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Tag Archives: Suffering
Sermon – Crown Of Suffering (James 1:1-18)
Sermon on the ‘Crown Of Suffering’ (James 1:1-18) by Ken Noakes is now available to stream or download: http://bit.ly/2bd6XI8
Full Text and Workings for this Sermon – James 1.1-18
Read the Bible text: http://bit.ly/2bxD9qK
Download the English Corner PDF: http://bit.ly/2bkdyD1
Sermon – The Lord Who Delivers (Psalm 31)
Sermon ‘The Lord Who Delivers’ (Psalm 31) by David Smith is now available to stream or download: http://bit.ly/2aXoIOi
Read the Bible text: http://bit.ly/2blnGhM
English Support Handout: http://bit.ly/2aWMTwE
Sermon Outline:
1. A Psalm of Lament:
a. Relationship with the Lord who delivers
b. Relationship with the world to be delivered from
c. Relationship with the lamenter who needs deliverance
2. What the deliverance meant:
a. To David
b. To the first readers
c. To Jesus (Luke 23:46)
d. To Stephen (Acts 7:59)
e. To Us (1 Peter 4:19)
3. How to make the most of this Psalm
a. “I trust in you O Lord. I say “You are my God.”
b. What am I learning about God when times are not desperate?
Side by Side – Part 3 (of 3)
The first two posts in this series have offered two observations coming out of 1 Timothy 5:1-16 which may help a church family to further consider what it means to honour and care for those who are most vulnerable.
In the first post, we observed that the widow of 1 Tim 5 was akin to the ‘vulnerable’ today.
In the second post, we observed that when caring for a person in need – everyone is different and everyone can play a part. Five pointers were offered in how to do that.
In this last post, I would like to recommend a good book that works hard to offer principled and practical suggestions for getting alongside a person whom we are trying to love.
Side by Side – Walking with Others in Wisdom and Love by Edward T. Welch (Wheaton: Crossway, 2015).
Side by Side by Edward Welch is a quick and helpful read, written by a Christian counselor who has practiced and written in the fields of depression, fear and addiction for decades.
The aim of the book is to identify skills that Christians can learn and then use in caring for others. His basic idea is that those who help best are the ones who both need help and give help.
Suffering and the Saint
In Job Chapters 1-2 we get to peak in on a conversation between God and Satan.
God: Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.
Satan (my paraphrase): Of course he is going to be blameless and upright – you protect him and his household and you bless him – if you weren’t so protective he would curse you to your face!
What a cynic. It is so easy to think the worse of someone instead of the best! (notably – a pattern we always see in Satan!)
But does he have a point?!
The Troubles of my Heart
One of joys and burdens of being the 5pm Church Pastor is to sit with folk whom I love and hear them tell me about how tough life is for them. There are 5pm family members who are really really struggling at the moment.
And there are many reasons that lie behind some of those struggles – unemployment, depression, grief, breakdown in relationship, childlessness, money, marriage difficulties, singleness issues, doubts of faith and more.
How I long to just snap my fingers and have the problems fixed. I don’t like to see folk walking such hard paths.
Gospel Bite: The Problem of Pain and Suffering
A ‘Gospel Bite’ – a short answer to a commonly raised objection to the gospel.
The question of suffering looms large in the modern mind, particularly in light of disasters such as the 2004 tsanami in Asia, or the earthquakes in Christchurch, or the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011. Many of the issues need to be dealt with philosophically (does suffering disprove God’s existence?) or theologically (is God powerless to do anything?).
churchcentralonline.com 