God is in Control!

Prayer is the heart of relationship with God. Through prayer we deaw close to Him; we listen to Him; we share our desires and our concern for others. It's like having a heart to heart discussion with your best friend. Jesus addressed God as 'Abba' or 'Daddy'. Too often our model for prayer has been the presentation of a shopping list to God with the adding on the end "according to your will", we sometimes almost fear talking to Him in case He has something that He asks of us. Richard Foster says in his book "Prayer", "Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth, but from falling in love." And so, real prayer comes from an intimate relationship with God. A developing, actively engaged relationship with our Heavenly Father, not a casual fling, but a real intentional, itimate relationship. It's been interesting over the past few weeks as I have been praying for a few different friends. Why is it that some people I have been pr

“Jesus loves me, this I know,” is a startling truth that should affect our lives profoundly. Do you know that Jesus loves you? It’s true even if you don’t feel it. How can you know for sure? “Because the Bible tells me so.” John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” God does not see you as you see yourself, whether it’s addicted, co-dependent, obsessive or simply unworthy of His love. God sees you as His beloved child. “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1). Now it is easy to say God loves you; you have probably heard it many times before. Yet how can you and I make it real in our lives, so real that it changes who we are and how we see things? We can’t. The good news is God can. God has the power to change how we think, so changing who we are. We can begin to seek His power through prayer.

I know..........it's been a long time coming..........but here it is.......... A little while ago I read a book called "The Shack" by WM. Paul Young. I had heard that it was a good book and been at Koorong and seen many many copies being bought by people, so I decided that it was time that we buy it and both read it. The back of the book says this; Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation, and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later, in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, ostensibly from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment, Mack arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever and quite possibly your own. In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrele