Hope For Today

Dear Friends, At this time of year, we can be bombarded with messages via magazines, newspapers, radio and TV telling us “New Year – New You”.  Giving promises of a whole new way of life if we will just follow the latest diet fad or buy a celebrity’s exercise DVD etc.   But when promises of change and trying to be different don’t work we become discouraged and loose hope.   Today I’d like to give you encouragement and hope that change is possible – that there is a new life waiting for each of us if we are willing to embrace it. 14 Whatever we do, it is because Christ's love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for everyone, we also believe that we have all died to the old life we used to live. 15 He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live to please themselves. Instead, they will live to please Christ, who died and was raised for them. 16 So we have stopped evaluating others by what the world thinks about ...

Dear Friends, A few weeks ago I was preparing for preaching and one of the bible passages I was using was from Luke 9:51-56.   James and his brother John were displaying a judgemental attitude and Jesus' response to them grabbed my attention.  Part of what he said was this: "You don't realise what your hearts are like." ( verse 55, NLT). It was true of them then, but it can also be true of me and you.  We can be going about our daily routine, our various responsibilities at home, work and church, unaware of what may really be in our hearts.  We can be blind to what's in our hearts, blind to an unknown sin which we may be harbouring.  In Jeremiah 17:9-10a we read  " 9  The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked.  Who really knows how bad it is?  10  But I, the Lord , search all hearts and examine secret motives." (NLT)  We may be able to deceive others, or deceive ourselves, but we c...

Dear Friends, As a teenager I used to find it amusing when my Mum had to hold whatever she was reading further away from her face in order to see the words clearly.  I don't find it so amusing now that I'm needing to do the same! I've recently found a few grey hairs and the wrinkles on my face are getting more noticeable.  (Although I like to think of them as laughter lines.)  What's also scary is when I sometimes look in the mirror I see my mum's face looking back at me.  When did I begin morphing into my mother?! Society seems obsessed with body image, with being physically fit, with body size and shape and the way we look.  People can spend enormous amounts of money in order to feel good, look good and appear younger than they are.  Spending hours at the gym, perfecting a fake tan, injecting poisons into themselves and even going to the extreme of going under the knife.  All for the sake of trying to slow down the inevitable - the ag...