Our God is a big God


I was sat amongst some friends this week and we listened to song called 'You are' by Bradford Church . We spent a few minutes thinking about the song and we were asked what the one thing was that stuck out to us . When listening to this song the words that stuck out to me was ‘You are’. In the song it talks about all the things that God is...

“You are the strength for the those in need , You are the defender of the weak Your everything we need, You are our God”

It can be so easy in our everyday lives to forget how big God is ! , We can forget that God is interested in the small things in our lives as well as the big. God is all the things above and so much more . I was challenged to try to include God in all parts of my life not just the big things.

Do we truly understand where God is or do we put Him in a box and see Him where we want Him to be. It is easy to see that God is there when we worship or when we sometimes pray, but do we see God when people are hurting or struggling? Let us show others that actually we see God in the smallest things like a baby smile or a hug to someone in need. Where will you acknowledge God this week and where are you going to take Him over the next few days?

Emily Swinburne / Richard Dawson

Sold out for the Gospel or Selling it?

When you become a Christian, you’ve been forgiven for all the things you’ve done wrong, you enter into a relationship with the living God, you’re loved and accepted, you’re destined for heaven. Amazing isn’t it? And I love sharing these truths with young people. I love giving them these gems of hope – telling them they’re loved when they feel like no-one cares about them. Telling them they’re accepted when they feel like they don’t fit in anywhere. Telling them they’re forgiven when they’re possessed by shame for the mistakes they’ve made. But that’s like showing someone half a photograph.

Do we tell them that when you become a Christian, you’re called to take up your cross and follow Jesus? To die to yourself. You’re called to serve others instead of yourself. You’re called to love the people who hate you. To forgive people who hurt you. My fear is we don’t. In making Christianity relevant to consumer culture, have we turned passion, love and community it into a cheap product?

And I find myself the head of this marketing committee. When asked how I changed when I met Jesus, my initial response was to say I became much more confident and happy in myself. I was no longer brought down by what girls said to me at school because I’d found love and acceptance in Jesus. But then I thought, when I met Jesus, I learnt to love the girls that bullied me at school, to try to think of others before myself, to be thankful for the good things in life – why weren’t these my first thoughts?

I fear that we’ve commercialised the gospel. That we’ve taken the radical out of history’s biggest movement. That we’ve religified an event that cut history in two. That instead of being sold out for the gospel, we’re trying to sell the gospel.

So what does it look like for you and me to take up our cross?

If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.
Matthew 16: 24-25

Becci Raine

Why is it that we have a default mechanism of what we think is fair or not?
We are about to start a week of lessons in a couple of schools titled ' It's not fair!'. Even my 6 year old girl and 3 year old boy seem to have the saying on a loop when it comes to what they can or can't have. Now i know for them it is not necessarily about justice, for them it is more about what they want, but in all of us we seem to have a deep rooted feeling of what is wrong and right. Listening, as i do, to radio 5 in the mornings and their discussions, it is plain to see that what one persons justice, is not neccesarily anothers, as we all put our own slant on it, like my kids. One of the things in the Bible that i really love is the fact that when Jesus rose from the dead, he didn't appear to the most obvious of people, he didn't appear to those whom he thought would be the ones he should appear to. In a culture where men were seen as the trusted ones, the important ones, and women the lesser of the sexes, he appeared to Mary and Joanna. How awesome was that, it would have been easier to appear to his disciples first (as they didn't seem to believe the girls), and to most of us, we woudl probably take the easiest option. Thank God that Jesus didn't. In that little bit of the ressurection story, Jesus showed that justice and fairness ooze out of his father in heaven. I might just see how i do today. Richard