A big well done to James for his sermon and presentation on Sunday. I may be going mad but does he speed up after the half way point?! Well I've missed the past three weeks due to other commitments but still had no joy finding the sermons on the NCC website so I could catch up - maybe they don't do sermons when I'm not there!! And where did all those new songs come from?!! More golden oldies please!) "And can it be", "How great thou art", "Will your anchor hold" to the sound of a pipe organ without drums!!
And what a blessing it was to see 5 babies being dedicated with all their possibly un-churched relatives - did I see people having to stand around the edge due to lack of chairs? An appropriate sermon and an easy way to get a house full. Maybe we should have a service dedicated to blessing the craft fair or praying for the football team!
Back to James, a break in the middle of a mini series which I have missed so far. A fantastic video presentation that gave a clear message for parenthood. I've been banging on about this for I don't know how long - The Sun newspaper recently ran a story on Baroness Greenfield who just happens to be a leading neuroscientist, saying that "Computer games 'are giving kids dementia'" - and according to James, children today spend on average 52 hours a week in front of a screen (personally I clock up over 100 hours and that hasn't effected me!!).
The essence of the talk was to not sit back and let society bring your kids up. Don't give in to the pressures of advertising etc or give in to the temptation of pursuing a career that takes you away from the joys of life. James quotes from John 10:10b "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (KJ). An "abundant life" - sounds good to me!!
Lets just look at our life for a minute, do we have the work/life balance nearly right? Do we pursue money or do we pursue our family? Are we more worried about work or the state of the planet, then we are about our kids having sex education when they are in primary school - Tower Hamlets schools teach it to 8 year olds - are you bothered? Information or innocents? Lets deprive our kids of their childhood because of teenage pregnancy! WAKE UP!! We can make a difference if we can be bothered. oppps - did I just rant?!
Back to the sermon. Does that mean we are given license to pursue our dreams? I don't think so. When you become a Christian a new part of you comes alive - your spirit. And when you become a Christian God will send His Helper - the Holy Spirit, and "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." Gal:22-23 This is an abundant life - this is all we need for life. We came into this life with nothing and we are taking nothing with us when we leave - except that which is within our heart.
Thank you James for using MY rope analogy!! my version has a long washing line with a length at each end to represent co-eternity with our life somewhere in the middle of this time line. In my example I use a clothes pegs to represent different events in our life ie being born, going to school, getting married, retiring etc. But in terms of the sheer length of the clothes line, our life is a blip! And this is the meaning of life - what we do during this blip will determine what happens after we die. There is no backdoor into heaven.
James sums it up with a useful equation :
Jesus + nothing = Abundant life
Abundant life - Jesus = nothing
Not a difficult equation! You get a very simple choice in life - there are no other loops you need to jump through. As I summed up last week - Prayer, Study the Bible, Fellowship with Jesus followers and you wont go wrong. That is your responsibility.
There is no other reason for life on this planet - eternity is the only reason. What you choose now will effect you for eternity.
And James, did I hear you swear?!!!!!!!
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