Bye bye April...it's May!

OK, I'm trying to put a positive slant on the fact that I didn't blog in April... but I'm now here to make amends. Sorry guys - thanks for reading all the same!

Right, so in April, without giving all the answers away, we took some more advice from Proverbs.

On Easter Sunday, we were inspired by learning from Jesus' discipline. We saw how the hardest thing for him to accomplish, was to know what the deal was and stick with his decision to go through with it - even though his most trusted mates kept sleeping on the job. He was torn apart by the agony, knowing the kind of death he would suffer - and being totally human, how much it would hurt. But, he focused on his goal - saving us from sin - and stuck with what he'd decided to do. That's the most amazing, extreme discipline! (Thankfully, it doesn't take half as much guts to revise for exams - although sometimes sitting an exam feels like a complete nightmare..!!!)

The week after, we looked at telling the truth and not lies. We skipped through lots of Bible passages and learnt that the biggest reason not to lie, is that it's not godly. In more than one place, we found words like these: God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfil? (That verse was in Numbers 23:19) We can totally trust God because we know that he doesn't lie - on the other hand, lying destroys people and friendships... so it's a good time to stop lying. If you find that difficult, the Bible says you might be talking too much!

Talking about friendships, that's what we looked at the 4th week of April. Choosing Friends Wisely. We looked at two diagrams that illustrated a process called osmosis (has anyone gone home and done any more learning there?) which I needed a lot of help explaining - sorry! Basically though, I was trying to show that it's easy for us to make friends with people who make unwise decisions, and get dragged down with them. Trying to pull a friend out of the mud is much more difficult. Bottom line - choose friends carefully, hang around with people that will help you be someone you like, instead of tagging along with people who you have to try to impress all the time, by doing stupid, unwise things.

Finally, last week...some of you decided to take a holiday, or couldn't make it, so you need to read this! We took a break from the wisdom series, and looked back at what we believe in. We challenged ourselves - is our faith strong enough for us to stand firm, even if people disagree with us, mock us, reject us or think we're desperately uncool? I missed out a key passage at the end of the session which goes like this:

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?"
They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets."
"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"
Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." (Matthew 16:13-16)

The question being asked last week was: "Who do you say Jesus is?"
We looked at what people like Einstein, Gandhi, Napolean and even Prince Philip have said in the past. And then we also challenged ourselves with some words from C.S. Lewis, the guy that wrote the Narnia books. This quote was taken from one of my favourite books, Mere Christianity:

"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg - or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool… you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us."

Basically, he was saying, we either believe Jesus is who he said he is, or we think he's crazy or plain evil. He's not just a "good man" or a "prophet" or whatever people say about him these days, because he made some crazy claims about himself that are either true and make him God, or are the words of a totally deluuuuded madman! So we had a read through some verses from John chapters 6-15 and had a quick think about some things Jesus said about himself.

To conclude, I asked those of you who were there to just think about what you believe, and tick some statements you agreed with. Don't worry, those of you who weren't here will be able to catch up on that - and also update all the birthday dates we have!! (So you might want to think about who you believe Jesus to be, before this Sunday... cu then!)