November 25

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." Romans 1:16

Do you recognise the person in this picture? Most people don’t know or care who he is. Not to be disrespectful against someone who has against all the odds achieved so much, but his sport is what I would term as a ‘niche’ sport – F1 or Formula 1 racing cars, to give it it’s correct title.

Now if you are unfamiliar with the sport, it is a sport dominated by very rich men where only men with big financial clout or sponsors are allowed to take part and all the drivers are male. The races take place on specially made racing circuits around the richest parts of the world and the winner is the one who wins the most races over a season claiming the most points. So who is Lewis Hamilton? On Sunday he became a British double world champion, the first since the naughty nineties.

Is he talented? Undoubtedly. Has he worked hard to get where he is? Without question! Do we have something in common? Well you would be surprised as I was when I listened to his interview after the race.

“Well I just kept the faith, I say my prayers every day and really today God had his hand over me. And that has been the huge change in my life…” BBC Sport

I did a little research, nothing more than put his name into Google and found out that he is a devout Catholic. I then looked back at some more of his interviews and I was pleasantly surprised with the amount of times he mentions his prayer life, and faith in conversation.

My question is simple - do we? We don’t have to have a platform of a famous sports person to share our faith but we do need to do it in very real way. Yesterday I had a conversation with a colleague about my faith and although he flatly told me that he didn’t believe in ‘any of that religious stuff’, another colleague found me afterwards and shared that her brother had just recently been baptised. If I hadn’t publicly demonstrated my faith, maybe the second conversation might never have taken place.

So go on, be bold - share your faith publicly with someone today.

"I am not ashamed of the gospel" is the title of todays's song. It is by the 'Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir.' Click on the picture to listen.

       

     Housekeeping details for you

     The point of this short blog will become clear if you decide to use this reading in the way we intend it. Netherfield Seventh-day Adventist Church believes in healthy churches. You can see what that means if you head to the relevant Healthy Churches page of the website. We also want other churches to be healthy. That means you can join in our campaign to create healthy churches, with healthy people serving the people in those churches.

     A healthy church is one where Jesus comes first. A healthy church is one where the people work together to put Jesus first. One thing we are doing is to join people together to spread that news. I would like you to look at our prayer partners page. This will explain how we want you to use this short devotional. Very basically we want you to find a like-minded Christian friend who you will join with to : choose to pray together every day, decide together on a way to serve other people together, to help them grow as Christians - and to invite the Holy Spirit into your life every day. This blog that you will receive every day simply gives a common spiritual purpose. If you are a newcomer and want to join the blog with this object in mind click here