Our society desperately needs an alternative, a culture that manifests God’s Kingdom on earth.  A culture populated by those who choose love over lust (Matthew 5:27-30), marriage over divorce (vs. 31-32), truth over lies (Ephesians 4:25), humility over ego (Philippians 2:3-11), service over self (Ephesians 5:21).  (Denison Forum)

To receive good news, to really receive it—to take it in and discover a new freedom—requires a new way of thinking. This new way of thinking has a Biblical name: repentance. I know: you thought repentance meant remorse, determination, trying harder or feeling guilty. Someone has lied to you. At its very core the word “repent” means rethink your life. The trick is: you have to have a valid reason to rethink your life. A positive mental attitude is not enough; simply trying harder won’t change your world. There must be some hard-core reality that changes the equation, wipes away the past or presents a future filled with joy. Better yet, all three. Jesus presented this hard-core reality when he said, “The Kingdom of God is breaking in. Right here, right now.” He wasn’t describing some new program or advocating a new philosophy. Jesus proclaimed the world would be forever different because God had come down, and he would do whatever was necessary to set people free.

God would not be stopped: the old order of things was condemned, and a new order was made real. He invited us to move to the side of victory with these words: “The time has come. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news.”  (Ray Hollenbach)

Emma Reynolds Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government 1:47 pm, 10th June 2015

I beg to move,

That this House
notes that the UK faces an urgent and growing housing crisis;
believes that the Government should bring forward a comprehensive plan to tackle the housing crisis which sets out concrete steps to build more homes, including badly-needed affordable homes, boost home ownership, improve the private rented sector and reduce homelessness and rough sleeping;
and regrets that over the past five years home completions have been at their lowest level in peacetime since the 1920s, that home ownership has fallen to a thirty-year low with a record number of young people living with their parents into their twenties and thirties, that there are 1.4 million families on the waiting list for a social home and that since 2010 homelessness has risen by 31 per cent and rough sleeping by 55 per cent

The Good News-the word we translate “gospel”-is that this world as we know it is not the whole story. There is another realm.

The good News is especially that this world -the kingdom of God- is closer than you think. It is available to ordinary men & women. It is available to people who have never thought of themselves as religious or spiritual. It is available to you. You can live in it now.

Extract From “The Life You’ve always wanted”  John Ortberg

Canon Holmes of India who years ago said to most people God is an inference, not a reality. He is a deduction from evidence which they consider adequate, but he remains personally unknown to the individual.  He must be they say therefore we believe he is. 

Tozer  :The bible is a self-evident fact that men can know God with at least the same degree of immediacy as they know any other person or thing that comes within the field of experience.

(extract from Pursuit of God by Tozer)

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)

In 2008 Parliament passed a law that that gave Government the power to introduce regulations allowing three parent embryos. The Government made an assurance that regulations would only be considered once it was clear that the scientific procedures were safe.

The Government asked the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to assess the safety and effectiveness of the procedure. The HFEA concluded that evidence did not indicate that the techniques are unsafe although it accepted that there was little evidence. This would appear to be an extremely inconclusive  statement.

Prof. Stuart  A Newman, a world-renowned expert in this field, has described the proposals as ‘inherently unsafe’

We do not know the long-term consequences and the HFEA has stated that children should be monitored for a long time after birth.  This sounds like experimentation with a child’s life!!

The world health organisation has stated   “germ-cell therapy, where there is an intention or possibility of altering the genes passed on to the next generation, should not be permitted in the foreseeable future.”   The Council of Europe’s Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine explicitly prohibits these measures.

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)