We see in the Bible that God was very patient with Israel, His chosen people; however, when they continued in their rebellion against Him, in due time God drove them out of their land into a miserable captivity.

There should be no doubt in our minds that God is grieved by our coldness toward Him. One day soon we may see our own country take a nose-dive. God may decide that enough is enough, and He may decide that it is time to punish those who grieve and offend Him.

I would therefore encourage you to pray for our country, its leadership and its people. Pray for a revival in our land, that many might wake up to their spiritual needs, call upon Jesus Christ, and be saved.

Let’s also make a point of recognising the Lord’s Day every week, by going to church to honour our God and our Saviour.

Make Sundays Special!

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

II Chronicles 7:14

And yet our world has a long history of major disasters even more horrific than those of recent years. The great Chinese famine of 1958 caused the loss of 40 million lives. 300 million people died of Smallpox in the early 1900’s, and in the 14th century 75 million (half the population of Europe) died of the Black Death.

So these recent events by themselves are not an indication that Christ will return soon. Rather, they remind us that our world is tainted by sin and the curse, and they warn us that our lives are fragile.

Let us take heed of these recent terrible warnings, and make sure we have taken care of the important matter of our final destiny. Only by putting our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ can we make sure of eternal life.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16

I was amazed to read of a group of people in Australia who decided to abandon civilization, and to go out into the outback and ‘live it rough’. How many generations of ‘living rough’ do you think it took for these people to forget everything about civilized life?

The answer: just one generation! The parents of the next generation of children chose not to tell them about the civilized life they once had, so their children grew up completely ignorant of civilization.

Do you realise this can happen to Christianity? If our society continues on its path of neglecting to go to church and refusing to send its children to Sunday schools, the next generation will know nothing about God and His Bible!

How important it is, then, that we pass on our knowledge of God and the Bible to our children. Let us not neglect reading the Bible together at home, and praying together regularly, so our children can see how a Christian family ought to live. By doing this, we are ensuring our children know how to teach their children to do the same things.

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.                              Proverbs 22:6

While working in my garden one morning, clearing leaves, sweeping paths, weeding plots and cutting back overgrowth, it occurred to me that gardening is an effort towards turning chaos into orderliness.

The chaos comes about when birds and animals (and people!) leave a mess behind them, and plants grow wildly in all directions, and weeds determine to outgrow everything else.

The orderliness is restored when the gardener diligently and carefully works in the garden. If the gardener neglects his work for a few days, the task can become onerous. After a longer delay, the garden may look quite chaotic, and perhaps become too great a job to tackle. The secret is to do ‘little and often’.

A garden might be a good representation of the spiritual lives of Christians. The ‘birds’ and ‘animals’, spiritually speaking, are all those worldly things and worldly people we encounter every day, that mess us up with their bad influences. The ‘plants growing wildly’ represent our spiritual activities, which need to be trained, nurtured and pruned so that they go God’s way. The ‘weeds’ represent the sin in our lives which threatens to take over if we are not careful. Much work needs to be done if the Christian’s spiritual life is not to become chaotic.

How is the work to be done that maintains the orderliness in our ‘garden of life’?

Just like the gardener, you must regularly spend some time on your knees!

Remember, ‘little and often’ is best.

For us it is a time of looking forward with excitement to the most important day in the Christian calendar, and praising God for the risen Saviour.

But for the Lord Jesus, it was a time of dreading the inevitable. He knew (as only God could) the full horror of the agony that was to come. As He considered the great cost, in terms of pain and anguish, of saving the great masses of lost people upon the earth, He had to make the decision that it was all worth it. We thank God today that He chose the hardest path!

We may not know, we cannot tell,

What pains He had to bear;

But we believe it was for us,

He hung and suffered there.

So, as we approach Easter this year, let us remember the suffering that Jesus went through before He was arrested. We should then pray and thank Him afresh for the depth of His love for us, that He should choose to go through so much pain in order to save us from our sins.

Hallelujah! what a Saviour!

At the same time, the ‘Churches Together’ movement is working hard to draw in those few traditional Bible-believing churches in the UK who have not yet fallen under their influence. As a result, there are fewer and fewer churches today that can truly call themselves independent.

Church independence from external governance, whether that be ecclesiastical hierarchy or state government, is a foundational principle of the Baptist churches. Those who fought for this privilege over the centuries paid a great price for it, often enduring torture and death.

Sadly, many today would give up this hard-earned independence in order to see ‘unity among the churches’. The idea sounds nice, but such ‘unity’ always leads to compromise, as foundational doctrines are set aside in an effort to find common ground.

Remember that it was neither excitement nor unity that saved us from our sins, but truth; the truth (doctrine) of the Bible.

The Bible warns us that there are those who have “a form of godliness , but denying the power thereof: from such turn away” 2 Timothy 3:5

Let us therefore “walk circumspectly, … because the days are evil” Ephesians 5:15,16.

Our latest move forward has been in the setting up of this website. This was one of our early goals for 2009, and we are pleased to already be out there advertising ourselves. So, to those who are looking in the Bicester area for a Bible-centred, mission-focused, gospel-preaching, life-saving church … here we are!