E-Nerf fun for everyone!

At Llandudno Youth for Christ, we are excited to announce that we have some brilliant social events coming up in the near future. Indeed 2 of them are in the very near future.

On this coming Saturday 23rd February we will be having a ‘Girls’ Night’ social event and a ‘Lads’Night’ social event. These will be two great community building events.

The Girls will be spending time together eating ice-cream and watching a movie at Gloddaeth Church from 6-9pm. At the same time the Lads will be meeting at TyLlywelyn Community Centre for an evening of eating pies, playing games & taking part in bouts of inflatable boxing.

Then in just over a Month’s time we will be all meeting for an epic ‘Nerf’ battle, again in Gloddaeth Church on Saturday 30th March, 6-8pm. This will be a fun time for everyone.

So, if you are aged 11-18yrs of age, or you know someone who is, and you think you might enjoy these events, please do come along/let them know.

Also, please be praying for these events. Praying that everyone will have a good time and a real sense of community and fun will be built amongst all who attend.

Thank you, and be blessed!

Love is…

This Thursday we are all going to be inundated with red roses, chocolate hearts and romantic cards. Yes it’s valentine’s day.

You might be fed up with this annual celebration of romantic love and see it as simply a commercial endeavour set to line the pockets of businesses. However, as it does focus on the most impart thing in life, ‘love’, it shouldn’t be so quickly dismissed.

Interestingly enough, this last Sunday at ‘Redefine’ we were studying chapter 12 of the gospel of Mark; verses 28 to 34 to be precise. In this passage a religious scholar asks Jesus what the most important commandment is. Jesus’ reply is this “The most important of all the commandments is this: ‘The Lord Yahweh, our God, is one!’ You are to love the Lord Yahweh, your God, with every passion of your heart, with all the energy of your being, with every thought that is within you, and with all your strength. This is the great and supreme commandment. And the second is this: ‘You must love your neighbour in the same way you love yourself.’ You will never find a greater commandment than these.” Mark 12:29-31

Jesus is saying that loving God and loving those around us are the greatest commandment. It’s all about love. After all God is love.

And loving our neighbour just means those around us, even those people who dress differently than us, who think differently to us, who have different beliefs than us. Those people that we don’t always get along with, or want to get along with. As we love them, we are demonstrating our love for God also. For the apostle John in his first epistle writes Anyone can say, “I love God,” yet have hatred toward another believer. This makes him a phony, because if you don’t love a brother or sister, whom you can see, how can you truly love God, whom you can’t see? For he has given us this command: whoever loves God must also demonstrate love to others” 1 John 4:20-21.

This is a tough call and a difficult ask. The romantic love of Valentine’s day may be easy, as easy as popping to the shops and buying a card and some flowers, but the powerful and robust, unconditional love of God; the Agape love of God; is much harder to do. Indeed, it is impossible for us to do in our own power and strength. We can only accomplish it by God’s Spirit moving in and through our lives.

So this week as we are reminded of love wherever we go, let us remember that God loves us with an unconditional and reckless love and as we are transformed by that love, let us love those around us with the love He gives us.

Be blessed!

More than meets the eye…

The title to this blog post is the tagline to the Transformers franchise. I’m writing about Transformers (no, not the electrical one for changing voltages), because my son and daughter just received a surprise bag of some vintage and nearly new Transformers for them to play with. They loved them and were very eager to play and ‘transform’ these toys.

The Transformer toy line has been around since 1984 when it was created by Bob Budiansky and Nobuyuki Okude as a joint American Japanese venture between Hasbro (USA) and Takara Tomy (Japan). I grew up with Transformers and in fact if you ever visit the Llandudno Youth for Christ offices, you’ll see 4 vintage Transformer toys from my childhood on display above my desk. Transformers are robots that ‘transform’ into various vehicles and objects, they are ‘robots in disguise’ (another tagline for them). Some are easy to transform, whilst others are quite tricky and complex.

Indeed, 2 of the new Transformers my son had were so tricky that even I didn’t know how to transform them from vehicle mode to robot mode. I needed either a direct line to the toys’ creators or at the very least the instruction manuals.

This struggle with the transformers sparked something in me, and whilst I was praying at Redefine, I kept on getting images of Transformers in my head and realised God was trying to tell me something. So I listened more intently to what the Spirit of God was telling me.

I felt God was saying that as human beings we are even more complex than Transformers and that we need both the Creator and the instruction manual in order to be transformed. God was reminding me that it was His job and responsibility to bring the transformation in our lives and that we cannot do that on our own, but by letting God transform us by His presence and His word (the Bible).

I was really encouraged by this and by these words from Psalm 139:13-16.

13You formed my innermost being, shaping my delicate inside
    and my intricate outside,
    and wove them all together in my mother’s womb.
14 I thank you, God, for making me so mysteriously complex!
    Everything you do is marvelously breathtaking.
    It simply amazes me to think about it!
    How thoroughly you know me, Lord!
15 You even formed every bone in my body
    when you created me in the secret place,
    carefully, skillfully shaping me from nothing to something.
16 You saw who you created me to be before I became me!
    Before I’d ever seen the light of day,
    the number of days you planned for me
    were already recorded in your book.”

Remember there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to you. God has made you and He doesn’t make mistakes. He created you and He knows what you need.

This week as you meditate on the above truth, please be praying for the young people that attend the different events we hold. Pray that they would come to realise that they are a beloved and unique creation of a loving and unique Creator, God.

Be blessed.