| By Andy Moyle | 2 mins 16 secs | 0 Comments
People pleasers are a pain! Ingratiating themselves with others to curry favour. Flattering others to win approval. Saying what they think you want to hear, even if it’s a lie. If that’s you, stop it! Live for an audience of One – be a God pleaser. In today’s reading Paul has exhorted us to be […]
| By Andy Moyle | 3 mins 13 secs | 0 Comments
The practical outworking of grace now comes into focus – how a church can hold together when everyone is so different. Paul shows us two issues: eating meat and holy days. He then shows us how to stay together when we have come to different conclusions on them. The issue of eating meat or not […]
| By Andy Moyle | 2 mins 8 secs | 0 Comments
One of the patterns in Paul’s letters is that he always starts with who we are in Christ, then brings some doctrine, usually about grace, before moving on to how to live in the good of it. We need truth that will empower behaviour. In Romans, Paul takes 11 chapters to outline grace and then […]
| By Andy Moyle | 2 mins 9 secs | 0 Comments
The main thrust of Romans – that there is a righteousness revealed from faith – has finally been completed! Jews and Gentiles are dirty rotten stinking sinners, in need of the grace of God. When we respond to Jesus, believing God raised Him from the dead and confessing with our mouths that Jesus is Lord, […]
| By Andy Moyle | 1 min 47 secs | 0 Comments
These chapters are difficult and controversial! The American Religious Right has bought into Zionism and so US foreign policy follows that. Many Christians, inspired by the Scofield Bible and US Television preachers, buy into a version of Christianity which I believe is wholly at odds with Paul’s writings here, and based on a misunderstanding […]
| By Andy Moyle | 1 min 25 secs | 0 Comments
Righteous by law observance = no-one Righteous by faith through God’s grace = anyone We don’t need to look for Jesus in heaven or anywhere else, he is close at hand. Close at hand when people like us open our mouths and tell others. Verse 9, which we use in baptism services, tells us if […]
| By Andy Moyle | 2 mins 0 secs | 0 Comments
Yesterday we started to look at the question, ‘If God is sovereign and chooses who to save and who to harden, how can we be responsible?’. God is patient in his wrath, wanting all to have the chance to repent. In Chapter 1 we saw that God’s wrath is currently shown in giving people over […]
| By Andy Moyle | 3 mins 57 secs | 0 Comments
Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles, but he is a Jew, an ex-Pharisee and a Hebrew of Hebrews (Phil 3:5), so of course he is aggrieved that Jews have rejected the Messiah as much as he is passionate about the Gentile mission. This is a fairly complicated passage, probably one of the ones Peter […]
| By Andy Moyle | 3 mins 20 secs | 0 Comments
In our life group we have been going through Crazy Love by Francis Chan and a couple of weeks ago I was challenged by discussion on where our home really is – that we can get far to comfy here on earth with friends and families and jobs and houses that we never want to […]