The Bethel - Old Trafford Christadelphian Church

Sometimes belief is not easy, sometimes it is a choice. In the story of Abraham, we see a man tortured by the paradox of a promise that is as yet unfulfilled but a life of experiencing a faithful God. God is not late, unconcerned or ignoring Abraham, but while he waits Abraham chooses to believe God and was counted righteous as a result.

There is a lot happening when we think nothing is going on. All our body processes, all that happens to take our world spinning through space around the sun. And this serves to remind us that we are sojurners. Travellers on a journey, that our lives are not permanent. It will not always be comfortable. Progress is sometimes if not often slow. We can, however, always rely on God to provide assistance along the way. He will provide signposts to guide our journey.

Today we ask Jesus to enter in to something that can often be very busy with other concerns.

Malcolm looks at the inkeepers of Bethlehem and how they couldn't find room for Jesus. He challenges us to look at our lives and decide whether we find room for him today.

Christmas is a time of year where we often reduce our 'gift' to a tiny sized Jesus that would fit in a little ring box. What we really should be doing is making Jesus bigger and turning down the rest of the interference that gets in the way. Trevor calls us to make much more of Jesus especially as we enter the Christmas season.

Whenever we look at Biblical characters we get a very compressed view of their lives. More than half of the list in Hebrew 11 were ongoing things that they did and we miss large amounts of time in their lives.

Faith is an everyday thing not just a special occasions event. We should not expect our lives and our experiences to be different from theirs.

God’s universe goes from the absolutely miniscule to the mindbogglingly vast yet we are at the centre of it. This is God’s love.

You cannot know the peace of God unless you know the God of peace

God does not protect the faithful from the pain and suffering which are all around us. In our damaged world we find God right at the centre , sharing with us.

Richard leads us on an imaginative journey through the grief of Jesus, Mary and Martha following the death of Lazarus - finding reassurance and empathy for all of us remembering lost loved ones - and a future in the hope of resurrection.

God doesn't think the way we think, He doesn't see things the way we see things. How often are we guilty of making God 'smaller' than He really is to conform to our perspective. Andrew shared lessons from the approach of the people of Israel, who remembered all the good but not the bad of Egypt. They moaned about what they didn't have as opposed to celebrating the goodness of God all around them. Our warning is to avoid doing the same.