Happy 90th Birthday Your Majesty

What a wonderful time we had celebrating the queen's 90th birthday, we had a surprise visit from her majesty heavily disguised as Sandra Bagworth. We were individually introduced to her and she showed a keen interest in who were were and what our role was in the army, all in all we had a wonderful time. May the Lord continue to bless her reign.

Click on the link for a  video of 

  Major Tim and Ruth meeting Her Majesty

Sandra spoke at the testimony time on Sunday of how she and her husband Brian had been invited to a garden party at the palace and how they were instructed on how to approach the queen and the etiquette involved. She reminded us that as Christians we are all children of God, who have been saved from our sins by faith in Jesus Christ and His death on the cross and because of this we can come boldly to the throne of God. Jesus is Lord of lords, and King of kings and there is no other way in which we can come to the Father, but there is no etiquette involved, we don’t have to clean up our act, we don’t have to call Him, sir, we don’t have wait for permission. He accepts us when we repent of our sin, Jesus died for us while we were yet sinners, He took the punishment for our sins. The King of glory died in our place that we might be with Him forever.

King of kings,majesty, 
God of Heaven living in me, 
gentle Saviour, closest friend, 
strong deliverer, beginning and end, 
all within me falls at your throne. 

Your majesty, I can but bow, 
I lay my all before you now. 
In royal robes I don't deserve 
I live to serve your majesty. 

Earth and Heaven worship you, 
love eternal, faithful and true, 
who bought the nations, ransomed souls, 
brought this sinner near to your throne; 
all within me cries out in praise. 

Your majesty, I can but bow, 
I lay my all before you now. 
In royal robes I don't deserve 
I live to serve your majesty. 

God save our gracious Queen! 

Long live our noble Queen! 

God save the Queen! 

Send her victorious, 

Happy and glorious, 

Long to reign over us, 

God save the Queen.

Thy choicest gifts in store 

On her be pleased to pour, 

Long may she reign. 

May she defend our laws, 

And ever give us cause, 

To sing with heart and voice, 

God save the Queen.

Don't imitate me!!!

For the past four weeks the Ripley Home League have been meeting in the local Co-op cafe as the hall was out of bounds due to repair work, but we had a wonderful time of fellowship and spoke about many things including love, and forgiveness something which many of us find hard to do when we have been badly hurt. But this week we were back at the hall and I spoke about how others see us, especially our family, friends, and neighbours, can they see Jesus? We were all challenged to look within to see what needs changing. Sometimes our focus is so much on what we are going through, family heartaches, health issues etc, and we become so engrossed with these things that before long we have taken our eyes of Jesus. When we focus on Jesus and not on ourselves then the troubles and trials are put into perspective and we know we can trust Jesus to be with us and help us through them. Paul wrote:

Philippians 4: ⁴ Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!

⁵ Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.

⁶ Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; ⁷ and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

⁸ Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. ⁹ The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.

Paul could say with confidence to those he had led to Christ. 

All the things they had learned from him, received from him, and saw in him, was all Christ-like because he had such a close walk with the Lord. He was content no matter what circumstance he found himself in. People could still see Jesus in him no matter what he was going through. Can we with hand on heart say to new believers as Paul did “Imitate me, as I imitate Christ”, no I don’t think we can. That is an amazing statement but it is one that we can strife for, we can examine our lives and put right those things that grieve the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We can strive with the help of the Holy Spirit to be more and more conformed to the likeness of Jesus. Don’t concentrate on your problems but concentrate on the true, the noble, the just, the pure, the lovely, the good report, virtue and things praise worthy, in other words all the things of the Lord Jesus and not of ourselves or the world. Paul’s focus on the world was the lost people and that should be our focus especially our family, friends, and neighbours. If we imitate Christ, and pray for them then one day they may sing with us.

King of Kings, Majesty,
God of heaven, living in me
Gentle Saviour, closest friend,
Strong Deliverer, Beginning and End
All within me falls at Your throne

Your Majesty, I can but bow
I lay my all before You now
In royal robes I don't deserve
I live to serve Your Majesty

Earth and heaven worship You,
God Eternal, Faithful and True
Who bought the nations, ransomed souls
Brought this sinner near to Your throne
All within me cries out in praise

Priceless Bookmarks

Our dear friend, Brenda Langham came to talk to us about her bookmark collection. She brought quite a few with her, she has altogether thirteen and a half thousand! She brought the one that started it all off. Brenda had worked at Waverley college in Nottingham as a librarian. Many times the students would leave their bookmarks in the books and Brenda and her colleagues would always check them when they were putting them away, they would pin the bookmarks to a notice board for the students to collect. This particular time just before the college broke up for the summer holidays there on the board was a bookmark that hadn’t been collected that had a little bambi on it and  'here is where I fell asleep' written on it. So Brenda not wanting to leave the little bambi alone in the collage for six weeks took it home, that was forty years ago and the rest as they say is history. In 1984 Brenda was invited to show her collection, she had 449, a friend of hers who did craft work made one specially for her with her name and 500 on it. 

Brenda appreciated the beautiful penmanship of the bookmark made especially for her

the bookmarks are made from varies material, paper, card, metal, fabric

 but in the main they are leather

When Brenda moved to Derbyshire she went into Ripley library to see if they would be interested in displaying some of her collection, they were and so she did. A young girl who was in the brownies saw the collection and found it interesting and decided to collect bookmarks for her collective badge.  Brenda was invited to show her collection at the brownies and then at the WI. The collection grew as did the invites and Brenda went to numerous places to share her interest. 

One interesting bookmark that she received through the post was furry with a little red tongue and if you put on the carpet and stroked it, it moved. Or if you fid it difficult to bend over it would also do it on your jumper.

you can read some of the history of the humble bookmark here; Bookmark Shop

Someone once asked Brenda what her collection was worth, she answered that it was priceless as far as she was concerned and there was no way that she would sell it. There are memories attached to many and they are reminders of places she has visited, people she has met and of people who have given her bookmarks for a gift. All in all it was very interesting and we all got a chance after the talk to have a look at part of Brenda's collection.

David reminded us before the closing prayer that we are all precious in God's sight, we have been bought with a price that can never be repaid, the price of the sacrifice of the Son of God at Calvary. And we are all unique, some of the bookmarks were looking a little worn around the edges, some had blemishes and were far from perfect. We too have blemishes, we are imperfect, we are sinners but through the blood of Christ we are forgiven and receive eternal life. When we are in our eternal home the blemishes will be gone, we shall no longer be worn around the edges, we shall be perfect and we shall spend eternity with our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. What a wonderful hope and assurance we have if we are in Christ Jesus.

What can you Give

It is now January 2016 and Christmas 2015 is now a memory. For the Salvation Army Christmas is a very busy time of year and so it was for Ripley Corps with various activities, Christmas Fayre, singing carols and sharing the truth of Christmas in various places, Christmas parties. Making up Christmas hampers and toy parcels for the less fortunate in our community and a host of other things. 

The home league, went out for a meal as well as having a ‘fuddle’ at the hall where we shared food and fellowship together and thought about the greatest gift that was ever given. 

One of the carols we sang was in the Bleak Mid Winter, the last first being:

What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

Major Tim asked us if we had given Jesus our heart, for when we do then we have given Him our all.

The Home League since March have had once a month a shoebox shop, 

various toys, stationary, toiletries etc were donated to the shop that the ladies could buy to put in a shoebox for the Operation Christmas child Appeal. The money raised from the shop goes into the Home League Helping Hands Appeal. We had been thinking at past meetings about love, and how whatever we do if we don’t do it with a motive of love for the Lord Jesus and the people we are doing it for then it is in vain. 

But when we love the Lord, then we love others and are prepared to help others. Giving in love can have far reaching effects that we may never know about. A shoebox given to a child in the name of Jesus, says a lot to the receiver. We may never know what happened to the child who received our box but Jesus does, we don’t have to know the end result all He asks of us is that we give from the heart. The greatest gift of Christmas is the Lord Jesus Christ who is God manifest in the flesh. He gave His life for us, He paid the debt for our sin that we might be forgiven, we can never repay that debt of love but we can show others the love of Jesus in a simple way like filling a shoebox with goodies for a child. You can find our more about Operation Christmas child here: OCC

Christmas may be over but the gift of God's love is with us everyday when we come to know 

Jesus as our Lord and Saviour.