We have good news to share! The good news that Jesus has died for sin so that we can be free to come to God and know him. The barrier is gone!

Through the last few weeks of studying Acts in our homegroup, I've particularly been struck by one main thing - what Acts can teach us about sharing the gospel. Although this is because I prayed that God would teach me more about how to share the good news with others. So what does it say?

Firstly - in each instance of sharing the good news in Acts we see that the message is the same, it's the same gospel that is shared with each different person / group of people - That Jesus who was crucified is the Lord and only in him can we find salvation. Through Acts we see people from many different races, religions and backgrounds receiving this same good news and being changed by it! We have good news that is for everyone - whatever race, religion or background.

Even though the message never changes, the way it is shared does. In each situation, we see the believers starting from what has just happened or where the people with whom they are talking are at, and from there they go on to apply the message of salvation to the situation. Then usually after having shared the message they call the hearers to repentence.

The other thing that I noticed from Acts is that the Holy Spirit has prepared each situation that we read about. We see him leading the believers into situations, preparing the hearers for the message and working through the believers and their listeners as the message is shared. The final thought that this (and particularly the conversions of Paul and Cornelius) highlighted for me is that God could have done it all - shared the message with and brought them to know him - but he has decided to use us believers in the process.

God doesn't need us in order to share the gospel, but it pleases him to entrust us with it. We should rejoice in this responsibility, in all the opportunities we have to share this good news and in the joy of seeing others come to know him.

Mark at wordandspirit started a discussion on the nature of small groups, as to whether they are more appropriate for teaching or discussion.

My personal view is that the discussions are very important - often without that people can't manage to get their own grip on the concepts. At our homegroup we generally read the passage in either one whole chunk or smaller chunks that we can look at one at a time with the reading and then working through the passage and the ideas that come from it.

Generally I think the biggest problem for small groups is when the person who is leading the discussion isn't adequately prepared or thinks that they don't need to bother with preparation or background reading before hand. I know it's easy to do - I've done it myself , but it makes a huge impact on the quality of discussion if you've done your work!

On Tuesday, we just started a new series in Home group, looking at the Book of Acts (based on John Stott's Seeing the Spirit at work Bible study guide). As it was Shrove Tuesday we started off with pancakes (and wraps) before moving on to studying Acts 1. It was a really good study and through my preparation for the study and the study itself I came across some really interesting bits that I hadn't thought about before:

"why do you stand here looking into the sky?" (v10 - 11)

The interesting question about this passage was why the words of the men in white convinced the disciples to go back to Jerusalem, as what they say doesn't appear to explain why they shouldn't keep watching! The main thought we had on this was that it was the surprise element that made them move on, as Jesus had just been taken up without them expecting it - so they couldn't expect him to return while they were expecting him to re-appear. Also on this the questioning as to why they were looking up sort of implies that there is something wrong with what they are doing, so would make them think.

Selecting a replacement for Judas (v21-26)

As we're coming up to electing a new PCC, the process used here to appoint a replacement was quite interesting to look at, firstly they specify the qualifications required for the replacement:

who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from John's baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. > >

Then they nominated 2 possible men who fitted the qualifications, and then prayed that God would reveal his will in the decision acknowledging that God knows everyones hearts, and that He would choose the replacement. They then cast lots in order to discern God's will - which was interesting to note from the commentary that this is the last place that the casting of lots is used in the Bible, and that after the Spirit came at Pentecost it is no longer necessary, as the Spirit reveals God's will to us.

Just a short note about two great new imaging toys I've found recently:

Picasa

Brilliant application which is now owned by google and has improved greatly since the first verison I tried - it now includes a search function and the star and label organisation system so you can highlight your favorite pictures and put them in virtual groups as well as in folders. It also now appears to have unlimited undo for any enhancements you make to the pictures - including the really easy to use rotating tool to sort out sloping pictures! (Picasa also produced the photo pile image at the top)

Terragen

Generate your own landscape and render it - all the pictures included at the top I created using Terragen.

Last night on the way home from work coming through the roadworks on the M27, I pulled across into the fast lane, and suddenly the car started making funny noises coming from the front drivers side wheel. It gradually got louder, so I slowed down and pulled into a gap in the cones into the area coned off for the roadworks. I got out the car and realised that I had a flat tyre. So I phoned Laura to explain and see if she knew who I needed to phone to make use of the 'free recovery zone' for the roadworks. I then tried the AA, and was sat in a queue for quite a while until I realised - "I've got a spare tyre - I can change it myself" - duh! So I got on with changing the tyre and just as I'd finished changing the tyre and phoned Laura to let her know that I'd sorted it and was about to head home, a truck with it's orange lights flashing pulled up in the roadworks section on the other side of the road - I explained to him what had happened and he told me the best way to rejoin the traffic. The car seemed to be driving strangely after changing the wheel, so I took it slowly and then took it into Kwikfit today and got it sorted.

Following on from my list of firefox extensions, here's my list of Thunderbird extensions:

Minimize to Tray

Changes the minimise in Thunderbird to send it to the system tray and still check your e-mail in the background.

Contact Sidebar

Adds a list of your contacts below the folder pane

Message Faces

Show Face headers in e-mails and news groups

Quote Collapse

Makes quotes in e-mail and news messages collapsable to save space

Quote Colours

Makes quotes in e-mail and news messages appear in different colours (I used to do this with userContent.css, but this is easier)

Buttons!

Adds extra buttons to Thunderbird including change SMTP server which I use a lot

View Headers

Adds an extra button to Thunderbird to toggle the viewing of headers

About Config

Restores about:config to Thunderbird so you can access the advanced configuration

Mail Redirect

Lets you bounce e-mail with the original headers

Also you can see which search plugins I use.

I can't remember where I found it, so I thought I'd put this here so I don't loose it!

In user.js or about:config, find mail.addr_book.mapit_url.format and set it to:

http://www.multimap.com/map/places.cgi?addr2=

@A1&addr3=@CI&pc=@ZI&db=GB&client=public&

cname=Great+Britain&advanced=true&mapsize=big

Or for streetmap use:

http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?
postcode2map?@ZI

Well yesterday we went out for a meal to celebrate Anne's birthday which is on Tuesday, and we decided to have a New Year's challenge. We had a few different ideas for challenges, (including my suggestion of collecting an object to represent each month throughout the coming year) but the challenge we're doing is a good idea, and that is:

To start of with £10 at the start of the year, and to try and increase it's value by this time next year, when the person who has made the most money gets 10% of everyones total, and the rest goes to their chosen charity - if that makes sense. The rules are as follows:

• No more than ten pounds can be put in at the start

• Means of increasing value has to be legal

Well I've had a few ideas, but still not sure what I'm going to do - so the value of my £10 is still £10

I've now implemented Gravatars for the comments on this site.

It was a bit tricky as this is coded using ASP (VBScript) - but I've managed to get it working using the code from http://www.frez.co.uk/freecode.htm#md5 - although interestingly the VBScript version wouldn't work, so I have used the javascript version - a bit of a strange way to do it, but it seems to work. I didn't realise before that you could mix languages in ASP, but it turns out you can by including one in the page using the <script runat="server"... tag, and then it can be called from within the other code on the page even if it's in a different programming language!

On Bonfire night before we went up to Portsdown hill to watch the fireworks, we filled up the car at the BP petrol station opposite All Saints church. The car was initially fine, then on Saturday it started making a loud squealing noise, which we thought was a problem with one of the belts. By Monday I'd planned to take the car to the garage, however the car wouldn't start at all, so I assumed that the battery had been worn down, so borrowed a battery charger and left it charging. However even with doing this, the car wouldn't start, so later in the week Ben towed me round to the garage. When the garage had a look, they discovered that the problem had been caused by the petrol tank containing water, so they would have to remove the tank and the fuel lines, drain them and clean and dry them thoroughly. The only place I can think of where this could have come from was when I filled it up, which apparently does occasionally happen (as I found out from the garage, from BP and from trading standards). So I contacted BP about it and after conducting an 'investigation' they said that it was highly unlikely that it came from there tanks. It's a mystery where it came from then!