Welcome to our service today. It is great to have you here and we would love to invite you to stay after the service and join us for tea and coffee. We are also having a shared lunch after the service so we warmly welcome you to stay and fellowship with us.

Just as we know that we cannot earn our salvation through striving to do good works, the same applies to growing in the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23). 

The fruit of the Spirit is the spontaneous work of the Holy Spirit in us. It is the Spirit alone that produces these character traits that are found in the nature of Christ. They are the by-products of Christ's control - we can't obtain them by striving to get them without His help. If we want the fruit of the Spirit to grow in us, we must join our lives to Christ. We must know Him, love Him, remember Him and imitate Him in all areas of our life. As a result we will fulfill the intended purpose of the law - to love God and our neighbours as ourselves. What is one of the fruit of the Spirit you would like to become more like Jesus in? Ask God to develop this in your life through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Blessings,

Sandra

Welcome to our service today. It is great to have you here and we would love to invite you to stay after the service and join us for tea and coffee.

We are desperately dependent people. God has sent His Spirit to help us. We show our dependence by asking Him to empower us by His Spirit. That's why we are taught to pray in and by the Spirit and to pray for the Spirit's working. He helps us in our weakness. Prayer is one of the primary ways we show that we're desperately dependent on God. 

So how much do we pray? We are instructed in the Bible to 'pray without ceasing'. Do we pray daily for God's guidance? Do we ask Him to show us what and who to pray for? Do we include praise, thanksgiving and confession in our prayers? Do we pray generically or specifically? There are so many different ways to pray! But at the heart of it all we must confess our utter dependence on the Holy Spirit. As we do this we will discover such a deep sense of gratitude, humility and peace in our hearts, knowing that anything we pray for is not dependent on our sufficiency but in God's power. 

Blessings,

Sandra

Welcome to our service today. It is great to have you here and we would love to invite you to stay after the service and join us for tea and coffee.

David knew from experience what it meant to wait for the Lord. He had been anointed king at age 16, but didn't become king until he was 30. During the interim, he was chased through the wilderness by jealous King Saul. David had to wait on God for the fulfillment of his promise to reign. Later, after becoming king, he was chased by his rebellious son, Absalom.

Waiting for God is not easy. Often it seems that He isn't answering our prayers or doesn't understand the urgency of our situation. When we think like that it implies that God is not in control or is not fair. However we also know the best thing we can do is wait for God. In the book of Lamentations, Jeremiah calls us to hope in and wait for the Lord because often God uses waiting to refresh, renew and teach us. Next time we find ourselves in a 'waiting time' let's make good use of it by discovering what God may be trying to teach us in it. 

Blessings,

Sandra

Welcome to our service today. It is great to have you here and we would love to invite you to stay after the service and join us for tea and coffee.

It's easy to overlook the fact that Jesus chose Judas to be His disciple. We may also forget that while Judas betrayed Jesus, all the disciples abandoned Him. Along with the other disciples, Judas shared a persistent misunderstanding of Jesus' purpose on earth. They all expected Him to make the right political moves. When He kept talking about dying, they all felt varying degrees of anger, fear and disappointment. They didn't understand why they had been chosen if Jesus' mission was doomed to fail. 

We don't know the exact motivation behind Judas's betrayal, but what is clear is that Judas allowed his desires to place him in a position where Satan could manipulate him. So what can we learn from this? Judas does us a favour if he makes us think a second time about our commitment to God and the presence of God's Spirit within us. Are we true disciples and followers? Do our desires line up with God's desires - or should that question be asked the other way around - do God's desires for us line up with ours? Let us continue to draw close to God each day, asking the Holy Spirit to mold us and make us more like Him so we will be committed followers, not just ones seeking our own ends. 

Blessings, Sandra