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 ...