Life Church Southampton

.From time to time Life Church are having ‘All in Sundays’! There's one coming up in the next few weeks with more to follow. In essence, these are great opportunities to invite people along to church! Every Sunday at Life Church is an open invite to visitors so what makes these occasions any different? In this LifePod Si and Dave deep dive into how an All In Sunday can help us stay on mission and bring life to those around us.

How should Christians behave towards each other and towards others? This passage reminds us that the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous and his ears are open to our prayers. We should, therefore, strive to live in peace with one another and with others, and to honour God by living a righteous life.

Here Peter instructs wives to submit to their husbands, just as Jesus submitted to the Father, and emphasise their inner beauty over outward adornment. Husbands are encouraged to treat their wives with honour and understanding, recognizing their equal value as fellow heirs of grace.

How do you handle it when circumstances are unfair, or when people treat you unjustly? Chris considers how we, as exiles belonging to another Kingdom, can respond when the justice and values of Jesus' Kingdom clash with differing ones.

Often we see submission to authority as something to fight and rebel against in the pursuit of 'freedom'. However, when we submit to the authorities that God has given us, as good gifts of His grace, we can live as people who are genuinely free. This is God's Amazing upside-down freedom!

Jesus' claim that he has ‘come that they may have life, and have it to the full’ must hold answers which we cannot simply ignore. Si explores how this, and the events of Easter, answer one of life’s most searching questions, the meaning of life itself.

What does it really look like to live like a Christian in the 'exile' that Peter keeps talking about?

Next week and the week after we will be having our Spring Gift Days. Chris looks at a passage from Acts to give us some principles for how we are going to pray and give, so we can continue to press on in our mission to be ‘Bringing Life to Every Community’.

God commands his church to love one another with a different kind of love which can be hard and, at times, it can feel impossible. However, thanks to the work of Jesus in our lives, it is possible!

Peter writes to help us understand who Jesus is and who we are. With the help of a flip-flap book about dinosaurs, Si helps us to understand how what we put our faith and hope in makes a difference in living out our salvation in Jesus.

'Be holy as I am holy' - an impossible task or a living giving call to holiness?'

These three verses serve as a bridge between Peter's description of a new reality in Christ and the letter's teaching on how we should live. They mention the prophets to offer assurance about this new reality and emphasize Jesus' central role in God's narrative. The prophets help connect the fall and the rescue and give us insight into God's character and actions.

The first verse of 1 Peter describes Christians as ‘exiles’, ‘strangers’ or ‘aliens’. How does that description fit with your experience of living as a Christian today? Leave your thoughts and comments below. 1 Peter 1:6-8 was written to give stability and confidence to early believers experiencing trials. They were able to rejoice in their faith because of the amazing inheritance that they had received, which could never spoil or fade. This joy is available to anyone who believes in Jesus Christ, regardless of their circumstances. While becoming a Christian does not mean an end to all trials, the suffering is temporary, and believers can look forward to the restoration of all things.

. In this, the first of a few One Peter LifePod episodes, Si and Dave take time to talk about how we've decided to study this particular section of the Bible and why it will especially relate to Life Church in this coming season.

Knowing the order in which things happens is of utmost importance, not least of all when it comes to God's saving work in our lives. It is the work of Christ which makes us new when we are “born again”.

The first verse of 1 Peter describes Christians as *exiles*, *strangers* or *aliens*. How does that description fit with your experience of living as a Christian today? Leave your thoughts and comments below.In this new teaching series in 1 Peter God’s people are described as chosen exiles. Dave McNee examines what this means for the way we should live and relate to the world around us, and how we get the power to do so.

When Paul was in Athens (Acts 17), he saw lives changed with the power of the gospel; Si helps us to see how we can see the same in our day in Southampton.

In the final message of this series, Chris Kilby recaps what Isaiah teaches us about the confidence and joy enjoyed by the people of God, and the ultimate hope we have in that, 'He will swallow up death forever'.

This week Dave explores what Isaiah Chapter 2 has to say about how we can learn to live in a world that is in an almost constant state of crisis.

Against a backdrop of bleak reality in the world in which we live, the church is called to be a joyful people. Si helps us to see how we can live in the good of this through the words of Isaiah 25.