Listening to the Voice of Hope
Lots of positive feedback on our Sunday gatherings.
The conflict Catrina and I had in front of everyone on Sunday morning seems to have provoked a lot of positive debate - you can catch it on the Kerith website if you missed it - in summary there have been a few DIY projects around the house which I've been putting off! There was a bit of a hitch on the wardrobe building front (one of the projects I've been putting off) as I got it out of the box yesterday and found it had come without any instructions - and that's not just my excuse for putting off building it! Anyway, the instructions have been emailed through now so I'm without excuse. Please try and find half an hour this week to sit down with somebody else and try and spend 15 minutes listening to each other without interrupting, reassuring or going off at a tangent. Why not post a comment to let us all know how you got on!
I thought Rachel Hickson was very inspiring on Sunday evening speaking on us having genuine hope. Hopefully it will be up on the website soon, but in summary she gave four steps to hope.
H - Have a God given heart cry of desire with a faith filled expectation of your desire being fulfilled. Be irritated to hope for more.
O - Open new doors. Lev 26:10 says "You will still be eating last year's harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new". Be willing to let go in order to grow.
P - Press through delay. Job 14:7-9 says "At least there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail. Its roots may grow old in the ground and its stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth shoots like a plant." Don't give in to the lies of the devil that it will never happen.
E - Eager expectation. Let the house of God be a house characterised by love which gives the greenhouse effect to allow us to live the life of faith. This ties in well with the what we're looking at in the mornings.
For me I felt she lifted the whole expectation around our summer Hope08 events, believing God for something much bigger than just a week of social action followed by a fun day but for God to do a whole new things amongst us and through us. Please don't forget to come to the prayer meeting at Easthampstead Baptist on Thursday - I'd love us to pack it out and bring an atmosphere of hope to the proceedings.
Have a great week and hope to see you on Thursday evening,
Simon.
The conflict Catrina and I had in front of everyone on Sunday morning seems to have provoked a lot of positive debate - you can catch it on the Kerith website if you missed it - in summary there have been a few DIY projects around the house which I've been putting off! There was a bit of a hitch on the wardrobe building front (one of the projects I've been putting off) as I got it out of the box yesterday and found it had come without any instructions - and that's not just my excuse for putting off building it! Anyway, the instructions have been emailed through now so I'm without excuse. Please try and find half an hour this week to sit down with somebody else and try and spend 15 minutes listening to each other without interrupting, reassuring or going off at a tangent. Why not post a comment to let us all know how you got on!
I thought Rachel Hickson was very inspiring on Sunday evening speaking on us having genuine hope. Hopefully it will be up on the website soon, but in summary she gave four steps to hope.
H - Have a God given heart cry of desire with a faith filled expectation of your desire being fulfilled. Be irritated to hope for more.
O - Open new doors. Lev 26:10 says "You will still be eating last year's harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new". Be willing to let go in order to grow.
P - Press through delay. Job 14:7-9 says "At least there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail. Its roots may grow old in the ground and its stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth shoots like a plant." Don't give in to the lies of the devil that it will never happen.
E - Eager expectation. Let the house of God be a house characterised by love which gives the greenhouse effect to allow us to live the life of faith. This ties in well with the what we're looking at in the mornings.
For me I felt she lifted the whole expectation around our summer Hope08 events, believing God for something much bigger than just a week of social action followed by a fun day but for God to do a whole new things amongst us and through us. Please don't forget to come to the prayer meeting at Easthampstead Baptist on Thursday - I'd love us to pack it out and bring an atmosphere of hope to the proceedings.
Have a great week and hope to see you on Thursday evening,
Simon.