We met a woman on Friday morning who was on her way to one of the local welfare centre in Penrith. She stopped for a free coffee and got chatting. In God’s providence, she has been thinking about getting in touch with a church. Why? Well, she’s a participant in a Narcotics Anonymous (NA) rehabilitation program (fifteen months clean, praise God!). NA, like AA, has twelve steps, in which the first is belief in a ‘higher power’ that is able to help overcome and control addiction. Our new friend decided she wanted to know who that higher power is, and she’s keen to come to church on Sunday.
Penrith has become Athens: like Paul, we speak into a culture that doesn’t even know its own gods, proclaiming: ‘what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it’ (Acts 17:23–24). Pray that this woman might learn, in God’s grace, to name that Higher Power: Jesus Christ our Lord.
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