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Sermon online

Simo — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:42:39 +0000

Having started a sermon series at church toward the end of last year, we were looking at ways of making them available for people that missed the service or were out leading a group. We came to the conclusion that the easiest way to do this now was to record and put them online, thus was born www.allsaintsfaringdon.co.uk. As was inevitable with this situation eventually one of my sermons was going to appear and that has happened today (it’s taken me a while to get it sorted this week). So if your interested in hearing what I had to say on the subject of calling click here and download.

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Why

Simo — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 16:14:35 +0000

I am preparing a sermon for this coming Sunday and I need your help with the answer to a simple question, if you could leave a comment or email me with your answers it would be very useful, the question is ‘Why do you do what you do?’ I’m thinking about the main activity you do, it might be your job, it might be being a parent it might be something else but if you could just give me one or two sentences that state why you do what you do it would be great. Thank you in advance.

PS. If you want to hear the results the sermon will be available as an MP3 download sometime next Monday from www.allsaintsfaringdon.org just click on the link for sermons.

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A new church website

Simo — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:57:11 +0000

Just set up a new website for the church, it�s in very early stages at the moment but uses wordpress to make it all work. The reason for doing this is we wanted to be able to record our current sermon series and have found tapes to be a problem now as very few can copy them when needed not to mention the fact that a lot of people don�t have facilities to listen to them at all now. So today I have just uploaded the first sermon from the series, check it all out at www.allsaintsfaringdon.co.uk.

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His strength in our weakness.

Simo — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 13:43:31 +0000

Had one of those situations at the weekend, I was preaching after coming back from Soul Survivor, the idea that I could reflect something of the theme and help to make it more relevant to those that had been there. The theme of Soul Survivor was �Into His Likeness� I felt that something I had actually spoken on at Yellow Braces fitted this theme well and so was looking at the theme of �Love your Neighbour�. I had the talk worked out but after I had delivered it I just felt like I hadn�t really got it, I felt it had been weak and was disappointed with myself for not putting more work into it and coming out with something stronger. Do you ever get that feeling after preaching speaking? Anyway after the service several people spoke to me and several positive comments, some people picked up on points and how it spoke to them, I have also received an email from someone who was there talking about how helpful he found it. A great example I think of how when we can feel weakness Gods strength can come through, this is not the first time I have felt like this, felt disappointment with what I did but yet in response found that God did something in people.

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Good Friday

Simo — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 15:06:58 +0000

I am doing an all age talk in church tomorrow morning, it�s been difficult working out how to do something appropriate for all ages on such a theme but I think I have sorted it. Below you will find a video run through of my idea, it still need a little tidying and it would help if I don�t have a mental block on any key words tomorrow but on the whole I�m quite happy with it.
Enjoy

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John 14

Simo — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 09:30:43 +0000

I was preaching yesterday on John 14, I thought seeing as I rarely have anything particularly spiritual on here and I would share with you the key point I was getting at.
Looking at verse 7 Jesus says �If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well� Philip hasn�t quite got the grasp of things and asks (Verse 8 ) �Lord, show us the Father�. In answering Philip Jesus says to the disciples (Verse 10) �I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.� The point here is that those who follow Jesus will know the Father because of the likeness between them, in the same way that you can spot that some people are related because of the likeness, although that is often a physical likeness here it is talking more about a personal likeness, the thing Jesus does and the way he does them are like his Father.
Going on then to look at Verse 20 �On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.� If we would recognise the Father because of the likeness of him we see in Jesus because Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in him. Then we read about us being in Jesus and him being in us then surely our lives should lead people to know something of the person of Christ. In other words the way we live our lives, the way we treat others, the way we talk to others we should be reflecting Christ, it should be Jesus working through us that speaks the words, we should be doing what, we see Christ doing, we should be concerned about the things Christ is concerned about. So the conclusion then is that when people look at us and our lives who do they see? Yes they see us for who we are but if they saw Jesus would they recognise that likeness between us and what we do and what he does?
(all quotes taken from the NIV via the BibleGateway.com)

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Sunday 10th

Simo — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 11:02:00 +0000

Preached yesterday, decided to go for the lectionary readings of Luke 3:1-6 & Malachi 3:1-4, I have to admit Malachi isn�t a book I know well and this passage is one that offers some challenges, it start by foretelling of John T Bap but then goes on to talk about Jesus ministry, the second half of Verse 2 reading:-

For he is like a refiner�s fire and like fullers� soap^{^[1]}

This was the main focus I took in the end, I was a little nervous about doing so as to me this passage points out that it can be tough being a Christian and this is something that I think the church as a whole tries to avoid a little. Anyway I talked about the fact that sometimes things in life can be hard and can hurt and that if God is going to refine us like silver and clean us that can be a painful process, speaking of fuller�s soap being a Launders soap as used for cleaning the priestly robes, it would have almost had a bleaching effect to make the robes white, it was serious cleaning. I finished with a story about refining silver which I think gives us the key to this passage. When refining silver with fire (it is now more often done with acids) you have to watch it closely as if it is left for too long the silver will burn and be ruined. Although sometimes we struggle in our faith, we feel distant from God, he is always there watching us closely. But the real key comes in knowing when the silver is pure, the silver smith knows that it is pure because at that point he can see his own reflection in the silver.

Sometimes we all struggle with our faith, we feel that God has for some reason abandoned us, often when we look back at those times from a distance we can see that God was at work, and coming out of those times we perhaps reflected Gods image in our own lives a little better.

^{^[1]}The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. 1996, c1989 . Thomas Nelson: Nashville

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