3rd November 2019 - Garden of Tears
On Sunday, Ainsley took us through the moment of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane from the Gospel of Mark. She looked at this raw and intimate moment between Jesus and his Father, and how this gives us a glimpse into their relationship. The final challenge was to us - “wake up! Watch and pray!”
20th October 2019 - Who Do You Say I Am?
Focussing on Mark 8:14-30, Jed unpacks a series of Gospel stories that revolve around Jesus’s question to his disciples: Who do you say I am? Despite our ready answers to that question, Jed suggests that Jesus is less interested in our speedy replies than in our willingness to follow Him. It is in following Jesus that we understand who he is. The king who is outside our definitions and beyond our language asks us to learn from the eloquence of His life, and His love for others.
July 7th, 2019 - Faithful Presence: Kingdom Prayer
June 30th, 2019 - Faithful Presence: Fivefold Gifting
June 23rd, 2019 - Faithful Presence: The Least of These
June 16th, 2019 - Faithful Presence: Proclaiming the Gospel
June 2nd, 2019 - Faithful Presence: Reconciliation
May 26th, 2019 - Enacting God's Love
This week Jed explores the distance between the things we believe about God’s love, and actually enacting God’s love in the lives of others
May 19th, 2019 - Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch
“How wide do I actually think God’s love is? Are there people in this world who are unable to love God in the way that I do?” - Jed Evans
April 7th, 2019 - Laying down Consumption, Embracing Contentment
“When we are content, we are thoughtful, measured, and prayerful in what and how we consume resources. “
“So how can we pick this up? How can we find the secret of contentment? Well like anything good in life, we have to cultivate it.” - Ainsley Freeman
31st March, 2019 - Laying Down Busyness, Embracing Purpose
“Embracing purpose doesn’t mean abandoning the reality and chaos of this world but engaging in it more deeply through life giving action. This is the way of Jesus.”
“Life is full and this is life. A purposeful life does not equal a life that is not without action or a withdrawal from the reality of this world. A purposeful life is being connected to new our identity and staying in step with what we are created for. This is what being a disciple or apprentice of Jesus is. “ - Lyndal Sherwin
10th March, 2019 - Laying Down Worry, Picking Up Trust
“As we peel back the layers of Jesus’ dialogue with His disciples, we start to see Jesus zeroing in, with pin point accuracy, on the part of our lives that has huge implications for both our heads and our hearts. Jesus is talking to His disciples about the relationship between control, worry, and trust.” - Dan Le Cordier
3rd March, 2019 - Light Through Our Community
“The most distinguishing characteristic about the early church was not their ideology or their politics. It was their love for others. They lived as those who were once again living under the rule and the reign of God, as a sign and as a foretaste of what it would be like when Christ returned.” - Jamie Freeman
24th February, 2019 - Light in our Family
“It is life changing when church becomes what it is supposed to be. Church so easily becomes about the bits and the pieces, our style, our songs, where the chairs are set up, whether the sermons are any good, whether the service meets my needs, whether there are things for me to get involved in…
But the Bible doesn’t at all talk about church like that. The church is a family to which we belong. A family that we’ve been adopted into. A family that embraces and enfolds everyone. A family that navigates the messiness of life together because Jesus is in their midst.” - Ainsley Freeman
10th February, 2019 - Light in our Lives
Having considered what it looks like for God to be the light of the world, we now consider what is looks like for God to be the light in our lives. This week we take a look at Peter’s life changing interaction with Jesus and consider what it looks like for Jesus to speak words of light back into Peter’s life.
3RD FEBRUARY, 2019 - LIGHT IN THE WORLD
The way God’s light overcomes the darkness is punctuated and fulfilled by Jesus stepping into the world, but it is emphatically demonstrated by God’s persistent engagement and grace with humanity over the course of history. He is the one who has never let go. Not in the beginning, not throughout his covenant with Israel, not after the resurrection, not today, and he won’t let go tomorrow.
The darkness has not overcome the light because the light is ever present.
20TH JANUARY, 2019 - LIGHTHOUSE
Ainsley kicks off our year together by introducing the focus area for H3O this year. She invites us to consider what it looks like for the church to be a lighthouse in our communities as we reflect on what it means for God to be the light in our world.
18th November 2018 - The Beatitudes: Blessed are the merciful
In this sermon, Ainsley explores how true mercy from God—and others—is a completely undeserved gift. Those who flourish in the Kingdom are not those who somehow made it happen through their own character or actions. Instead, it is those with nothing to offer who are able to inherit the Kingdom. The merciful, Ainsley explains, are those with empty hands.
11th November 2018 - The Beatitudes: Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness
In this sermon, Jed clarifies the meaning of “righteousness” as something more like restorative justice, and explores how God’s Kingdom is characterised by a reconciling form of justice. And God’s justice does not match our standards of equality. This new way of living, Jesus says, is not based upon rewards for good deeds. There is no principle of proportionality at work here, but a new kind of upside-down economics. God’s economy is an economy of grace, where God showers generosity on those who might least deserve it, and at the same time God is unfailingly trustworthy to those who have nothing left to count on, nothing to hold on to at the end of the day. God’s reign is characterized by restorative justice.
