Faith Speaks — Reverend Neil Taylor — Sermon Podcast

Read Galatians 3.10-1

Fighting the good fight of faith is:

• Do I believe that when Jesus died, all my "curse" was lifted so that I could say, "What can mere mortals do to me" (Hebrews 13.6; Romans 8.31–34; Psalm 118.6-7)?

This is the struggle of the everyday Christian life; it is our most important work every day. How we keep our day's activities from becoming works of the law, and how to live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us to redeem us from the curse of legalism.

Read Romans 5.1-8

Trinity Sunday, June 12, 2022

“God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

God’s love poured into your heart is not the same as God’s love proven to your mind. The longest distance in the world is 47cm, or in the old language 18 inches. That is the distance from the head to the heart. That is also the distance from heaven to hell. God’s love poured into your heart is a real heart experience of being loved by God. God’s love proven to your mind is the conclusion of an argument, with or without the sweetness of feeling loved by God in your heart.

Read Acts 2.1-21 & Joel 2.28-32

Pentecost Sunday

The two questions I want to try to answer:

1) What did Joel mean when he predicted this outpouring of God's Spirit before the great and terrible day of the Lord?

2) What is the fuller significance of this event now as we view it from the standpoint of New Testament revelation?

Read Acts 16.16-34

Seventh Sunday of Easter

Anyone can sing “Shine, Jesus, Shine” when life is good when you’ve got money in the bank, when your marriage is strong and when your job is secure, when you love your church, and all is right with the world. If, with Paul and Silas, you can sing praise to God at midnight in jail, then what you’ve got is real. Not only will you discover what you believe in times of trouble, but that’s when the world discovers what you believe.

Read John 5.1-18

Sixth Sunday of Easter

Our Gospel passage today is impressive in what it shows us about Jesus, but it also shows us and gives us pause to think that despite Jesus’ power to heal, our world is still riddled with sin, disease, calamity, and death.

Read John 13.31-35

Fifth Sunday of Easter

The verse that I want to focus on is John 13.34.

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”

This morning we’re going to look at one verse and one question, and that is what’s new about the commandment to love each other?

Read Acts 9.23-43

Fourth Sunday of Easter

One of the most devastating feelings in the Christian life is fatalism, and that is the feeling that this is the way it will be forever and nothing is going to change it.

However, one of the enduring messages of the book of Acts is that this is not true. Jesus Christ is not dead, he is not distant, not silent, not weak, and he is not uninterested in the world and the progress of his mission, and he is defiantly not uninterested in you. Jesus is alive, and what he began to do in his earthly life, he is continuing to do. He is full of surprises for his church, nations, families, and individual people.

Read John 21.15-19

Third Sunday of Easter

On Tuesday morning, the churchwardens and I talked about the year so far, and we got into an excellent conversation about “what initiates church growth? We identified having a professional and informative website helps. Having a presence on social media with good branding helps. Make sure families with children feel welcome, and finally, essential church growth happens, when leaders are feeders—when God’s people step up and take ownership of God’s mission.

This is the central point of Jesus’ conversation with Peter; that the pastoral priority of the church is to lead and feed. When that is a priority in the church's life, growth and new life ensue.

Read Psalm 103.6-18

Easter Sunday

What is Psalm 103 telling us about Easter? We’re richer than we think, we’re more blessed than we know, and we have more than we realise.

We frail, mortal sinners are rich in the mercy of God, and we have found that mercy, or rather, that mercy has found us in the cross of Jesus Christ.

This Easter morning, all that we believe, all that we have,  all that we hope for is found in the cross of Christ and at the empty tomb.

Good Friday, April 15, 2022

It was the single most horrible day in the history of the world. No incident has ever been more tragic, and no future event will ever match it. No surprise attack, no political assassination, no financial collapse, no military invasion, no atomic detonation or nuclear warfare, no cataclysmic act of terrorism, no large-scale famine or disease — can eclipse the darkness of that day. No suffering has ever been so unfitting. No human has ever been so unjustly treated, because no other human has ever been so worthy of praise. No one else has ever lived without sin. No other human has ever been God himself. No horror surpasses what transpired on a hill outside Jerusalem almost two millennia ago, and yet we call it “Good” Friday.