Talks, Sermons and Reflections

​ Philippians 2.1-11 The church is never a place where you will find selfish ambition or vain conceit! That’s a joke! In fact our passage speaks of selfish ambition and vain conceit (v3). Selfish ambition : the desire to have more, to be more: more money or possessions or status or significance. Ambition in itself does not need to be wrong. The problem is what we are ambitious for. The problem is when we end up climbing over others to get what we want. We fix our eyes on the object of desire and nothing and nobody will get in our way. Vain conceit : this is the temptation to think more of ourselves than we should. We have our petty little achievements and successes and as a result we start to think that we are rather important. We become 'puffed up'. I’m bigger than you; I’m stronger than you; I’m cleverer than you; I’m more attractive than you. We look down on others. We think we deserve greater status or honour. We're put out when we feel that we haven...

1 Samuel 24 So, somebody hates you. Perhaps they have grounds for that dislike. Maybe it is a Jacob and Esau situation. Esau had every reason to hate Jacob. Jacob had taken advantage of his weakness, deceived him, and stolen what was his. And maybe somebody hates you because you have hurt them. You've walked out on them in a relationship; you've said things or done things that have deeply hurt them; you've stolen from them; you’ve treated them as dirt And when others have reason to hate us, then we need to do something about it. We need to acknowledge the other person’s reason for being angry with us. We need to say sorry, and - in so far as it is possible - we need to begin to put things right, with saying sorry Of course, we are good at deceiving ourselves. I remember one man, who was a member of one of the churches where I have served. He walked out on his wife for someone else. And rather than face up to the reality of what he had don...