I have been listening to a lot of music recently. It helps me focus and it helps me get ready for the day. Here are a few of the songs I have been enjoying lately.

This one is from MercyMe (again!) and is called Best News Ever. It has some wonderful lyrics and takes aim at those who tell you you can earn your way into heaven.




This next one is from Crowder. He has a magnificent beard and a wonderful voice. This song has been speaking to me a lot.




This one is from Casting Crowns and is a beautiful song of praise to Jesus

It has been an incredibly stressful term. I have been so busy and things have been so difficult. It was a relief to be able to start the Christmas Holidays yesterday. Here is my sermon from today which is on the Magnificat. It was tough to write this week but I think it was the sermon God wanted me to preach.

This is my latest sermon. I enjoyed writing it. Normally, sermons take a few days to come to me but this one came in a day and a half! It has been sitting on my desk for almost two weeks. Hope you enjoy it.

To day was my turn to preach at church. I was down to preach last week but someone wanted to swap. I was happy to do so and had a look at the lectionary for today. Isaiah 53! What a passage, what a privilege to preach on it.

I hope I did it justice

Been listening to a lot of Christian songs lately. My wife and I have had them on when the kids are up and they are really getting  into them. Their favourite band are MercyMe. They love their songs Greater, Flawless and Happy Dance.

While listening to some, I came across this updated version of their song I Can Only Imagine. I like it. The original is magnificent but I think this brings it up to date and adds a good deal to it. Hope you enjoy

Today I was asked to preach again at church. I gave a sermon that I have given elsewhere in the past. It is on John 4 and the Woman at the Well. I made a few small changes (and my lovely wife made some more!) which I hope make it flow a little better. I waffled a bit towards the end but hope that you enjoy the sermon.

I was asked to lead at church this morning. I have spoken a couple of times but not led the whole service. It was fun. The pastor told me, when I asked him what he wanted me to do, that it "is your service, do what feels right". Now, this is great if you are confident in your abilities to lead people closer to God.

For me, it was ever so slightly terrifying. God, of course, has better faith in my abilities than I do. He arranged for twice as many people as normal to be there! Praise the Lord.

It went well and was a lovely experience. I hope that I shall be able to enjoy the next time a little bit more.


IN the meantime, here's another song that I am enjoying at the minute. It is MercyMe again and this one is called Flawless

I spoke again at church today.
It is the third time in about two months and I was really confident in what I was going to say (smug, if I am honest) as I had my sermon written last week. However, God had other ideas. During the week I had an increasing sense that what I had written was wrong. My wife had read it and gave me the remarkable feedback of "it's ok". I had a couple of re-reads and then began chopping away at it. Eventually I had to bin it and start again.

I didn't change the passage, that was something I was sure God was ok with. I went from 14 pages of typed notes to two pages of scribbled bullet points. I have rarely felt so nervous but the feedback was good and I got into it.

If you want to, please have a listen!

I don't like it hot. Never have. Never will
I sweat too much, I get grumpy and I most definitely do not look good in shorts.

The only good thing about the Summer is the holidays. As a teacher the Summer Holidays are amazing.

This year, one of my children is having her first summer holidays. Day 1 and we have already been for a swimming lesson and she is currently in the local library doing craft stuff (saves me having to clean up the mess).

As it stands I've done 108 minutes of walking today and well over 10,000 steps. I've got more to do in a bit.

Church is going well. I'm back preaching and will be doing so again in two weeks. Having the time off work to give more thought to sermons means I am more relaxed and careful about what I write. It also gives me more time to read and digest what others have said about the passage.

Next sermon will be on Ephesians 1:3-14. It isn't an easy passage to get into but I hope it'll lead to some great stuff. The Bible usually does ...

Here are the last two sermons that I have given. I was not very happy with the one on James 2. I think I tried too hard to give a sermon that I have heard before. This never works for me. The one on David and Goliath, I was much happier with. Please, if you listen, leave me some feedback.


James 2 sermon


David and Goliath sermon

I remember a while ago, posting some songs that were helping me in my personal worship time and I thought that I would add a few more. There are some really good ones that have helped me connect with God in a deeper way this year and that is, obviously, a great thing.
They are simply personal preferences and I make no comment on the theology of them.

Here is the first one. It is by Mercyme and is called Greater. It has a fun and simple quality about it. Its message speaks to me, particularly when it tells us that the cross has already won the war. Enjoy.


This next one, by Casting Crowns is another nice one. It isn't deep and it isn't ever going to trouble the charts but it tells of God's Plan and how He wants us to trust him. A worthy message. Unfortunately I could only get the lyrics video but it is still well worth a listen.

The third one I have been spending a lot of time listening to is one we sang at Spring Harvest this year. This version is, quite clearly, not from Spring Harvest but is a really good on. It tells us about how Jesus called our names. It is upbeat, relentlessly positive and incredibly catchy.



The Final one is called My Beloved. It is simply a good tune and a great performance from Crowder.

Now, I know that there are not an awful lot of readers of my blog and that's ok. However, I have been very poor at posting this year. I have not posted since January and that is very bad of me.

It has not been a great year and it has been a great year!

Not long after my last post, my beautiful wife had a nasty accident. She fell over while taking our kids to school and badly broke her leg. She had to have a big operation to fix it and spent many weeks in rehab. I was able to get my mum to come up (cheers mum!) to help look after her but it was tough to see her like that.

We had recently started attending a new church (after all the bullying at our last one), I mean I had literally been three times before the accident and they stepped up and were amazing. Lifts were offered, money for taxis given food brought round (which was especially helpful after we also broke our oven!) and just amazing levels of support. They shone with the light of Jesus. Thank you lord for their support.

Since then, work has been incredibly busy (I shall not say too much here) and it has been a lot of pressure for me. I am still maintaining my sabbath which is great but I am not feeling the love of the job as much as I used to.

Who am I kidding? I have never loved this job. I just do it.

I have been praying about and thinking about what God wants me to do and, as yet, no answer!

So, you can see why I haven't written anything for a while but hopefully, that will change in the next few weeks as I have the Summer Holidays coming up and loads of stuff planned.

Let's see ...

I realise that it has been a long time since I wrote anything on here and I would like to apologise for that. It has been an incredibly busy few months and, sadly, it has not been an altogether good few months.

I was ill in December and my father in law was also very ill. Lots of prayer and some miracles from a gracious God have meant that he is now, thankfully, safely back home. Work has also been hectic with some really difficult things to do and get done.

The biggest problem has been church. As you know, I was a leader at church along with my wife. I am no longer a church leader and am, in fact, without a church at the moment. What happened was simple, some of the other leaders bullied out pastor and his wife into quitting the church and my wife and I decided we could no longer be in fellowship with them.

We used to meet monthly to discuss the church and pray about what was going on but for the last year, our meetings have been dominated by money. We were a small fellowship and our pastor was unpaid. We, the other 4 leaders that is, decided that it was biblical, moral and ethical to pay the pastor. We got the agreement of the congregation (or at least there was no disagreement) to go ahead and then the problems started.

We tried, again and again, to sort out a payment process and a salary. Unfortunately, several in the leadership and amongst the trustees (the church is, of course, a charity) were shocked by the amount that pastors are paid. It was a fair salary that they were asking for but unfortunately, some thought it was too much.

This was the start of the problem. We kept coming up against the same blockage and eventually things came to a head in early November. We were at a meeting of the leaders and trustees and it was an awful meeting, I was taking minutes and was as silent as possible during it but I was witness to some horrendous bullying. Much of the questioning was directed at the wife of the pastor and was downright rude and some was inappropriate. I have never (even in my job where I work with kids) seen such vicious bullying.

To my shame, I did not say anything there and then. I have prayed to God about it and he has forgiven me. My pastor and his wife have also forgiven me but I do still regret my inaction. What I witnessed was selfish, jealous and mean-spirited. It was clearly not of God.

It led, to us leaving the church which was tough for us. As it was swiftly followed by the bouts of illness, we have hardly been to church since. We have, however, found a new church that we have been to a couple of times and we hope that this is where God wants us to be.

Long story short, please pray for us that we do get settled in a new church as soon as possible. I will keep you posted