Small groups create friendships through conversations, prayers, meals, and studies of Scripture. Friendships emerge as we sit across from each other and talk. It’s hard to pray for someone without becoming involved in their lives. It’s impossible to talk with someone without learning about each other, and it’s tough to study the Scripture with someone and not appreciate God’s work in their life.

One night a lady could not sleep. At midnight she went downstairs and picked up a Bible. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been to church; nor had she ever opened a Bible on her own. When she opened it now, she noticed it was divided into an “old” part and a “new” part. She decided to start with the “new” part, figuring the book may have been updated.

So in the still of the night she sat on her living room floor and began to read Matthew’s gospel. By 3am she was in the middle of John’s gospel and found as she put it, that she had fallen in love with the character of Jesus. “I don’t know what I am doing ” she prayed to God “but I know you are  what I want”

It is uniquely in the Bible that we encounter Jesus. The message of the Bible is not just that help is coming – it has arrived.

God still meets people in such ways

Extract from “The life you always wanted ” John Ortberg

As conditions deteriorated in every way, internees began to openly question their religious faith and the purpose of the church. Some asked Liddell the following directly. What was the point of praying – for food, for comfort, for rescue – when those prayers weren’t being answered? Where was God? Why wasn’t He listening? Also, why had He ‘allowed’ Weihsien to happen in the first place?  Liddell’s beliefs never wavered. ‘His faith grew stronger than ever in such troubled times’ said a friend. ‘He didn’t blame God for the situation we were all in. He believed God was in that situation with us. That was his message and he never stopped preaching it.  He’d say to us all ‘Have Faith’.