Beckenham Baptist Church

Dear Friends,  From this month’s Open Doors prayer diary we have been asked to ‘pray for the persecutors’ and we heard the remarkable story from Central Asia which said, ‘A policeman arrived at an underground pastor’s home to arrest him, but he wasn’t in. His 10-year-old daughter invited him to wait. She made him dinner and, saying grace, thanked God for the food and this ‘good man’. Overwhelmed by her love, he became a Christian and is now helping protect the church’. We are asked to read the stories and testimonies of those who are being persecuted for their faith in Jesus Christ, and to pray for these courageous believers. ‘Be ready to be inspired by them and rejoice with them, because God is honouring them’ Open Doors reminds us. We read of the apostle Paul’s request for prayer from the believers in Thessalonica, that the gospel message would continue to spread and that he and his fellow missionaries would be ‘delivered from wicked and evil people, for not everyone has faith. Bu

Dear Friends,  A childhood memory that perhaps we can all associate with (and which may persist into later life) is holidaying at the beach and taking off our shoes and socks and running in the sand and sea barefoot, which always to me seemed to express a freedom and enjoyment that life not on holiday never quite gave. During Lent this year I’m using a book called Barefoot Prayers – a meditation a day for Lent and Easter by Stephen Cherry who is the Dean of Kings College, Cambridge. He says that ‘prayer is what happens when humility meets grace, or rather, when humility is met by grace. People today shy away from the virtue of humility for fear that to get close to it will make them weak in the face of hostile others, or in the fear that thinking themselves humble, they might slip into pride. Yet humility is the least negotiable of the Christian virtues. It is the basis of spirituality, wisdom and ministry’. The gospel of Matthew tells us of the story when Jesus’ disciples came to h

Dear Friends,  This week sees the beginning of the season of Lent in the church calendar as Ash Wednesday marks the 40-day period of prayer, fasting, repentance, moderation, self-denial and spiritual discipline. The purpose of the Lenten season is to set aside some time for reflection on Jesus Christ and to consider his suffering and sacrifice, his life, death, burial and resurrection. Why a 40-day period you may ask? It is based on two episodes of spiritual testing found in the Bible, the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness by the Israelites after the Exodus, and the time of Jesus’ temptations by the Devil in the desert after his baptism. The account of Jesus’ testing in the wilderness reminds us that he fasted forty days and nights, and that he was hungry. That sense of hunger is what we seek over the period of Lent as we seek to come closer to God, to learn more about our own relationship with him, and to discover more about who Jesus is as we slow down and take our time. In a

Dear Friends,  Sunday 4 th February is the BMS World Mission Day of Prayer. Each year at the beginning of February, the Baptist family in the UK is invited to pray for the work that BMS is doing around the world for some of the most marginalised and least evangelised people to experience the fullness of life through Christ and the love of Jesus in both word and deed. From the BMS website we have the following that tells us something of what BMS does: ‘Mission – what is it? It’s over 200 years of matching God’s word with deed. It’s our storied Baptist history and world still in need. We’re shaped by our past as we look to the future. It’s you and it’s us, it’s ‘we’ working together, as BMS World Mission uniting believers to change the world. Will you join us? In over 30 countries from cities to the most remote places, we tackle injustice and suffering in desperate places. We walk with refugees and those forced to leave home. We share the good news of Jesus where it’s never been kno