One person I know read Mark’s gospel not so long ago, and was struck by the fact that Jesus knew He was going to die.  It wasn’t just something out of control that happened to Him.

Perhaps that’s a telling observation.

At Christmas we recite that first nativity story, of our Lord being born.

However, for so many people they never really get beyond the first part of the story…..almost as if for them Jesus never really gets out of the manger!

But the Jesus of the nativity, is the Jesus of the cross, is the Jesus of the resurrection and is the Jesus who will one day return.

All of it happened, and all of it holds true for us……all of the time.

Why not pray for someone this Christmas that they come to understand more of the whole Jesus of the whole gospel?

Yours in Jesus,
Chris

I wonder how often you ask someone to give you their perspective on something about you or your life?

I’ve been struck recently by the fact that even when by God’s grace I think I sense where we’re heading, it’s possible to feel a bit ‘foggy’, like when you feel you see the day-to-day detail but not so much the bigger picture.

And so it’s worth remembering that God can use other Christians to help us gain godly perspective on things.

In Proverbs we read that ‘plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed‘ (Proverbs 15:22, NIV).

Modern life can be very ‘me, me, me’, but let’s make sure we are humbly open to godly, biblical counsel from others where it is to be found…even when it means admitting we might have blind spots!!

And of course, let’s be humble and honest before the Lord Jesus and seek his will in everything we are and everything we do.

Creator of everything is the most sensible approach we can have.

That’s why it’s been so good to focus on prayer at this time of year through the Thy Kingdom Come initiative.

So, whatever your circumstances at the minute, whether in busyness or rest, ‘Be still and know that I am God’, as well.

Yours in Jesus
Chris

I wonder how you cope with failure??

My feeling is that in this country we don’t deal with it very well (although I don’t know enough about other cultures to compare).

It feels to me like times of failure are so often dealt with by acting as if they haven’t really happened and just moving on to the next thing, or by blaming other people or other things.

The honest admission by someone that they totally fell short of what was needed feels so few and far between.

Jesus’ first disciples didn’t always get it right; sometimes they failed, and spectacularly.

Think of Simon Peter. Even before he denied his Master, Jesus knew what was coming – and yet Jesus prayed for him in advance: ‘Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back , strengthen your brothers.’ Luke 22:31-32 (NIV).

With Jesus, our failures are nothing to fear.

He knew our weaknesses when we first came to Him.

Of course, our failures are certainly not to be celebrated either, but when we know God’s grace and love we don’t need to pretend or blame others when we mess things up.

Yours in Jesus,
Chris Collins

I wonder if you’ve ever had the experience of tidying a room and it taking far longer than you planned.

Why? Well because as you went through all of your stuff, you kept finding things that you’d forgotten existed and so you spent time looking at them.

Perhaps you stumbled across an old diary or book of photos that you’d forgotten you had.

Whilst it might feel frustrating that it makes the task longer, I imagine there’s a chance you were glad to have been reminded of such half-forgotten memories.

In my own walk with Jesus, I’ve realised the value of spending time looking at the foundational truths of my Christian status which in the busyness and pressure of everyday life might become obscured.

In Christ, God gives us eternal life. He forgives us our sins. He makes us part of his family. He gives us his everlasting love. He gives us his Holy Spirit to live within us and give us new life.

Spend time with the big gospel truths; dwell on them, because God wants Christians to know their status.

As Ephesians 3: 19 shows us, God’s desire is that in Christ we ‘know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.’

Our memory verses for the summer are taken from Psalm 139.

In the opening verse of that Psalm David says ‘O LORD, you have searched me and you know me’ (NIV), before going into further detail about how God knows him inside-out.

However, at the end of the Psalm David asks God to ‘See if there is any offensive way in me,’ (verse 24, NIV).

So which is it? Does God know us completely already or do we have to invite Him in to discover what’s going on deep inside us?? Well, of course, God does know us totally.

And therefore David asking God to search him surely has to do with David’s desire for self-knowledge – that God would show David the things that need to change.

Hopefully this summer offers opportunity for some rest and reflection, and I hope you will take some time both to ponder God’s love for you in Christ as well as invite Him to show you the things about yourself He wants to change.

Not so that you might despair, but so that going forward you might experience more of the life in all its fullness which Jesus spoke of.

The beginning of June is when most of the Thy Kingdom Come prayer initiative falls this year.

As Christians we all know prayer is a good thing, we all know it’s something we should be doing, and yet I think there’s something mysterious about it which perhaps we don’t often think about.

You see if God is an all-powerful God, as we believe, then why does He want us to ask Him to accomplish things, why doesn’t He just accomplish them anyhow??

After all, Jesus tells his disciples in Matthew 6:8 that ‘your Father knows what you need before you ask Him’ (NIV).

At one level, the answer is simply that God has asked us to pray for things and therefore that’s why we do it… we do it in obedience to Him even if we don’t fully understand.

But more than that, surely it is to increase our dependence upon Him, to acknowledge before Him that on our own we can do literally nothing for Christ’s Kingdom….and of course to deepen our relationship with Him.

For Christians do not pray to a God who is distant or disinterested, but One whose children address Him as ‘Abba, Father,’ (as we see in our Memory verse this month. Galatians 4:6 NIV.)

Yours in Jesus
Chris

There’s an old hymn that begins ‘Tell me the old, old story, Of unseen things above, Of Jesus and His glory, Of Jesus and His love’.

At Eastertime the ‘old, old story’ is re-told at churches around the world, as the accounts of Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection are shared once more, and Christians celebrate Jesus winning redemption for us through all He did.

It all happened nearly 2,000 years ago and so it certainly is old, and yet even in 2019AD this ‘old, old story’ remains the message that can save.

Perhaps the modern world feels like a confusing place where you feel you can barely keep up, but at heart the needs are the same – the need for forgiveness, adoption, reconciliation and new life from God.

So don’t be afraid to share the ‘old, old story’ – it is as relevant as it ever was.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15: 3-4: ‘what I received I passed on to you as of first import ance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures….’ (NIV).

This Eastertime and always, celebrate the ‘old, old story’.

Yours in Jesus
Chris Collins

(Katherine Hanky wrote the lyrics in 1866, George Washington Doane wrote the music.)

Our Lent devotional groups are based on the parables of Jesus, with a focus on parables which are perhaps lesser known or less readily recalled by Christians.

One of these was the so-called parable of the unmerciful servant in Matthew chapter 18.

Jesus uses this parable to show how the forgiveness God gives to people is incomparably greater than whatever forgiveness they might be asked to give to someone else.

In the parable a man owes his master 10,000 talents… a figure which doesn’t mean much to us today, but when converted into our money is at least £3 billion.

In the story this enormous amount represents what we owe God because of our sin.

And yet…through the death of Jesus he wipes out the debt completely!!

In the letter to the Ephesians Paul says ‘In Him we have redemption through his blood, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that He lavished on us’. (1:7, NIV).

This Easter, spend time thinking about just how big a debt every person owes to our perfectly holy God, and just how huge his love for human beings is in offering to wipe that debt out completely through the cross.

Yours in Jesus Christ
Chris Collins

At a recent meeting with the bishop of Leicester Martyn Snow, church representatives were encouraged to think about ‘discipleship’.

It’s a word we don’t use much in normal life, if ever, but it’s a regular go-to word in the gospels – the first followers of Jesus (and that’s more than the 12) are often called ‘disciples’.

This word is perhaps difficult to translate but I think the combination ‘learner-follower’ is good. And that means obedience to the teaching of the Lord Jesus……but more than that it means committing ourselves to Him personally, wherever He leads us, because He is alive today.

In Matthew 28:19 (commonly known as the ‘great commission’) Jesus’ early followers are told to ‘go and make disciples of all nations’ (NIV). That’s the language Jesus uses about anyone who will put their faith in Him, wherever they are in the world – they will be disciples…..learner- followers of Jesus.

The question for us is whether we will take hold of that title and run with it this 2019 and beyond.

Yours in Christ
Rev Chris Collins

‘O come O come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear’.

This is my favourite carol (although I know some might want to say it’s technically an Advent hymn not a carol!). The reason (aside from the beautiful melody) is that of all the songs that churches sing during Advent and Christmas, this is the only one which seems to me to have a sense of desperation about it. The desperation that feels something needs to happen in order to sort us all out, something needs to happen to restore what the human race has lost, something needs to happen to bring us home to God, something needs to happen to free us from the trap we’ve fallen into.

Christmas is about Jesus coming so that all of that could happen. No more desperation, but instead godly freedom, fulfilment and life.

Praise the Lord this Christmas, because ‘the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work’ – and that means the cycle of desperation is broken for all who trust in Him’

Yours in Christ
Revd. Chris Collins