Nathan has been a pastor of our Church since 1994.
God is most likely and able to work through those who accept their own weakness and don’t try to forcefully assert their own power and influence.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons by Nathan Nettleton (Page 18)
Despite our often minimal vision for ourselves, and our feeling of not being important to God, Jesus Christ is committed to bringing us to the fullness of life and wholeness.
God calls us to faithful expressions of the Culture of God which usually look unimpressive and unruly when judged by the world’s usual standards of success.
Satan casts out satan all the time in our divisive attempts to protect ourselves by demonising and expelling others.
We all have different roles within the ongoing ministry of Christ, but that ministry is ultimately not dependent on the success of individual leaders.
We are not added to a particular church flock in order to be in the “right” group, but in order to learn, with Christ, to love others and lay down our lives for the world.
The glory of God is most fully revealed in Jesus’s willingness to suffer death at the hands of the law.
We are prepared to sacrifice and kill in the name of our God, but God is willing to be sacrificed and be killed to save us, even when we were enemies.
Jesus calls us to turn away from pathways of judgement and condemnation and to follow him on the harder path of love and new life.
Expecting God to always appear as an exalted triumphant victor blinds us to the reality of God’s glory which is made known in suffering, self-sacrificial love.
Jesus calls us to model a pattern of love and generous inclusion, and to avoid the demonic temptations of exclusion and pride.
Jesus leads us into a joyous and healthy way of living that avoids both constricting legalism and destructive libertarianism.
God has become flesh so that we might know God and realise our own destiny in God in the world.
Joseph models a courageous willingness to be stripped of his sense of entitlement that he might become all God wanted him to be.
Preparing ourselves for the coming Lord is not a matter of rigorous rule keeping, but rules can help us learn the appropriate new way of being.
Jesus calls us to courageously follow him through a world of apparently apocalyptic violence towards the advent of hope and peace.
In our desire to see mercy and compassion expressed for the needy, we must beware of falling into desiring the exact opposite for those who have not shown mercy and compassion.
Our readiness to welcome and celebrate Christ is integral to his becoming present and active among us.
Jesus does not burden us with crippling moral expectations, but humbly takes our burdens on himself and frees us to relax into the life of God.
As we gather with the saints of all times to worship the crucified victim, we are immersed in a culture that is so at odds with the values of this world that those who truly embrace it just appear odd for now, but strangely and alluringly familiar too.