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ANGLICARE reaches out in love to people in need, just like Jesus reached out to us. They want to encourage you to think of one thing you can do to share God’s love with someone else and do it! What do you reckon??? Go on, do it these holidays…
We love because he first loved us _ 1 John 4:19
The following is from 13:3. Used with permission. Pray for persecuted Christians.
Iranian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani is facing execution after refusing to renounce his faith during court hearings held this week.
In July, the Supreme Court instructed the Revolutionary Tribunal of Gilan Province to review his case to verify whether he was previously a practising Muslim. At the recent hearings, the court in Rasht ruled that Pastor Youcef was not a practising Muslim before becoming a Christian. However, he remains guilty of apostasy because of his Muslim ancestry.
According to sources, when Pastor Youcef was asked to repent in court, he said:
Repent means to return. What should I return to? To the blasphemy that I had before my faith in Christ?
When judges told him to return to “the religion of your ancestors, Islam,” Pastor Youcef responded, “I cannot.”
Nadarkhani has used up all his chances in the court. “We hear some rumors that he could be executed literally this week – that he’s had now three days which is called for in Islamic law to reconsider his decision, and he could be executed at any time,” reports Todd Nettleton with Voice of the Martyrs USA.
MORE INFORMATION
Check out this news report for more information about Youcef’s case.
URGENT PRAYER NEEDED
Please share this story with your friends and family and ask them to pray for Youcef Nadarkhani and his family.
Sources: Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Voice of the Martyrs USA
This article is from 13:3. Used with permission. Pray for persecuted Christians.
Here’s a youth ministry idea: help young punks to read the Bible. That’s one of the goals behind our DAILY BIBLE JOURNAL. For these school holidays we’re encouraging our crew to read through some of the Psalms.
I was going to have a crack at writing some school holiday reading notes, but in the end thought I’d use a brilliant new resource from Matt Jacobs. It’s a project called SixtySixBooks. Basically it provides an intro to different books of the Bible in a way that youth can understand along with a sample reading plan.
We’re using Graham Stanton’s notes on the Psalms.
What strategies do you use to help young people dig into God’s word?
After his success in 2010, my mate Snowy has a made another video entered in this year’s Ignite Film Festival. Check out Broken:
If you like it, you can help him win the People’s Choice Award. Check out the other entries here and then vote for his video and two others here.
It’s exactly a year since this blog post…
On Sunday night we had a special year 12 church service. It was encouraging to be able to pray for them and preach to them. I spoke from Isaiah 40 encouraging people to lift up their eyes to see the Incomparable God who offers strength to those who put their hope in him.
Here’s a link to the mp3. I hope it’s helpful for those who need a bigger picture perspective.
The Incomparable God gives strength to the weary – Isaiah 40 – Dave Miers
(right-click etc to download)
Row proposed that we have a night of square-dancing to finish our term together as a Small Group. Luckily we didn’t do square dancing. Instead we had a ‘Music Appreciation Night’. It was so much fun. Each person in our group had to have 2 songs prepared (with another 2 backups) to play for the rest of the group. It was cool to hear different songs and be introduced to music for the first time.
Before each song was played we introduced it to the group, made a few comments afterwards, took further questions or comments and then moved on to the next person. We basically did two laps of the room.
Here are the songs from each round:
Continue reading “Music Appreciation Night – Song List”
Soulies recently went away on our youth camp, Mission Impossible. It was a sweet, sweet, encouraging time in Philippians. Here’s a pic of our youth leaders. They’re legends:
I’ve been writing less on this blog this month, but increasing content on our youth website. Here are the latest 10 posts: