Conference 2022 Session 1 - Navigating uncharted waters

Alison is an inspiration and shared with us her story of God opening doors for her to work as an engineer in the field of climate change , advising in the heart of government. She also wanted to offset her own lifetime carbon footprint so planted 1750 trees during lockdown!

Using the life of Deborah, Elaine shows us in this session how important it is to hear God’s voice for ourselves. She leads us through an exercise of writing a letter to ourselves from God. If you missed the live event, we highly recommend that you take time to listen to the podcast and do the exercise yourselves. We always hear about the importance of doing physical exercise, but it’s even more important that we work at exercising our ‘spiritual muscles’ too. This will cause our faith to strengthen, deepen and FLOURISH.

If you find yourself in a place of waiting for God to answer your prayers, then this message is for you. Using the life of Sarah, Fiona Saunderson encouraged us all to come to a place of trust in God because he is utterly trustworthy.

In this session Carole Rawley and Jan Watt kick off the conference and Sue Eldridge shares an encouragement on navigating uncharted waters. 

A huge thank you to Nancy Goudie for sharing today at our Flourish Christmas breakfast. She pointed us to the story of Mary meeting the Angel and saying Yes to God even though she didn’t fully understand what it would mean for her life. Nancy’s questions to us are: ‘ Are we willing to say Yes to God’s plan for our lives even when we don’t fully understand what it will entail?’ ‘Are we willing to trust God even when we don’t have the answers to all our questions?’

A huge thank you to Georgina Newton for encouraging us to think about our journey to where we are today, our early life growing up and how that influences us today. God has made each one of us unique with our own gifts and skills, all for a purpose. There is a link on the Flourish facebook group to take you to the analysis of your "creative type". Why not try it and start that careful exploration of who you are and what God has purposed for you to do today?

We had a wonderful time at our Flourish breakfast with Heather Rogers who continued our series on ‘Women and Work’. She shared with us how God gave her a download from heaven in writing the I AM series. Since then it’s been used in youth groups, young adult groups and with whole churches. It addresses the foundations of our identity in Christ.

In this recording, Abi begins our new series on ‘Women and Work’ talking about being salt and light in our workplaces. She defined work as anything God has called us to do or what we find ourselves involved in eg. Paid work, volunteering, being at home whether that’s with children or being retired. So it’s a very broad remit that we all fall into.

What a lovely breakfast we had this morning! A huge thank you to Abby King for sharing with us from Luke 8:40-48. It’s the story of a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years, experiencing immense suffering and then she reached out to Jesus. Abby encouraged us to reach out to Jesus in the midst of our own suffering, vulnerability, disappointment and challenges. Jesus called her ‘daughter’ and he does the same to each one of us today. You are HIS DAUGHTER, loved and treasured!

In this episode, Georgina Newton joins us and discusses the different types of relationships we have in our lives, ones that energise us and ones that are more challenging. It was so helpful to have a chance to share our own experiences too.