The sauce of life

During the course of this month, the leadership team have two "days out." The first one on Monday 3rd October is to take time out together to listen to what God is saying to us as a church and then, on 19th October, we are gong up to Sheffield to look at whether we want to be supported by St Thomas Philadelphia and their missional communities work for the next few years.

As we meet together and look at possibilities, we want to hear what God is up to, so that we can follow Him in reaching out to our friends and family, neighbours and work colleagues with the love that has been shown to us.

At the heart of this is the HP teaching we are working through up till Christmas - a Heart of Prayer is fundamental to our lives as christians, and also to our church life - we want to be a people who talk and listen to God so that we know what is important. And as Les Norman said when he spoke a few weeks back "It does not have to be this way" because through prayer God intervenes in situations that may seem impossible to us.

As a church we are good at producing food for every occasion and this is part of the HosPitality of God - His open-handed generosity to us. We want to reflect this in our lives; demonstrating to the people around us what God gives us so freely - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control - the "free stuff" that is available to everyone who believes.

And we want to see the Holy Spirit's Power at work through us. A few years ago at the mainstream conference I attended a seminar where a local pastor talked about going into local schools and praying for the young people. He talked about the miracles that happened (so much so that the young people did not want lessons to stop), but reminded us that the biggest miracle is when someone becomes a christian and realises that it is better to follow God than try and be the boss of their own lives. His prayer was to see this happen and anything else that God chose to do too. And all of this happens through the Holy Spirit who is at work in us.

Huw

October 2011