{"id":806,"date":"2016-10-09T12:21:24","date_gmt":"2016-10-09T12:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/?p=806"},"modified":"2025-06-28T19:31:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-28T19:31:09","slug":"bills-letter-for-october-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/bills-letter-for-october-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill\u2019s Letter for October 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month<\/a> I wrote that we were starting our latest series of groups for people exploring their faith. The groups have started but it is not too late to join.<\/p>\n

The idea of the groups is not to tell people what they should\u00a0\u00a0 believe, but rather to help explore some of the big questions of life. What is life all about? Where am I going? What is the point of it all? It is all too easy to drift through life without taking time to think through these questions for ourselves. Sometimes life’s events bring us up short and prompt us to ask these questions. The Christian story gives a chance to find meaning and purpose, but also to discover the power and comfort of a relationship with a God who loves and cares for us.<\/p>\n

A very good friend of ours has recently died. She was a single lady who through a difficult childhood did not have a very good\u00a0\u00a0 opinion of herself. But she had an amazing faith and concern for other people; a real purpose in her life. Over the years she has been a\u00a0wonderful prayer warrior for our family and many others. After a\u00a0\u00a0 conversation about what was happening in our family, she would get a note book and write down the things that needed prayer. She prayed for many families and people every day. When she died we had a thanksgiving service for her life and the church was packed and many people told stories of how she had helped them over the years. She would have been amazed at the number of people who wanted to show their love.<\/p>\n

One of the readings at her service was one we had in our first meeting of our \u2018Just Looking\u2019 group. It comes from psalm 139 and talks of God\u2019s great love for us: \u201cO Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me\u2026.You knit me together in my mother\u2019s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

It can be a bit scary to think that God knows everything about us, but comforting to know that he still loves us all the same. Faith gives us the foundation to believe that life is not just a series of random events but that we have a higher purpose. There is a loving God who wants us to know Him too, and a relationship with Him will transform everything. Following Jesus is challenging but the most rewarding thing we can do<\/p>\n

Rev Bill Henderson<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month I wrote that we were starting our latest series of groups for people exploring their faith. The groups have started but it is not too late to join. The idea of the groups is not to tell people what they should\u00a0\u00a0 believe, but rather to help explore some of the big questions of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Phone_number(s)":"","email_address":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,35],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters","category-more-pages","tag-featured"],"mb":[],"mfb_rest_fields":["title"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":807,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions\/807"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}