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Devoted to Prayer

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Online Church Service – Devoted to Prayer - Part 2 by Adam Bream We’re now on our 9th and FINAL instalment of our ‘Devoted’ series. It’s been quite a journey! A series exploring the impact that the Holy Spirit HAS on followers of Jesus and how He affects our devotion towards several very specific aspects of life. At the end of Acts 2, we have a handful of verses that give us quite a short but powerful example of what God wants His Church to look like and to be prioritising. Devoted to, in fact. Not just for the 1st generation Church, but for EVERY generation following = including ours today. Where it’s easy to get distracted by our own personal likes and dislikes , it’s MORE important that we see what God wants / WHAT HE has planned for HIS Church to enjoy. When builders are building a home, they refer to the drawings that the architect has created. The blueprints. Acts 2:42-47 are like the blueprints for the Church. As these ordinary men and women began encount...
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The afterlife of the chapterhouse

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series: Circular Spaces Chapters: The modern afterlife for the chapterhouses The modern afterlife for the chapterhouses Afterlife, 20th-century examples for the chapterhouse 20th-century architecture retained the special atmosphere and circular message of these spaces. Below, I present a couple of famous examples. One is a building that serves as a "chapel" in the modern sense, while the other is a classic gathering and community space where conferences and focused discussions can also be held. Chapterhouse should not be confused with chapel or refectory! In modern architecture, however, these special spaces are given a new interpretation, preserving the spiritual and emotional message of the original central community events. Notices: chapel : A chapel is a small place of Christian worship, which can be a standalone building or a room within a larger one, like a hospital, prison, or school. It may be a designated space with its own altar in ...
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N.T. Wright's Aha Moments

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One of the very first sermons that I was asked to preach when I was still a seminarian in 1972 at Whitliff Hall just up the road here was in St. Eb's church in Oxford on Trinity Sunday which was a great privilege and quite scary and the text was Isaiah 6. Isaiah 6, very well-known reading for Trinity Sunday when Isaiah in the temple sees the angels serenating God and singing, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory." And then Isaiah is scared and says, "Woe is me. What's going to happen?" And the angel comes and touches his lips with a hot coal and says, "Actually, your iniquity is taken away." And then there's a voice saying, "Who shall I send and who will go for us?" And Isaiah says, ".. here am I. Send me." Now, normally on Trinity Sunday, and I already knew this because of growing up going to church, that reading would stop at that point. ...
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Are You Still Gospel-Centered?

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by Jared Wilson We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. Hebrews 2:1 Gospel-centrality is not as popular as it once was. At least, the marketing movement built on gospel-centrality has declined over the past fifteen years. As an early adherent of the gospel-centered, “young, restless, and Reformed” whatchamacallit, I have watched many of my fellow tribesmen, usually leaders around my same age, gradually undergo a shift in their ministry emphases and spiritual priorities over the last decade, and it’s left me scratching my head a bit. In the gospel-centered heyday, many young ministers, like myself, abandoned the seeker-sensitive church movement. Burned out by ever-demanding needs of innovative methodology and disillusioned by a pragmatic consumerism that appeared less and less tethered to the Scriptures, we ached for something with theological depth, biblical rigor, and historical roots. Many others of us began to find our min...
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How to Minister in God’s Strength

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Supernatural Pastors — Message by John Piper I have three aims for this message. First , I want to impress upon you the fact that the pastoral ministry is supernatural. All of the distinctly Christian goals in your pastoral life are humanly impossible, and God alone is the decisive cause if those goals are attained. Second , I want to try to show how you go about life and ministry so that you become an instrument of God’s decisive work. How do you work so that he is the decisive worker? Third , I want to exult with you that God has designed the ministry this way so that he gets the glory through Jesus Christ in your ministry forever and ever. So, you could sum up these three aims like this: The Christian ministry is by God’s grace, through faith, for God’s glory. My text is 1 Peter 4:10–11. As I read it, look for those three realities. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, [let him speak]...
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