How can I have confidence that I am a true Christian, and have passed from condemnation into eternal life?
Kevin DeYoung offers a threefold answer from 1 John.
I summarise:
1. Theological
I can have confidence that I am a true believer if I believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God (1 Jn 4:14-16; 5:1, 5; 5:11-13). I believe that he is the Christ or the Messiah (1 Jn 2:22), that he is the Son of God (1 Jn 5:10), and that he has come in the flesh (1 Jn 4:2).…
Jesus’ life was saturated with prayer.
He prayed:
(After J.…
The following was prepared for discussion within our small group.
Remember
What are your childhood memories of saving, spending and giving money?
Reflect
How do you feel about being invited to think about and discuss your stewardship of money?
Discuss
Read 1 Chronicles 29:14-16
What is the difference between an owner and a steward? What are the qualities of a good steward?
Read 1 Timothy 6:17-19
It is said that people with little money are often more generous than those with much. …
Well, not a sermon really, but the notes of a talk given at a midweek meeting. A revised version of something I produced many years ago.
Delivered with two voices (a) Philemon himself, and (b) Apphia, his wife, reading the text of Paul’s letter to Philemon (in italics).
I want to take you back to the year AD 61. My name is Philemon. It is early evening, and my wife Apphia and I are looking out from the veranda of our home in Colossae.…
Notes of a sermon preached at Holy Trinity Norwich on Ash Wednesday, 2026.
Text: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Everybody has an outside and an inside; a public exterior and a private interior. On the outside are all the things that other people can see and hear. On the inside is that collection of thoughts, feelings, motives, and attitudes that we call ‘the heart’.
But how well do our outward appearance and our inner reality match up? We have a name for the person who is one thing in public and another in private: we call him or her a hypocrite.…
The first recorded words of Jesus, as he began his public ministry, were:
Mark 1:15 — “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the gospel!”
But what does the word ‘repentance’ mean?
Jerome, in the Vulgate, translated μετανοεῖτε as poenitentiam agite (‘do acts of penance’). As Ian Paul notes, this does several things to Jesus’ command:
…it shifts it from being focused on attitude and outlook to being concerned with ritual acts;
it moves it from being a response to God to being set in the context of the institution of the Church (whose priests alone could dispense forgiveness through the rite of penance and confession);
and it became a habitual ritual rather than an urgent response to the ‘end times’ coming of God.
[Notes of a sermon preached at Holy Trinity Norwich in August 2017.]
Christian faith under pressure.
Over 200 million Christians are experiencing serious persecution in more than 50 different countries. ‘In Nigeria, Christian girls are being abducted and impregnated by Boko Haram. In Egypt, extremists are paying men to abduct women, force them into marriage and convert them to Islam. And in Pakistan, women are being kidnapped, raped and forced to change their religion.’ (Evangelicals Now).…
[Notes of a sermon preached in August, 2016]
Psalm 5 – Praying under pressure
Do you feel under pressure as a Christian?
Notes of a sermon preached at St Andrew’s Eaton, Norwich, on Sunday 2nd November 20025.
A link to the video can be found at the bottom of this page.
Scripture passage; Matthew 5:33-37
Especially v37 – ‘Let your “Yes” be “Yes.”
Context
At the beginning of this section of the Sermon on the Mount, we have:-
An affirmation: v17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”…
Is forgiveness unilateral? Must we – can we, even – forgive those who refuse to repent?
Our gut reaction – especially in a day when ‘unconditional love’ is such a popular notion – is probably that it is, we must, and we can (forgive the unrepentant, that is).
But God doesn’t do that. If we we imagine that we can be reconclied with God, regardless of repentance, then we have landed ourselves right in the middle of the heresy of universalism.…
