The Bethel - Old Trafford Christadelphian Church

God's reaction to people who turn their back on him is always to continue to pursue them. God's desire is for reconciliation and it is the same today as it was for the people He told Ezekiel to go and speak to, even though He knew they wouldn't listen.

Tony encouraged us with the reminder that God is always here for us and our response to what God has done for us is to seek to be more Christlike.

What do we do with our minds to keep them focussed on God? How can we train our minds to ignore the distractions of life around us? What are the capabilities of the mind that God has given us and how important is it and it's health to us? Phil walks us through some practical suggestions to help us train our minds and tap into the mind of God and the mind of Christ. Regular mind training will hone our skills and feeding them the right thing will enable us to be changed and developed by God to have a spirit of power, a spirit of love and of self discipline.

Elijah's adventures, including being fed by ravens, a woman who's oil would not run out and needed her son resurrecting, a sacrifice-off with the prophets of baal, fire from heaven and a bloody massacre can sometimes pass us by with our overfamiliarity with the stories. Tony revisited the stories with fresh eyes, reminding us that these things were big and impressive and miraculous. But also, many of these very ordinary people wouldn't have been aware of their major part in God's big plan. Elijah, we were reminded, was in many ways just like us with the same fears and concerns despite all the amazing situations he had encoutered.

We can find it easy to join in with Jesus' condemnation of the Pharisees and Pete explored the 5 things they were more regularly criticised by Jesus for. From this he drew crucial lessons for us to learn and tangible ways to apply them in our lives. God is after fruit from us but we can't expect it to come over night, we need to be patient.

Digging down into the text of Matthew 7, Mike starts his encouragement with the phrase 'do not judge' and centres the whole passage on the deeper meaning of Jesus igniting our desire to grow closer to God with the knowledge that God's desire is to get closer to us.

How we speak to each other matters. Martyn encouraged us to speak truthfully and also to speak truth whilst at the same time not being insensitive or unkind.

No matter what storms surround us in life, all we need to do is lift our eyes and fix them on Jesus. The words 'Lord Save Me' are the only ones needed to stop us sinking.

The Parable of the sower asks questions of us; what kind of soil am I? In an age where grace is derided the parable also reveals to us the surprising grace of the sower.

If you suffer from anxiety, Malcolm thinks there may be a solution found in the pages of an ancient library of books describing people's encounter with the divine.

Richard challenges what norms and traditions we might be prepared to sacrifice to try to prevent the growing trend of young people leaving church. The statistic is that 'half the children of church members do not attend church by the time they are adults'.

Using the parables from Luke 15 and the life of the Apostle Paul, Richard draws parallels and encouragement for us to line up with God's desires for all people to be saved, expressed in the way we run our community.