Today was an amazing day for us as a church, as well as celebrating the resurrection of Jesus, and hearing from Matthew 14 (which you can find here on the podcast) we also had the joy of hearing testimonies from Bev and Sam as they were baptised.

Today we read the account of Jesus walking on the water in Matthew 14, and Matt pointed out to us that this story is more than just an account of Jesus amazing power but actually the story that the whole bible tells again and again. The story of a God who has come down to stand with us in our mess and lead us through the storms of death and sin to a place of provision and life.

Today Lara shared with us from Matthew 13, looking at how people responded to Jesus and then using His parables to challenge our response to Him also. Through this passage we discovered that Jesus came as an outsider, for the outsiders, to leave no one as an outsider anymore. The invitation is there, how will you respond?

This week Mike shared with us from Matthew 12 where Jesus, after being confronted for not keeping the pharisees rules about Sabbath, says that He is the Lord of the Sabbath. Mike took us back to the Old Testament, to Genesis and Exodus, to discover more about what the Sabbath was supposed to be about. There we discovered that the Sabbath was a place in time where people could encounter God, the life He brings and His provision. This is what we now find in Jesus.

Today Matt shared with us from Matthew 11 which tells us part of the story of John the Baptist and who Jesus says he is. We saw from John's story that many things can affect the way we see and understand ourselves, but also that Jesus is never swayed by those things and His word over us is eternal.

This week we read through Matthew 10 where we discovered that Jesus invites and empowers His followers to share the good news of the Kingdom in both word and power. Matt shared with us his hope and prayer that we would be a church of followers of Jesus like this.

This week Matt shared with us from Matthew 9. There we saw a number of people who encountered Jesus, whom everything changed for because of that encounter, and a number of people who were so close to encountering Him but missed all that He had for them. In Jesus God wants to meet with us and change our world for the better - will you come to Him and encounter Him?

Today Ann-See walked us through the accounts of Jesus miracles and interactions with people in Matthew 8. There we saw Jesus revealed as the Son of God, the one who has power and authority over every realm and all the powers of darkness. In light of this Ann-See invited us again to see Jesus as He is, the Son of God, and to come to Him surrendering to His power and allowing Him to bring the hope, healing and wholeness of the kingdom in our lives too.

This week we read through the final part of Jesus teaching famously called "The sermon on the mount". In this final part we discovered that Jesus, having invited us to walk in and experience kingdom goodness, cares about how that is lived out in our lives because He cares about His church. And so here at the end of the talk we find some teaching that calls us again to allow our hearts to be moulded by the heart of the Father and to live like Him in the here and now.

Having read Matthew 5 last week where we saw that we could never live up to the righteous standard of the law of God, this week we see Jesus pivot in His sermon on the mount and show us that there is one, the Father, in whom the blessing of that kingdom is found and here in Matthew 6 Jesus is inviting us into intimacy with the Father so that the kingdom He loves can take root in our hearts as well.