A Daring faith includes daring to commit.  Daring to give ourselves completely to God.  In Romans 6:13, Paul describes it as giving every part of ourselves to God.   Everything.  We don’t hold anything back.

 

This includes the most important commitments in our lives:

worship,

fellowship,

discipleship,

ministry, and

mission.

 

We can strengthen our faith, by uniting with others in worship. 

We can discover our identity and purpose, when we connect with others for fellowship.

To will develop our potential, when we learn with others to grow (discipleship).

We experience significance, when we serve with others in ministry.

We make an eternal difference, when we join others on mission.

Listen now as Pastor Peter unpacks his thoughts.

God tells us many times that this world is not going to last. The universe is winding down, history is moving toward a climax—Jesus Christ is coming again. The Bible has more to say about his second coming, in fact, than it does about his first. How would your life change if you used more of your time, money, and energy on what’s going to last forever?

Listen now as Pierre unpacks his thoughts.

Daring

faith: the key to miracles – includes daring to imagine! God-inspired dreaming

often goes far beyond anything we could imagine! Through God-inspired dreaming,

we learn that: (1) Our imagination shapes our life, (2) Imagining is essential

to living by faith, (3) Great lives are built around great dreams, (4) God’s

dream for our lives is bigger than our dreams, (5) Doubt is the enemy of

imagination, (6) God’s Spirit and God’s Word fuel our imaginations, (7) Growing

our character will clarify our vision, and (8) If a dream is from God, it will

be connected somehow to His church and plan for the world.

Listen now as Pastor Peter unpacks his thoughts.

On the first Easter morning when Jesus’ disciples

John and Peter went to the place where Jesus had been buried, they found an

empty tomb and his body gone. When John saw this, he believed in Jesus’

resurrection. God wants us to believe in Jesus. The word “believe” appears 250

times in the New Testament, and God’s people are called “believers.” The

question “Do we dare to believe?” may be the most important question in our

lives. 

Listen now as our Youth Pastor Pierre unpacks his thoughts.

Faith is

multifaceted: it is seeing everything in the world from God’s perspective.

Faith is not desire; it’s not feelings (which often get in the way of faith);

it’s not bargaining with God; and it’s not pretending something untrue is

really true. There is always more than one way of looking at things.

Listen now as Pastor Peter unpacks his thoughts and discusses how seeing things from God’s point of view produces a faith that

dispels fears and unlocks miracles and dreams.

If you had the opportunity to talk with Jesus, for fifteen minutes this morning, and you could make one request of Him, what would your request be …security, money, healing, restoring a relationship?

The disciples got that opportunity at one point. They came to Jesus one day, and they had a request - "Lord, teach us to pray."

It's interesting, that the disciples watched Jesus preach and they watched Him do miracles, but never once did they say - "Lord, teach us to preach", or "Lord, teach us to do miracles". Instead they said - "Teach us how to pray."

In Jesus last words to His disciples, He tells them He’s going to give them His Spirit, and that they will be able to talk with Him through prayer.

Listen now as Pastor Peter unpacks his thoughts.

Since when is prayer practical?

You struggle to make time for prayer, be it early in the morning when you struggle out of bed, especially in the middle of winter, or at any other time during the day or night.

You speak to someone you can’t see, feel or touch. You’re not even sure there is anyone there.

Your mind wanders everywhere other than the things for which you want to pray. You consider it an achievement if your prayers last five minutes. You never see any answer to your prayers or, if you do, it is the opposite of that for which you prayed.

You say to yourself “I can do just as well with my own intellect & the work of my hands. What’s the point of prayer?”

This morning we are going to look at some of these blockages and suggest some ways that prayer, rather than being a chore to be endured, can become something which energizes and stimulates our faith to become more alive.

Good praying!

We baptise those people who confess their faith in Jesus Christ and those children who are brought for baptism and for whose teaching and nourishment in faith their parents and the church takes responsibility.

The Bible is clear about our mission - it’s to help connect people to God, to bring others into God’s family, and to participate in God’s work of “reconciling” people. If Jesus lived at our place he’d want to be doing just that!

Listen now as Pastor Peter unpacks his thoughts.

How do we make a difference with our lives?

We find the answer to that question when we understand that our lives have a purpose and the way that purpose is directed makes a difference.

A former president of the United States once said that having a mission matters and that we should - "choose as your mission in life to choose a mission that makes a difference"

The Bible is clear about our mission - it’s to help connect people to God, to bring others into God’s family, to participate in God’s work of “reconciling” people. For that mission, our motive is love, our message is good news and our method is to live it and share it. There are some practical tools to help us in the task. We can pray for opportunities; we can build bridges to people by listening and caring and we can intentionally invite people to join us in the ministries and mission of Church in the Marketplace.

Listen now as Pastor Peter unpacks his thoughts.

Following Jesus has never been an easy thing to do. These days, believing in what God says over and above the new normal that society is pushing, well, it’s not an easy thing. Christians these days are derided as bigots and conservatives, when, for example, they stand up for “traditional marriage” (as though there is any other sort of marriage!).

And on top of the pressures of an increasingly secularized society, there are the pressures that we each face in our own lives.

Work, family, finances, health …there is not a one of us who doesn’t have some things going on in our lives that we would rather be rid of. And in the middle of this walks Jesus. Calling us to follow Him.

Hang on a minute Lord. Just hang on a cottin’ pickin’ minute!! Do you have any idea of all the stuff I have going on in my life?! Follow You?

How am I supposed to do that?

Listen now as Berni unpacks his thoughts.