Thought for the Week

How to have a ‘Quiet Time’

    I thought I would pass on the wisdom Giles shared with us on this topic at the weekend away – or at least what I can remember of it.  A ‘quiet time’ is simply time alone with God, reading his word and praying.  It’s not commanded in Scripture, but it’s a good habit

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True Love

True love   This week I heard a story about a woman who wore a locket on a chain around her neck.  She had never been married, so her friends wondered whose picture could be inside.  Was it someone she had loved and lost – perhaps a member of her family, her mother or maybe

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Who wants to be popular?

Well, I confess that I do!  Like most people, I suppose, I want to be liked – and I want our church to be well-thought-of as well.  But as soon as I say it, I realise that great danger lies that way.  What lengths will we go to in order to be liked?   What compromises

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Refugees

“What do you call people who have been driven from their homes with only the clothes on their backs, unsure if they will ever be able to return, and forced to build a new life in a strange place?”  That was the question one news agency was asking in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, that

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I deserve better than this

Why do we grumble?  Or why do we feel sorry for ourselves (which is much the same thing)?  I think grumbling comes from a feeling that “I deserve better than this.”  In other words, it is the fruit of underlying pride in our hearts.  We feel that we are not being treated as we deserve

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Learning Contentment

In the Student Group (Rooted) this term, we have been reading and discussing a book called ‘Respectable Sins’ by Jerry Bridges.  Of course, no sin is ‘respectable’, but the book focuses not on the obvious sins of our culture but on the subtle sins of believers.  It is a good book, but it is also

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Deliver us from evil

It is well known that the Lord Jesus taught his followers – in the Lord’s Prayer – to pray, “Deliver us from evil.”  (It could also be translated, “Deliver us from the evil one”, but it comes to much the same thing since all evil finds its source in the evil one, the devil).  We

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What are you afraid of?

Perhaps you find it hard even to ask the question, thinking to yourself, “What am I not afraid of?” We are afraid of so many things. We can be afraid of what people will think of us, afraid that we won’t know what to say in a social situation, afraid that we’ll fail at something

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I’m Learning (slowly)

It was a delight to catch up with Rico Tice last week while he was in Birmingham speaking at the Spring Convention.  I love his infectious enthusiasm for personal evangelism, for taking every opportunity to speak to people about Christ.  I was won over (again) by his passionate concern for people – he really cares

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Not as planned

How has your week been?  It doesn’t matter whether you are nearer the ‘control freak’ or the ‘chaos theory’ end of the organisational spectrum, the answer to that question will always be, “Not as planned … Not as I expected … Not as I wanted … Not as I hoped”, or something similar.  The reality

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