I don’t know if you believe God answers prayer but I have had some very cool experiences of late. Just last Tuesday week back I was thinking about all I had to do that week and the impossibility of preparing a sermon on top of everything else, so I got on my knees and asked God if He might please provide for me and no sooner had I said amen than the phone started ringing. Not even thinking that this would be the answer to my prayer I simply answered the call as I would any call and couldn’t believe it when the person on the other end asked if they might do a presentation at Chatswood Adventist Church and when I asked them if they could come that Saturday they said yes!

This experience isn’t dissimilar to one I had a month or two back. Someone had called me on a Monday to ask if I could do a cremation committal the next day and having never even been to a cremation committal before I was rather nervous but said yes. Well the next morning, being the morning of the cremation, I started to panic because I didn’t know if what I had prepared was appropriate or not so I got on my knees and asked God to help me and I kid you not, at that moment which was 8.00 o’clock in the morning, a hospital chaplain called and told me he had been thinking about me and thought he needed to call and see how I was doing! Who calls at 8.00am?! And of all the people in the world, who knows more about cremation committals than hospital chaplains!

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This week I have an inspiring/challenging quote to share with you. It’s from p 46 of Henry Blackaby’s book, Experiencing God.

“When you believe that nothing significant can happen through you, you have said more about your belief in God than you have said about yourself. You have said that God is not capable of doing anything significant through you. The truth is, He is able to do anything He pleases with one ordinary person fully consecrated to Him.”

It’s true! Think on these things.

A couple of weeks ago I spoke about a recent survey on spiritual growth and the importance of reflecting on the Scriptures if we want to know Jesus and become like Him. Unfortunately reading the Bible or studying, meditating or memorising Scripture doesn’t always come easy, so I thought I would share some ideas that might help you . . .

• Small Group – join or initiate a group that meets for Bible study each week
• Diving Deep Group – join or initiate a group that takes a paragraph of Scripture each week and observes, interprets and applies it to their lives
• Growth Group – join or initiate a group of 2-3 people of the same gender and meet with them each week for mutual encouragement
• Accountability Partner – find a buddy who wants to read what you’re reading or simply shares your commitment to reading the Bible and check in with them each week for mutual encouragement
• Bible Book Club – form or join a Bible Book Club that encourages consistent contact either in person or online
• Bible Reading Plan – find and commit to a plan that will ensure you don’t get stuck at trying to decide what to read and will see you reading a variety of Bible books in a given period of time

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