blog

  • Just a Thought... 13 June

    Tested faith We all enjoy seeing someone win, and the harder the test, the greater the victory! Think of a sports competition, a new world record, or a graduation after many tough exams. All these might be hard to pass or win, but they encourage perseverance and effort, and reward it with honour and satisfaction. So it is for our faith, as we heard on Sunday from Matthew 15:21-28. Jesus tested the great faith of the Canaanite woman and she is commended for it! Her great faith was answered, and her daughter healed. It’s so important that...

  • Just a Thought... 6 June

    Great forgiveness, great love “We love, because he first loved us,” wrote John (1 John 4:19). This summarizes so well what we heard on Sunday morning from Luke 7:36-50. Jerry preached to us about the amazing, extravagant, love that this ‘sinful woman’ showed to Jesus in the house of Simon the Pharisee. Contrary to the expectations of their culture, Jesus did not reject her but praised her for her faith and display of love. The contrast with Simon is stark: he failed to show even basic hospitality to Jesus! The short parable which Jesus...

  • Just a Thought... 30 May

    It’s an astonishing transformation! God takes His enemies and adopts them as His heirs, and He does it at the incalculable cost of the sacrificial death of His only Son! The love for people like us that stands behind the Gospel of grace is breath-taking. Yet not only does He save those who repent and put their faith in Him as Saviour and Lord, He changes our status entirely: Last Sunday morning we considered that new status we have as members of the church, the body of Christ. Thinking briefly about several different astonishing statements used to describe...

  • Just a Thought... 23 May

    Let’s follow him! Matthew 14:13-21 describes for us the amazing miracle that Jesus did, feeding thousands of people in a remote place. It shows us his care and provision for them, even satisfaction for all! It shows us the beautiful character of our Saviour. But, let’s not miss the lesson we can learn from the crowd. This miraculous provision was necessary because thousands of people had basically dropped everything to follow Jesus. “Let’s follow him!” They saw him leaving in a boat, and followed him on foot. “I want to be with...

  • Just a Thought... 16 May

    Church ISN’T a building! We saw last Sunday morning from all over the New Testament that ‘church’ is the gathering of people who trust Jesus as Lord and Saviour. Of course, what we mean by ‘Church’ depends on how we use the word: We may be referring to the Church throughout time, or we may be referring to God’s people in a region e.g. “the Church in Wiltshire”, but normally we mean the gathering of God’s people into a local church – like our church, Emmanuel Chippenham. What ‘being a local church...

  • Just a Thought... 9 May

    We can’t fully understand how it works, but in His sovereignty, God graciously responds in answer to our prayers. Certainly prayer help us to focus and change our own thinking, but also amazingly He changes circumstances and situations. The Lord Jesus told His disciples to pray: “Give us today our daily bread.” (Matthew 6:11) If they didn’t pray that would food come? Sometimes maybe it would and sometimes maybe it wouldn’t. Yet the fact that He told them to ask means they can say thank you when it does! Given that’s how the...

  • Just a Thought... 2 May

    Unless they’ve been through some sad catastrophic upheaval, most young people’s experience of the world is fairly limited. Only as we grow up do we start to discover that we live in an immensely complex world in which everyone has a different opinion and experience. Preparations for the coming coronation weekend for King Charles III illustrates the point: from issues of security to the importance of history, to reflecting a multiculturalism and the many different faiths of people who make up the United Kingdom of the 21st Century, to preparations for the future with all its anticipated diversity...

  • Just a Thought... 25 April

    In the most graphic way we were reminded last Sunday of the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus: A young man who had become a Christian had asked to be baptised in obedience to the Lord Jesus’ command. It was moving to hear his testimony which included the description: “I tried to fix my brokenness on my own and I couldn't, but Jesus goes 'I'll fix it' and he does". Yet what did he mean? How can ‘dying to myself’ fix me? Surely there’s a basic contradiction? How can it possibly be true...

  • Just a Thought... 18 April

    The lighter mornings and longer days have certainly been a welcome change these last few weeks! Going to and from work or school in the dark is never a pleasant experience. We love to see clearly, it’s much safer doing that because we can make a fuller assessment of what’s going on and where the danger lies. Last Sunday morning we were reminded from John Chapter 9 of a man who had never seen anything, whom Jesus healed: One moment he was struggling with blindness he was born with, the next he could see for the very first...

  • Just a Thought... 4 April

    We wonder the same thing in Easter week every year: “How can people be so fickle?!” At least some of the same crowd that cheered the Lord Jesus into Jerusalem that first Palm Sunday as Luke describes (chapter 19) called for Him to be crucified that first Good Friday (Chapter 23)! What changed in less than a week?! The answer is those people were just like us: We forget…! They’d forgotten what so many of them had heard and seen: His teaching like no-one else could.His making the blind see and enabling the lame to...