Muffins: Fast and Fantastic

Catriona here, pulling myself out of the Christmas whirl to write a blog post (Nicki is picking herself up off the floor right about now!). Anyway, I have a great suggestion for a Christmas gift that is inexpensive but invaluable if you know someone who likes baking or would like to learn. It is a book about how to make excellent muffins called Muffins: Fast and Fantastic, and it is written by a lady who goes to our church, Susan Reimer. She wrote it several years ago when she first moved to the UK from Canada with her family. She was frustrated when her tried and tested muffin recipes just didn't work with British weights and measures so she set out to re-write the recipes for use in Britain and this book (which was self-published) was the result. It is extremely practical, and full of helpful comments about how to modify the recipes for different diets or just for variety. And even if you live in North America, it will still be useful to you as she gives advice on how to modify the recipes for US/Canadian ingredients and measures.

I can personally endorse almost all the recipes as I've virtually baked my way through the whole book and not one of them has been a flop. (My husband has enjoyed trying them out!) I even gave a copy to Rachel for her engagement and she made some excellent summer fruit muffins for her engagement party. If you can't wait for the book to arrive you could visit Susan's website where you will find the recipe for her amazing banana muffins and can get started right now!

(And Susan, hope you don't mind me giving you a plug - have a great Christmas!)

A Mother's Work....

....A Model for True Work. Here is a must read article, and below is a snippet.

All work is sacred work, worthy of the diligence, the effort. I pick up lost legos, dry the pots, whish the toilets and this serves God. For if I can’t meet God in my work, where do I meet Him? If I don’t serve Him here, where do I serve Him? Are we not called to serve God in the work – not merely in some imagined, mirage place outside of work?

In a model of Christian work, we live one-piece lives, all weaving together into a sacred cloth as unto the Lord with no false seams between God and our days.

And in our work, sacred work because there is no such thing as secular work, we first serve God. I’ll put away the laundry, sweep the crumbs, polish the windows not to serve my family primarily, but to serve God.

Christmas Roundup

Here are a few links to some of the Christmas things we've blogged about over the last couple of years.

• 10 Questions to ask at Christmas
• 20 Questions to ask at New Year
• When there's Crisis at Christmas
• Down with Santa Claus!
• Tablet
• Mulled Apple Juice
  
• Alternative Giving
• Christmas Gift Ideas
  
• Christmas Gift Ideas for Kids
• Christmas Gift Ideas for Her
• Frugal Christmas Gift Ideas
• The Gift of Gifts
• What Do You Tell Your Kids About Santa Part 1
• What Do You Tell Your Kids About Santa Part 2
  
• Jesse Tree
• Christmas Traditions

Helpful Resources

Over at Revive Our Hearts there are some useful resources available for downloading and printing. Here are some, but you can find more here.

• 10 Reasons You Can't Afford Not to be Hospitable
• A Call to Biblical Womanhood
• Biblical Portrait of Womanhood
• Men & Women: Similarities & Differences
• 10 Questions for Explore & Understand a Church
• 31 Days of Praying for Your Pastor
• 31 Days of Praying for Your Pastor's Wife
• Follow the Leaders
• 15 Ways to Please Your Husband
• 30 Day Husband Encouragement Challenge
• 31 Days of Praying for Your Husband
• Personal "Hedges"
• Mirror Mirror On the Wall: The Decision to Live Your Life for God's Glory
• Sexual Purity
• 23 Great Questions to Ask Your Kids
• 12 Ways to Pray for Your Child's Future Mate
• 15 Ways to Make Prayer a Natural Part of Family Life
• 31 Biblical Virtues to Pray for Your Children
• How's Your Love Life?

Pamper Night

Here are a few photos (though not great!) from our recent pamper night at church. We have run this for two years now and found it to be a useful way to engage people with the gospel, as well as have great fun! Around 2/3 of those that attend are new to church, coming along with a friend who has invited them.

As well as a nail bar, a home-made beauty treatment stall, 5 minute head & shoulder massage and endless coffee & chocolate, we also provide a prayer room and prayer request box which we are delighted to see people make use of. We end the night with a short talk and also send our ladies on their way with a gift bag of pampering goodies, including further information on the Christian faith.

So if you are looking for a creative way to open up your church to the ladies in your community, or are looking for an appropriate setting to encourage your female members to reach out to their friends, you might want to give this a try!

Becoming a Woman of Virtue

Are you a wise woman building your house? Or are you a foolish woman tearing it down with your hands? Use these questions to help evaluate yourself.

A Challenging Reminder for Women

A friend reminded me by email this morning of something I read a while ago - John Piper's Challenge to Women. Read it, better still, print it off and stick it in a place where you'll continually be able to revisit and be challenged by it. Here are Piper's 16 challenges:

1. That all of your life—in whatever calling—be devoted to the glory of God.
2. That the promises of Christ be trusted so fully that peace and joy and strength fill your soul to overflowing.
3. That this fullness of God overflow in daily acts of love so that people might see your good deeds and give glory to your Father in heaven.
4. That you be women of the Book, who love and study and obey the Bible in every area of its teaching. That meditation on Biblical truth be the source of hope and faith. And that you continue to grow in understanding through all the chapters of your life, never thinking that study and growth are only for others.
5. That you be women of prayer, so that the Word of God would open to you; and the power of faith and holiness would descend upon you; and your spiritual influence would increase at home and at church and in the world.
6. That you be women who have a deep grasp of the sovereign grace of God undergirding all these spiritual processes, that you be deep thinkers about the doctrines of grace, and even deeper lovers and believers of these things.
7. That you be totally committed to ministry, whatever your specific role, that you not fritter your time away on soaps or ladies magazines or aimless hobbies, any more than men should fritter theirs away on excessive sports or aimless diddling in the garage. That you redeem the time for Christ and his Kingdom.
8. That, if you are single, you exploit your singleness to the full in devotion to Christ and not be paralyzed by the desire to be married.
9. That, if you are married, you creatively and intelligently and sincerely support the leadership of your husband as deeply as obedience to Christ will allow; that you encourage him in his God-appointed role as head; that you influence him spiritually primarily through your fearless tranquility and holiness and prayer.
10. That, if you have children, you accept responsibility with your husband (or alone if necessary) to raise up children who hope in the triumph of God, sharing with him the teaching and discipline of the children, and giving to the children that special nurturing touch and care that you are uniquely fitted to give.
11. That you not assume that secular employment is a greater challenge or a better use of your life than the countless opportunities of service and witness in the home the neighborhood, the community, the church, and the world. That you not only pose the question: Career vs. full time mom? But that you ask as seriously: Full time career vs. freedom for ministry? That you ask: Which would be greater for the Kingdom— to be in the employ of someone telling you what to do to make his business prosper, or to be God's free agent dreaming your own dream about how your time and your home and your creativity could make God's business prosper? And that in all this you make your choices not on the basis of secular trends or yuppie lifestyle expectations, but on the basis of what will strengthen the family and advance the cause of Christ.
12. That you step back and (with your husband, if you are married) plan the various forms of your life's ministry in chapters. Chapters are divided by various things—age, strength, singleness, marriage, employment choices, children at home, children in college, grandchildren, retirement, etc. No chapter has all the joys. Finite life is a series of tradeoffs. Finding God's will, and living for the glory of Christ to the full in every chapter is what makes it a success, not whether it reads like somebody else's chapter or whether it has in it what chapter five will have.
13. That you develop a wartime mentality and lifestyle; that you never forget that life is short, that billions of people hang in the balance of heaven and hell every day, that the love of money is spiritual suicide, that the goals of upward mobility (nicer clothes, cars, houses, vacations, food, hobbies) are a poor and dangerous substitute for the goals of living for Christ with all your might, and maximizing your joy in ministry to people's needs.
14. That in all your relationships with men you seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit in applying the Biblical vision of manhood and womanhood; that you develop a style and demeanor that does justice to the unique role God has given to man to feel responsible for gracious leadership in relation to women—a leadership which involves elements of protection and care and initiative. That you think creatively and with cultural sensitivity (just as he must do) in shaping the style and setting the tone of your interaction with men.
15. That you see Biblical guidelines for what is appropriate and inappropriate for men and women in relation to each other not as arbitrary constraints on freedom but as wise and gracious prescriptions for how to discover the true freedom of God's ideal of complementarity. That you not measure your potential by the few roles withheld but by the countless roles offered. That you turn off the TV and Radio and think about...

• The awesome significance of motherhood
• Complementing a man's life as his wife
• Ministries to the handicapped
• hearing impaired
• blind
• lame
• retarded
• Ministries to the sick:
• nursing
• physician
• hospice care—cancer, AIDS, etc.
• community health
• Ministries to the socially estranged:
• emotionally impaired
• recovering alcoholics
• recovering drug users
• escaping prostitutes
• abused children, women
• runaways, problem children
• orphans
• Prison ministries:
• women's prisons!
• families of prisoners
• rehabilitation to society
• Ministries to youth:
• teaching
• sponsoring
• open houses and recreation
• outings and trips
• counseling
• academic assistance
• Sports ministries:
• neighborhood teams
• church teams
• Therapeutic counseling:
• independent
• church based
• institutional
• Audio visual ministries:
• composition
• design
• production
• distribution
• Writing ministries:
• free lance
• curriculum development
• fiction
• non-fiction
• editing
• institutional communications
• journalistic skills for publications
• Teaching ministries:
• Sunday school: children, youth, students, women
• grade school
• high school
• college
• Music ministries:
• composition
• training
• performance
• voice
• choir
• instrumentalist
• Evangelistic ministries:
• personal witnessing
• Inter Varsity
• Campus Crusade
• Navigators
• Home Bible Studies
• outreach to children
• Visitation teams
• Counseling at meetings
• Billy Graham phone bank
• Radio and TV ministries:
• technical assistance
• writing
• announcing
• producing
• Theater and drama ministries:
• acting
• directing
• writing
• scheduling
• Social ministries:
• literacy
• pro-life
• pro-decency
• housing
• safety
• beautification
• Pastoral care assistance:
• visitation
• newcomer welcoming and assistance
• hospitality
• food and clothing and transportation
• Prayer ministries:
• praying!!!
• mobilizing for major Concerts of Prayer
• helping with small groups of prayer
• coordinating prayer chains
• promoting prayer days and weeks and vigils
• Missions:
• all of the above across cultures
• Support ministries:
• countless jobs that undergird major ministries

Updated Resources

Just to mention that we have recently updated (and are continuing to add to) our online resource section at the foot of the blog. If you have listened to any talks on biblical manhood & womanhood, marriage, singleness and parenting (or anything else edifying for that matter) that you think we would benefit from, we would love it if you left us a link. Now go fill up your ipod!

Pamper Night

This is really notification for anyone in the Edinburgh area, particularly our church about our upcoming pamper night on the 20th November. This is an opportunity to bring along our unbelieving friends to be pampered, yet more importantly for them to hear the good news of the gospel that can cleanse, satisfy and beautify in ways that no amount of chocolate or beauty product can. Here are the details:

TICKETS ON SALE THIS SUNDAY & NEXT WEEK AFTER THE SERVICES (OR VIA THIS BLOG)

> Where else can you indulge in as much coffee & chocolate as you want?
> Where else can you get your nails done for that price??
> Where else can you try out some homemade face masks, hand scrubs & lip balms?
> Where else will you experience a little massage or a facial from a professional?
> Where else will you get the opportunity to browse some stalls & be charitable?
> Where else will you get a free goody bag?

ALL OF THAT FOR JUST £5! BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY,

Where or how else on Thursday 20th November will you have the opportunity to bring your unbelieving friends into contact with the Gospel?