The Bethel - Old Trafford Christadelphian Church

Christmas is so impressed upon us from such an early time, that we are bombarded with messages of gift-giving and decorations, songs, films and adverts. Tony reminds us what Christmas is all about - Christ - and draws our thoughts to three lessons to take away: make Christ the centre; God calls everyone, and we all get the same gift in Jesus; and lastly - seek God and open our hearts and mind.

Tim explored the darkness in the nativity story. Tim exposes seven points where the darkness is highlighted in the story of Jesus' birth and identifies how the Light of Jesus shone and still shines in the darkness.

Who is the letter to? Unless we dig below the surface, we'll never find out!

What is it that you can bring for someone else? Christ took a small thing and made it big - three nails and a cross - a rudimentary tool that became the biggest redemptive tool the world has seen. God can take hatever your gift or contribution is, even if that is just showing up, and bless it and make it so abundant that many people are blessed by it.

Seemingly small things that Jesus said and did resonated through history. If we allow it, Jesus and God are involved intricately, face-to-face with us in or lives. The small things of today will often, eventually become globally public. Something which should act as encouragement and challenge to us.

On this Rememberance Sunday, Andrew explores the fragility of memory, or perhaps not memory but priorities. Our weekly memorial service not only serves to remind us of the importance of Jesus in our lives, it also allows us to reprioritise. In rekindling the memory of the exodus (the trial imposed on Israel because they kept forgetting), Andrew asks us: do we forget that we are children of God? On our journeys, let’s not forget, let’s not lose sight of all that Jesus has done, and the relationship we have with God.

Manasseh was a king of the Kingdom of Judah. The only son of Hezekiah and his wife Hephzibah, he became king at the age of 12 and reigned for 55 years. He was a very bad King. He very deliberately went against what had been shown to him and taught to him by his own father. Martyn digs deep into the story to see what lesons are hiding within the text for our lives today.

When Jesus said "I am the vine, you are the branches", he was talking about a way of living that ensures we are fully connected all of the time to the source of our faith. David explores the ways we can embody this today.

Trevor beautifully sums-up thoughts and experiences that have been shared over the last four weeks and challenges us as a community to explore what barriers we might be putting up or holding on to that are getting in the way of us being the open, accepting, embracing, gracious and enabling people that we aspire to be as we reflect the love of God.

Have you ever taken your FOT? As a car needs an MOT every year, to keep us on the right path, it is sensible to take a Faith On Test regularly. What is it that you need to wake up to for your faith to be reinforced and challenged so it can grow and become stronger?