up to explain not to preach. He was giving witness to what he had experienced – it wasn’t a debate of logic and reason.
• It was the explanation that broke through into people’s hearts and lives.
• Being cut to the heart was a violent thing. It wasn’t a paper-cut – it was a stab.
• People were told what they needed to do and they did it.
• The message – turn from your sins, turn to God, be baptised and receive the Holy Spirit. A simple yet profoundly eternal message.
• What would you do if you weren’t afraid – what would I do if resources weren’t an issue?
• God gives good gifts.
• It’s rude to leave a box unopened.

The last two points come as an addendum to Ian’s prepared message after he was challenged by God the day before. God is challenging us to open the gifts that He has given us. What gifts have I left unopened? What gifts have you left unopened?

In many ways Andrew’s message was, again, a follow on from Ian’s message. Andrew’s encouragement was to think of the book of Acts as a series of Pentecost stories rather than Pentecost being limited to the events in Acts 2:

• Stories of Purity – Acts 8: Philip preaches the gospel in Samaria and Simon the sorcerer is
  humbled. Titus 3:5 “He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit”.
• Stories of Presence – Acts 10: Peter at Cornelius’s house. Peter tells a gentile the good news. The Holy Spirit came. God looks at you and sees His Spirit.
• Stories of Power – Acts 9: Paul was a rebel. Ananias lays hands on Saul – brother Saul. It’s about His power. 1 Corinthians 2:4: “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power”.
• Stories of Praise – Acts 10:  They were astonished at the praise of God by these gentiles: “For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God.” The Holy Spirit lead naturally to praise.

But that wasn’t everything. Sunday was also the Global Day of Prayer and we took our part. It was great to see people praying throughout the afternoon lifting people and issues to God. I don’t believe that it’s a coincidence that people responded in the evening service afterwards. Personally I was really challenged about how much I love – how much I love my friends, how much I love Preston, how much I love England. It was a challenge that first struck me in David Smith’s sessions a few weeks ago; Sunday afternoon took that challenge deeper.

I know that I don’t have enough love for all of these things but I know that God does.

Finally, a big thank you for the kind comments about these posts and a special thank you to those of you have commented. I’d love to hear more of your own reflections.

For some people I’m sure that a statement like that sounds like complete lunacy, but it’s the truth.

This weekend we have seen another example of God using ordinary people to speak to other ordinary people in extraordinary ways.

We are in the middle of a series titled What would Jesus say… it’s really a non-series where we have asked people to bring a message that they believe God has given them for us.

That doesn’t mean that we are going to get completely different messages in each service because our experience tells us that God has a remarkable way of creating a common theme. This weekend was another example of that; both Mark Sleet and Chris Drury brought messages that encouraged us and challenged us to move into a journey of faith.

Mark Sleet spoke to us about the experience that Peter had when he went walking on the water with Jesus. Chris Drury spoke to us about the example of Abraham.

Both of them were talking about moving out of a place of comfort into a place of adventure – an adventure of faith.

Some of my thoughts from both of them:

• Am I comfortable with living with a fear?
• Where am I in a comfort zone? Am I willing to risk it?
• It isn’t enough to just speak faith. If Peter had just said “tell me to come to you on the water” and not gone when told to “come” he would have been a failure.
• If it’s already within your ability to do it – it’s not faith.
• Abraham didn’t know where God was taking him when he set of – and neither did Peter.
• Peter’s faith was revealed instantaneously – Abraham’s was revealed over decades.
• If Jesus says come – there is nothing to fear, we can step out in faith.
• God is big enough.
• Jesus was there when Peter reached out his hand.
• Faith is an adventure.
• The correct response for both Peter and Abraham was worship.

What thoughts struck you?

It’s taken me a little longer to get the podcasts uploaded from this weekend, but they are there now.

• Isaiah 58 with Chris Drury
• Galatians 5 with Andrew Gardner

We are continuing in our What would Jesus say… series where we are asking people to bring a message to us that they believe God has told them to bring, something from their heart.

Chris and Andrew both bought real heart messages this week.

After looking at Isaiah 58 Chris left us with two thought provoking questions:

• What sort of people are we?
• What does it mean to be the people of God?

In many ways Andrew went on to expand upon these questions by thinking about these words from Galatians 5:16:

So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.

The other thought that occurred to me as I read through Galatians 5 was the word “fruit”. I’ve always read this passage as saying “fruits” plural, but that’s not what it says:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Galatians 5:22-23

We aren’t meant to split them up with each having a different one – they come as a package.

I don’t believe that God gives people random messages, we are there as a people and He wants to speak to us as a people. It’s certainly worth listening to both of these messages.

The message to me personally this weekend was – “Graham live out your peace and stop striving for everything”.

What did God say to you through these messages.

If you struggle to understand what Andrew is trying to do at the end of the service with the pieces of paper a handy guide can be fund here.

We had friends visiting for the weekend and they loved being with us, it was great to see. It can be very enlightening seeing your own church through the eyes of a close friend. It’s easy to take for granted what God has done among you – “thank you Lord”.

As our name suggests we are a part of a movement called the Free Methodist Church. There are a number of church across the UK and each year we get together to hear from God and to consider the way ahead for the coming year. It’s also the place where pastors are appointed to the different churches. It’s a great gathering.

We started the weekend on Friday night with a time of praise, worship and celebration. The building was full of people who had come together from across  the country. David Roller (our Bishop) was the speaker; his message to us was an encouragement to move on and move out (available on the podcast).

On Saturday we had a special guest speaker from KingsGate Community Church in Peterborough, David Smith; again the focus was on growth and movement.

From a personal perspective it was great to hear David’s heart coming through, his heart for the church to reach the local community and on to the nations. Rather than giving us a set of methods David gave us a set of principles. From my perspective principles are always more useful that methods, it’s a bit like the difference between giving someone a fish and teaching them to fish.

David spoke in two sessions How to Start a (Thriving) Church from Nothing and Principles for Church Growth. If you are in a leadership role of any kind you should listen along.

Our speaker for Sunday, following on from Annual Conference, was Richard Taylor; speaking both morning and evening. I can’t really comment on the morning service because we had some technical issue that I was busy sorting out. In the evening Richard told his story and it was a blessing to see people responding. Both services are available on the podcast.

Richard has a wonderful testimony, a story of God’s transforming power. If you are ever in a position where you doubt whether God can really change lives listening to Richards story will make you realise that God can and does.

We are just starting out on this series of posts on Weekend Reflections and we’d love to hear your stories so please leave your comments.

The heart that we are trying to reflect is that of the thankful Samaritan who was healed of leprosy:

Ten Healed of Leprosy

Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus travelled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance 13and called out in a loud voice, "Jesus, Master, have pity on us!"

When he saw them, he said, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were cleansed.

One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.

Jesus asked, "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" Then he said to him, "Rise and go; your faith has made you well."

Luke 17

God is doing things amongst us, and we want to give our thanks to Him by telling some of the story.

I (Graham Chastney) will be the primary writer. In many ways I’m just an ordinary member of the church. I’m not a member of the staff, I’m not a member of the leadership team, I do lead a ministry and I do love the people that God has brought together. So that’s the perspective that I’ll be writing from.

We’d love to hear your stories and reflections too. I can only see and reflect upon a tiny part of what God is doing so we’d love to hear about the things that God is doing in your life. Please feel free to leave us a comment here on the blog, we’d love to be able to include your stories in future posts.