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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 find satisfaction? | Eccl 1:12-2:26 | Sermon

Posted on by Phill Sacre

Ecclesiastes is a book which thinks hard about where we find meaning in our lives. Where do you look for meaning in your life? Family or friends? Job? Money? Projects? Things?

The Teacher here looks at all the different things people look to for satisfaction, and concludes that there is only one real place to find satisfaction.

Read the passage online here.

See the first one in the series here.

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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 death should teach us to live | Eccl 1:1-11 | Sermon

Posted on by Phill Sacre

We live in a society that doesn’t want to talk about death. And yet, death should actually be our teacher. This is what the book of Ecclesiastes is all about.

This is the first part of a new series on the book of Ecclesiastes. I’ve basically followed the pattern from Living Life Backwards. We’ll be looking at it over the coming weeks up until Christmas. It’s a fascinating book which I think many Christians don’t spend very much time studying – so I hope we’ll all learn something new.

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Heidelberg Catechism: #11 Jesus the only Saviour

Posted on by Phill Sacre

Over the last few weeks I’ve started uploading the Heidelberg Catechism videos to YouTube and Facebook – one each Monday. Today I just uploaded #11 – Jesus the only Saviour.

If you’d like to do the whole course, you can sign up (free) for the Teaching Programme. If you’d prefer just to watch individual videos, they are all available on this YouTube Playlist.

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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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