Hope For Today

Dear Friends, During our holiday in Cyprus, Jason suggested we (and the kids) all went paragliding. Now, if you know anything about me, you'll know what my answer was. It was a no brainer. Nuh huh! No way! No how! Brave is not a word I would describe myself. I don't do heights; I don't do fairground attractions; I don't do water slides and I don't do water sports! I prefer to have my feet on terra firma! I was perfectly happy for the rest of the family to do it, whilst I sat on the side-lines watching. However, with gentle persuasion by Jason, I agreed I would do it. Now where did that come from? I can't believe those words came out of my mouth! The heat must have addled my brain because I would never have agreed to it if I was in my right mind. This holiday I've been reading John Ortberg's book "If you want to walk on water you've got to get out of the boat". It was as if God was prompting me to go paragliding. To take m...

Dear Friends, Occasionally after preaching a message on a Sunday morning at church I will have people come up to me and say "I don't know how you can do what you do.  I never could." But the thing is, no-one is more surprised than me that I am standing up preaching to a crowd of people. You see, very few people today know what I was like growing up, but I do, and it's nothing less than miraculous that I am able to stand in front of a group of people sharing God's truths. As a teenager I was painfully, painfully shy.  I had a handful of friends, but was so shy around the rest of my peers that I could hardly open my mouth and I only spoke in class when I was pushed to by one of my teachers. Although I love reading and writing, I found some English subject lessons quite hard-going. In English language we were expected, every so often, to give a 3 minute speech to our fellow class mates. Now, this might as well have been 30 minutes as 3 to me.  I struggled ...