Heading home tommorow after picking up some more presents for my beautiful wife and children. Having a understanding wife, who is willing to let me go for the week, and is such a competant mum really helps.

Reinhold Bonke 9.30am "How we make God visible"
Bonke spoke using various bible passages (Is 6, Mark 16, Exodus 14) on how God is made visible, despite being invisible. Obviously it is because we are to make Him visible. Bonke encouraged us to be like the disciple Peter who had to call out to Jesus, and then get out of the boat to walk on water.

Peter challenged Jesus, "can I come?"
The focus of the miracle was on the faith of Peter (despite his subsequent doubt)
In other words we are to understand that we have a responsibility to show Jesus and His power, it is through us He chooses to work.

Franklin Jentzen ""The seventh sneeze"
Have a guess where this sermon title comes from? Seriously, where in the Bible does it mention someone sneezing seven times?

Look up 2 Kings 4.32
This was the best sermons I have heard Franklin preach. Wonderful, insightful message on handling pressure and the contrast between the flesh and the spirit. He talked about how the sneeze is an involuntary expulsion of something unwanted. The boy came alive after sneezing seven times.

Franklin then went into the New Testament and then proceeded to give a wonderful overview of the difficulties, the hindrances, the early church faced. It was so interesting. Normally we hear how victorious and overcoming the early church was, but Franklin showed us how in fact there were 7 (at least) times the church was hindered.
Here are only some of the key ones....
Acts 5 Greed
Acts 6 "There arose a murmuring"
Acts 8 Fear
Acts 10 Racial predjuice

Franklin is such a passionate preacher, try to resist getting swept up into his message if you can! I could not. This was a moving and challenging message.

Bayliss Connor
Houston had his customary sore throat. (I have been coming for 6 years now, and he always gets a sore throat). Bobbie was not his fill in preacher (as she often is) but he called upon Baylis to preach.
He spoke on 2 Corinthians 6, Ps 119 and Is 54
His basic message was covered by Bruce Wilkinson in the prayer of Jabez, which Bayliss referenced and mentioned.
He called us to have a willingness to deal with manure (!), which provided perhaps a more balanced view than Wilkinson gave us.
It was a really encouraging message because he talked about the incredible difficulties his church has had in its relocation process. The council took them to court and they had incredible legal bills which were necesary because of some legal issue where the council try to take the property and do not need to give any compensation. The process of relocation was explained and was a four year process. With some churches only telling part of the story, it was great to hear the difficulties faced by this church.

One another incidental quote he gave was a beauty.
"God had a family before He had a church"
Yes, and important to remember what is most important.

Home and back to reality tommorow. Really refreshed and looking forward to preaching some of this stuff.

Franklin then