Lent Devotional - Week 4

Revelation 2:1-7At the start of 2026, we're exploring Jesus' instructions to the 'Seven Churches' in Revelation (chapters 2-3). As we long for a move of God in our city, we can often feel the cost of following Jesus in testing times. Revelation offers a practical message to stay faithful to Jesus, despite the pressures to compromise.

Matthew 2:1-12Andy looks at the visit of the wise men to the infant Jesus in Matthew 2. He unpacks the significance of the gift of myrrh and how it speaks to Jesus meeting us in the harder moments of the Christmas season.

Prayer is more than just something we do, it’s what forms our way of life with Jesus. In this five-week series, we’re unpacking how Jesus taught his disciples to pray in Matthew 6, known as ‘The Lord’s Prayer’. This week at our Central service, Joel looked at Jesus’ teaching to pray against temptation and evil in our daily lives.

Prayer is more than just something we do, it’s what forms our way of life with Jesus. In this five-week series, we’re unpacking how Jesus taught his disciples to pray in Matthew 6, known as ‘The Lord’s Prayer’. This week at our Mile End service, Adnan looked at Jesus’ teaching to pray for God’s daily provision in life.

Prayer is more than just something we do, it’s what forms our way of life with Jesus. In this five-week series, we’re unpacking how Jesus taught his disciples to pray in Matthew 6, known as ‘The Lord’s Prayer’. This week at Sutton, Andy looked at Jesus’ teaching to pray for forgiveness, and our radical need to both receive and extend forgiveness to others in order to live in light of God’s Kingdom.

Prayer is more than just something we do, it’s what forms our way of life with Jesus. In this five-week series, we’re unpacking how Jesus taught his disciples to pray in Matthew 6, known as ‘The Lord’s Prayer’. This week, Catherine (Sutton Service) looks at Jesus’ teaching to pray for God’s kingdom to come on earth as in heaven.

Prayer is more than just something we do, it’s what forms our way of life with Jesus. In this five-week series, we’re unpacking how Jesus taught his disciples to pray in Matthew 6, known as ‘The Lord’s Prayer’. This week, Adnan kicks off our series by looking at Jesus’ teaching to pray to ‘Our Father in heaven’ – exploring the heart and purpose of prayer.

We’re taking a few weeks as a church to focus on our three core values: Presence, Formation, and Mission. This week at our Stockwell service, Lou taught on our value of ‘Mission’ based on 2 Timothy 1:3-14. We look at our call to embrace our mission as disciples by sharing the Gospel with confidence over fear. We see how Paul urges Timothy to ‘fan into flame the gift of God’, allowing the Spirit to provide power, love, and self-discipline. Sharing faith requires courage and obedience, taking the long view, and being fully dependent on God, not personal eloquence.

This week, Andy Tilsley (Sutton Service) speaks on our value of ‘Formation’ as a church, looking at how we experience change as disciples of Jesus. Teaching from Luke 13, we see how the primary context for transformation happens in ‘manure’ of church community – the messy, costly, imperfect, but essential community for growth, where laying down self leads to resurrection power, ultimately making us more like Christ.

This week, Joel (Central Service) kicks off our teaching series on our values and vision. We look at the value of ‘Presence’ being the foundational value for any true revival. Seeking God’s presence requries us shifting the mindset of prayer from obligation to orientation, cultivating a deep hunger and thirst for Jesus as our life’s ultimate goal. It also demands a shift from relying on feelings to friendship, building a sustained, commitment-based relationship with God, independent of emotional highs. Finally, we must move from a faith of consuming to contending, actively contending in prayer for the Church’s purity and the powerful advance of the Gospel.