Women Actively Sharing God's Love
Welcome to the Activate-Your-Life website. We take a unique approach by encouraging all christian women to be active, knowing that you can be effective just by being yourself.
With 4 decades of experience behind us and an exciting future ahead, we'd like to invite you to join our community of 'girls getting out there' sharing God's love in natural, meaningful ways.
Our aim is to offer stimulating articles, fun ideas and challenging topics for discussion. We need you to join in and help us by posting articles, joining in forum discussions, or simply telling others about useful resources you've discovered. So read on, log on, donate, or sign up for our training day and weekend away. We look forward to welcoming you...
Fiona Castle - President | Mandy Catto - Director | Sarah McKerney - Director
Come Dine With Me-and Alison!
Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.
Dale Carnegie
Come Dine With Me came and went on Sunday 4th July. I felt an ecclectic mix of relief and delight once the show was over. Relieved that I hadn't made any huge bloomers and delighted to have had a moment of stardom.
Woman on a Mission
Q: What do you get if you have a seven year old who loves playing "dance lessons" on the playground?
A: Too many repetitions of listening to "Telephone" by Lady Gaga
Yes, my daughter has hit the stage of shutting herself in her bedroom and playing her music loudly, rather earlier than I had anticipated!
Outreach is dead, long live Withreach?
At Activate-Your-Life we were challenged to rethink our terminology and our strategy by the 'Withreach' organisation. Have a look at their website or read the contrasting lists below. It certainly prompted some deep thinking amongst us. We'd love to hear what you think of it all, maybe you could use this to prompt discussion or a training session amongst your other Activate friends.
Outreach
Confrontational
Unchurched are nameless faces and numbers
We do good things for people
Transformation imposed from the outside
Monologue
Superiority
Church speak
Religious jargon
The God of All Comfort
We can look into 2 Corinthians as if we’re looking at a day to day journal of Paul’s missionary journeys and the things he experienced. Of all his letters, this possibly is his most personal and outlines more than any of his writings, his personal life and indeed his personal individual sufferings.
(2 Corinthians 1:3-11)
Wintershall - The Life of Christ
Recently I went with friends to Wintershall, to see The Life of Christ, an open air play at Wintershall Estate, Bramley, Surrey. Described as ‘a multisensory experience which has something to offer everyone irrespective of their own beliefs’ I would recommend seeing this play although Wintershall have decided to take a break in 2011 but will be back in 2012.
Further confessions of a Reading Group addict...
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I first heard about reading groups from Helen Cooke some years ago at an Activate conference. Moving to Dorset and trying to meet new friends gave me the opportunity to join a local group. I loved it!! I am now a member of two local groups and I set up a third at my son's school as a way of getting to know other mums better. All the groups meet once every six weeks or so, meaning that I usually have three books on the go at any one time.
LILIES OF THE VALLEY
DID YOU KNOW THAT THE LILY OF THE VALLEY IS A SMALL BEAUTIFUL WHITE FLOWER THAT GROWS IN THE SHADE? DID YOU KNOW THAT IT HAS A SWEET, SWEET FRAGRANCE? DID YOU KNOW THAT IN ISRAEL THIS LITTLE FLOWER IS AS COMMON AS OUR DAISY AND IS EASILY TRAMPLED UNDER FOOT?
The Father's Song
With Father's Day approaching, click on the link below to hear Matt Redman sing 'The Father's Song' showing the enormity of God's love for us ...'you sung it over me and for Eternity it's written on my heart'. A beautiful message ♥
Live a life that matters...
I came across this piece recently - the author is unknown. What I found in the message was that the qualities of Christ living in us matter more than anything.
Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours, days.
All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else.
Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.
It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.
Your grudges, resentments, frustrations, and jealousies will finally disappear.
Be A Bosom Buddy
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Women vicars from Manchester are backing a campaign that aims to provide good quality, correctly fitting bras for homeless women.
North-West leading charity for the homeless and marginalised, the Mustard Tree, has paired up with a Manchester lingerie boutique Lucile to launch Bosom Buddies 2010; a campaign that aims to provide good quality, correctly fitting bras for women who would otherwise have to go without.
A recent survey revealed that on average British women own 13 bras but only regularly wear eight of them (One Poll, March 2010). That means a lot of bras are going begging. In fact, that makes about 124 million in total, so a campaign has been launched to get the ‘hands on’ some of those bras to support homeless women across Manchester and the North West of England.
