Prayer Week 2013

Good afternoon! I hope you are all well reading this and haven't been effected by the storm last night. I think we had a small breeze last night up in the North-East, either that or I slept right through the whole hurricane...

A question throughout this year that we have been directed to keep on reminding ourselves of has been "What is God doing?" and furthermore this can be developed to ask the question of Where is God at work? Something that has being shown to me numerous times this year already is that God is with his people. Although some may not realise it, He is there. I've said this before and I will say it again, our job is to build relationships with these people so we can show them who God is and where He is working. This is a goal of mine for this year and I have been making progress! The school's work we do in Eston is huge and every time we go round a school all the kids know Gary (or Captain Chaundy to be more official) and now they are beginning to know who I am. I would have kids walk past me and shout "Hi James!", I haven't a clue who they are but we are building that relationship with the schools and pupils in them. I just pray that I would get to know the schools more and that they will know what we stand for and believe and one day just one child (obviously we'd love there to be more) would remember us and that relationship the Salvation Army had with the school and they would want to know more and build a relationship with Jesus for themselves. But God is with his people and He is working through His people!

A big part of ministry I believe is to reflect. To take a step back from the business and just relax and pray on what has happened and what will continue to happen in the future. This week Eston Corps has a great oppurtunity to do that in our 24/7 prayer week. At least one person will be praying at the corps all week for one hour. I am really looking forward to this week because I believe it is so important to cover all that I do with prayer and through prayer be revitalised and ready to do God's work. I remind of Psalm 91 which says "He who dwells in the Shelter of the Most high, shall rest in the Shadow of the Almighty." And this is exactly what I am going to do this week, I am going to dwell in His presence and really listen to what he has to say to me. I am doing a lot of the night hours and so I will be on my own just listening and talking to God. If there are any prayer requests that you want me to bring before God then please let me know, I will incorporate them into my prayers tonight and for the rest of the week so please do get in touch. It is through prayer that we can really come closer to God, the song says:

 

"Prayer gently lifts me to highest Heaven, from Earth's confusion to Jesus' breast. My sin and weakness, my doubt and sorrow are lost forever in sweetest rest."

 

I know I am going to come closer to God this week as I just relax and rest in His presence under the Shadow of the Almighty.

 

So please get those prayer requests to me in any way possible. Through blogspot, twitter, Facebook, email... anyway you can! Please get in touch. Have a very blessed week.

 

God Bless

 

@peggo36

 

pegg.j@hotmail.co.uk



'Be Courageous'

Good evening all! Once again it is monday so as per usual it is time for my blog. It's becoming almost routine for me to write this some time on a monday, just to reflect what has gone on in the past week otherwise it's very easy for me to just allow the weeks to fly by without any recognition of where God is working.

The week has been jammed pack to say the least (all weeks have been really) and I can honestly say that I have never worked harder than I have done recently, yes it would explain my A-Level exam results. But I am enjoying what I am doing here, on a daily basis I am talking to God's people. Those who regularly attend the Salvation Army and those who find themselves in the hall for whatever reason. Two examples of this happened this week and the examples are of opposite ends of the spectrum...

Recently at Eston Salvation Army we have been visited by a homeless man and he goes by the name of Ray. I have spent a lot of time with Ray in the past week and actually while I was writing last week's blog I was at the hall with Ray while he was sleeping. We don't really know why Ray is homeless but all we know is that he is sleeping rough and we need to help him. So we do what we can for him and then leaves the hall. But on monday afternoon just as he was leaving the hall, I had a chat with him and I told him to come to the army on sunday for the morning meeting, he said he would but I wasn't so sure. But I obviously have very little faith, it was 10.15 and in walked Ray with his bike. Hallelujah! He sat in the meeting which focussed on Grace and afterwards I just asked if he understood all what has been said and this was his reply, "I know God loves me...". Grace, the undeserved gift just because God loves us. This man is having a huge impact on my life and I thank God I have been able to sit and talk with him, not just about his life and his circumstances but also about Jesus. I pray for Ray, I really pray that he will be able to turn his life around and furthermore accept Jesus as his friend and saviour. I ask you, the one reading this, to pray for Ray. He certainly needs them.

Now the total opposite to Ray's situation is that I have been given this exciting and fantastic oppurtunity to lead the 11-14 year olds group on a sunday morning. There are two girls in the group at the moment but I am so excited for the potential this small group has got. This sunday we talked about Jesus' teaching on Loving Everyone, including enemies. During this lesson, one of the group asked me how "Is God's love bigger than space?". It was an absolute priviledge then to answer that question and teach the young people that God's love is eternal, it is immeasurable! Again I ask you to pray for this small group. It's the start of the youth work in Eston and I am praying and I am ready for God to work in this group and do marvellous things.

But through both these humbling situations I have seen my faults. I have spoke to both these sets of people about the Love of God but I need to do it more. I need to be more courageous when it comes to speaking about what God has done for me. I have been commisioned to go and make disciples of all nations but for some reason I draw myself back from telling people about Jesus. I need to be more courageous. As I realised this, I truly believed God started to put things in place to help me. This year I am attempting to read the Bible in a year and one of this weeks readings was from Matthew 14 and verse 27 really stood out to me. It is the story of when Jesus was walking on the water and the disciples panicked thinking it was a ghost. But Jesus said "Take courage. It is I. Do not be afraid.". Jesus tells me and you to take courage for it is Him. For it is Jesus and that is all we need, we need to take this courage he gives and just go and tell all about him!

I hope you have a good week this week. Please get in contact if you have any questions and I'll do my very best to answer them. God bless you all!

pegg.j@hotmail.co.uk
@peggo36

'Your Grace still amazes me'

Hello! I hope you are all well and have had a happy and blessed week. It's Monday again! The weeks are coming round so quickly, dare I say it'll be Christmas before we know it.

So now I am well and truly involved with the corps programme here in Eston and something that I can see is vital to the corps here, and an important part of the ministry, is their Children's work. We minister to over 1000 school children a month, bringing the good news of the Gospel to assemblies and a couple of us also volunteer to read with 6 year olds at a local school. Also, on a Wednesday we have about 100 children ( not including the parents) come through the doors of the salvation army for Parents and toddlers. Now you may laugh but, if you were to ask me what I have found to be most challenging about my work in Eston so far, without a shadow of a doubt, it would be Wednesdays at Parents and toddlers. The usual type of people who come to Parents and Toddlers are women bringing there young child, usually around 2/3 years old. This group of people are the most difficult type of people to relate to, as a young man of 19, I have very little in common with them. Also, many mothers come to toddlers to meet other mums and they form friendships which is great! But they do like to talk. Now my mum and Sophie (my girlfriend) can talk and gossip till the cows come home and even with them I feel a little intimidated getting in on their conversation. But when there are women who I don't know and I'm trying to talk to them, it gets difficult. But God has brought them into the Army for a reason and it is my job to be there so I can talk to them and share my faith or just even reflect the Face of Christ. I pray, although I find it difficult, that God will still use me to do great things through this wonderful ministry.

Now again, if you were to ask me what part of the corps programme has had the most impact on me I would answer House Group on Tuesday nights. Every Tuesday evening we gather round as a small group of roughly 10 and we discuss and we study different aspects of the Christian faith. At the moment we are focusing on Grace through Phillip Yancey's book, 'What's so amazing about Grace?'. The book (along with a dvd) tackles so many issues as Christians we need to talk about. It talks about, receiving Grace, distributing Grace, forgiveness. But through all of this there has been a message that stays constant to me and it comes from 1 Corinthians Chapter 15: verse 10- " But by the Grace of God I am what I am...". It is by God's Grace that I was saved, this unearned, unwarranted free gift of Grace. What a great God have I! But what has challenged me more is the need for myself and my ministry and the places of Eston Salvation Army or Wellingborough Salvation Army or even the whole Salvation Army is to show Grace at all times, in every circumstance. We can not go preaching a message of hatred and damnation to all who do wrong but actually we must preach a message of Love and Grace to all who need to hear it. It says in Scripture in so many words that our war is not against the sinner but sin and we as a body of God's own people must take this message of God's Grace and open our arms to those who are broken. For if anyone needs God's Grace, it is those who are broken and are on their knees. We need to be Gracious and pick them up and show them this great, undeserved gift that we have received called Grace. I thank Gary and Lorraine and the house group for allowing us to focus on this teaching and I know that God is and will continue to do great works in my life and in others through his word and through the inspired words of others. I've titled this blog 'Your Grace still amazes me' because it is still amazing me, the more I learn about it the more I begin to realise how amazing it really is!

So I pray that you have been blessed.  Please get on contact with me if you want to discuss what I've said or if you want to know anything about Essential or anything to do with the Salvation Army's work. I hope you have a good week.

God Bless.

Twitter- @peggo36
Email- pegg.j@hotmail.co.uk

All Good Gifts around us!

Hello! Once again thankyou for clicking that link and reading this blog, very much appreciated! This week at Eston it has been Harvest. So, yes, the songs in my head this week have included 'Bringing in the Sheaves' and 'We Plough the Fields'. I'm not really a fan of either song but they are the best ones for Harvest. Controversial? I hope so!

This week has been another good week and the thing that keeps cropping up in everything that I do is this vital aspect of ministry of building relationships and really going out of our way, out of our comfort zones and meeting the people where they are at. The perfect example of this was on friday when I sold the War Cry in the Pubs and clubs with Captain Gary and Una (a lady at the corps). We went to about 5 different pubs and in each one of them I felt that the people there were friendly people, enjoying the company of their friends and having a good time together. I really felt the presence of God in those pubs, there is an automatic view that going to the pub is wrong and the people who go to the pub are bad, but actually it is wrong to think like this. Actually when we look into the dynamics of a pub atmosphere we see people being happy, people enjoying being in each others company, people almost sharing brotherly love with their neighbour. Is this such a bad thing? To me it shows that God is working in and amongst those men and it is our job to be in that environment and to continue building those relationships so we can point out that God is here! He is already working. This is something that has really hit me and I just pray that as I continue this ministry, God will use me to show people where He is and that His work in that place will just grow and grow into something beyond what we could ever imagine.

So we have been preparing for the Harvest at Eston Corps and harvest this year has been in particular a bit more real to me. The idea of harvest is to gather the crop and the grain and store it all for winter, for when times get hard. But in the modern day we don't have to rely on the harvest. If there is a bad harvest in England we can just go to another country to get our produce and if there is a bad harvest there then again we can just move onto the next country. It would seem we have it pretty sorted... actually that couldn't be farther from the truth. I said in my last blog that there are people still coming to the Salvation Army for help so they can feed themselves. This is wrong. In this country, people are going hungry! So we as the Salvation Army collect food in which we can give to those who need it, we save it for those who are going through those hard times. So to have an actual part to play in that ministry is very challenging and day by day I am being challenged when I see people need the Salvation Army's help and when it is me at times who passes over that box of food, I have this awesome sense of humbleness that I am serving God by serving man.

One thing about Harvest that I really like is that it gets me to think about the special things in life that are around me and how blessed I am. If you read Matthew Chapter 6- verse 25, it tells us that God provides for us and at this time of year we focus on food and that sort of provision. But the way I kept on thinking about God's provision is the people he has put around me. Here at Eston I have a great support network of Gary and Lorraine, Trevor and Gillian and Phil and Dawn and there are others. God has placed me here in Eston but he gives me everything so I can fulfil the task he has assigned including these wonderful people. I then also think of the people back home who I hold close in my heart in particular I think of my Family and I think of Sophie, people I love and adore and these people who have influenced my life incredibly. God has given me them hasn't he? What a great gift to give me. But he also gave me his son, Jesus, the greatest gift of all. He gave his son to die for me and yet he rose again and now lives within us. What a gift, what provision! I serve a Great God. So, all good gifts around us, all good people around us most definitely come from Heaven above and all I can do is give my grateful thanks and praise to my God who provides me with all things.

I hope this blog has made you smile and also really made you think about the good things around you. I say this every week, please feel free to post comments about the blog or if you have any prayer requests please do post them below. And please do get in touch!

God bless you all!

@peggo36

pegg.j@hotmail.co.uk