== Love God == Delight in Light ==

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Saved by Grace

The BAD NEWS - we are miserable, sinful failures who spend a huge amount of our time doing things that offend God with occasional imperfect attempts to do things that please Him.


The GOOD NEWS - God loves us so much that He gives us salvation anyway.


Thursday, November 19, 2009

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Handout (Flyer) for Halloween

Here's a handout for Halloween for Christians who don't approve of Halloween:


I put this together so that we had something to give to kids who come to the door trick or treating. Since we don't like the concept of celebrating Halloween, but also don't feel comfortable just ignoring them, we decided that the best thing would be to create a little flyer that gives a positive Christian message to give the kids along with their "treat" . Feel free to print this out and use it as well if you find it useful.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Why? Because He Loves You.

And (following no from the last post) - here's a talk I did more recently (this past Sunday, actually) about things that God does or allows to happen in our lives that sometimes make us wonder what He's up to or whether He cares - when the truth is that often these things happen specifically because he does care.



Prayer

Here's a talk I did a while ago on prayer, which, it seems, I've never quite got round to posting. It starts with an except from a book that I've been gradually working on writing (and, who knows, may actually get round to posting as well someday!!!).



Part 1:



Part 2:

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Loving Your Enemies

Another quote from Lucia (aged 3yrs):
Lucia: "Daddy, the Bible says you need to be kind to your enemies."

Dad: "But you're not my enemy, so does that mean that I don't need to be kind to you?"

Lucia (in a very exasperated, reproachful voice): "Daddy... Your children are your enemies... so that means you have to be kind to me!"

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Cross about Computers

Another quote from Lucia (aged 3):

Lucia to Dad who is working on something on the computer so can't come and play a game with her: "You're making me cross!"
Dad: "Oh - well then you may need to go to the stairs to think about your attitude for a while because it's not good to get cross about such a little thing."
Lucia: "It's not a little thing - it's a big computer!"

Sunday, June 07, 2009

Flying the Nest

There was great excitement the other day when we got to see the baby blue tits emerging from their nesting box and flying off for the first time. We had been very cautious in our hope to even see this event - but, as it turned out, not only did we see it, but we happened (providentially?) to have been videoing the parents coming and going just as it happened.

Here's the video - with the children's excitement clearly audible in the background!

Saturday, June 06, 2009

Catching Up With Kids Quotes

Here's some quotes from the kids that we've been noting down over the past couple of months but haven't got round to posting yet...
Me to Sinead: "How long have we been married - 12 years?"
Kathleen (aged 8) pipes up: "It seems longer than 12 years to me"

Kathleen (aged 8): "Reading Milly Molly Mandy is the joy of life."
Mum: "Hmmmm, not sure I've read that in the Bible!?"
Kathleen: "That's because they didn't have Milly Molly Mandy then."

Lucia (aged 3): "I'm a big girl now."
Mum: "Are you? How big?"
Lucia: "Small."

Dad, looking for something: "Does anyone know where..."
...finds it as he is asking and turns towards Lucia (age 3) and continues: "... this is?"
Lucia: "No - I'm not a mother!"

Lucia (aged 3) - out of the blue one morning: "Anyway, it's tomorrow"
Dad, confused: "What's tomorrow?"
Lucia: "Today" - pause - "Is it Daddy? I'm not really sure?"

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Seeing the Unseen

Another sermon - this one is in two parts due to the fact that Tangle has a limit on the length. The topic was "seeing the unseen" based on 2 Cor 4:18 - would we live our lives any differently if we were more aware of the "unseen", "eternal" things instead of being so distracted by the "visible" things around us?


Part 1:


Part 2:

Monday, May 04, 2009

A New Day

This is a poem that I wrote to go with a series of photos that I took for a photography competition - here's the poem - you can hear it read along with the photos in the video embedded below.

I ventured out at dawn's first light
Across the dewy green
Where lonely trees peer through the mist
And sleeping grasses dream.

The whispered breath of rippling waves
Sigh gently from the wake
Of one lone duck that glides where trees
Are mirrored on the lake.

Along the fringe of every reed
A million jewels of light
Watch shyly as the stirring world
Wakes softly from the night.

"Twill not be long till through our leaves,"
The silent branches say
"Will burst God's rays of sunshine's hope
To herald in the day."
- Mark H (DelightInLight.com)




Note: This is one of a number of poems that I have posted on this blog. If you want to see more of them, please have a look at this post: "Fun Poems for Kids"

You can also email a link to this post by clicking the mail icon below...

Friday, April 03, 2009

All Go with Tangle

Well, it looks like Tangle will do the job for us at Crawley Church. We've started uploading videos there - there was a bit of a problem for a while in that I couldn't get the videos to embed on our Church's website (which is on Wordpress.com), but discovered that it can be done via VOD:POD, so all is well.

Here's my latest appearance doing one of the talks in the Journey through the Bible series. Have a look at Tangle or our Church Blog for the rest of the talks in the series.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Tangle

As I mentioned previously, it seems that Google are going to be dropping Google Video so I won't be able to use that in future (after sometime in March, I think is was) - so, I've been looking for somewhere else to host my videos. I've been looking at Tangle.com (previously called GodTube.com) - it has the advantage of being a Christian site which I would like to support - however, unfortunately there are limits to the videos that you can upload (max 100MB or 30 minutes). This is better than YouTube (which has a max of 10 minutes), but it does mean that a lot of the sermon videos (like the ones in the "Open Sunday - Take a Look" series) would have to be uploaded in two parts. It's still a possibility, but would be more of a hassle (each time) than I would like, so I may keep looking for a while. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Christian T-Shirts

My niece has revived her Christian t-shirt business - called "Upstream Designs".

It's well worth having a look at the Upstream Designs website - you can buy t-shirts from a range of designs, colours, sizes, etc.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

How Do I Become a Christian?

This is the fifth (and last) talk in the series that I did following the Open Sunday that we ran at our Church. The topic of this talk was "How do I become a Christian".

Here's the handout.

How is life different as a Christian?

This is the fourth talk in the series of talks that I have been doing for our Church group following on from the "Open Sunday" that we held in January. This talk is on about how life will be different if someone decides to become a Christian.

This is the handout for this talk.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Can a Rational Person Believe?

Here is the third talk from our Open Sunday "Talk a Look" series. This time that talk was on the topic "Can a Rational Person Believe in God / Jesus?".

Here is the handout for this talk.



Here's some links / references:

Monday, February 02, 2009

Good News?

I seem to be about a week behind in getting these videos onto my blog! Here's the second one in the Open Sunday "Take a Look" series which was on the topic "If the Bible is true, how could that be Good News?".

Here's the handout.



I'm just in the process of processing the third video so hope to post that one soon.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Open Sunday - "Take a Look"

Well, I've now got the video of the Open Sunday talk uploaded to Google Video - although I have now discovered that Google is going to stop allowing video uploads in a few months, so I'm going to have to explore other possibilities *sigh*!

Still - it should be around at least long enough for us to use it for the series of talks following the Open Sunday so that's something anyway.

Enough on that - here's the video: we haven't yet put it on the church website (crawleychurch.org.uk) - thought we'd use my blog as a guinea pig first...

By the way, apologies for the sound quality - this was just recorded with a camcorder off to one side of the hall (no fancy sound equipment, I'm afraid) - I think it's good enough though (assuming you can deal with my weird accent!).

Here's the handout from the day.



Hopefully I'll also bring you the follow-on talks as well over the coming weeks. The next one ("If the Bible is true, how could that be "Good News") has already been recorded and uploaded, so I should be able to post that one soon. But now I need to go and work on the preparation for the third on in the series which will be on the topic of "Can a rational person really believe in God / the Bible?".

Monday, January 26, 2009

A Little Song

Well, we had our Open Sunday on the 18th, and it seemed to be quite successful - had a reasonable number of visitors, which was nice. However, I'm going to be delivering a series of talks over the next few weeks, so am still rather busy. We're hoping to put recordings of the talks on our church website all being well - if we manage to get that to work I'll try to post them here as well.

In the mean time, here's another little poem for you to enjoy:

A little song, one summer's day,
Came floating past my ear.
It tiptoed in to look around
And chose to settle there.

It filled my head with dancing notes
That skipped into my heart,
And now we are so close and dear
It seems we'll never part!
- Mark H (DelightInLight.com)

Note: This is one of a number of poems for Christian children that I have posted on this blog. If you want to see more of them, please have a look at this post: "Fun Poems for Kids"

You can also email a link to this post by clicking the mail icon below...