Andy B Podcasts and Stuff

Send us Fan Mail

Andy B begins GoDeeper by explaining the idea of a tactical retreat when it comes to the military. He adds that making a tactical retreat is more deliberate than just retreating. 

Andy then gives multiple examples of Jesus making tactical retreats, often to pray, but on a few occasions, he retreated to simply get out of harm’s way. Jesus’ example is obviously helpful to try to imitate.

Andy B points out that there is a time to make a stand and that we only retreat so that we can prepare and/or regroup for said stand. He relates some of the times he has stood, giving some of the costs of standing, and encouraging us to stand when the time comes.

Andy B

Support the show

Keep in Touch with the BerryBunch
www.berrybunch.org

Support Us Online
www.berrybunch.org/supportus

Introduction

In this week’s Marriage Matters, Andy B and Jo do some straight talking about sex in marriage – ‘Let’s get physical’ – focusing on the good stuff and the benefits! 

Andy and Jo affirm the importance of sex, discuss some of the pitfalls and share their ups and downs in their own marriage, pun intended!

The bible talks about sex and so Andy and Jo agree that we should and as usual Andy makes sense of it all with scripture verses:

• Matthew 19:6
• 1 Corinthians 6:18 
• 1 Corinthians 7:5

 You could also check out the celebration of sex in the song of songs!

• Read Song of Songs in the bible. You can do this, for free, at Bible Gateway
• Read ‘The Message of the Song of Songs’ by Tom Gledhill to help you understand this book on sex in the bible – yes in the bible!
• Read ‘Sex, Romance and the Glory of God’ by C.J Mahaney and/ or
• Read ‘Feminine Appeal’ by Carolyn Mahaney
• Check out The Unveiled Wife website, who Andy referred to.
• And finally if this was not enough why not check out Hot, Holy & Humorous by J.Parker

Andy and Jo both reiterate the importance of sex and the benefits within a marriage between one man and one woman, noting the difficulties of more than one wife or husband as shown in the bible!

Sex is part of God’s design for marriage, and it is designed to get better and better, so keep practising!

Sex is so good that Andy B and Jo realised they need to do it justice and plan to come back with Part 2 of sex to get physical again!

Andy and Jo

For a full transcript, listen to the podcast or watch the video, visit our website – https://www.berrybunch.family/marriage-matters-lets-get-physical-s01e017/

For all our Social Links
www.berrybunch.family/allthesocials

Watch Us Online
Vimeo – www.vimeo.com/berrybunchfamily
YouTube –  www.tinyurl.com/YouTubeBBF  

Support Us Online
Patreon - www.patreon.com/BerryBunch
PayPal.me – www.PayPal.Me/BerryBunchfamily

#BerryBunchFamilyFive #MarriageMattersBBF #MarriageMatters #SpeakTruth #KeepItReal #GoDo #RealLife #RealTalk #Marriage #OneFlesh #sex #relationships #intimacy #onelifeliveit #God #HolySpirit #church #Bride #Groom

Keep in Touch with the BerryBunch
www.berrybunch.org

Support Us Online
www.berrybunch.org/supportus

Catch us on Konnect Radio for our weekly show - Family Focus: Sundays, 3 til 6pm

Send us Fan Mail

We’re enjoying the mature garden we’ve inherited with our home. It’s stunning to see all sorts of flowers, bushes and wildlife taking shelter in the various places that such a garden creates. Our house sits in ¼ acre, so there is plenty of it!

We’ve spent time, recently, mowing the grass, and trimming the hedges  - our home is almost completely hedged in by hedges, which we love!

We’ve been blessed by the garden, and the hedges. But, with the changing of the seasons, it is all growing quite rapidly.

That growth is a good sign of health in the vegetation, although it also means we have to get out the mower and hedge trimmer to keep it all under control.

One of those bushes, however, is sitting untouched by us. When you see all the neatly trimmed hedges around it, that mess stands out even more! Because, you see, this particular bush is also home to a pair of goldfinches and their nest.

We watched them busily building it, and now Mrs Goldfinch is sitting in there waiting for those eggs to hatch.

It’s amazing!

In life we can see mess in someone’s life, but that mess can be a really good sign of growth. So, let’s not mistake mess, for something bad. It could, just as easily, be due to growth.

Just a thought…

Andy B

Support the show

Keep in Touch with the BerryBunch
www.berrybunch.org

Support Us Online
www.berrybunch.org/supportus

Send us Fan Mail

In the garden, to one side of our home, sits a bush. It has the most stunning, beautiful, purple flowers, that literally can take your breath away, such is the colour. But that’s only half the story. Because the other half of this same bush is looking rather barren and dead.

In our lives we often need pruning to keep us looking at our best – like having a hair cut. It keeps us looking tidier, and more presentable.

In our spiritual lives, if we are having a relationship with Jesus Christ, then we will be constantly growing too. But, with growth, there is a need for pruning.

Just like the bush in our garden that needs a good prune to help it have a chance of doing what it should do, we need that same attention in our lives.

Is there an area of your life that God is wanting top prune? Perhaps a former living part that has simply had it’s time, and now needs pruning away so God can help something even more beautiful grow in it’s place? Much like cutting dead ‘heads’ from a bush, we can feed things that are no longer working as they should.

Just a thought…

Andy B

Support the show

Keep in Touch with the BerryBunch
www.berrybunch.org

Support Us Online
www.berrybunch.org/supportus

Send us Fan Mail

Holidays. From the south of France to Alaska, from Venezuala to New Zealand, people like holidays, and we all need downtime, one way or another,  to help recharge those batteries so we can serve God better.

Do you see your holiday as time for you? Or do see holiday as an opportunity to give to God in a different way?

If you are able to enjoy some annual leave, remember that the skill and health that God gave you – that enables you to have a job – is the very reason you are entitled to some time away from that same job.

The bible talks about tithing in the old testament, and this is a great starting place when we consider our giving through the focus of the New Testament. But our money is just as valuable to God as our time. Perhaps, in some ways, our time is even more valuable than any physical things we can bring to God, because our time is influenced by our heart, and our heart is what God loves more than anything else we can bring.

So, do you see your time as your time, or as time that God has blessed you with?

Is God, perhaps, asking you to use the time you have available in a different way? Perhaps a way that means you need to sacrifice some of that well earned annual leave and holiday?

Just a thought…

Andy B

Support the show

Keep in Touch with the BerryBunch
www.berrybunch.org

Support Us Online
www.berrybunch.org/supportus

Send us Fan Mail

Andy B unpacks this week’s theme by first defining what we mean by the expression: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always got.”

He further explains taking risks with examples of stepping out in faith from his own life. In addition, he gives an example from Bear Grylls climbing Mount Everest. 

Andy B also looks at some of the risks Benaiah, a character from the Bible who oversaw King David’s bodyguard, took during his life. Benaiah is one of Andy B’s favourite characters from the bible.

Andy B

Support the show

Keep in Touch with the BerryBunch
www.berrybunch.org

Support Us Online
www.berrybunch.org/supportus

Introduction

In this week’s Marriage Matters, Andy B and Jo talk about holidays and resting, whether you go abroad, travel far and wide or have a staycation or whether you take time off to celebrate a special occasion or simply make the most of the Bank Holiday weekend. Whatever you do, wherever you go and whoever you go with, Andy and Jo ask what is your heart for these holidays, what are you doing it for and will your marriage benefit?

Andy and Jo affirm the importance of rest but interestingly this week they find no holidays or bible passages about holidays specifically in the bible, but they do find celebrations. And let’s face it Jesus’ first miracle is to change water into wine, so clearly God wants us to ‘let our hair down’! 

The bible tells us to rest and gives many examples of celebrations

• Check out Genesis 1 – when God rested on the seventh day 
• Check out when Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding celebration in John 2

You could also check out other celebrations throughout the bible!

• Don’t live for the weekend, your days off or holidays
• What’s your heart for holidays – good or bad? Healthy Heart, Healthy Holiday!
• Watch a holiday disaster film together, like RV with Robin Williams  to help you put holidays in perspective!

Andy and Jo both reiterate the importance of rest and the benefits of holidays and advise us to work out the differences between you in marriage beforehand, so that you choose the right holiday for you both. And giving, like everything in life prayerful consideration how you use your time for God.

Andy asks us to think about our motivation behind holidays – are our motives pure? It’s good to rest and to holiday together, but don’t build a sun tans, build memories!

Andy and Jo

Keep in Touch with the BerryBunch
www.berrybunch.org

Support Us Online
www.berrybunch.org/supportus

Catch us on Konnect Radio for our weekly show - Family Focus: Sundays, 3 til 6pm

Send us Fan Mail

Whenever Jo needs to be in the office for just a few hours I take the opportunity to take her in. We get some time together, and I can get some shopping done. With 5 of us in the house, there’s always more food shopping to be done!

As a family we’ve been so blessed by two gifts of money, from two very different people, who have wanted to partner with us in what we’re doing. This has been super encouraging, and blow us away – how God speaks to others about what we’re doing, and seeing the action of that relationship they have, themselves with God, responding to a need we’ve prayed about with God.

I do so love God’s family!

One of those gifts was money to buy a camera for our filming. We’ve used 
web cams, then mobile phones, to film what we do. And, now, we have a proper camera for the job. It’s outstanding, and had been something we’d prayed about for less than a day after we felt a burden to pray for it. The gift giver had a burden to help us with this, even before we had a burden to ask God for it.

The other gift was to partner with us in order to purchase some branded t-shirts. We’d prayed about this a long time ago. Like, many, many months ago. We knew there was no hope of us being able to fund this ourselves, so we simply prayed and left it with God. It was an enormous boost to our morale to have the message, and then the money, to enable us to improve this element of our ministry.

God is good and faithful. So, I can say this – if God has given you something to do, do it with all your heart and trust that God will supply you with everything you will need. It is not, however, going to happen according to your schedule, but God’s!

Just a thought…

Andy B

Support the show

Keep in Touch with the BerryBunch
www.berrybunch.org

Support Us Online
www.berrybunch.org/supportus

Send us Fan Mail

Through life things are always changing around us. Whether it’s the latest development in mobile phones or the most recent, progressive opinion on what society should look like, there are always these shifts around us that we need to pay attention and deal with.

Sometimes it is accepting those changes – like getting old. All the plastic surgery in the world can’t increase your lifespan. It has the power to reduce or end it, but never to extend it.

In our relationships with God there is one certainty – God never changes. But, we do! So a wise person will take time, frequently, to ensure they are adapting to the changes in their relationship with God.

We have some trees that started blocking the internet signal we receive via a mast on a wall, that then gets sent to a router so we can have Wi Fi in the house. But, when those trees grew quite a bit, the situation changed and, rather suddenly, we had a dodgy internet connection, with a woeful download speed, an upload speed less helpful than a carrier pigeon, and a quality of signal that was simply dreadful!

All I had to do was put our mobile phone mast 6 fee higher and all was good again.

Is God asking you to take a check on your relationship with Him? For you to readjust your relationship so you can get closer to God. If He doesn’t change, and we do, then it’s always worth checking how we can keep that ability to hear His voice as good as we can possibly make it.

Just a thought…

Andy B

Support the show

Keep in Touch with the BerryBunch
www.berrybunch.org

Support Us Online
www.berrybunch.org/supportus

Send us Fan Mail

Feelings come and go. They can be like the changing of the winds at the seaside and, if we let them, they’ll blow us round in circles. Feelings are a great way of measuring our emotions. They act as a thermometer for our body. But, feelings can lie too!

I’ve used this illustration many times, but it is so true: you can eat a pudding, following a huge meal, but then feel ill because you ate too much. And yet, you felt like you had the room to eat it before you began. What happened? You trusted your feelings, and got it wrong because feelings change.

So, it’s really important that when we feel something that is going to leave a changing effect on us, or someone else, that we don’t allow our feelings - our emotions - to guide our actions. Yes, of course, please do listen to your feelings, when they alert you to something. But check those feelings against the word of God – the bible. It is exactly like a plumbline used by builders to ensure a wall is vertical: the bible helps us develop healthily, without leaning one way or the other.
 
God made us with feelings, and to experience all sorts of emotions. But when we allow those feelings to make us lean too far one way, we will fall over! Which is why God tells us to renew our minds every day, so we can start each day with a clean start, and not drag into this day the issues from yesterday.

So be aware of how you feel – your emotions. They can save you from danger. However, they can lead you into danger as quickly as they can alert you to it so use them responsibly, ensuring you measure how you feel against the only certainty we have in this world – a relationship with Jesus Christ, being filled with the Holy Spirit and reading the Bible.

Just a thought…

Andy B

Support the show

Keep in Touch with the BerryBunch
www.berrybunch.org

Support Us Online
www.berrybunch.org/supportus