Here’s the link to the Sermon: Bovvered?!
Reading: Amos 6
In the sermon we looked at this passage under 4 different headings. As a group take a look at these headings afresh – try not just to regurgitate the sermon 🙂 but go deeper and broader and look at how these thing apply to us today.
Facilities
We’ve been blessed for many years with the use of St Mary’s School, and we hope this will be the case for some time to come, but the elders feel it is right to seek the Lord on the possibility of a permanent building, to enable us to further the work of New Connexions.
Some prayer points for this are:-
Youth
A number within the Church have been challenged by our need to reach the youth of the area.
Some prayer points for this are:-
Please do pray for the work of New Connexions and use these prayer points in Housegroup, Prayer Meetings and personal prayer to specifically seek the Lord on these key points.
How often does a Pastor hear the words, “I want to change but…”
Oswald Chambers says in these few sentences below some straightforward words that many a Pastor would do well to replicate in such situations:
The first thing I must be willing to admit when I begin to examine what controls and dominates me is that I am the one responsible for having yielded myself to whatever it may be.
If I am a slave to myself, I am to blame because somewhere in the past I yielded to myself. Likewise, if I obey God I do so because at some point in my life I yielded myself to Him.
If a child gives in to selfishness, he will find it to be the most enslaving tyranny on earth.
There is no power within the human soul itself that is capable of breaking the bondage of the nature created by yielding. For example, yield for one second to anything in the nature of lust, and although you may hate yourself for having yielded, you become enslaved to that thing. (Remember what lust is— “I must have it now,” whether it is the lust of the flesh or the lust of the mind.) No release or escape from it will ever come from any human power, but only through the power of redemption. You must yield yourself in utter humiliation to the only One who can break the dominating power in your life, namely, the Lord Jesus Christ. “. . . He has anointed Me . . . to proclaim liberty to the captives . . .” (Luke 4:18 and Isaiah 61:1).
When you yield to something, you will soon realise the tremendous control it has over you. Even though you say, “Oh, I can give up that habit whenever I like,” you will know you can’t. You will find that the habit absolutely dominates you because you willingly yielded to it. It is easy to sing, “He will break every fetter,” while at the same time living a life of obvious slavery to yourself. But yielding to Jesus will break every kind of slavery in any person’s life.
We must take responsibility here, who really is your master?
Every now and then, whilst in college, I find myself in a meeting or a conversation where a group of generally friendly, but strident left wing academics will be holding forth about the wonders of the present ‘equality and diversity’ framework in the UK….
When I comment on the damage I feel this agenda is doing to the Western (particularly UK) society I’m often rounded on by all present with something like, “Surely as a Christian you can’t object to this, after all aren’t you lot supposed to be caring and loving and accepting of all?”
On the surface, this looks to be a fair point doesn’t it? And yes I will, absolutely shout from the rooftops that Jesus’ love is to be shown and shared to all. However the experience of the Christian church in the UK is that the very ‘equality and diversity’ framework which is held in such high esteem by the largely extreme left elite and their media circus, is actually constructed and promoted by those with alternative agendas which sit in opposition to Biblical Christianity.
As Christians we need to tackle this with Godly wisdom and compassion, not seeking to be contentious, but standing up for the truth, and speaking the truth in love.
I think Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, summed the situation up well when commenting on a recent case of a Christian woman being disciplined for nothing other than being herself (inoffensively) in the work place. Andrea said “Victoria’s case highlights the risks of the current ‘equality and diversity’ framework. Rather than bringing people together and creating more cohesive workplaces where people can be honest about who they are and build meaningful relationships, ‘political correctness’ means that many workplaces are becoming fragmented, superficial and suspicious. People are being forced to hide their identity and the things that matter most to them.”
