Final post

As we now have two face book pages www.facebook.com/claptonsa and www.facebook.com/stokenewingtonsa we believe it is time to stop posting here. Thank you for reading. May God richly bless you in the future. We look forward to interacting with you through facebook. Love and prayers always.

Acts 4:31

Acts 4:31

"After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly." Whatever life is throwing at you today remember the truth that the God of the Bible is the same God who is available to us today. The Holy Spirit that came at Pentecost is the same Holy Spirit who's power is available to each one of us today. Trust the God who created the universe with your life today and watch him work in you and through you. You will be amazed. Talk to him, pray according to his will and watch in awe as you see his kingdom come in your life and in the lives of those around you.

Teach us to pray!

As followers of Jesus we all need to pray, prayer is the key way to communicate with our heavenly Father. If we don’t spend time talking to him, we can never expect to understand what he is saying to us. If we don’t talk to our friends and family we don’t know what is happening with them, we grow distant and begin to enjoy different things. It’s the same with God we need to spend time with him to understand what he is saying to us and to discover his will for our lives. Sometimes it is hard to pray, we don’t know what to say, we find ourselves coming before God and wondering how to pray. In the New Testament the disciples asked Jesus how to pray and he gave them a pattern for prayer, The Lord’s prayer: Remember the creator of this amazing world wants to be in relationship with you, so much, that he has left us a pattern to follow when we talk to him.

The Lord's Prayer

Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,

The power, and the glory,

For ever and ever.

Amen.

Try is,use it allow God through the Holy Spirit to speak through it, into your life today!

Acts 10:9-16

Peter’s Vision

⁹ About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof⁽ to pray. ¹⁰ He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. ¹¹ He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. ¹² It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. ¹³ Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”¹⁴ “Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”¹⁵ The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”¹⁶ This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven.

Peter in his vision responds from his safe place of tradition and refuses. In Leviticus 11v44-45, we have strict guidelines that Peter refers to.

Leviticus 11:44-45

⁴⁴ I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy. Do not make yourselves unclean by any creature that moves along the ground.⁴⁵ I am the Lord, who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy.

Acts 10 is like a bomb exploding. Peter realises that the living God is speaking to him and whilst it is always beneficial to fall back on scripture and tradition. By doing this we may miss out on what the Spirit is doing. Peter is obviously confused when Cornelius’ servants arrive to see him. The next day they all travel to Caesarea to the house of Cornelius, a Gentile. Peter, a Jew, again was breaking Jewish tradition by associating with Gentiles.

Peter listens to Cornelius’ story and then preaches the gospel as he finished preaching the Spirit fell on those who listened. The Gentile listeners were not baptised or circumcised and yet the Holy Spirit, descended upon them. God in this story shows to Peter, and to us, that the gospel is for the entire world, all nations, all ages, and all people groups. But it is also apparent that God wants to reach lost mankind in partnership with mankind. He invites us to be part of his mission. Taking part in the mission of God means leaving our place of security, to travel to the place where others are. It is always in the direction of others not ourselves.

So the challenge of this story for today. We must be prepared to let God do new things. Even if we don’t like it. We don’t get it, and we would rather he didn’t. Acts 10 is a story of a man and a community who were prepared to think and act outside of the box. We must learn not to confine and constrain God. We must be radically dependent on God and follow where he leads. We must also realise that God is active in the world outside the church. Cornelius was not part of the early church, but God spoke to him. We do not hold a monopoly on the love of God. It is available to all men.