I remember a conversation I had years ago with someone who didn’t believe that God exists. We were standing in a school carpark and this person at one point in the conversation looked around him with his arms wide open and said, “Where is he? I can’t see him. Show me God so I can... Continue Reading →
The Golden Rule (Luke 6:27-36)
A couple of weeks ago we talked about the heart of the Christian message being love: trusting God’s love for us in Jesus and loving others the way Jesus loved us. One way the Bible describes this love is 1 Corinthians 13. We talked about growing in our capacity to love others in 1 Corinthians... Continue Reading →
Missional Listening (Luke 5:1-11)
How well do you receive advice from others? Sometimes we can find it hard to receive advice. We might think that we know what we’re doing, or that we want to work out problems or challenges by ourselves. However, when we are facing a problem we’ve never confronted before, when the challenge seems too overwhelming,... Continue Reading →
Growing in Wisdom, Maturity & Grace (Luke 2:41-52)
I have two pot plants in my office. They are from each of the two groups of young people I’ve had the pleasure of leading through Confirmation in the time I’ve served the Greenock Parish. Each year we buy small plants from a nursery and re-pot them in one of our Confirmation sessions. I then... Continue Reading →
Jesus Serves (Mark 10:35-45)
Most people enjoy going out for a meal. The places we go might can vary from a bakery or fast-food franchise to the local pub or a fancy restaurant depending on our budget, taste and how much time we have. However, all of these have one thing in common: there are people who serve the... Continue Reading →
Unstained Religion (James 1:17-27)
The word ‘religion’ can mean lots of different things. For example, when people say they aren’t religious, it can mean that they don’t attend church services. An increasing number of people talk about being ‘spiritual but not religious’ which can mean that they believe in something but aren’t part of a religious organisation. People can... Continue Reading →
The Way of Love (Ephesians 4:25-5:2)
There are a lot of things we can learn from YouTube. Since it was launched in 2005 it has become the world’s second-biggest search engine behind Google with more than 2.7 billion users every month. If we want to learn how to sew on a button, change a tap washer, or even restore a tractor,... Continue Reading →
The Work of God (John 6:24-35)
One way some people organise themselves in our busy world, or they organise others, is to use ‘To-Do’ lists. These are lists in which people detail all the things that need to get done in a certain time frame. People might make these lists in the order that things need to be accomplished, in order... Continue Reading →
Knowing Christ’s Love (Ephesians 3:14-21)
Australia is a big country. Anyone who has looked at a map of the world will notice the land down under, situated between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, occupying a significant portion of the face of the earth. We are comparable to the sizes of Europe and the USA, and while we are smaller than... Continue Reading →
The Grace of Giving (2 Corinthians 8:7-15)
Every week Australians spend millions of dollars on lottery tickets. Their hope is that they will pick the winning numbers and take home the first prize of many millions of dollars. Have you ever thought about what you would do if you won that amount of money? Would you pay off the mortgage, travel the... Continue Reading →