||Pastoral Passage|| The experience of church as a family and a community helps inquirers come to a commitment to Jesus, and it helps followers of Jesus grow strong and stable in the faith they have committed to.
Prayer
Experiences don’t make or break the Christian life. They can be a great boost for faithful Christian living, but in the end they count for nothing if what God has already clearly spoken has little value to you. Do seek to hear God, but make sure you aren’t neglecting to listen in the right place. He has already spoken.
The parable of the Unforgiving Servant spells out in severe terms the necessity of forgiving those who wrong us “from the heart”. An issue that arises here is the very real difficulty people can have in bringing themselves to forgive.
||Pastoral Passage|| An experience of healing, by faith in the character of God, expressed by prayer.
||Pastoral Passage|| There is a fairly old debate concerning modern Christian mission: Should priority be given to gospel preaching or to social action?
“If you pray for us, you will pray for the wrong things . . . “
||Pastoral Passage|| It is because we may pray in Jesus’ name that we can expect our prayers to be heard by God the Father.