Category: Features

New Feature: Learn to read the Bible

Posted on by Phill Sacre

I’ve decided to start a new weekly feature called “Learn to read the Bible”. I do appreciate how hard it can seem to start reading the Bible – it’s a big book that was written a long time ago! How do you get into it? That’s what this series is all about.

You can see my little introduction to the series here:

We are kicking off by reading through Mark’s Gospel. You can see the first session is already available on this page. Why not give it a try?

If you’re interested, do check out the new page with all the information. If you’d like to be notified of new videos, you can do that in a few ways. Subscribe on YouTube or Facebook, or sign up to the mailing list.

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When troubles are overwhelming | Psalm 3 | Thought for the week

Posted on by Phill Sacre

A short reflection on Psalm 3.

This week’s Thought for the Week is on Psalm 3 – a Psalm all about when our troubles and enemies seem overwhelming. One of the things I love about the Psalms is that they do not shy away from this side of life. They give us tools to be able to cope with difficulty and adversity. Psalm 3 is a good example of why I love the Psalms and why I think they should be a staple of everyone’s spiritual life.

I hope you enjoy.

You can see all the ‘Thought for the Week’ videos on this page. They are also published on the podcast.

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How to break free from pornography

Posted on by Phill Sacre

A lot of people want to break free from pornography – but how is that possible?

Pornography is one of the biggest issues we have in society which we rarely talk about. Take, for example, these statistics from Pornhub (which I found researching another blog post):

To start off, there were more than 42,000,000,000 site visits to Pornhub in 2019—nearly 6 visits to the site per person on Earth—which is 8.5 billion more visits total than last year. That’s over 23 million more visits per day in 2019 than in 2018, a considerable uptick that’s double from last year. Note that YouPorn–a sister site to Pornhub—received just a humble 5 billion site visits.

I think it’s almost impossible for us to comprehend the scale of the problem here. Pornhub received about 6x the number of visits than there are people on the planet. It’s mind-boggling! It is particularly something which affects younger people – according to another website, 70% of men aged 18-24 visit a porn site at least once a month. It’s a widespread problem, and it’s not going to get better anytime soon.

Recently, a young man came into one of our church services. I got chatting to him afterwards. He confessed to me that he was struggling with pornography (which is unusually brave of him – most people don’t admit to it). He hated himself for doing it but he couldn’t break free.

I’ve been wanting to record a video about porn for a long time. I know from personal experience that it’s a destructive and powerful thing. It’s taken me this long because porn is not easy to talk about! But I think it’s really important to break the silence.

This video isn’t everything I want to say – in fact there’s a lot more I want to say – but it’s a start. If this is something you struggle with and you’d like me to say more, please get in touch.

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How to live as a Christian series complete

Posted on by Phill Sacre

I have finished the “How to Live as a Christian” series! All nine parts of the course have now been completed. The final five are about Communion, Service, Money, Marriage and Parenting.

All of these things are important aspects of the Christian life which it’s important to get a handle on to live life as a Christian. This series has been written particularly with people new to faith in mind. You can see the whole thing on the series page.

Once you’ve done that, why not try signing up for the teaching programme, where you can do a course like the Heidelberg Catechism – a comprehensive overview of the Christian faith?

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How to live as a Christian – 4 sessions complete

Posted on by Phill Sacre

I have completed the first four sessions of the How to live as a Christian series which I mentioned the other day. Those are: Following Christ’s example; Prayer; Reading the Bible; and going to Church.

The whole idea of the series is to give you some practical ways to get started with these things – not just tell you about it. That’s what I’ve tried to do so far.

I really hope you enjoy the series – please let me know if it’s helpful to you! Leave a comment to let me know what you think.

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New! Thought for the Week

Posted on by Phill Sacre

I’ve started a new Thought for the Week feature. I will publish a video every week with a short, 10-minute reflection on a part of the Bible followed by a prayer. The idea is to help you not just understand the Bible as an intellectual exercise, but be moved by it as well. In other words, to inspire our love as well as our minds!

I’ve decided to start by working through the Psalms – which will take a while! But that’s exactly what the Psalms are there for – to help us not just understand but love.

You can get these reflections on YouTube, Facebook, or the podcast.

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How to live as a Christian: A Guide

Posted on by Phill Sacre

A few months ago, I created a new course called What is Christianity? That course was designed to introduce Christianity by looking at a very brief overview of the Bible. However, it didn’t offer very much practical help in terms of actually living as a Christian. I want to start remedying that now with another short and practical course about what it means to live a Christian life.

A few years ago I stumbled across a document called “A Short Guide to the Duties of Church Membership”. It was written back in 1954 by the then Archbishops of Canterbury and York. Although it’s over 60 years old, I think it remains a very helpful document as an overview of what it means to be a Christian. And it’s not just for Anglicans!

They included nine things in that list:

  1. To follow the example of Christ in home and daily life, and to bear personal witness to Him.
  2. To be regular in private prayer day by day.
  3. To read the Bible carefully.
  4. To come to Church every Sunday.
  5. To receive the Holy Communion faithfully and regularly.
  6. To give personal service to Church, neighbours, and community.
  7. To give money for the work of parish and diocese and for the work of the Church at home and overseas.
  8. To uphold the standard of marriage entrusted by Christ to His Church.
  9. To care that children are brought up to love and serve the Lord.

I think this is a very helpful list – if you studied these things you would be well on your way to understanding how to live a Christian life. Well, that’s exactly what we’re going to do!

In this series we’re going to work through each one on the list to show how these things can be lived out each day. My hope eventually is to turn this into its own course and add it to the teaching programme. In the meantime, you can see the whole thing on this page.

If you’d like to receive these by email, you may sign up to the mailing list. You’ll get a weekly email with all the new updates from UTB.

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The Proverbs 31 Woman: The Life of Wisdom

Posted on by Phill Sacre

The very last chapter of Proverbs – Proverbs 31:10-31 – contains a description of the life of a woman which looks almost superhuman. I hear that some women, particularly in American churches, have come to dread the ‘Proverbs 31 woman’ sermon: “ladies, this is what your life should look like…” How could anyone’s life look so perfect? It’s beyond intimidating!

However, I do not believe that the ‘Proverbs 31 woman’ is actually describing any individual. The question in verse 10 is right: “A wife of noble character who can find?” – well the answer surely is, ‘no-one!’ No-one has a wife like this, because this is not describing a real woman.

No. The Proverbs 31 woman is a description of a perfect ‘wise’ life to encourage us to adopt a life of wisdom. Why do I say that? Let’s look into it.

Continue reading “The Proverbs 31 Woman: The Life of Wisdom”
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Wisdom of Proverbs: Wealth and Poverty

Posted on by Phill Sacre

One the best thing about Proverbs is its practical wisdom about everyday topics such as wealth and poverty. However, Proverbs is more than simply a self-help book – it is godly wisdom which seeks to put “the fear of the Lord” at the beginning. As we saw in the previous session on guidance, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 1:7). Today we are going to look at how that works out with money / wealth and poverty.

This is a huge issue in our society: according to the Global Inequality website, the richest 1% of people own 44% of the world’s wealth. According to Oxfam, the wealth divide between the richest and the poorest in the world is steadily growing. Closer to home, in the UK about 20% of households are below average income. And yet, a lot of people chase after wealth – according to the Telegraph, 70% of UK adults (more than 32 million people) play the lottery on a regular basis – and 99% of winners play again, convinced they will win again.

Money and wealth play a huge role in our society. What does the the wisdom of Proverbs have to say about it?

Let me first just give a quick caveat: one of the problems with proverbial wisdom is that you can’t simply read off one verse and then ignore the other verses about wealth and poverty. Proverbs isn’t a “get rich quick” scheme! All of these things need to be taken into consideration together. With that in mind, here are seven short lessons about wealth from the wisdom of Proverbs.

Continue reading “Wisdom of Proverbs: Wealth and Poverty”
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