Merry Christmas all!

 

Three or four things to do or remember!

Good Day home group
sorry it has been such a long time since i posted - I am glad to see the blog is still used though.

THREE THINGS:

1 Please bring your diaries next week - we would like to book in a Homegroup Christmas dinner! With secret santa and roast and all!!!

2. Also, Ant is finding it hard to find time to prepare the studies because of work pressures, (and I am not very good at leading studies - much better at arranging christmas dinners!) so it would be great if when you come next week, you could sign up to prepare one of the studies we will do in the run up to christmas - think we are doing Amos next. The variation in study style is always refreshing, so please dont think you cant do it (guess that means I have no excuse either - I promise to sign up too!). Thanks guys.

3. All Saints Christmas Ball - 2 December - black tie - £25 - money going to raise funds to take the youth to the various camps and conferences on in the summer.

OK, so I actually meant FOUR THINGS!!

4. Christmas Choir - 1st practice 16th November (4 practices in total although you dont have to make them all)

Thats it folks
love Annie xx

A purpose driven life

Rick Warren wrote "Purpose Driven Life".

In an interview by Paul Bradshaw, Rick said the following:
"People ask me, What is the purpose of life? And I respond: In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven. One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body but not the end of me. I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act - the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity. We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't going to make sense. Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one. The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort. God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy. We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.

This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer. I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore. Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life. No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for. You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems. If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness, "which is my problem, my issues, my pain." But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others. We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her. It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people. You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life. Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy. It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don't think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease. So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, II Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72. First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases. Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church. Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation. Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free.

We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God's purposes (for my life)? When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don't get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better. God didn't put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He's more interested in what I am than what I do. That's why we're called human beings not human doings."

Happy moments, PRAISE GOD. Difficult moments, SEEK GOD. Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD. Painful moments, TRUST GOD. Every moment, THANK GOD.

House Warming party cancelled, but DINNER PARTY STILL ON!!

Hi there, hope you dont mind me doing this, Rich, but I just thought I would publish it on the blog that the warming party is off, but you are still having a dinner party - 7.30.
Annie xx

hold that thought - I think I might like to go and see it this Monday - will be all on my own (except for Jude) because Ant is on a course, and if I can find a sitter then I think monday is preferable for me, but it also depends on who wants to join me and when it suits them - Mon or Thurs. Looking forward to going already!

Hi there guys! Thanks for being the best home group in the world! Just wanted to say that it would be cool to organise a girls night out to the cinema - I really fancy seeing 'The Devil wears Prada'! If anyone fancies seeing it too then I was planning to go and see it next Thursday night. Let me know!
love Annie xxx

Next Tuesday's homegroup

...will be a social! We,ve finished Jonah, so before we get into Joel, we decided to have a night of just chatting! ...hold on, Jude has a message he wants to type... Jude?...

560.360 xagtgrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

(looks like the grid reference of a tiger to me?...)

Ant

Posting to the blog

Hi all. To answer Niki's question, to post to the blog all you need to do is click on the 'I power Blogger' button (at the bottom of the sidebar on the right). I think it might ask you for your password if it doesn't recognise the computer you are using... Then just hit the create post button, type your content and hit the 'publish post' button.

Niki and Andy's wedding site

I just fixed the link, so it should work now!