Ampthill Baptist Church

Ampthill Baptist Church Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Ampthill Baptist Church, Religious Center, Dunstable Street, Ampthill.

We are a thriving, family-friendly church that seeks to help people meet Jesus Christ and become his fully devoted followers ✝️🙏 Find out more here: https://www.ampthillbaptist.org.uk/

Try Alpha: https://www.ampthillbaptist.org.uk/alpha

Quiz Night is back tomorrow! Come along at 7pm for a fun night of quizzing and homemade cakes and bakes 🧁🍰☕️ All welcome...
05/06/2026

Quiz Night is back tomorrow! Come along at 7pm for a fun night of quizzing and homemade cakes and bakes 🧁🍰☕️ All welcome!

Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.For he does not willingly bring affli...
01/06/2026

Though he brings grief, he will show compassion,
so great is his unfailing love.
For he does not willingly bring affliction
or grief to anyone. (Lamentations 3:32-33)

A funeral is typically not an event we would look forward to, or enjoy, but we recognise the value of a ‘good funeral.’ A meaningful, engaging, heartfelt service can be a powerful means of comfort, a help to many. Offering the hope and promises of God in the face of death is a wonderful privilege and can rescue grief from despair into a knowledge that we are not alone and God is there too.

A funeral can help us say farewell, to honour our family member or friend, to express thanksgiving for a life and all that it brought to us, and to grieve well rather than projecting a front or seeking to hold ourselves together.

Lamentations reads like a good funeral. It offers immense pastoral value to us today. It helps capture the contours of grief and loss, the emotional range of lament and sorrow. Crucially, it takes these sorrows to the Lord and shows rather than tells how he meets us in our sorrows.

For we will all experience loss, as did the Lord Jesus. God is not removed or indifferent from us in our afflictions or troubles. He is the Lord over life and death, awesome in power, yet tender-hearted, full of compassion, and this thread runs through Lamentations.

Written by the prophet Jeremiah, who witnessed the devastation of his nation, city, community and people under the might of proud Babylon, he grieves for this, and he grieves that it came about through sin and idolatry. Rebellion against God, the love of wickedness, the pride of the human heart, all compound the grief. Loss of hope would be natural, but grief has value in recognising the impact of the loss and expressing that to the Lord. Lamentations helps give voice to our lament.

Structured as a poem, the first line of each paragraph begins with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet, as if God has provided us with an A to Z on expressing grief and seeking God in our loss, anger, hopelessness or despair. It brings us back to him.

The short book takes our sorrow, our awareness of our need, our sense of being deep in grief or having turned from God and found ourselves lonely from him, and brings our lack to the same Lord we still need. There we find God’s faithfulness and compassion. He hears, he knows, he has mercy.

Today, may you take to the Lord your deepest needs and hurts, and seek his mercy and compassion, for he hears our prayers.

29/05/2026

Hear that?? That’s the sound of the Church worshipping🔥 This Sunday there’s two opportunities to come together in praise - 10:45am and 6:30pm.
We’d love to see you at either 🤗

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the pris...
18/05/2026

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. (Isaiah 61:3)

Jesus lived and breathed the Old Testament. It was his inspiration and framework behind most of his teaching, and he saw himself and his mission as the climax and fulfilment of its promises and prophecies.

Isaiah is a massive and rich book, written with a perspective of addressing kings and nations of his own day, but captivated by a greater vision of the true King of all, the living God, the Almighty.

As the book enters the final third, there is a particular focus on a great Servant of God, the Suffering Servant of chapters 52-53. Jesus saw his own mission so clearly as fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy. He would suffer and die to save; he would bear our sins; he would be rejected that we might be accepted and made new; and after his suffering he would be honoured, glorified, vindicated by God.

Today’s reading is one of many beautiful snapshots from Isaiah, seeing a future great hope for God’s people of such renewal, rescue, transformed lives, deep comfort: the healing of hearts. And all this is fulfilled in Jesus – who preached this text in Luke 4.

He is the one supremely knowing God’s favour, the beloved Son, and in him we can receive that same Spirit, that favour, that grace for ourselves. In him and by his Spirit, we can find comfort, beauty instead of ashes, joy in place of mourning, praise rather than despair. Jesus transforms lives, he saves. May we seek his gentle, powerful, deep renewal of the heart, before the awesome King on heaven’s throne.

I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it s...
11/05/2026

I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him. (Ecclesiastes 3:14)

Every book of the Bible has timeless value. Ecclesiastes is unique in scripture in so many ways but particularly for how it addresses the timeless questions: What is life’s value and meaning? Where do I find my worth? What is my purpose – what is life for? Is there more than this?

Ecclesiastes questions everything ‘under the Sun’ – nature, wisdom, work, wealth, pleasure, food and drink, our sense of self-worth or status, even life itself! It finds it all ‘meaningless’: superficial, insubstantial, futile and frustrating. At face value, this is not an encouraging read!

Like all scripture though, it is for our good. It calls us to a godly perspective, to have a sense of where true satisfaction lies and not to invest our hopes in the wrong place or with the wrong attitude. It offers us direction – where our life can find solid, substantial foundations and lasting joy.

Ecclesiastes also helps us relate to, speak into and empathise with the world around us, where many pursue wealth, pleasure and work with such energy and focus, hoping to fill up the appetite for self-worth, striving for peace of mind and heart, for protection from the worries or distraction from troubles of this life ‘under the Sun,’ only to find that these things cannot ultimately satisfy. Ecclesiastes is wisdom for all time, for everyone.

The writer also has much to say to the God-fearing, the righteous, the wise. It is possible to know God, to find wisdom from him, and the contentment and joy in this life from him. Ecclesiastes speaks of sinners, the wicked, the fools who reject God and how they miss the peace and life he would offer.

May we know the delight God takes in humble faith, life under the Son, trusting him in each season, and seeking the treasures of heaven through investing in our life with God and in his kingdom. These are what matters and lasts, what Jesus called us to seek first.

I will sing of the LORD'S great love forever;with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations.I...
04/05/2026

I will sing of the LORD'S great love forever;
with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations.
I will declare that your love stands firm forever,
that you established your faithfulness in heaven itself. (Psalm 89:1-2)

At the centre of our Old Testament is a book of songs or prayers – the Book of Psalms. Written around 3000 years ago, their power, beauty, value and insights are undiminished.

The Psalms enable us to step into the emotional life of faith, the wide-ranging experience of engaging with God and with this world amidst the realities of our human nature and history. We find here expressions of doubt and hope, fear and confidence, anger and peace, love and hate, joy and despair, gratitude and emptiness. The full range of emotion, of heart-and-head connection with God, is here in the Psalms.

They are even far greater than this. If the Psalms were just a means to offer us fuller expression and a gift of rich words for our prayers, they would be wonderful indeed. But Psalms offers far more.

The Psalms are not only the words of the faithful, often of the struggling and lamenting believer seeking God’s help or pleading his case, but they are also a rich portrait of God himself. The Psalms are a vast treasure, illuminating the Lord of the Psalms, casting fresh light on all his promises, granting us new perspectives on his compassion and love, helping us to see the wonder of grace and his salvation, and bringing us into the place of prayer which the individual psalms capture.

Here we find worship, praise, prayer, confession, trust, repentance, adoration, reflection, remembrance, thanksgiving and more.

The Psalms lead us to Jesus – the anointed king of Psalm 2, the suffering and vindicated one of Psalm 22, the good shepherd of Psalm 23, the one who offers forgiveness in place of shame from Psalm 51. The Psalms remind us of God’s creative power (Psalm 8, 19), of the solid ground and protection he offers (89, 121), of the goodness of his word (1, 119), of his tender care (23, 139), and his nature or character of perfect love, justice, righteousness and faithfulness.

If history were to last another 3000 years, we will still be singing and praying these words. What would be your song? Which of these Psalms grants you joy, hope, faith, new strength? How good God is.

03/05/2026

It was amazing to hear from some of our young people at the 6:30 last week! And what a joy to hear the sound of worship from the building 🙌

When Esther’s words were reported to Mordecai, he sent back this answer: “Do not think that because you are in the king’...
27/04/2026

When Esther’s words were reported to Mordecai, he sent back this answer: “Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:12-14)
Esther, the beautiful girl, and only a young girl, finds herself as the favourite of the king. A story of power, of the abuse of power, of power grasped and manipulated (by the wicked Haman), and where true power lies – with the living God and his purposes.
Esther is reminded that she is in her position of royal privilege, whilst also facing real risks, and called to seize the moment with faith and boldness to serve God’s purposes. If she will not, out of understandable fear, she may yet lose her life, but God’s purposes will not be thwarted. As Spiderman was famously told, with great power comes great responsibility.
We too face the call every day to honour God, in great or small ways. We are each called to follow Christ, to take up our cross. Called to exalt God’s kingdom in our lives and humble ourselves, a call to serve and love others and not simply pursue our own comfort, convenience and desires. Sometimes we face truly challenging moments of decision, to stand up for what is good and true or against what is evil or false, perhaps to honour Jesus within our extended family. Will we choose well and know God’s blessing.
God’s purposes are not frustrated by our disobedience or lack of response, for he is sovereign in all things. But, like Esther, we might miss his blessing, or find ourselves in unforeseen trouble.
Esther and the people of God are saved, the enemies destroyed. Mordecai is honoured, the people respond in joyful celebration for God’s promises are true. How much greater a Saviour we have who willingly did not just risk his life but gave his life for us. Not just for the Jews but for all who believe in Jesus. How good that he has defeated our greatest enemies of sin and death, and we can know the joy of new life now and forever.

Address

Dunstable Street
Ampthill
MK452JS

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 1pm
Tuesday 8am - 1pm
Wednesday 8am - 1pm
Thursday 9am - 2pm
Friday 9am - 2pm
Sunday 9:30am - 1pm

Telephone

+441525841682

Website

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