Did you know there are only 62 shopping days left until Christmas!

As you sit down to write lists and make plans, let me encourage you to consider participating in the “Operation Christmas Child Shoe Box Appeal.” It’s an opportunity for us to bless those we don’t know, and display the grace and love of God to those we will never meet (except in heaven?).

Flyers are available from the “Info Point” this Sunday, so please pick one up and consider reaching out and giving in this way, to bless children much less privileged than us.

Our next LIFE Discipleship evening is on Sunday 2nd November.

The second part of the audio material from Michael Ramsden (to help stimulate our conversation on that evening) is available here.

The article to read is here.

Sunday 2nd November @ John & Sarah’s House. Kick-off 8pm

This coming Sunday evening is the next Church Prayer Meeting; an opportunity for us to gather for a short while to pray for God’s grace upon us as we seek to represent him to a watching world. It’s an important aspect of our life together as a church.

To encourage your faith and to whet your appetite to join us to pray for our church and the proclamation of the gospel in our city, here are a few quotes for you to meditate on…

Wayne Grudem: “Prayer is personal communication from us to God.”

John Bunyan: “Prayer is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart or soul to God, through Christ, in the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit, for such things as God has promised, or according to the Word of God, for the good of the church, with submission in faith to the will of God.”

D.A Carson: “The Bible insists that we pray, urges us to pray, gives us examples of prayer. Something has gone wrong in our reasoning if our reasoning leads us away from prayer; something is amiss in our theology if our theology becomes a disincentive to pray.”

Graeme Goldsworthy: “Prayer is not trying to persuade God to do something he otherwise would not do. It is our being caught up in the purposes of God and the expression of this privilege as his dear children who know him as Father…Prayer is not the bending of God’s will to ours, but his conforming our will to his…Prayer is a truly human response to divine revelation and action.”

R.C Sproul: “The Scriptures teach both the sovereign foreordination of God and the efficacy of prayer. The two are not inconsistent with one another, for God ordains the means as well as the ends for his divine purposes. Prayer is a means God uses to bring about His sovereign will to pass.”

Donald Whitney: “When our awareness of the greatness of God and the gospel is dim, our prayer lives will be small. The less we think of the nature and character of God, and the less we think of what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross, the less we want to pray. But, when I think of what Christ has saved me from, when I recall the shame he endured so willingly for my sake, when I remember all that salvation means, prayer is not hard!”

Sunday 19th October 2008 @ Peter & June’s house. Kick-off 7pm!

Following on from last Sunday’s “Reason For God Guest Sunday” where we explored answers to the question: “There can’t just be one true religion, can there?” Here’s Joshua Harris…

Our next Reason for God Guest Sunday is Sunday 16th November 2008.

This coming Sunday evening is the next of our LIFE discipleship for all the 18-30’s among us. This week, we will be taking a look at the topic of apologetics, so that each of us might always be “…prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” (1 Peter 3:15)

To help us in that endeavour, we want to enlist the help of Michael Ramsden.

Michael Ramsden directs the RZIM Zacharias Trust, the european branch of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. He holds a law degree from the University of Hull and a doctorate in law and economics from the University of Sheffield. As Diretor of Zacahrias Trust, Michael works as an apologist and evangelist, travelling extensively in the UK and internationally, speaking on university campuses and to church and civic organisations.

We are going to be discussing the first of his messages in a two-part series he preached at Covenant Life Church, in Maryland, USA.

In these rich messages, Ramsden demonstrates with practical examples that apologetics is not a specialist discipline for the select few, but that thorugh conversational apologetics, any and all Christians can learn to communicate the gospel of grace in all its simplicity, profundity and life-changing truth.

Please download and listen to the first part of the message by Sunday evening. It is available here.

Sunday 19th October 2008 @ John & Sarah’s house. Kick-off 8pm!

Each year we have the opportunity to take time to reflect on, and celebrate the grace and work of God through our wider church family. Over the next three Sundays we shall be celebrating our partnership in the gospel with Soveregin Grace Ministries.

This year, we are going to be showing 3 short videos that document some of the ways God has been using Sovereign Grace churches and people to see the gospel going forward in places many of us wont ever visit.

This week (Sunday 21st October) we’ll see our involvement in Germany. Then next Sunday, the gospel going forward in Ethiopia and then finally a video about the future of Sovereign Grace Ministries.

For now, here’s a brief trailer to whet the appetite…