Don’t vent over advent!

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This Sunday, the 3rd of December marks the start of the season of Advent. It is indeed the first Sunday of Advent. The time when we start preparing our hearts for celebrating the coming of Jesus. It is a time of joyful anticipation, however it can become a time of stress and dread for many as they head towards the season of peace and goodwill.

Instead of thinking about the amazing news of God coming to earth as a tiny baby to be the Saviour of all mankind, they are faced with shopping queues, mounting debt, fights with relatives and friends, the remembrance of lost loved ones and loneliness. It is not a time of joy, hope, peace & love.

I think that is because we lose sight of the Saviour amidst all of the tinsel, turkey & trimmings, and the season loses its meaning. Loses its reason. It just becomes something to be endured and not cherished.

There is no life to it without the life-giver.

The stress and fear that people of Israel were under when Jesus was born in Bethlehem is similar to how people feel in troubled parts of the world today; places where there is oppression and war. The Jews had been conquered, yet again, by a foreign power, this time the Romans and they were being ruled by a puppet monarchy. They were oppressed, like in the days of Moses, and were crying out to God for a deliverer. The song ‘O come, o come emmanuel’ resounds with this sentiment.

God in His goodness, mercy, faithfulness & grace heard their cries and sent Himself to be their Saviour, though he came in a way they could have never imagined.

So this advent, don’t allow the pressures to build up and lead you to ‘vent‘, but instead take time with Jesus, ‘Emmanuel – God with us’ and refocus upon the reason for the season (I know it sounds a bit trite, but it’s true) and allow his love to bring the peace to you that your heart needs.

Just like the Jewish people did all those many years ago, as you call our to God, He will be faithful to hear your cries and respond.

Let him know about your fears, your loneliness, your family troubles, your grief. He is big enough and strong enough to handle them all and bring the comfort you need.

Also if you want more information about Advent, perhaps you might like to check out a great resource from Youth for Christ – our Request website.

I’ll leave you now with a lovely song by Bebo Norman called Born to Die.

Be blessed and have a peaceful advent!

Love is in the air…

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I do love blog posts with a song lyric title don’t I?..This one is taken from John Paul Young’s song ‘Love is in the air‘ as used in the film ‘Strictly Ballroom‘.

I am titling this ‘love is in the air‘ because this week, two of our amazing volunteers at Llandudno Youth for Christ are getting married! Yay!!! So looking forward to seeing these guys tie the knot and enter the covenant of marriage.

Marriage is an amazing covenant that God has instituted that gives us a picture of Jesus and his church. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church – for we are members of his body. ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and the church.” – Ephesians 5:25-32

In marriage, we see and image of Jesus as the one who loves us so much that he willingly died on the cross for us, to save and restore us. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” – Romans 5:8.

He considered us to be worth it. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” – Hebrews 12:1-2.

A Canadian worship band called The City Harmonic wrote a song that beautifully encapsulates this idea – it is called ‘Holy (Wedding Day)‘. In it we see a love story between Jesus and his bride, the church (which is made up of every believer). A love story that is still in the making as more and more people realise the truth of how much God loves us, and how much he has done to make a way for us to be restored to relationship with him.

It is a story that will culminate in a great wedding feast at the end of the age, where we can all truly sing that ‘love is in the air‘.

So this Thursday as we celebrate with two of our volunteers as they publicly declare their love for each other and enter into the sacred covenant of marriage, let us also think about how much Jesus loves us and publicly demonstrated that by dying on the cross for us, and let us look forward to that great day when we will celebrate the wedding feast of the Lamb.

Be blessed!

Amazing Monthly Meet Training with Llandudno Youth for Christ!

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Last Monday night we had a great training evening with our ‘Monthly Meet‘ training event (every 3rd Monday in the month, Llandudno Youth for Christ run a totally free training evening for youth workers, teachers, parents & pastors). We looked at how to manage difficult behaviour in our youth groups.

It was a highly informative and insightful night.We looked at what foundational issues needed to be looked at and thought through when dealing with issues of how to manage difficult behaviour.

What Biblical foundations could we see that point to us to how to manage the spaces where a youth work event or project is run. “Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave – just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’”-Matthew 20:25-28 was especially good at helping us view the young people we look after and our interaction with them.

We are to create safe spaces for the young people that come to our ministries/projects and events. Part of that safety is for them to know they are in a place where we have put things in place to help cultivate community and where there is consistency in how and why we manage difficult behaviour. A safe space where the young people know what the volunteers and leaders of the space expect from them as regards behaviour, and also what the young people can expect from the leaders in return as regards behaviour.

We also delved into some ‘Do’s‘ and ‘Don’ts‘ of managing difficult behaviour, as well as of course unpacking what difficult behaviour looked like and could mean to each group.

So of these were things like don’t engage with too much ‘shushing‘ or just try to speak louder than the group that you are trying to make yourself heard by as this can lead to them feeling challenged by you in a negative way and the noise levels only increase.

“Through patience a ruler can be persuaded, and a gentle tongue can break a bone.” – Proverbs 25:15. “Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.” – Phil 4:5

We learned and saw demonstrated just how effective speaking firmly, but softly and calmly, could be at bringing order and attention to an unruly room of people.

All in all, it was, as with all of the ‘Monthly Meets‘, a great evening that was fun, informative and a great opportunity to meet up with a network with other youth workers, teachers, parents and pastors in the North Wales area.

Our director Mr Tim Gough is an excellent communicator and his training nights are not to be missed. He also has a great youth work blog that is a brilliant resource for youth workers to dip into.

I really do encourage people to come along to our next ‘Monthly Meet’ training evening in December. 18th Dec @ 7pm in Ty Llywelyn Community Centre, Ffordd Yr Orsedd, Llandudno, LL30 1LA. It will be another great evening and there will be mountains of mince pies and other festive treats too.

Be blessed!

Coming unstuck…

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Way back in the 1960’s, a scientist at the stationary company 3M, Dr Spencer Silver was working on developing  a super strength adhesive. However, he instead accidentally created a ‘low-tack’ reusable and pressure sensitive adhesive. This happened in 1968 and despite it being a breakthrough in glue technology, the good Dr couldn’t think of the right ‘application’ for the glue (pun not intended, but welcomed nevertheless). He had come unstuck in his development.

Was this to become one of those silly inventions that are relegated to the annals of history as something cool, but stupid, like ‘shoe umbrellas’ or ‘chopstick fans’?

Never fear, in 1974 a colleague at 3M, Art Fry, after having attended one of Dr Silver’s lecture about his glue had a brainwave. Whilst he was singing in his church choir, he was musing about how he could put bookmarks in his hymn book so that he could easily find the next song without damaging the pages when he remembered Dr Silver’s discovery. Art Fry worked on the idea, and used yellow scarp paper from the lab next door to his to create the peel & press bookmarks. These were launched in 1977, but the idea did not take on fully until free samples were sent out the following year, which proved to be a success, and in 1979 ‘Post-It’ notes as we have come to know and love them went into full production in 1979.

The rest is history as you say.

A seeming failure was repurposed and changed the stationary industry as we know it.

The apostle Peter is another example of someone coming unstuck. In the gospel of Luke, after having fiercely proclaimed that he would never deny Jesus, we find him doing exactly that, much to his own bitter regret. The rock band ‘Third Day’ sing a great song from Peter’s perspective about this called ‘I can’t take the pain‘.

This looked like a failure that could not be fixed. Peter had come unglued and where could he go from his denial? What could he do?

Thankfully God does not leave us in our sin and failure, but through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross has made a way for us to be restored and for our lives to be turned around.

This happened for Peter. Jesus lovingly restored him and on the day of Pentecost, we see this Christ denying apostle, boldly declaring that Jesus was the Messiah.

The same can happen in our lives. God can take our messes, our brokenness and our failure and when we place our lives into his hands, we can see him turn it all around like we would never have imagined. “In the end I will turn things around for the people. I’ll give them a language undistorted, unpolluted,
words to address God in worship and, united, to serve me with their shoulders to the wheel. They’ll come from beyond the Ethiopian rivers, they’ll come praying — All my scattered, exiled people will come home with offerings for worship.” – Zephaniah 3.

Be blessed!

Boom, here comes the boom!

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Last Sunday night at ‘Redefine‘ we played a new game called ‘2 Rooms and a Boom‘. It’s a really fun game to play. I’ll let this video explain the basics of how to play.

We played three rounds of the game; twice the blue team won and the president’s life was saved and one time the red team won and there was a boom in the room and no more president.

It was kind of funny to play such a game and it really helped the young people to mingle and relax at the start of the night.

We then went on with the next night in our teaching series on ‘Jesus is..‘ and we looked at the fact that Jesus is God.

Again there were lots of ‘booms‘ in the room as we explored what the Bible had to say about Jesus being God, and it figuratively blowing our minds with how awesome and staggering that fact is.

It’s easy to believe that Jesus is human, but to come to the realisation that he is God is sometimes a lot harder for people to believe. Indeed, it was for the very fact that Jesus made such claims that the Jewish leaders that heard him wanted to kill him. “‘Very truly I tell you,’ Jesus answered, ‘before Abraham was born, I am!’ At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.” – John 8:58-59. The ‘I am‘ that Jesus said here is ‘ego eimi‘ in the original Greek. Jesus’ listeners would have recognised what he meant when he said this. When Moses is being sent by God to deliver the Israelites from captivity in Egypt, he asks God who he should tell the Israelites has sent him? Essentially Moses is asking God for His name. God’s response to Moses is this “God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: “I am has sent me to you.”’”- Exodus 3:14

That is why they wanted to stone him. Jesus was calling himself by the same name that God had called himself when he spoke with Moses. After healing a man on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders asked Jesus why he had done this and in their eyes broken the sabbath by working. “So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. In his defence Jesus said to them, ‘My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.’ For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” – John 5:17-18

In other places Jesus is worshipped and does not stop the disciples from doing this, or from calling him God.

We then broke into groups to look at Hebrew 10 and look at why, if Jesus is God, and is perfect and eternal, why he would come to die for you and for me.

“For by one sacrifice he (Jesus) has made perfect for ever those who are being made holy.” – Hebrews 10:14

Last week we saw how, only a human could pay the price for the sins humanity had committed, but this week we saw how only God could offer a perfect and eternal sacrifice for our sins. That is why Jesus is both fully human and fully God. “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” – Colossians 2:9

Boom!

We finished the night with some time prayer journalling and sang Bebo Norman’s ‘Born to Die‘. One lyric in particular stood out for me from this song ‘And all fell silent for the cry of an infant, The voice of God Was dividing history for those with eyes to see The Son would shine from earth that night.‘ God coming to earth as a baby was truly a ‘boom‘ moment.

As you contemplate the truth that Jesus is God, may you too have a ‘boom‘ moment as you marvel at how great God’s love is, and may it lead you to worship him.

Be blessed!

“All people that on earth do dwell…”

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My wife and I are currently in the process of selling our home. We used to live in Mochdre and have moved to Llandudno Junction. Whilst thinking about this, I thought of the scripture where it says that “From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.“- Acts 17:26 (NIV). In the NKJV it goes like this “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,” or in the NLV “He made from one blood all nations who live on the earth. He set the times and places where they should live.”

That then made me think of the Hymn ‘All people that on earth do dwell‘, which is based upon the 100th Psalm. Its lyrics were written by a Scotsman, William Kethe in the 1500s and the tune is ‘Old Hundredth‘ which is said to have been composed by a Frenchman in the 1500s, Louis Bourgeois.

The hymn encourages everyone on earth to worship God as God. It focusses us back to the truth that He has made us all and knows best how to look after us, like a shepherd looks after his sheep. It is a great hymn that gives us confidence in God’s goodness and also His Lordship. He truly is in charge. At times in our lives this can seem hard for us to understand and believe in. Especially when disaster or tragedy befalls us.

When we see all of the troubles in the world around us both internationally and locally, we can wonder, is God really in charge, is He really good, is He really God?..and our faith can be tested.

However, this hymn and the scripture from Acts reminds us of the truth that God IS God and He IS in control. He has even ‘determined their (all the nations of men throughout history) preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings‘. God knows what He is doing. Speaking of the birth of Jesus, when writing to the Christians in Galatia, Paul writes; “But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.” – Galatians 4:3-7

When the ‘fullness of time had come‘; in other translations it says the time ‘that was set by God the Father‘. God is faithful, and the fact that you were born when and where you were born, He is fully aware of and has a plan for your life.

That plan is for you to come to know Him; “God did this (see Acts 17:26) so that they (all people) would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.” – Acts 17:27

So as you look around you and see all of the trouble and strife and even look at your life and wonder why?.., look up and realise you were made to know God and make Him known; so ‘All people that on earth do dwell; sing to the Lord with cheerful voice, Him serve with mirth, His praise forth tell. Come ye before Him and rejoice.‘

With that said, I want to say a big thank you to all of our amazing volunteers that help us to share the good news of Jesus with the young people of North Wales. God set the appointed times and places that you should live; and part of that is being such valued members of our team at LLYFC. Thank you for being obedient to God and being such valued members of this ministry.

If you feel that you would like to volunteer with Llandudno Youth for Christ, then please do contact us.

Be blessed!

Fireworks

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Last night at Redefine we had a fun time watching a firework display and lighting sparklers in the cold and crips air of early winter.

We then went inside to warm up as we continued our series ‘Jesus is..’ This week we looked at Jesus is – human. The humanity of Jesus. “Since the children have flesh and blood, he (Jesus) too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” – Hebrews 2:14-15

We started off the study session with a True or False game about some scientific facts about the human body that boggle the mind. Such as how much saliva your body produces in your lifetime and whether having lots of dreams during the night denotes a higher or lower IQ?!?! It was fun, fascinating and at time a bit gross.

We then settle down to our Bible study looking at Jesus is human, and in particular tackling the whole issue of ‘why’ Jesus had to be born as a human. “For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” – Romans 8:3-4.

Jesus was God in the flesh coming to pay the price for our sins; and unlike in the song ‘Human‘ where there is an acknowledgement of the fallen, imperfect state of humanity as a whole; though he, Jesus, was fully human, he did not sin. So he could be the perfect sacrifice for our sins and meet the requirements of the law and restore us back to relationship with God.

Wow!

But, still why come as a baby to die for us? Why?

Because He thought we were worth it (see Romans 5) A bit like in Katy Perry’s song lyrics for ‘Fireworks’, “You don’t have to feel like a waste of space
You’re original, cannot be replaced…you’re a firework. Come on show ’em what your worth.” God has placed immense value upon every human life, and has made a way for us to be in relationship with him; “Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” – Hebrews 10:19-25

He want those of us that have come into relationship with him; to shine. To be like fireworks that light up the darkness and point the way to him.

Be blessed and shine!