Jungle Gym Training pt1/4

Amy shares some helpful tips on how to grow in your relationship with God. Pt 1/4

As I write this, my baby Riley is playing on his jungle gym play mat. He is 25 weeks old (5 ½ months to those who are like me and have no perception of what weeks mean!) He is bringing his legs up together in the air and them slamming them back down again, he repeats this over and over again, meanwhile he is also biting his bottom lip which has spent most of the morning in his mouth. The amazing thing is that little over 2 weeks ago Riley couldn’t do either of these things, he wasn’t able to bring his legs up together and he had only appeared to have found his top lip.

I have to admit I’ve become one of those sad mum’s who is obsessed with what her baby is doing and what he is learning about the world. I have even signed up to websites, which give a week by week guide to babies development. You’re encouraged as a new mum to help with your babies development, to develop play time and watch out for new skills they have picked up. My life has turned into development, development , DEVELOPMENT!!

However, I have recently felt very challenged about something… I have become so concerned about Riley’s development, but how concerned am I about my own? (I don’t mean walking and talking, I think I’ve pretty much got them covered…) but what I mean is my spiritual development, am I growing in my walk with God, am I being changed to be more like Jesus, am I displaying my faith to others?

At the beginning of this New Year I want to challenge myself and offer the challenge to you also. The challenge - Develop in my walk with God.

Your distraction might not be babies but I'm sure you've got something in your life that seems to sap so much of your energy and brain power that you've got nothing left for God. What is it for you and how can you make room for your walk with God?

Spend less time on Facebook?
Say 'no' to something?
Call him back another time?

Over the next few days I'm going to be sharing some tips on how to keep the Main Thing, the main thing in your life. Are you ready for a challenge?

New year, same focus

Sally shares what Jesus' birth means to her and why it's something to get excited about beyond the Christmas season...

Ok, so call me dim, but for ages and ages I was a Christian who couldn’t quite get my head around the fact that we are saved and rescued from all our sins solely by one man. I’d accepted that it was true, and I could give all the right answers when asked, but in my head, I can honestly say I really didn’t get it! Many of you are probably thinking that it’s obvious, in which case you probably don’t really need to read on, and maybe it was just me who struggled with this, but for anyone who just doesn’t quite get it, I’d really like to try and make it clearer for you because it’s an amazing revelation!

According to my Google search, there are approximately 6,888,888,888 people currently living in the world, and it’s estimated that about one third of those people consider themselves to belong to the Christian faith. That’s a heck of a lot of people! Multiply that by the amount of people that have been before us, and you get some extortionate figure that wouldn’t even make sense to you and I as your average person who doesn’t have a PhD maths! So. All that sin generated billions of times a second, by these billions and billions of people... and it takes one man to take it all away!? WHAT, surely not!?! This had me so confused and bothered me for literally years!

Jesus was the son of God, who came from heaven in human form. He had a human mother and was born just like you or I. He grew from being a baby into a man – again just like you and I. He never sinned and always did right by God and other people... woah, let’s rewind a bit! That’s not like you or I (sorry to break it to you!) I just want to repeat that sentence: he never sinned and always did right by God and other people. This is the key part that I knew, and could relay to others when asked, but had also completely overlooked and had learnt to say by parrot fashion!

To top that, not only was he sinless and always doing right by God and his ‘neighbour’, but he also offered to take ALL his ‘neighbours’ sin onto himself and take the punishment for it, instead of us having to endure an eternity in hell. We don’t deserve heaven. God is so amazingly good and right and holy that we aren’t even worthy so as to pick up the crumbs from under his table. But Jesus came, and because he was the only sinless one, he then took each and every one of our sins and made a way for us to go to heaven. This, is what makes it possible for this one man, and one man only to have saved us: he was SINLESS which meant he could, and did choose to TAKE ALL OUR SIN UPON HIMSELF!

So anyway, the birth of Jesus... What does it mean to me? Well flip me, if he hadn’t have been born what kind of a mess would we be in!? Christmas is such an amazing time to celebrate the fact that Jesus was born into the world and that little tiny baby is saviour of billions of people. Oh come let us adore him indeed!