Preacher: Nathan Nettleton

Knowing Jesus intimately is the most important thing of all, but many of our otherwise good gifts and concerns are constantly getting in the way.

If you set yourself against the other, you also cut yourself off from the Father who loves you both. You diminish yourself, cut off the other, and break the Father’s heart.

God’s ways of abundance and grace are almost incomprehensible to those of us who have been shaped by the world’s ways of scarcity and merit based rewards and punishments.

The glory that has been seen in Jesus can shine forth in us, but there will be obstructions to be purged and commitments to be made first.

The call to love our enemies is not a new law to slave at, but a call into a culture of love so wild and free and strong that no one can hate it out of us.

There is a fundamental culture clash between those who put their trust in God and those who pursue wealth, comfort and celebrity.

When we truly encounter God in worship, we see everything in all its splendour and horror and are transformed for mission.

God is love, and so love is the only real measure of spiritual maturity or accomplishment.

Jesus’s agenda, which we are called to follow, is about healing, liberating and gathering in the excluded, not purifying the community by excluding anyone.

All-in commitment is unfashionable, but it is often what God needs from us to allow the richest blessings to flow.

In baptism we follow Jesus in being “ordained” and empowered for mission.

An adaptation of the First Kontakia on the Life of Christ, a sung or chanted sermon by the great sixth-century poet and singer, St Romanos the Melodist.