Fiona Bruce MP has this week laid an amendment to the Serious Crime Bill, which makes clear that abortion on the grounds of sex is illegal, and provides an opportunity for the Government to make regulations aimed at combatting the practice. If selected, it will be debated at Report Stage in a few days’ time.

Grace will disagree with our sense of Justice

Grace puts our sin into perspective

Grace looks to restore & not condemn

(EG)

Imagination is not faith. The two are not only different from, but stand in sharp opposition to each other. Imagination projects unreal images out of the mind and seeks to attach reality to them. Faith creates nothing; it simply reckons upon that which is already there. (A.W.Tozer)

Gord Skonik  works for Impact South Sudan, a Christian organisation that’s been involved in the peace and reconciliation process following the recent unrest.

Christian volunteers spend time empowering local churches and offer pastoral training. In one 3-month period, 197 pastors received training, and over 200 churches were planted.

Much of the recent violence has been based around a long history of tribal conflict in South Sudan – mainly between the Dinka and Nuer tribes. Gord and his team have seen huge transformation through the power of God’s love and forgiveness.

I then started reading the Bible and discovered how this God was so amazingly patient and kind towards people who kept doubting and insulting all his care and love for them. I realised that I was just like those people- that I had lived rejecting Christ, the living God, who longed for me to come to him.

So I accepted Jesus as my Lord and asked his Spirit to help me change and be like him.

Fouad  (born in Iraq, son of Arab Communist father)

GO magazine Jan-mar 2015

(Interserve)

One colonel from the Peshmerga, the Kurdish forced battling ISIS in Iraq, approached members of an indigenous Iraqi ministry team to ask them why they were there. He was curious about what motivated the group, putting their lives at risk to supply displaced people with food , clothing, beds medicine & Bibles.

Team members explained that they were demonstrating Christ’s love in  a tangible way, bringing love & peace & goodness to people in need.

A long conversation began about Christ and as a result the colonel bowed & prayed, asking Christ into his life.

He said, ” Today I am the happiest person-I’ve had the privilege of making this decision.

GO Magazine Jan-Mar 2015

(Interserve)

I was about ready to leave the sanctuary of a church in Vancouver, Canada, when they challenged us non-believers to accept Jesus. Right before I put my hand on the door handle, to my surprise, an audible voice called me loudly, “Philip, if you are not saved today, you will never be saved!” I was shocked and I lifted my hand and ran to the front like a little child. That was God’s voice for sure! My spiritual journey began right after that altar call in 1992 when I was 18 years and it has affected me until today.

David found faith when he was 40 years old. Although he and his two brothers had been brought up largely without religion in a family of Lithuanian Jewish heritage, David says he had been “searching for something” all his life.

“I was a typical teen growing up in the 1960s, when everybody was into gurus and meditation,” explains David. He says he then just “forgot about it” until he was making the movie Harry And The Hendersons in the US in 1986.

In the unlikely setting of a bathtub in a hotel room in Seattle, Washington, David’s search for religion began anew.

“I was in the bath, thinking about my late grandfather, with whom I had an extraordinarily close relationship,” says David, referring to his maternal grandfather, famous Fleet Street photographer Jimmy Jarche, who died in 1965 when David was 18.

“I always felt that he was with me as my spiritual guide. I felt him sitting on my shoulder. Then I thought to myself, ‘Why do I believe that and not believe in life after death?’ That got me thinking about the most famous person who they say had a life after death, Jesus.”

It led David to the New Testament of the Bible, and to Paul.

“I chose it because I knew that somebody called Paul actually existed, I knew that he wrote letters, and that they are there for everyone to see,” he added.

David read Paul’s epistle, which says that salvation is offered through faith in Jesus Christ, and had a “road to Damascus” moment when Paul’s words chimed with him.

“By the end of the letter, certainly by the end of the book, I was reading about a way of being and a way of life that I had been looking for all those years,” explains David.

Saint Paul made it clear that faith is no easy state to obtain. “When I read his letters, I saw that we both struggle with faith – it’s not an easy road no matter what religion you are,” he adds.

David joined the Church of England, but attends Christian churches of all denominations, depending on his location. He didn’t get confirmed in the church, though, until three years ago.

“Although I’m a very emotional man, I just can’t have blind faith, I have to find out for myself,” explains David. “It took me that long to say, ‘I fully commit’.”

C. S. Lewis left his childhood Christian faith to spend years as a determined atheist. After finally admitting God existed, Lewis gave in and knelt in prayer to become what he described later as “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

Lewis’s long journey away from, and back to, faith began with his mother’s death from cancer when he was a boy. Disillusioned that God had not healed his mother, Lewis set out on a path toward full-bodied rationalism and atheism.

The road back to faith was cluttered with obstacles Lewis once thought impossible to overcome. His conversion to a robust Christianity required years of intellectual struggle and came only after being convinced that faith was reasonable.

Could you summarize Jesus’ ministry in one sentence? Be careful—your answer will say more about you than it will about him. The Apostle Peter gave a one-sentence summary in Acts 10:38. It’s instructive how he chose to summarize the good news:

You know … how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.

It’s a fascinating account. Peter has recently had a remarkable encounter with God–filled with revelation and mystery–and before he has time to sort it out, he is called upon to share the gospel of the Kingdom to a roomful of people who are completely foreign to him. This passage is pivotal to the growth of the church; it’s the moment when Peter’s experience overwhelmed his theological understanding of the gospel, and it’s when the Holy Spirit sovereignly decided to demolish ethnic walls and renovate the church.

Peter’s response is instructive not only because it gives the essentials of Jesus’ ministry; it provides the essence of our calling as followers of Jesus. Peter was after more than a mere presentation of gospel message; he was out to make disciples. First impressions, as the saying goes, are lasting ones, and I suspect Peter wanted his hearers’ first idea of Christianity to include the notion that they were called to be just like Jesus. The tree will grow from the seed, and Peter sowed the seeds of the divine nature becoming flesh-—not only in Jesus, but also in us.

What kind of tree will grow from the seed we plant? Perhaps we should measure our summary against Peter’s inspired example. He are five points of comparison:

1. Peter’s gospel message includes Father, Son and Holy Spirit working together. (“How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit”) The tree will grow from the seed. Do we present the full picture of God at work in the earth, or limit the image of God to only One Person? Peter’s example is instructive. A “full gospel” requires the presentation of the full Godhead.

2. Peter’s gospel message doesn’t point to heaven as a future event. He paints a picture of heaven and earth linked together through the work of the Holy Spirit, who spans the divide and pours the stuff of heaven into the words and works of Jesus. In one simple sentence, we get to see how “Let-your-Kingdom-come-let-your-will-be-done-on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven” works.

3. Peter’s gospel message does not limit Jesus’ mission to redemption only. We see Jesus going from place to place, “doing good and healing.” We see God in action, giving practical expression to his goodness and power. How many gospel presentations affirm his essential goodness as well as his power to express that goodness. True, redemption is part of the story, but Jesus embodied a much bigger “good news” than we dare to imagine.

4. Peter’s gospel message reminds us that we are called to conflict. Those who are in need of healing are “under the power of the devil.” Even the most “Missional Churches” of the western world fail to highlight the spiritual nature of the conflict we face. His intent was not to win an argument; his intent was to win freedom for the captives.

5. Peter’s gospel message presents the presence of God as a necessity for ministry. This final point is worthy of a separate article (or a book). Jesus-—Immanuel—operated in the presence of God. That presence was essential, not optional. If Jesus needed it, how much more do we?

Verses 39–43 indicate that Peter had more to say, but the Holy Spirit had heard enough. The Spirit was ready to harvest. God was ready to start a wildfire. Even those who were strangers to the Jewish covenant were welcomed into the Kingdom of God. The church would grow from pagan soil. The barbarians in Europe were about to see the light. If we were only dealing with church history, this verse would be interesting enough. Strangely, God’s not into church history, he’s into the church now. And certainly he didn’t inspire the book of Acts merely to interest us, it’s the inspired Scripture-—meant to instruct us.

How we summarize the gospel is the seed of our expectation. The tree grows from the seed. Peter called the seed “imperishable” because he wanted us to become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

Isn’t it time to revisit the gospel Peter preached?

Ray Hollenbach