meet the ministers

June 30, 2012 at 5:30 am (Meet The Ministers)

Rev. Tim and Daniel Lockwood

Tim and Danni met at a youth event they were both taking part in and after a few months of chasing (on Tim’s part), Danni’s heart was captured and they married around a year later in 1998. They have two amazing children, Acacia and Joseph.

Tim was raised in a Christian home where his parents were both pastors. At the age of 19 he embarked on a significant journey with God, travelling over toSouth Africaand studying Christian Leadership atRhemaBibleCollegefor a year. During that year he developed a passion for church and knew God had placed a calling on his life to become a pastor. When he came back to the UK he took up the role of Youth Pastor at a localCornerstoneChurchwhere he impacted the lives of many young people. Another passion of Tim’s was to become a Police Officer so in 2001 he successfully completed a police training course, obtained a Warrant Card and became a fully fledged P.C! He continues his police work alongside his ministry within the church, as his role within the police is very much of a pastoral nature, working alongside offenders to get them out of the lifestyle of crime.

Tim is God-driven by a desire to see people saved, set free and released into a purpose filled life with God. He is a man of vision, and is committed to go where God leads.

Danni had her first revelation of God at the age of 11 at a Christian Camp, but soon fell away due to peer pressure and for the next few years led a lifestyle that was destructive and damaging. Eventually she hit rock bottom and knew the only way to turn was back to God. She began her journey on the road to recovery and experienced Jesus in such an incredible way transforming her from the inside out, impacting her outlook on life and her attitude to her future. She developed such a passion for God, His Church and His People that she made a decision to commit her life in service to God and His church. Because of her own experiences, she is passionate to see people saved, hope and healing arise and destiny restored. Her greatest delight in life is to see people come into a purpose-filled, awesome adventure with their creator God.

In 2010 Tim and Danni felt that God was relocating them and they both developed a heart for Guildford. In 2011 they became the Senior Pastors of Eternity Church taking over from the founding Pastors. Tim and Danni are passionate about seeingGuildfordtransformed by the power of God working through His church.

We are a modern and vibrant church that loves God, loves people and loves life. Our passion is to reach our community in a real and relevant way, demonstrating that there is a God in heaven who is for them, who believes in them and who is completely and utterly sold out for them. Experience church in a fresh and vibrant way!

Come along and join us every Sunday morning 09.00am or 11.00am at The Electric Theatre,Guildford for our fantastic services.

WHAT TO EXPECT

You, your friends and your family can expect a warm and friendly welcome at both our Sunday services and our team will be there to serve you in any way they can. We have our fully trained, CRB-checked Kids Church team on hand in the foyer area, ready to meet and greet you and your children at the 9am service, where you can sign them in to their very own age-specified programme for a fun-filled time. At the 11am service there will be fun filled kids packs available for under 12s during the word part of the service. You can also expect a powerful time of worship with our live band, an opportunity for prayer requests, and Bible-based teaching that is relevant to your everyday life at both services.

We would love to see you on Sunday, so come along for a refreshing church experience.

 

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message of note

June 30, 2012 at 5:24 am (Messages of Note)

 

John Lancaster

HELP PEOPLE FIX THEIR EYES ON JESUS

AND   FINALLY…

The pulpit in the parish church inSt Leonard’s on Sea inSussexwas made inIsraeland is a beautiful replica of the bow of a Galilean fishing boat. To the preacher and his congregation it becomes a powerful reminder that what he is about to do is to continue on the shores of the English Channel what ‘Jesus began to do and to teach’ on the shores ofGalilee. Even more powerful for the preacher are the words which face him as he enters that pulpit. Taken from John 12:21, they read, ‘Sir, we would see Jesus.’

The little group of Greeks who came to Philip with that re­quest were men who had ‘turned from idols to serve the living God’, but their problem was that, having turned from the sensuous emptiness of pagan religion to the stern rituals of Judaism, they had still not found the living God. All around them people were talking about Jesus, so could he be the answer to their search? It was not mere curiosity that lay behind their request; they sincerely sought an encounter with Jesus. Tired of religion, they wanted reality.

The congregations that face modern preachers may not spell out the same request. In fact, some would never even think it was their prior need, but the truth remains that, above everything else, people in our churches – and outside of them -need to be led into an encounter with Jesus. Modern preachers and communicators at every level and in every medium need to hear this message, ‘Sir, we would see Jesus! We don’t want to hear your opinions about this and that, or learn about your experiences and achievements; we need more than therapy for our hurts, we need more than advice about self-fulfilment, more than instruction on meth­ods of achieving success. We do need help with many of those things, but most of all we need an encounter with Jesus. Help us to “fix our eyes on Jesus”.

‘Tell us more about him, about who He is, what he has done, and what He still desires to do in us. Show us His glory, declare His Lordship, tell us about His second coming. Yes, we’ve heard it all before, but we need to hear it again and again, so that we will be able to worship Him in spirit and in truth, be inspired to live for His glory and be a witness for Him in a world that needs to see Him.’

This Christ-centeredness was the secret of the early church. Whether in a city-wide crusade (Acts 8:4), a one-to-one en­counter (Acts 8:35), a hostile court of enquiry (Acts 4:10) or an encounter with cynical academics (Acts 17:18), the message was the same -Jesus. Whatever else they talked and wrote about, they always came back to the centrality of Jesus; their preaching and writings were saturated with his name.

Nor was it only in their preaching that they proclaimed Christ, but also in their personal conduct. Intellectually out of their depth in an encounter with the cream ofIsrael’s academics, and psychologically under pressure because this was the court that had condemned their master to death, the apostles conducted themselves with such composure, mental alertness and free­dom of speech that the Council ‘noted that they had been with Jesus’. Intimacy with him through his Word and the Spirit enabled them to rise above their natural limitations.

There are many important issues that demand our attention and our voice, but in the end the deepest need of our fallen world is an encounter with Jesus. This means that, whatever else we talk about and do, we must help people to meet Christ.

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Living Devotions

June 30, 2012 at 5:20 am (Living Devotions)

Rev. E. Anderson

FAITH AND PHYSICAL HEALING

Living Devotional Ministries

Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight; your faith has healed you” — Luke 18:42

A survey conducted in the 1990s by theAmericanAcademyof Family Physicians showed that 99% of doctors believe that a relationship exists between faith and physical healing.

This line of thinking was bolstered by a California study of the effect of prayer on recovery from heart problems. About two hundred heart patients were assigned to Christians who prayed for them, while an equal number, a control group, received no known prayers. Neither group knew about the prayers, yet those who received prayer developed half the complications that were experienced by those in the control group.

A similar study by the Dartmouth Medical School examined the effect of prayer on healing when the patients prayed for themselves. The death rate six months after bypass surgery was 9 percent for the general population but 5 percent for those who prayed for their own healing. And none of the deeply religious patients died during the period of the study.

Study after study shows that faith works when it comes to improving your health. Yet so often, many people downplay this relationship thinking if they can just get the physical problem fixed, everything will be okay.

As a human being, you’re more than just a physical body. You have a very real and active spiritual dimension as well. So as you focus on keeping your physical body healthy, remember to also nourish your spiritual well-being!

PRAYER CHALLENGE

Pray that God would help you see yourself as more than just a physical being, and that He would help you keep your spirit healthy too!

 

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leadership factors

June 29, 2012 at 2:32 am (Leadership Factors)

 

Rev. John Maxwell

THE LAW OF CONNECTION

GOD’S COVENANT, GOD’S RULES

Taken from the John Maxwell’s Leadership Bible

Exodus 19: 3-13

Have you ever noticed how God introduced the Ten Commandments? Before He spoke His laws to the people in Exodus 20, He took time to remind them of three vital truths:

  • The love He had for them
  • The victories He’d won for them
  • The future He planned for them

God spoke about how He intended to blessIsraelas His children, and He warned them of boundaries to keep—how to survive His  fiery presence onMount Sinai. Only then did He give them His commandments to obey. Do you see the genius of the sequence?

Leaders touch a heart before they ask for a hand. Before God demanded His people keep rules, He reminded them of His relationship-blessings. That gave them all the incentive they needed to follow through on their commitment!

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just a thought

June 29, 2012 at 2:25 am (Just a Thought)

Rev. Aaron Linford

Back-Seat Driver

“Thine ears shall hear a word behind thee saying, ‘This is the way, walk ye in it’ ” – Isaiah 30:21

One of the greatest nuisances of the road is a backseat driver whose comments – sometimes acid – seek to direct, but only succeed to distract, the man (or woman) at the wheel. They are a pest. May their tribe perish! Is this a vain hope?

But in our text we have a voice from behind different and welcome. It is not the natural voice of a passenger, which is a menace, it is the spiritual voice of one who accompanies us through life as we trust and obey. This miracle-voice of God, speaking through conscience, Scripture, or inward urge of the Holy spirit will guide our onward way. “Walk before Me, and be thou perfect”, said the Lord to Abram (Genesis 17:1). The complete life is one that issues from the God who watches our ways. When He says ‘Turn left”, we are safe, when He says “Turn right”, we do well, when He says “Pause”, we do well to listen; when He says “Go on” we progress safely.

 

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illustrations that light up life

June 29, 2012 at 2:22 am (Illustrations)

Rev. E. Anderson

FACING REALITY

There once was a young preacher who had just landed his first congregation. Now this church was rather a small one and was composed entirely of the population of a small logging town. Everyone in town worked for the town’s lumber mill, which was its only business and was involved in fierce competition with the mill just upstream.

The preacher wasn’t in town long before he had an experience that shook him up a bit. He was taking a walk through the woods and chanced to see the workers at the town mill pulling logs branded for the other mill out of the stream, cutting off the branded ends, and running them through their own mill. The preacher was very distressed with this and so worked the rest of the week on a powerful sermon. That Sunday he got up and preached his sermon entitled “Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbour’s Property.” The sermon seemed to go over well. Everyone told him, as they went out the door, just how much they loved his preaching. “You really moved me preacher” and “Best sermon \ ever heard.” were some of the remarks they made.

But that next Monday morning it was business as usual at the mill. They were still stealing logs. So the next Sunday the preacher delivered a real “pulpit pounder” called “Thou Shalt Not Steal.” “Fantastic!” the people told him. “Wonderful!” they cried. But on Monday morning the other company’s logs were still being swiped by the town mill. Enough was enough! There’s only so much a man can take and then he’s got to act—this time he wasn’t going to hold anything back.

The following Sunday he got up and preached on the topic: “Thou Shalt Not Cut the Branded Ends Off Someone Else’s Logs!” They ran him out of town!

 

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healing testimonies

June 28, 2012 at 2:53 am (Healing Testimonies)

Weje Sekara

RECOVERED AFTER MAJOR STROKE

A WOMAN who suffered a huge stroke made miraculous recovery – as her pastor prayed for her in hospital,

Weje Sekara’s family members were told that she would be paralysed after a blood clot in her brain was discovered,

But as her pastor, Terry Walsh, began to pray, the unconscious 58 year-old made a dramatic recovery and began to talk. Moments later, she spoke on the phone to her daughter inAmericato tell her she had been healed.

Weje said she felt power go through her body as Rev Walsh prayed beside her bed inFrenchayHospital,Bristol.

She told New Life: “My pastor came and prayed for me. My daugh­ter was calling me fromAmerica, but she couldn’t talk to me because I was unconscious,

“When the pastor finished his prayer suddenly I start speaking and after some minutes I started talking to my daughter inAmerica. She was surprised and later the doctor said I didn’t need an operation because the blood clot had dispersed.

“My God is a great God who can do anything. I strongly believe in him and I have big faith in him. When I was unconscious the doc­tor told my husband that I’d had a massive stroke and that there was a blood clot in my head but they couldn’t operate. My husband was very worried but I now know the whole church was praying.

AMAZED

“The doctors and nurses thought I would be paralysed but now I am going to church every week and to Bible study.”

Rev Walsh, who leads Destiny Knowles Pentecostal Church in Bristol, said: “My wife and I went in to pray and we found her semi­conscious. I prayed, ‘Sovereign Lord, Creator of the universe, please heal our sister. In the name of Jesus I ask this”.

“I’d seen God heal before because my mother was healed from terminal cancer but this happened right in front of us.    

“She immediately came round and started speaking to us. She told me later that when we prayed, she felt power go through her body.”

Medics were amazed and found that Weje no longer needed an operation as the blood clot had gone.

“When the doctors came, they told her that she didn’t need an operation and that she had had a miracle,” Rev Walsh added. “There was no sign on her face that she’d had a stroke”.

 

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great stories

June 28, 2012 at 2:47 am (Great Stories)

Rev. E. Anderson

YELLOW BUTTERFLY

“Why are you downcast, 0 my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him” – Psalm 42:5

As a young girl, my biggest dream was to be a mother. I always said I wanted four children—two boys and two girls. When I got older I was so blessed to have that dream come true. I loved those kids more than life itself. Many times I found myself standing in the doorway watching as they played outside and thinking just how blessed I was, and I was always amazed that all of them were mine.

Like most mothers, in the back of my mind there was the fear that something would happen to one of them. Sadly that horror came true.

It was in June when the knock on the door came.

When my husband came to tell me the news, he didn’t have to say a word. I saw into his soul that night as I looked into his eyes. Our oldest son, fourteen-year-old Josh, was hit by a car and killed.

The years after that seemed to just run together as we struggled to learn how to live life without him.

A few years later, on a beautiful spring day, my daughter Chelsea and I were going fishing. It was our favourite hobby and we could never wait until the weather got warm enough to go again. The fresh smell of newly cut grass filled the air and the daffodils were in full bloom. Everything around us seemed to be coming back to life, for us, if only for a day.

We grabbed our buckets and fishing poles and climbed over the old fence and headed down the field toward the creek. I looked back at Chelsea who was lagging behind slightly, and saw at least thirty white butterflies dancing all around her. It was a heavenly sight and if my Josh could communicate with us from where he was. So I called out to him several times, “Josh, if you are with us, please send us a yellow butterfly.”

Then I stopped and waited as my daughter caught up with me and I told her, “If you see a yellow butterfly it means Josh is with us 2.

She said, “How do you know?”

“Because I asked him to send us one if he was here.”

Then we we both started calling out, “Josh, please send us a yellow butterfly so we’ll know for sure that you are with us.”

“God, please let Josh send us a yellow butterfly.”

Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere a large yellow butterfly with rounded wings flew right in front of my face not three inches away! Our jaws dropped as our eyes met and when we turned back was gone just as quickly as it had appeared. We couldn’t see it anywhere, but we didn’t need to. We had the answer we needed. With a great sense of peace we started walking toward the creek again,   saying, “Come on Josh, let’s go fishing!”

—Deborah Derosier

 

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gospel nuggets

June 28, 2012 at 2:43 am (Gospel Nuggets)

Evangelist Barry Woodward

A LESSON FROM MY TIME IN THE DOCK

His name was Judge ‘Send-em-Down’ Jelland. Back in the day, he had a serious reputation amongst theManchester criminal underworld for being one of the most hard-line Judges. He was 5 feet tall, 60 years old and he was about 17.5 stone. And he always sent people down. 

After being on remand in Strangeways Prison for a number of different offences, I ended up standing before him at Manchester Crown Court, Court Room 1.

Imagine you are sat in the courtroom… I’m stood in the dock and Judge Jelland is sat behind his bench. He tilted his head and looked over his slimline reading glasses balanced on the end of his large nose. He looked at me, while pointing his fat finger and said, ‘Barry Woodward you have been found guilty of the charges brought against you, and for this I sentence you to this sentence **** in prison. Send him down.’

The hammer slapped on the bench, and my heart began to pound as I was taken back to the holding cell. I was eventually put in the Sweat Box and taken back to Strangeways to serve my sentence.

Now, let’s use our imaginations… You’re sat in the courtroom, I’m sat in the dock and Judge Jelland is sat at his bench. ‘Barry Woodward,’ he booms, ‘you have been found guilty of the charges brought against you and for this I sentence you…’ Only this time, right at that point the door opens at the back of the courtroom. The hinges squeak, everybody – including you – turns around to look at the door.

There is a moment of silence… and then a guy comes through the door. He walks down the side of courtroom toward the dock where I’m stood. Everybody’s eyes are on him. He comes to the dock and opens the door… looks at me… reaches into his back pocket. He pulls out a £10 note, puts it in my hand. ‘There you go Barry,’ he says. ‘There’s your Taxi fare home, you can go.’

I’d have been out of there like a shot, I can tell you! Besides, it’s only £2.50 to where I lived in Moss Side!

And then Judge Jelland continues, ‘I sentence YOU.’ And he gives this guy the worst ever sentence that can be given – the sentence of death. But the guy stands there and takes it like a man. He’s then taken down and executed.

Does this sound familiar in any way? Well, it might: This is exactly what God did for us. He sent his son the court room of this world to stand in the dock in our place. He took the blame, so we could get off scot-free!!

See, there are faults, flaws, failures in all our lives and we deserve to be judged. So 2000 years ago & 2000 miles away, God sent his son into this world to die on the cross.

He stood in the dock and took the wrap for you!

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a time to laugh

June 27, 2012 at 3:04 am (Time to Laugh)

Rev. E. Anderson

WOMEN’S REVENGE

‘Cash, check or charge?’ I asked, after folding items the woman wished to purchase.
As she fumbled for her wallet, I noticed a remote control for a television set in her purse.
‘So, do you always carry your TV remote?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she replied, ‘but my husband refused to come shopping with me, and I figured this was the most evil thing I could do to him legally.’

WIFE VS. HUSBAND

A couple drove down a country road for several miles, not saying a word. An earlier discussion had led to an argument and neither of them wanted to concede their position..
As they passed a barnyard of mules, goats, and pigs, the husband asked sarcastically, ‘Relatives of yours?’
‘Yep,’ the wife replied, ‘in-laws.’

WORDS

 A husband read an article to his wife about how many words women use a day.  30,000 to a man’s 15,000.  The wife replied, ‘The reason has to be because we have to repeat everything to men… The husband then turned to his wife and asked, ‘What?’

CREATION

 A man said to his wife one day, ‘I don’t know how you can be so stupid and so beautiful all at the same time.
‘The wife responded, ‘Allow me to explain. God made me beautiful so you would be attracted to me; God made me stupid so I would be attracted to you!

WHO DOES WHAT

 A man and his wife were having an argument about who should brew the coffee each morning.
The wife said, ‘You should do it because you get up first, and then we don’t have to wait as long to get our coffee.
The husband said, ‘You are in charge of cooking around here and you should do it, because that is your job, and I can just wait for my coffee.’

Wife replies, ‘No, you should do it, and besides, it is in the Bible that the man should do the coffee.’
Husband replies, ‘I can’t believe that, show me.’
So she fetched the Bible, and opened the New Testament and showed him at the top of several pages, that it indeed says . ‘HEBREWS’

THE SILENT TREATMENT

 A man and his wife were having some problems at home and were giving each other the silent treatment.
Suddenly, the man realized that the next day, he would need his wife to wake him at 5:00 AM for an early morning business flight.
Not wanting to be the first to break the silence (and LOSE), he wrote on a piece of paper,
‘Please wake me at 5:00 AM.’ He left it where he knew she would find it.
The next morning, the man woke up, only to discover it was 9:00 AM and he had missed his flight Furious, he was about to go and see why his wife hadn’t wakened him, when he noticed a piece of paper by the bed. The paper said, ‘It is 5:00 AM. Wake up..’
Men are not equipped for these kinds of contests.

God may have created man before woman, but there is always a rough draft before the masterpiece

SEND THIS TO SMART WOMEN WHO NEED A LAUGH AND TO MEN YOU THINK CAN HANDLE IT!

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