Nathan has been a pastor of our Church since 1994.
Full-blooded Christian discipleship may cost us some precious relationships and a lot of blood sweat and tears, but we will have plenty of new supporters and it all all be well worth it in the end.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons by Nathan Nettleton (Page 21)
Believing and following Jesus is about faith because certainty is impossible and doubts are unavoidable.
God has created us for relationships, and any values or priorities that are willing to sacrifice relationship for something else will cripple us.
Answers to prayer are not a controllable formula, but we are called to pray as part of our participation in God’s quest to bring healing, wholeness and life to a world of chaos.
When we follow Christ in being pain-bearers, we are participating in the reconciliation of the world.
God is always reaching out to those who we have cast off as nobodies, treating them as beloved somebodies, and calling us to follow in doing the same.
Jesus has freed us to be all we were created to be and to live life to the full, not to indulge the impulses that will lead us straight back into captivity.
Those who, in Christ, have been set free to love as Jesus loves will no longer have their relationships with God or one another bounded or understood by law.
Our identity as a community of Jesus’s followers is primarily expressed in love, gratitude and hospitality, not in compliance with a negative code of conduct.
God meets us in the midst of our worst nightmares, calling life out of death, but seldom in the ways we might most wish for.
Being a follower of Jesus means honouring his authority by following his teachings and his example (something that has become surprisingly rare).
When God is understood through the revelation of Jesus and his pattern of relating, then we discover ourselves invited into generous and gracious solidarity with all creation.
Salvation is about being set free to live life in all its fulness, even in the midst of conflict and suffering.
The resurrection of Jesus has made it possible for everyone to live fully, now, but not everyone feels ready to live.
The reputation that matters is a reputation for loving as Jesus loved and, like him, that will be seen as disreputable.
Extravagant expressions of love are a sign of the culture of God, and Jesus models generous giving and receiving of them, regardless of the scandal they cause.
Jesus leads us in the way of redemptive freedom before the violence of the world.
God saves us by changing our hearts, but one of the great temptations for the church is to try to turn that back into a system of exclusion and control.
Much of reality is usually hidden to us, but we can catch glimpses that become sustaining visions.
Although the Church and our nation might be stronger if they were more inclusive, the real call to inclusion is simply part of the call to faithfully reflect Christ.