From The Minister...
Every month Melbourn Baptist Church Minister, Stuart Clarke gives us a roundup of the latest work and challenges within the Church. This month's article is below.
Archive >February 2010 - For the Journey - Love perseveres
1 Corinthians 13:7(Love) always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Well this February is an exciting month as many of us look forward to the church weekend. My prayer is it will be a time of spiritual refreshment, a time of growth as disciples of Jesus, and lots of fun on our journey through the weekend.
This month we will start a new series that will help us journey towards Easter as we reflect on the passages in the book of Mark when Jesus predicts his death, challenges attitudes and shows us how to persevere with love.
The more passionately we love and persevere through life, the more intensively we experience the joy of life. The more passionately we love and persevere through life, the more we also experience the pain of life.
As Jesus journeys towards the Cross we see a passionate love that perseveres through experiences of joy as palms are waved, with the knowledge that his mission would only be achieved by pain, anguish and toil found in the Cross.
Jesus’ life is not full of gratuitous whinging but of openness and honesty with his disciples. We often keep our struggles and our difficulties to ourselves; we imagine in keeping the difficulties hidden we protect ourselves from people that will not understand. The truth is for many of us that being honest and open may help us persevere through those hard times with love and support from God through others.
Jesus shows us how to persevere with love by being open and honest in our relationships, discipleship, attitudes, service, and praise.
As we move through this time traditionally known as Lent, I hope together we will examine, explore, and experience Jesus’ transformative love that challenges us to be like Jesus in our struggles, difficulties and in our joys.
Blessings,
Stuart
