Towards the end of his life John Stott, one of the great church leaders of the 20th century, said this: “I am sometimes asked whether at my age I have any ambitions left. I always now reply, “Yes, my overriding ambition is that I may become a little more like Christ.” God’s purpose is to […]
I wonder what you see as you look at the cross. It was hideous ugly- the “supreme penalty” according to Cicero. And yet throughout Jesus’ ministry he never seems to regard it as a place of shame. Three times in John’s Gospel Jesus uses the same description of the cross- it is the place where […]
In my last couple of posts I have suggested that lockdown is a time for us to see the importance of the inner life. In our sermon series in January we considered Jesus’ invitation to come to Him- and I know a number were struck by the image of drinking deeply of Jesus from John […]
On September 17th 1939 Martyn Lloyd-Jones- two weeks after war was announced- preached on Acts 16:25. Paul and Silas have been flogged and imprisoned in Philippi. And yet we read- “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.” Lloyd-Jones wrote to his wife […]
How do you pray when your soul is overwhelmed with sorrow? Or in the furnace of temptation? We need to know because all of us will experience those things. Recently we concluded a series on prayer in our homegroups. We started with the Lord’s Prayer as Jesus answers his disciples’ request to teach them to […]
We are approaching Good Friday. As we consider the cross of the Lord Jesus we know beyond question that He loves us. “The Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Gal 2:20). “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” (1 John 3:16) Rightly […]
A while back, a friend of mine came up with a pithy tweet. “You’re so vain, you probably think this Psalm is about you.” The character limit didn’t permit an explanation but I am pretty confident that this was an argument that the Psalms, like the rest of Scripture, are first and foremost about Christ […]
When the great theologian Jonathan Edwards was 18 he had a fascinating experience- it may well have been the moment when he became a Christian. He had come across the description of God in 1 Timothy 1:17- the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God. He thought to himself- “how excellent a Being that […]
I spent last week speaking on John 13-21 at the Oak Hall Mountain Bible School in the German Black Forest. It was a busy time- I covered those chapters in eleven sermons and five interactive sessions. However, there was something wonderful about that. Speaking day after day rather than week after week it was more […]
As well as building up to Christmas this is the time of the year when we nostalgically look back on the past twelve months. We had our staff team Christmas lunch a couple of weeks back and reflected back on the past year. I came up with some highlights such as baptisms whilst my colleagues […]