Matthew 11 v28

I wonder if there is anyone in who can stand up and say, ‘I have no worries in my life?’ If there is, would you like to stand up so we can all admire you?

There must be very few Christians or non- Christians who have not experienced some worry, some anxiety. We need hardly ask whether worry harms, it causes us to lose sleep takes the joy out of living, causes our hair to fall out or turn grey, even leads to an early grave.
There are so many fears in modern life. Young people facing life away from home for the first time. The man in his 40s fearing redundancy. Young managers worried at having to achieve ridiculously high targets. The business man working such hours he hardly has little time to see his family.

There is the fear of marriage breakdown, or serious illness;fear of losing someone dear. These are all perils faced by people every single day. As Christians we need to ask, ‘what is life all about’? So many people, especially the young, have no meaningful purpose. They have a hard outlook of, ‘live life to excess, get what you can out of it by any means whatever’.

What is the answer for the growing number of older people frightened to venture out of their homes? The one parent abandoned by their husband /wife. Wherever you look you find sadness and heartache and despair. The Bible says the answer is that life has no meaning apart from God. But for many God is unreal.

You can’t however come to God except through Jesus Christ. Not by Mohammed, Buddha, or anyone else. Christ came to seek and to save the lost, the fearful and the lonely, the worried and the broken hearted. God is willing to pour His grace upon you so that you no longer need to fear if you repent of any sin and turn to Jesus as Lord and Saviour.

The Bible says that God is separated from us by sin. Sin is not just immorality; it is an attitude of rebellion and independence, saying ‘I go my own way’. The Prodigal Son went his own way to be free and independent, but failed to find any true purpose in life, and found he was cut off from the only person who really loved him.
Jesus came, sent from God with the sole purpose of bringing us into a living relationship with Himself and to all who are worried, afraid or anxious, Jesus says, ‘Come to me and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light’

So who can come? All those who are weary and heavy laden with care. This is a selective invitation. You have to recognise a need and be prepared to admit it. All who are weighed down by sin or guilt.

The Bible says, ‘there is no distinction since all have fallen short of the glory of God’. It doesn’t matter what the past has been, if you repent and turn to Christ, God is ready to blot out your sins and give you a clean sheet. We have all broken God’s laws but if we are prepared to admit this, then Christ’s invitation is for us.

What happens if you come? Jesus said, ‘I will give you rest’. These are words spoken by someone who fulfils His promises. So many people make promises they either cannot, or have no intention, of fulfilling. Jesus is ready to be faithful to His Word. He says, ‘I can set you free for I am the Way, the truth, and the life. Come just as you are. We rely on what He has done for us, and at His invitation in a spirit of simple trust.

Jesus said, ‘take my yoke upon you and learn from me’. A yoke was a wooden frame placed on a persons shoulder in order to make a load easier to carry. So Jesus is saying ‘let me help you carry your burden. Instead of going your own way turn around and come with me’.


You see it is not just being religious or even coming to Church that brings peace and rest, or indeed makes you a full Christian. A person can be baptised, confirmed and be regular at Church and not be a true Christian. Many Church people are really unpleasant, arrogant and very un-Christian. Coming to Church should be a delight like sons and daughters coming to meet their (heavenly)Father in complete harmony, as children go their earthly parents home In far too many Churches there are dominant personalities who, instead of looking for the good, want to put their own interpretation on matters, such interpretation not always being favourable. In such cases it is because their own personal life is unhappy, disturbed or there is something lacking.

In one famous promise Jesus said ‘behold I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and sup with Him’. As He stands outside the door of your life, He longs to come in to make His presence and friendship real. But the door handle is on the inside. All you need do is turn it in faith.

Jesus was brought up in the East, and there the greatest act of friendship is to dine with someone. Jesus is offering to dine with anyone who invites Him.

At the end of every one of his Crusades, Billy Graham asks people to make a commitment to Christ and to demonstrate that commitment to go forward to the front of the stadium. At the same time, the choirs sing the hymn, ‘Just as I am…I come to Thee’

Believe His promise, take Jesus at His word, come just as you are.

United States v United Kingdom.

It has long perplexed me in the selective way that we in Britain import much of American life. Sky has a channel devoted to American television programmes, which is very popular. We follow American movies and play their music, and use their colloquial phrases and terms, (‘a witness box’ has now become ‘taken the stand’) and of course some of their types of food; we even import their pornography. But there is something of American life we have not and no doubt will continue to resist, and that of course is their commitment to Christianity.

I was listening to a programme conducted by a presenter, who is a self confessed atheist, in which Christianity was being discussed and he seemed to be pleased to repeat several times that the number of people attending Church on a regular basis in America is down to 41%. This may or may not be true, but before polls are taken seriously it has to be determined who asked the question, what was the question, and where was it carried out.

If I was asked to conduct a poll I could produce any response that was required just by concentrating on an appropriate area and being selective in the asking of people. However, any Church in Britain, where regular attendance is less than 10%, would be delighted to find they could attract 41% of their local area to regular worship.

In modern life, circumstances make it difficult for some people to attend on a week by week basis, but will attend when possible; but those would not figure in the percentage. I watch American religious channels and the Churches I see have congregations that would have thrilled me and would be a joy for many Church leaders here.

A major religious difference here between our two countries is in the attitude of Evangelicals. The American Evangelical movement is strongly supportive of Israel, and indeed are Israel’s greatest foreign friends. In contrast I was amazed to read recently that a Vicar in this country, who claims to be a conservative evangelical, likened Israel’s response to the Palestinians to that of the Holocaust. He also appears on Islamic sites and has supported a Hamas anti-semitic preacher. When his attitude was complained about and other evangelical ministers asked to disassociate themselves from him, they refused.

I believe our attitude as Biblical Christians should be that of supporting Israel. I accept that their response to attack can be strong, but in which case it must be realised they are in fact responding, and if they were not attacked there would not be need for a response.

I am envious of the American preachers being able to freely express their views on all moral issues. There is no question that if British preachers were to use the same words I have heard from Americans, they would be facing prosecution. A street preacher here was arrested after a police assistant heard him answering a question
in a private conversation regarding homosexuality. In other instances advertisements have been banned as likely to offend people in same sex unions.

I was interested in the statement of beliefs of the largest Christian denomination in the United States, the Southern Baptists. I can only imagine the outcry if that was proposed in Britain. People would be screaming for action under the Equality and Diversity Acts. Only other faiths can be so dogmatic about their beliefs here.

Evangelicals are not popular outside their own circle. The liberals don’t like them because they stand for too high a theological and moral belief. The non believers don’t like them for much the same reason. A prime example was revealed recently.

Free Schools are a prized part of the Education Secretary’s agenda, which some of us commend. This takes authority away from left wing councils who have ideas which often children should not be taught, especially in regards to sexual matters, and subjects of a politically correct attitude. Free schools are supported by teachers and parents who have higher ideals and often have a religious background, which of course infuriates the opponents as those religious ideals are traditional.

An adviser to the Education Department, who also writes for the Daily Telegraph, described evangelicals as extremist and equated them with totalitarian Muslims and Orthodox Jews. This unbalanced, prejudiced and bigoted view was challenged by the Evangelical Alliance, who wrote a letter of protest to the Editor outlining the many practical and beneficial contributions evangelicals made to society. The failure of the paper to publish that letter adds to the justification for a press enquiry. There is a total lack of principle when accusation can be ignorantly and wilfully be made without the decency and courtesy of publishing a response.

I was personally surprised as the Daily Telegraph was once recognised as being one of the finer and more responsible papers, with a sympathetic attitude to Christian issues. As has been asked elsewhere, would they have dared to treat an Islamic protest with the same disdain?

Female Vicar to sample drugs.

It is reported that a female Vicar is to take the drug ecstasy in a television programme along with other drug takers to judge the effects. This being so it is shameful and if she is identified should be hauled before her Bishop and informed of her lack of responsibility and disciplined. This is a stupid and outrageous prank well beyond the bounds of acceptability. She should think of the message it sends out to young and weak minds.

There are too many men and women who have been ordained into the Church of England who appear to think that because of their occupation it gives them the opportunity to do things that they would not otherwise be able to do. This reveals a total lack of respect for their Office and lack of dignity. If these people wish to be television personalities they should do so by other means. They are just a disgusting lot of people seeking a few minutes of fame that their own abilities are not capable of attaining.

Mary Magdelene

This coming Sunday the Church of England honours the memory of Mary Magdelene and the Gospel reading is about her actions at the tomb of our Lord.

Mary is first mentioned in Luke’s Gospel where she is one of the rich women who supported Jesus financially. She came from a fishing village called Magdala so may well have been a business woman. We are told that Jesus liberated her from demons and it has been suggested, without foundation, that she was an immoral woman, but we are not told just what her trouble had been. Whatever it was it caused her to love Jesus deeply, accept Him as Lord and Saviour and made her vow to follow Him wherever He went.

When Jesus was taken to the Cross she stood with His mother to watch the awful scene, remaining to see Him placed in the tomb, and was first back at the tomb on Easter morning when of course she found it empty. She ran to tell the Apostles Peter and John who went and confirmed her story.

Mary was too distraught to leave the scene not realising Jesus had risen, but who indeed would ever have imagined a dead man rising back to life?

When someone we love dies we don’t really know how to deal with it. Those of us who have been through such a time can understand how Mary must have felt. She loved Jesus as she loved living and she was a loyal supporter. Death does not destroy or end love, it just takes another form. Some of you will remember loved ones and in your heart will feel you can still talk to them and say how much you miss them.

As she stood there weeping two angels in white were sitting in the place where Jesus had been and asked her why she was crying. She told them it was because Jesus had been taken away, and then saw Jesus standing by her but thought He was the gardener. She wanted to know where the body had been removed to so she could go and carry it back. When Jesus spoke she recognised Him and went to embrace Him but He told her not to touch Him.

There is a lesson for all of us in this story. Our Lord can be close to us even if we cannot see Him. It is often the case when we feel abandoned and sad He is closest to us so we must trust that He never will leave us to face life without Him. People tend to give up on God too quickly and feel they can face life in their own strength only to find they fail miserably.

Jesus told Mary to go and tell the disciples, and so she became the first Christian witness, and all who claim to be Christians are expected to do what Mary did and proclaim their faith. Jesus came to Mary in a personal way and we need to meet Him personally. For two thousand years the hearts of millions of men and women have been touched and their minds come to realise that Jesus can be with them as they face all of life’s burdens.

The Christian message is that Jesus stands at the door of your heart and asks to come in. He wants, and insists on, being invited, He will not force entry and then He will be with you on your life’s journey. If you have not yet made the invitation why not do so and get to know how He can set your life as free as He set Mary’s all those years ago.

A few weeks ago I wrote to you after the Bishops in the Church of England had agreed to include an amendment for the then forthcoming to the debate about the appointment of women as bishops, which would allow those who could not accept such appointments to be overseen by a male Bishop. This did not please women supporters and I quoted a statement reported to have been made by a Dr Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, an interim principal at Durham University’s Ustinov College.

I wrote that if ever anyone wished to establish a case against women being appointed as bishops, the writing of The Rev Dr Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, in a recent blog would be sufficient. She had accused the Church of England of being an "abusive institution" and questioned whether women should stay or flee.

She then went on to suggest women’s exclusion entrenched sexist attitudes, causing serious consequences for women around the world; and alleged that rape, sexual abuse, violence against women and women's political and economic subjugation, are repeatedly justified on the basis that it is 'natural' and 'God-given' that women should be below men on some divine hierarchy.

It is hard to believe that a supposedly educated person could make such an astoundingly stupid statement. It is hard to credit that a proposed amendment from the Church of England would reverberate around the world in an aggressive reaction to women. To further suggest serious sexual crime would result is allowing the emotion to run berserk. Now she has been at it again.

She is quoted as stating that the point of having women bishops is to say the Church of England believes men and women are equal and made in the image of God. I was never aware that anyone in the Church thought otherwise, but what this woman doesn’t seem to realise is that being equal does not mean must be the same. As Melanie McDonough, the Evening Standard commentator forcefully remonstrated, the Catholic Church does not have women as bishops, and Catholics have never felt unequal.

One would assume that Miranda being a principal of a College is also a teacher of Scripture, in which case she should be aware that the Bible states (1 Corinthians 12) God decreed there should be various gifts given to different people. God never rated some as being more important than others. Was He being discriminatory then? God did through His chosen writers of the Bible decree that leadership in the Church should be male.

When women were ordained as priests all supporters imagined they would succeed in evangelism, more so than their male colleagues. The Church has continued to lose members, and whilst that is a reflection on both sexes, it reinforces the fact that the ordination of women was more to conform to society’s attitudes, which do not consider tradition or theology, and is more concerned with the issue of equality and diversity laws.

We proclaim in the Creed that we believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, yet we seem to anxious to break away from that Church and separate us from the (Roman) Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Can we not find another way of proving the dear old Church of England believes men and women are equal?

2 Corinthians Chapter `12.

This Letter is less used than Paul’s First Letter to the Church at Corinth. In the first he was giving advice on many pastoral matters which is still relevant for us today.

Now Paul is in despair as the Church has been turned against him by false teachers who had infiltrated the Church. They claimed superiority to Paul and spoke of having visions, and Paul was not very happy. But Christians cannot be happy all the time, there will be joy and suffering as Paul knew only too well. He had been warned by Ananias at the time of his conversion, and experienced it many times.

In order to challenge the false teachers Paul decided to tell of his own visionary experience. He had been reluctant to do so but wanted people to know he had such a thing, but didn’t want to boast so wrote in the third person. Paul didn’t think it was necessary to tell everybody and didn’t want to make a big issue of it.

He wrote that it was fourteen years earlier with a vision of heaven, which made a deep impression upon him. He would have preferred to keep it secret for ever, but now felt it was necessary for him to tell.

He said he heard things he was not permitted to state. Whilst his opponents may speak of their backgrounds and achievements, he rather wanted to speak of his weakness and suffering, which he stated was the mark of a true Apostle..

Paul said he was given a thorn in the flesh, meaning some form of handicap, but no one has been able to definitively state what that was. He didn’t know the cause but many things happen to us that we cannot explain, we have to believe God has a higher purpose for us. I appreciate that may not be well received by someone who is suffering or has suffered much. If however God answered every prayer He would be taken for granted, so for unanswered prayer we have to decide if we are going to trust Him. If you are tempted to give up being a Christian because of unanswered prayer, then that is sad and you will not be any better.

God allowed Paul to have this thorn with the only explanation ‘I will not do anything about it but I will give you the means of dealing with it’. This is to encourage and challenge us because Jesus promises to give us grace. Whatever the problems my be, physical, spiritual, there is that amazing grace John Newton wrote about in his wonderful hymn ‘Amazing Grace’. There was a man who had no belief and was in danger of losing his life, but his prayer was answered and he was used mightily to serve his Lord not far from Bedford. History is full of stories of men and women with no great academic ability who rose to do great things.

When things do not go right for us, when we suffer pain, or when some serious event occurs in our life, we invariably ask why. Often the cause may be obvious, if for example a heavy smoker gets lung cancer, or a heavy drinker gets liver damage, but sudden tragedy does come unexpectedly and we ponder why God let it happen.

Some Christians would say it is wrong to questions God and we should just accept things, but writer after writer in the Bible challenges God. It is perfectly proper for a Christian to approach God in complete honesty and lay our concerns before Him. The Bible tells us we can approach God and express our pain and frustration with the way we feel. It is good for us to express our feelings to God

Sometimes we lay awake at night wondering what is going to happen to us. When you are in pain it is awful to spend a long night waiting anxiously for morning when relief may be sought. I am sure you will all have had some situation in your life when you have felt disturbed, so you know how little food or sleep matter.

A lot of people have well ordered lives and live comfortably and become totally detached from the wider world. I worked for many years in a big and busy city where I saw much loveliness, right across the spectrum to utter depravity. It is a sad, sad world out there.

A city has many lonely people living in flats alone, the products of broken marriages or romances; students living away from home for the first time vulnerable to predators; a hedonistic lifestyle leaves them feeling even more depressed.

It has been a sad part of my ministry to have taken funerals of young men (mainly but the odd woman) who have died under the age of forty because of alcohol or drug dependency.

Jesus said,’ come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden’, but Jesus is the last person they would turn to, yet their whole life could be turned around if they did. To live without Christ in your life is a great loss, to die without Him is a tragedy.

Henry Lyte was a clergyman who went under much pain and knew he had not long to live, but knew God would be his helper and support. He wrote the hymn ‘abide with me’. that I must have sung thousands of times over the years at funeral services, but it was never meant to be for that purpose but rather as a hymn of triumph. He had confidence in God in life and in death.

If you are someone who feels your faith is being tested; or you are having a hard time from someone, or any other kind of suffering, you may feel you long to talk to someone. This needs to be someone you can really trust so do what the Psalmist did and talk to God.

We will no find out all the answers we would like this side of heaven, but we will one day. We are promised a time will come when all who have accepted the Lord Jesus as Saviour will live with Him in glory; no more pain or suffering; no tears or regrets; all achieved through Christ’s atoning blood shed on the Cross and God’s amazing grace.

Paul wrote, no eye has seen; no ear has heard; no mind conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him.

May God’s grace be sufficient for you.

Be at Church on Sunday and God bless you.

The Church of England has just held a meeting of its General Synod and has come out of it looking ridiculous, disgraced, and acting as if it had a death wish.

We had the shambles of the issue of women bishops. A compromise was put forward whereby women could be made bishops and those who objected on scriptural grounds, (not a wise move in the present Church of England) would be accommodated by being offered alternative oversight. This however was not enough for the proponents of women bishops, it had to be complete surrender, a typical stance for those of liberal persuasion (you can be as liberal as one likes as long as you agree with them). Whilst women have every right to claim for appointment, so have those who object, to have their case considered. In the end Synod did what it does so often, it put the issue back until next time.

I have written before how wasteful Synod is. It has 467 members at an enormous cost when money is scarce for parish needs. It does nothing very useful and discusses issues it has no business doing so.

At a time when the country is screamingly anti-European, the Church wants to be more European calling for more European support. When 70% of the population are anti same sex marriage there are those who want to promote it.

We have Synod disgracefully supporting a Middle Eastern body which is violently and very biased against Israel. It is not Israel who is firing rockets on civilians and encouraging suicide bombers, yet not a word in support of Israel and against its attackers.

There was a motion virtually prohibiting clergy from being members of the British National Party. I cannot imagine many, if indeed any, member of the clergy wanting to become members of the BNP, or for that matter any other political party at the present time, but as that Party is a legitimate one given full freedom to campaign by the government, it ill behoves the Church to start meddling in politics, especially when it would never suggest clergy refrain from joining the Labour or Conservative Parties.

Then we had the most stupid remark surely ever made by a Bishop, and there have been many silly statements. The Bishop of Bath thought the rioters last year were having a spiritual experience when rioting. It has brought mockery and shame on the Church. The rioters were simply criminals and many were punished rightly. People of yesteryear suffered poverty on a scale beyond modern comprehension, but never acted in such manner. It ill behoves a Bishop sitting pretty in some palace in a serene part of the country to comment so when hard working people in the riot zones were having their life’s work sent up in smoke.

If a Synod is to exist it should concentrate its energies on propagating the gospel at a time when the Church is losing members in frustration at the Church’s obsession with matters, some of which are in direct contravention of Scripture, and other matters which are the province of secular government.