| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Nov | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | ||
Welcome to Aftershock.org.uk. Aftershock is the place for Christian devotional mp3 podcasts for young people. You will find devotionals (devs) for young people in mp3 audio format here at aftershock.org.uk. You can browse the various audio devotionals by using the categories panel on the left. Clicking the underlined links will take you to a page where you can listen to or download the MP3 dev.
Hi Guys
As you no doubt would have realized our work on Aftershock has come to an end. I feel that I am being called into some type of full time ministry and to this end I am completing a theology degree. As you can imagine this combined with a full time day job is to say the least a little pressurised.
I do think that there is a place for a site like Aftershock and a we still receive a large amount of downloads of the existing devs. If you think you know someone who could take over the lead, then do have them email us at podcast@aftershock.org.uk. In the mean time we would appreciate your prayers as we move forward. If you want to follow my journey you can get occasional updates over at www.cross.org.uk.
Max & The Gang
Our development as Christians has very little to do with our actual age. It doesn’t even seem to have much to do with how long we’ve been Christians. A teenager who’s only been at church a few years can be a more mature Christian than a grown man who’s been a Christian his whole life. Because your faith doesn’t grow with time, it grows with practice. If we enthusiastically choose to get ourselves baptised, or confirmed, or anything like that, but don’t move on to the deeper aspects of our faith, we may get on to the path but we’ll just stand still. And when people stand still for too long, they get distracted by things around them, and might forget what brought them to this point in the first place! Nobody wants to be fifty years old and still relying on their mum to do all their washing and cooking. In the same way, our spiritual maturity should be something we want to develop all the time. This means two things; listening to God, and doing the stuff, both in your church, and wherever else you happen to be!
All through history there have been priests in every kind of culture and society. They’re not always called ‘priests’; they are given lots of different names. But their function is always the same: to build a bridge between the people and God. God Himself called men to be priests in Israel, but because humans being humans, they invariably messed up. And when they did, the bridge fell down. With Jesus, things are different. Because he is our new high priest, and he is God’s Son, the bridge has now been built from God’s side, which means there’s nothing we can do to break it down. Sure, some churches still have leaders who are called “priests”, but for those Christians it now has a slightly different meaning; these Christian priests are people who minister to God’s flock and helps them to find the bridge that the real high priest has built for us.
Have you ever been to a shop or restaurant because you heard that they had a special offer on, only to find that the special offer only applies on certain special days? Not so special after all. Any ‘special’ offer the world makes you invariably has some sort of a time constraint. Maybe it’s only good on Tuesdays, or maybe only between 11 and 1 ‘o’ clock. I can’t count the number of times I’ve found a voucher in my shopping entitling me to some discount, and then noticed in the small print that the offer expired three months ago. God is also making us an offer; the offer of finding rest in Him. But God’s offer is different, because instead of setting a specific day for it, He has said that this offer applied “today”. And “today” means now, whatever day of the week, month or year it happens to be. We don’t know when Christ will come again, but until then, as long as you have ears to hear the offer, and a mouth to tell people about it, it’s staying open.
If God’s promises are so great and God is so loving, why doesn’t everybody receive the benefits? That’s what some people ask, and for some people it’s an obstacle to even believing in God. But as todays verse states, nothing has ever been missing from God’s promises. His part of the bargain is complete. A famous monk called Anselm explained it this way: if you don’t receive an apple from me it can mean one of two things. Either I did not offer you an apple, or I did offer you an apple and you just didn’t take it. The Israelites didn’t enter God’s rest, and it’s not because God wasn’t holding the door open. It’s because they didn’t have faith to enter. Lots of Christians will tell you they spent years wondering why God wasn’t giving them the comfort, or peace, or salvation they expected from Him, only to eventually find that He’d been there with His arms outstretched all along. They simply needed to reach back in faith.