A Call to Action!

When I was 18, I remember having a peculiar fascination with the old Van Morrison and Cliff Richard song 'When the love of God, shines his light on me . . .' Now, I was NO Cliff fan - though all the pretentious teenagers at that time were big fans of Van the Man. It was a great song, but now that I look back - why do we need to sit and wait for God to shine his light on us . . . if we are believers, the light is already within us and it is our job to start to share our light with everyone else . . . . .

On Sunday, Peter challenged us about how we testify about Jesus. How do we share the light with others? Are we up for the job? Do we even think that this is up to us? These are big questions. The next network bible study takes a look at this. If we are the witnesses for Christ - how are we spreading the word? Are we doing a very good job of it? It is hard to look at ourselves in this way but we need to get ourselves ready to LIVE the Christian faith.

RISE is a series of mission events that we are planning for early April 2009 and we hope that as many people involved in the church will get involved. The plans are still being drawn up at present but you can take a look at our progress to date on the RISE site at http://risempc.blogspot.com . If you want to get involved - send me a message.

Its time for action!

Happy new year and all that . . . .

Welcome to 2009!

What will it bring? I clearly remember the start of the millennium and this decade - it seems like only the other day . . . what have you achieved in the last 8 years? Have things worked out? Are you where you expected to be? Are you doing what you thought you would be doing? Traditionally, the new year has been a time to reflect on what you have been doing up to this point. This year, really make your self-reflection count. What do you want to achieve this year?

Maybe this is the year where you take those risks that you always knew in the back of your mind that you need to take. Maybe this is the time where you speak up and tell people the message that they need to hear. Maybe this is the year that you explain why you follow Jesus. Maybe this is the time you show people what the difference of a life with God actually makes.

Make 2009 the year that you grab every opportunity with both hands. Spread the word, gossip the gospel, model God's love in every way possible

Look at the new Year bible study here . . . . . . .

Happy new year and all that . . . . .


Tim

Get your Christmas Presence here!

Woolworths is closing. I cant quite believe it. The home of my favourite pic'n'mix is to disappear from the high street. Market analysts reckon that this wont be the last big shop to go under in the recession. I was talking to an electrician the other day who was telling me that he fully expected to lose his job the week before Christmas as the firm had no more orders on the books in the new year. Things like this always make us think about money. We think about how we should restrict our spending this Christmas . . . just in case. The credit is well and truly crunched.

Why have we developed such a fixation and stress inducing drive on making sure that we buy the right presents? We run around for weeks looking for perfection. Instead, we burn ourselves out so that for the few days we are off work to celebrate the birth of Jesus we are so tired and exhausted that we sleep, sleep, sleep.

Perhaps, as the financial markets are resetting themselves, people will reset their priorities and what is important to them. Perhaps people will stop concentrating on trading presents but will again focus on the presence that God revealed over 2,000 years ago when he sent his son down into the earth. God opened a channel for communication. It was a personal message to humankind - you are so important to me that the best I can do is to send my son to deliver the message and be sacrificed in the process. That is the cost of God's presence with us.

The study this week takes a look at some of the main characters in the Christmas story and gets you to consider some hard questions about where your heart lies this Christmas time.

Read the study here and then have a go at this little computer game!

Happy Christmas!

Tim

I still haven't found what I'm looking for!

How much confidence do you have? Where did you get it from?

The recent credit crunch is a good example of what happens when people loose confidence in property, banks and even goods and services. The markets plummet and they loose value. Sometimes our faith, our confidence in what we believe and what we live for can take a knock to and we need to be able to know what to do when we are taking those knocks. Where can we get our confidence back? How can we press on and make sure that we are living our lives in the way that God intended? These are some of the things that we will be looking at in what will be the last of our bible studies into 'Living in the real World.'

Hopefully, through this series you have started to think about your life as a believer and follower of Christ. Hopefully you have started to ask questions and find answers that will make your witness and the way that you live out your faith better. Bono from U2 sang that 'I still haven't found what I'm looking for' and neither have we. We live in a dark world and we try to bring Christ to this world to make it better - we try to bring the kingdom of God to this world but ultimatley we know that we are not going to get perfection here. What I am looking for - is waiting for me when I die and go to be with Jesus in heaven.

But in the meantime, lets press on . . . keep going and do our best in the hope that many other will also be saved.

The study for this week can be found here

Getting ready for Christmas . . .

A few weeks ago I was reading a book by Rick McKinley called 'This Beautiful Mess'. Rick is Pastor at the Imago Dei Community in Portland, USA. I took look at the church web site and stumbled across one of their initiatives called The Advent Conspiracy.

The idea is that we give less to people who dont really need it so that we give more to people who do. I know that in this time of credit crunch, there is a temptation to do this for selfish reasons - to reduce our outgoings and NOT to pass money on to those who need it. Maybe it can be as simple as spending more time with people or making our presents more personal because we have spent time and effort making them.

Certainly this is something for you to think about as we approach Christmas.

There is a video on youtube you can have a look at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eVqqj1v-ZBU . I also hope to have a copy available on the small group web site in the near future for you to use to inspire others to do the same!

Happy Christmas!

Living life in the real world . . . . .

On Sunday 23rd November the evening service at Muckamore Presbyterian takes a more relaxed format again as we look at some of the issues facing the Christian in the world today. Please come and join us for 7pm!

Shine like stars!

I have to admit that this is one of those verses in the bible that really inspires me. I love the picture that Paul paints in these verses about how we should be responding to God’s Grace. Because God has saved us, regardless of how good or bad we have been, our response should be to live different lives. Lives that act as beacons to others. Lives that shine out amongst the darkness of the rest of the sky.

Get the study here

This week in you network bible study we will be looking at how we should be acting as a witness for others. You might also want to look up a great song on this by Matt Redman called Shine. It is on his most recent album ‘Beautiful News’.

Al Gordon is the co-leader of Worship Central, which is part of the Alpha organisation. In the Worship Central blog for Sept he wrote a bit about this . . . .

Shine Like Stars 13SEP08
Looking around the church at the moment, I see signs of incredible creativity, explosions of art and wonder, but at the same time we often short-change ourselves. We lose out on the vast inheritance we have as children of the Creator.
If it follows that God is the true source of all creativity, the ultimate dreamer , and that we are not just made in the image of our Creator, but also adopted through Christ into his family, reflecting the nature of our Father, then it follows that we should burn with bright, Spirit-fuelled creativity. We should be exploding with art, bringing beauty and calling order out of chaos.
What’s holding us back? I wonder if, on the one hand, we hide ourselves in mediocrity, afraid to share our ideas for fear people will shoot them down. But the opposite is true:
“Whereas material goods are diminished by sharing, the spiritual treasuries of knowledge and beauty, of poetry, music and the rest, by being shared are not diminished but increased.” [Kathleen Raine, The Land Unknown]
We’re called to create in community: just as God involved Adam in the first creation, we who are in Christ, the second Adam, are called to be involved in the new creation: remaking, rethinking and renewing the world around us. We need to encourage a culture that births creativity and does not settle for the status quo.
The second thing that often holds us back is pride. Ego chokes true, God-anointed creativity and leaves us with a hollow shell of what could have been. I love the famous exhortation to humility that US President Ronald Regan had mounted on his desk in the White House: ‘There’s no limit to what you can achieve as long as you don’t mind who gets the credit’.
Let’s push for a cultural shift in our churches towards a season of dangerous, risky, brave creativity, while striving to be clothed in real humility. Let’s shine like stars in the universe as we hold out the word of life. [Phil 2:15]

From Al Gordon’s blog on Worship Central

Have a good week!

Tim