Concord Baptist Church

Good Friday

Jesus offers us profound words of comfort; that He has gone to prepare a place for us (our eternal home). Jesus also reminds us that He is the way, the truth and the life; that the way to our eternal home is through Him.

As Jesus predicts his betrayals and we recount how the betrayals of Peter and Judas played out, we see the common reason both betrayed Jesus is because they lost faith in him. They didn't believe his words. This week as we look at John 13:18-38 we'll be thinking about trusting Jesus' words even when we become discouraged. We should trust in Jesus' promises when we are tempted to give up and betray our trust in God.

Jesus shows us the radical nature of Christian leadership; by washing the disciple's feet.

The ffith habit of highly effective Christians is SENT; being sent by God into the world to live out the good news of Jesus in word and deed.

The third and fourth habits of highly missional people are listen and learn respectively; these habits help us to listen to the Holy Spirit and learn the heart and mind of Jesus.

God calls us to replace fear and anxiety with peace and confidence in Him.

Jake will speak about the importance of listening to God for young people so that their lives are shaped by his wisdom and love for them.

This Sunday we’ll be thinking about the spiritual disciplines of fasting, reading and praying by investigating Matthew 6:5-18 and 7:24-27. These passages show us how to worship God correctly so that we might prize our relationship with him and grow in it. God wants us to be transformed by the spiritual disciplines so that his character embodies us and our living response to him becomes an echo of his glory. Just like our human friendships require us to learn and adapt to the ways of seeing the world and living another person has, so relationship with God involves regularly re-aligning our lives to relationship with him in light of his great love for us.

This week at Concord Baptist Church we are looking at the parable of the wedding feast in Matthew 22:1-14. This is a great passage to understand our hope that we have through our saviour Jesus Christ. We will be looking a number of other Bible passages throughout the morning so be prepared to get some paper cuts (that’s a joke by the way)! Often how we see marriage is different to how God sees marriage, and this passage we will look at, shows just that, it is important for us to understand what marriage is and how the marriage in this passage affects our lives both as individuals and also as a Church and community. We must ensure that we have on our Robes of Righteousness and our clothes of salvation, and we must be always looking out for the devil sneaking his way into our lives. But if we follow those steps we will surely reach our hope, which is this marriage. We have all been invited to attend this wedding. It’s up to us as to whether we accept that and decide to put on our wedding garments.

Part 2 of 4 on a sermon series focusing on 1 John.

Just as Jesus gave up His life for us, so we too give up our lives in love and worship of Him.

When Jesus meets a Syrophoenician woman, they have a life-changing encounter which invities us to consider God's power to bring change to our lives.

Just like Jesus cared for the crowds and fed them, so too He desir3es to care for us in the most significant way; leading us to eternal life.

Sometimes God's answers are beyond our understanding, but we can always come to Him in faith - trusting that when we pray God listens and is always working for our good.

Jesus invites us to be good soil; soil that not only hears the Good News of the Kingdom but puts it into practice bearing fruit for eternity.

"Jesus had a fascinating way of cutting through human tradition to show people the heart of what it means to follow God.

As we read through Mark's Gospel we get to follow in Jesus'footsteps; listening to and learning from him.

If we aren't willing to observe and understand the coming of God's son, we will miss out on his plans to offer us more than we could ever anticipate.