As I watch the snow flurries outside my window it reminds me that the winter has not past, that we are still having to endure the cold and discomfort, but remembering the purpose it serves in allowing the ground to rest, allowing that which is bad to diminish and die allowing us to see the wonder of new life springing out as the miracle that it is, God’s yearly re-creation springing into life.

I hope you can guess where I am going with this and the parallels it shows in our individual lives. At times as we face times of pain, uncertainty and loss, we are reminded to remain in the Lord (Jn 15.4), to call on Him (Ps. 105.1), to allow Him to be our refuge and our strength, our very present help in times of trouble (Ps 46.1).

God has promised to never leave us or forsake us (Heb 13:5), that promise is most essential in times of distress and struggle where we grasp onto the Lord with both hands. Unable to see a way forward we need to lean on Him, to trust Him and ask Him to guide us and to take us through to the other side.

We also want to move forward, to be able to put those past hurts behind us and to move on. God can also use times of pain to deal with issues in our lives, to root out our insecurities and to strengthen our faith. It is amazing that often those with the deepest, unshakeable faith have been through the worst places, the greatest pain the hardest circumstances, yet trusting in God they have found help, support, strength and purpose for the road ahead. God uses every circumstance in our lives to guide and direct us, to draw us back to Himself and to move us on.
This year we are in the book of Mark and this past month we have been looking at new wine and new wineskins (Mk 2:22), this may be a new concept to you and it maybe that you weren’t quite sure of the illustration or the application. Please let me give you what I have come to understand of this. Each of us when we accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour are made new and receive the Holy Spirit, but over time we can come to be stuck in our ways, we can become hard, even brittle, like an old wineskin that takes on a form that it cannot change. The picture of the new wineskin I believe is God reminding us that He is in the business of making things new, even us, He wants us to remain supple and flexible, ready to extend and grow. God alone can remove the old and make us new, just look at Ezekiel where God says “I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Eze 36:26) – This is the same concept, God restoring that growth potential in His people. The question is, are we willing to allow God to restore us? Are we willing to allow God to take us out of our rut, our comfortable place and allow our will to conform to the shape of His – the new wineskin- God has an abundance to fill us with, He longs to fill us with the new wine, this filling is the Holy Spirit, it is the life and freedom of the kingdom of God allowing us to achieve our full spiritual potential for God. It is pressing on towards the goal, it is pressing in to see what God has for us, it is actively seeking the face of God (Ps 27:8), it is us working out our motto text for the coming year, it is preparing our hearts and our lives to be “living stones... built into a spiritual house”, this is us becoming “a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Pe. 2:5)

My deep heart longing and my daily prayer for each one of you is that you would seek after God first, that you would ask God for areas that need to be worked on, the hard, brittle areas, and that you would be seeking God to re-create these areas to make them supple and open to bend according to His revealed will, what He is saying both to us as individuals and together as a fellowship.
What is the purpose of this you may ask? Why do I need to bother? I am happy just the way I am... The purpose of this openness to the transforming power of God is for you as an individual, for us as a fellowship and for the world as this new wine pours out of us into the lives of others.

Think what this renewal could mean to you, deepen your walk with God, deepen your reliance and your expectations of God to work in you and through you.

For the fellowship it is part of sharing God’s love throughout each and every person, removing feelings of isolation and loneliness, and knowing our place both in God is secure and our place within the church. Please make every effort to reach out and include others, those on the edge as well as those in the centre!

I also want to encourage you to spend time with God to ask if the picture that Helen shared about a deep wound has any significance in your life. Please ask the Lord to show you areas that are hurts that remain in you, and bring them to the prayer ministry team, to myself or Alan or anyone you trust to help you through this. Only in exposing, and treating these deep hurts can we begin to achieve unity in purpose and vision otherwise these hurts create a blockage and a hindrance to us becoming one, the issue is perhaps one of trust.

We need to trust one another, I need to trust that what you say is in my best interest and you need to trust that what I share is to build you up and encourage you. Without trust our sharing seems to be conspiring and judging and causes even more hurt. So let’s get these things sorted out. God is on the move, let’s move forward with Him!

With love and blessings in our Lord Jesus Christ,

Dear Friends,

I hope you have had a great summer, this year with the help of Anneka and the YWAM team and other church support we were able to get out into the community. Huge thanks to all who were part of the leaflet drop, the kids film afternoon, the Kids fun afternoon in the rain and everything else! It really made a difference to have an extra pair of hands in Anneka, also someone looking out for opportunities to support and serve, so a huge thanks to Anneka as we send her off to London for a mission year with our blessing and prayer backing! We continue to pray that God will use her and bless her.

We have a lot of events and outreach planned for the coming quarter, so can you please ask the Lord to show you where you could help in the church. It’s important that we work together and build the church. It would be great if you see an event that you feel you could organise, please let us know (Ann, Haydn, Karen or myself) and that would save the events committee bringing everything into reality that we are planning (it is a lot of work for a small committee!!)

Reaching into the student community this year we will be at the ‘Church Fayre’ to see if we can draw any students to the church, following that evening we have 2 ‘BIG LUNCH’ Sundays, feeding the students that come and would love you to participate in that, make them feel welcome and get to know them too. Other opportunities are ‘Open Mike’ nights, we’ll hire a venue, invite people and anyone can come and sing a song, great chance to meet people and form relationships.. The other main event is an evening with a Christian, magician, comedian- John Archer, a wonderful, Christian man who uses magic and comedy to endear himself, then tells his testimony! Should be great, 20th January, put it in your diary QUICK!!

Building on our summer work in the community we have an opportunity on Harvest Sunday (25th September) to get into the community and bless those who need to know that God is gracious and generous, what better time! Some other community events are the Fireworks night on the 4th November, when we are organising the fireworks at a venue to be arranged! Great opportunities to deepen relationships and make new ones! We will be able to encourage our community relationships, but also show the love of Jesus and maybe even get more kids and families to Kids Club on a Tuesday! We have asked Sue if we could also bring a Christian presence to their school Christmas Fayre, also encouraging people to come to our carol service... So lots to pray about and think about getting involved with, thank you in advance for your support where you can.

Alpha in the evening starts soon, want to come, please call! Also a daytime discipleship course starting, if you’re free please join, thanks to Tracey for this!

Sunday evenings are continuing this term with a different format every week, please support these events, they are great chances for us to deepen our relationship with God in varied ways and have more fellowship with each other!

I hope you are getting into the ‘Place of Ministry’ series, and my prayer for each of you is that in your place of work, study, vocation, influence, you will know the love of God and His presence working in you and through you, that you will feel supported, encouraged and blessed by the church as you minister in that secular environment and that your light would shine to all around you!

Following a word from the Lord, our next series on Sunday mornings will be the gospel of Mark, systematically working our way through in the coming months. Please commit to reading the gospel of Mark, letting God speak to you through it!

Also, if you have a word to bring, or a picture or a vision from God, then please bring it to the Elders so we can test it and share it with the wider church. There have been a number of encouraging pictures of what God is doing in the church and we all need to know that encouragement that God is on the move!!

Karen read from Psalm 24 on Sunday morning and it is a wonderful picture of how God is asking each one of us to open our hearts to Him and of His deserved place of prominence in our lives no matter how we are feeling and where we are and what we are going through. ‘Lift up your heads, you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.’

May God bless you in all that you do, and may your light shine in the dark places of this world that you find yourselves this month,

Dear Friends,
It really is great to write this letter just after our Harby church weekend away. There is still a buzz about the place and still an excitement in the air from what God has been doing in our hearts over this past week. I’m sure you will join me in thanking both Martin Young for his teaching and the Harby committee for a job well done.

There was a lot to think about at Harby and not wanting to miss this opportunity to continue what God has started in your life. There is always room for more of what God has for us, and in aligning ourselves fully to Him we find only more and more of Him. Life lived for God is a life full of excitement and opportunities. It is a life devoted to God and full of love for people. We need to put down our own agenda, pick up our cross and follow Jesus. God is on the move in our midst, in our lives, let us continue testifying to what God does for us every day of our lives!
On a different note, there is a lot going on at the moment for saying that we would normally be in a wind down period heading towards the summer holidays for the children. As I write, my children have only 2 weeks of school left till the end of term, but we are not winding down this year, thanks to all who attended and voted at our last members meeting, as we now have a new church worker. Anneka James will be with us over the summer into September and we look forward to continuing contact especially with the parents and children of the Tuesday Club who we often lose contact with at this time of year.

Please also pray for other contacts and connections through different Christian organisations. We have a couple of irons in the fire that could potentially lead to a greater concentration of work in the Stockbrook area with connection to our church, this is still on the drawing board and needs much prayer and guidance and wisdom for how God is going to move forward with this one. It is exciting and the timing of it, the day after Anneka is appointed, makes me think that God has plans for us and that they are in hand and that they are near!

I do hope and pray that you are continuing your spiritual walk as we carry on through this year. We are on a year of pilgrimage since we continued with Psalm 84 in January and so we continue with our hearts set on pilgrimage... We are walking towards our almighty God and as we pass through July we are looking to concentrate more on Him as we look at ‘God unlimited’ these three ‘Omni’s’ and discover these amazing attributes that only God possesses, thanks to Matt for starting us off and looking forward to Omnipotence and Omniscience in the coming weeks. We will then be diving into 2 Peter where our series will be ‘Living in the light’ using 2 Peter as a guide for how to live our lives in the light of the Lord Jesus living within us.

We also had a fantastic men’s evening tonight, celebrating the American Independence day with softball and burgers, thanks to all who came, 15 men in all and only 11 from Trinity, it’s a start and there were many apologies received, we need to continue on this road to see what God is going to do for our men!

There is also the afternoon tea and hymns on Saturday when we will enjoy singing the well known hymns while enjoying an afternoon tea, and hopefully it will be well attended, we are trying to provide input for everyone, and we all need to remember that everything that we do will only be successful through much prayer and seeking God and taking opportunities to invite our friends and neighbours and family to participate.
With much love in our Lord Jesus,

Murray