A Vicar Writes: May 2017

May is the time of year when we really begin to enjoy the summer months isn’t it? The light nights and the sunshine (hopefully!) encourage us to spend more time outside in the fresh air. I love the summer months, it’s the time of year when I feel most alive – but I’ll come back to that in a minute.

Over the Easter holiday, it was brilliant to spend time with some of the church family at Delamere Forest, sharing a picnic and enjoying a gentle walk, even the sun decided to join us which made things even better! It’s so important to spend time together as a church family, to encourage friendships to grow and deepen. After all Jesus commanded us to love our neighbour and in order to love our neighbour, we need to get to know them don’t we? If you’ve not joined us yet for any of the church socials, can I encourage you to check out the list on the website and come along. The next event is the Vicarage Garden party on Saturday 20^th May from 2pm till 4pm, come along and enjoy the grounds, a drink and piece of cake.

The early disciples, spent a lot of time together, in fact they shared life together. They had some amazing times together but there was also some difficult times. They were there for each other through it all – they supported each other and helped each other. I’m sure they had there fallings out but they dealt with them and moved forward. Through this they learnt to obey Jesus command and they learnt to love each other. I believe it was through this united bond, joined together in Christ, through His Holy Spirit, that they found the strength to face persecution and continue Jesus’ mission to build the church.

As we read the book of Acts, we see they were gathered together praying and waiting. What an important message that is for us today, we need to discover the importance of praying together and waiting on God. If you’ve not already joined us, why not come along to our weekly prayer meeting on Tuesday mornings from 10am. Its so important to pray together, because when we pray God does act! In the 2 years we’ve been meeting, we have seen so many answered prayers – its amazing! Look what happened to those disciples, the Holy Spirit came upon them in the most amazing and powerful way, completely transforming them and the world as we know it! Have you experienced the Holy Spirit in your life? Have you asked the Holy Spirit into your life? Because with God’s Spirit in us, we are slowly transformed each day to become more and more like Him and we are also united with our Christian brothers and sisters around the world.

Our new sermon series is entitled ‘Building Character’, we will be looking at how the Holy Spirit transforms us over time so that we are changed and shaped by God to become more ‘mature’ Christians, our House groups will be picking up on the weekly sermons and discussing them in more detail, why not think about joining one of our groups? It’s a great opportunity to grow in your discipleship but also to deepen friendship and fellowship.

So why do I feel more alive at this time of year? Simple. We’ve just celebrated Easter, the most important event in the Church year, Jesus’ death and resurrection which means sin and death are defeated, the victory is won! That’s a great reason to feel alive. But Pentecost, the gift of the Holy Spirit is the gift which enables us to grow and live for Christ, the gift that ensures we are not alone. Christ is with us always – that’s the reason why I feel alive, because Christ lives in me– what about you?