Windows On The Soul

Two common traps Christians fall into are either thinking that God is easily pleased, or that God is so Holy that He can never be satisfied. Like most deep spiritual concepts, the truth is that God is BOTH easily pleased AND hard to satisfy. Jesus said both " My yoke is easy, my burden is light " ( Mt.11:30 ) and " It is easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle then to enter the Kingdom of God " ( Mt.19:24 ). The key is that Christianity is not simply a state, a label or a destination (and categorising people as simply as either "Christian" or "non-Christian" exacerbates this fallacy). Early Christians were known as " Followers of The Way ". " Disciples " are students enrolled in a period of learning. Whether "Taking up our cross" ( Mt.16:24 ) or putting on "His yoke", we are called to follow Him on a "journey", a journey of growth - the Christian life. Yes, signing up is easy...

Two of the more difficult tasks at work are trying to hire the right people, and laying off the wrong people. Apart from the basic technical skills for a job, the factors that make the difference between hiring and firing, relate to character. High on the list comes co-operability, being a good team member, adaptable to the group, teachable and manageable. Then of course there is honesty, not just in dealing with customers and the company, but honesty about oneself - to me, a danger sign is when a person has a too high (dishonest) opinion about themselves. When Jesus calls followers, we are called to discipleship (students/apprentices) [ Mt.18:3 ], to an honest, sober opinion of our sinful standing under God's judgement [ 1 Jn.1:9 ]. Accepting Jesus as Lord, means submitting our life to His management [ Jas.4:7 ] - totally, no divided loyalties [ Mt.6:24 ]. And of course we are called to membership of His "body", the church, to be a team member [ Rom.12:5 ], fulfilling ou...

In Acts 2:41-43 , there are two types of responses recorded from those who heard and saw the Apostles and disciples of Jesus. They were amazed and in awe at the wonders and signs performed by the Apostles. But more importantly, when they saw the changed lifestyles of the disciples, they “liked what they saw” (v41, Petersen’s paraphrase “The Message”). They saw believers:- living in wonderful harmony, pooling their resources so that each person’s needs were met, following a daily discipline of worship, sharing meals together, in joyful, exuberant celebration, praising God. Was it any wonder then that “ Every day their numbers grew, as God added those who were saved” , because people “ liked what they saw ”. When God created the world, He saw that it was “good”. When we share the Good News of the gospel of ‘re-creation’ through Jesus, it's no news at all, unless the hearer can see the results of this re-creation in us and be able to say “ it is good, I like what I see ...

In this age of Industry Restructuring and Business Process Re-engineering, everyone seems to be preparing "Mission Statements".  Even when one consults a Financial Adviser, he asks, "What are your Life Goals?". Anyone of "?0 something" asks "What have I done with my life so far? What will I do with the rest of it?". As we start this "Missions Month", it would be instructive to look at Jesus' personal "Mission Statements". Matt.5:17 "Don't think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, rather I have come to fulfil them" Matt.20:28 "The son of man did not come to be ministered to, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many" Luke 4:18 "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to free those that are bruised, to p...

"I didn't know I was supposed to be looking for him" - Forrest Gump Jesus said, " Blessed are those who know their need of God (the poor in spirit) for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven" . Our directives are to first seek the Kingdom of God, to make disciples (students, learners), to be open to receive the Holy Spirit. I pray that this New Year will be a year for us individually and as a Church, to be true "seekers after God". And that our witness to the community will be to awaken people to realise that the "hole" in their life is "God shaped", and to discover their need for Him. ----xxxXxxx---- Deu.4:29 "If you seek the Lord your God, you shall find Him" 2Chr.7:14 " If my people who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face..." Prov.8:17 "Those that seek me early shall find me" Lk.11:9 "Ask and it shall be given you, seek and...

“ What the Church needs are more ‘deep’ Christians ” (Richard Foster, “Celebration of Discipline”).  The Apostle Paul wrote, “ Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!!” ( Rom.11:33 ) How does one become a ‘deeper’ Christian? It takes ‘Time’ and ‘Experience’. To know the depth of something, one must have ‘plumbed’ the depth, that is attempted some sort of measure. To have some knowledge of the depth of God, one must explore the consequences and implications of Christian faith on one’s life and society, and thus to start to see the vast possibilities. Such exploration, takes time in God’s word, time with Him in prayer, and time in constructive, exploratory fellowship together. But most of all, depth of understanding and knowledge of the wisdom, grace and ways of God, come from experience. We learn only a small amount from what we hear, a larger amount from what we read and s...

Our family’s most prized piece of family history would have to be my great-great-grandfather’s apprenticeship indenture certificate from the 1860’s. To modern eyes, the terms and conditions border on slave labour. The young teenage George had to leave home to live and work with his ‘master’, who in turn had to teach him the mysteries and secrets of the trade of clothier, as well as house, clothe and feed him, and pay him the princely sum of two shillings at Christmas. When the Bible talks about Jesus’ disciples, the concept of Disciple is very similar to that of Apprentice. The disciples lived, traveled and worked with Jesus, learning ‘on-the-job’. The commitment, to which they were called, included leaving their homes and jobs. As we celebrate with the young people being baptised tonight, lets encourage them in their commitment. For the commitment of ‘becoming a Christian’ is not like joining an organisation, but rather the commitment of entering into a life-long relatio...

The Bible uses a number of different analogies to describe The Church, such as a ‘body’ ( 1 Cor.12 ), a ‘garden’ ( Isa.61:3 , Jn.15:5 ), a ‘family’ ( Jn.3:29 , Rev.21:9 ), or a ‘building’ ( 2 Cor.5:1 , Eph.2:21 ). All of these images illustrate multi-faceted growth, extension and adaptation, and all apply equally to The Church, any individual congregation or individual Christians. I’ve always liked the slogan, “ Please be patient. God hasn’t finished with me yet ”. When a ‘lost soul’ finds Christ, there is a sense of completeness in that a void has been filled. But as we grow in Christ, there is another sort of sense of incompleteness, not like an emptiness that needs to be filled, but rather being called onward in constant improvement. As God is constantly revealing areas of our lives that are not ‘up to scratch’, we are challenged to renewal. As our lives encounter new experiences and situations, we are challenged to meet them like Christ, with love. We are called to st...

In our years of “coffee shop” youth out-reach work, we put up with being sworn at, occasionally spat upon, and personal property damage. But I can’t think of any time when we felt in bodily danger. However, a week ago, such an incident did arise. In our 26 years of fund-raising for the Royal Children’s Hospital, we have volunteered our services to sell the Herald-Sun ‘WEG’ Premiership posters. Unfortunately, this year, the ‘out-of-towners’, Adelaide, won, and we were faced with trying to sell Adelaide premiership posters in the face of a rather angry, parochial crowd. Football crowds have always been a noisy fickle lot, but this was the worst I have ever endured. A boozed load-mouth slew our stock off the table, and as I turned, a swinging fist caught my cheek. I must confess, that my immediate thoughts did not include offering him my other one. Fortunately, his cohorts dragged him away and the incident was over as quickly as at started, but leaving my onlooking...

C.S.Lewis suggests that Satan does not tempt us with repulsive things, but rather temptation offers the subtle choices between what we want to do and what we ought to do (" The Screwtape Letters "). When God created the world, He saw that it was good. The devil, being less than God, does not create; rather his work is of pale imitations and distortions of God's good works. God's will is for our proper, moderated care, use and enjoyment of His creation. But as our natural wills are not fully aligned with God's, we are constantly tempted toward improper, immoderate, uncaring misuse of His good gifts. Self-respect, necessary for our growth as children of God, when used as an 'end' instead of a 'means', becomes pride. Self-love, the model of our love of others, misguided, becomes selfishness. Appreciation of beauty, immoderately, becomes lust and avarice. Natural appetites excessively fed, become greed and gluttony. William Booth knew that temptation...

“ I ask... that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ” ( John 17:20,21 ). The squabbles in the church must sadden our Lord who prayed that his followers may be one. If the church worldwide were united (in spirit, not necessarily in one organisation), the world would take notice. As it is, critics of the church are constantly mocking us for our sectarian divisiveness. The church is both human and divine. It comprises fallible humans, and has yet to be perfectly redeemed. It is divine - the Body of Christ. So we need to be patient with an imperfect church. Henry Scott Holland put it this way in 1914 when the Bishop of Zanzibar wrote a pamphlet asking where the church stood. Scott Holland said that it did not stand at all, but 'moves and pushes and slides and staggers and falls and gets up again, and stumbles on and presses forward and falls into the right positi...

One of the greatest inhibitors to personal and church growth is the FUD factor (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). After the horror of Christ’s crucifixion, the incredulity then ecstasy of His resurrection and His times of sharing with His disciples, Jesus ascended to heaven. What did the disciples feel then? I’m sure they must have felt very “flat” after their mountain-top experiences, and probably uncertainty and doubts crept in - “ What do we do now?” , “ Why has He left us like this?” . In many ways, these phases in the birth of The Church mirror the phases in the birth and growth of our children. The teenage years are times of much questioning, of moving out from under the sheltering presence of parents, to discover one’s directions and goals in the ‘real’ world - these are the “Why?” years. Then the young adult blossoms, the world is at their feet and they are prepared to take on anything, with courage and determination. Just as parents must hold back in order to release thei...

Like most human endeavours, the French revolutionaries got it half right.  "Liberty and Fraternity" are both things that God wants for all mankind. But His freedom, is the freedom to choose to be "disciples of Christ". His Brotherhood is not exclusive, but all inclusive, including our "enemies". Sadly, the history of mankind is littered with groups at either extreme: of legalism and licence; some of the bloodiest wars ever fought have been in the name of religious correctness. It is human nature to want to shake off the shackles of restrictive laws and rules. But freedom can be threatening and frightening, because true freedom brings responsibility. So the "freed" find comfort in banding together, conforming to new conventions and rules, as if "rules" free them from the responsibility of personal decisions. Then soon "evangelism" of the unconverted begins. What should our attitude be to differences between people? A centu...

In a recent letter, my sister wrote that we had "connected" like never before, during our family grief last year. That unusual expression seemed to tie in with some current readings and sermons about our relationship with Jesus. The Bible writers have certainly struggled to find the words to convey the meaning of this relationship. Jesus almost caused a riot saying that we had to "drink his blood" - very un-kosher ( Jn.6:53-61 ). I think western minds can be some-what mislead by the metaphors of being "born again " ( Jn.3:3-7 ) and being " filled with the Holy Spirit" ( Eph.3:19 , 5:18 ). Our image of birth is of being "separated" from the mother, of becoming an "individual", and "infilling" has connotations of something being poured from one container into another separate container. Even the western concept of marriage seems to have lost the spiritual aspect of " becoming one " ( Mt.19:5,6 ) . But to me,...

Two centuries ago with 'The Enlightenment', philosophers rejected the biblical doctrine of sin and began to teach that people are basically good - that only social structures are evil. If that is true, then to eradicate evil you do not have to change individual behaviour - only social structure. Moral effort was directed away from personal ethics and toward economics and politics. Jesus said that the one who is faithful in small things will be faithful in big things. It’s a matter of character. You see, the man who will cheat on his wife will cheat in his professional life. The man who has no self-restraint in his personal life will have no self-restraint in his political life. You can't have social morality without personal morality." Charles Colson, " A Dance with Deception " ----xxxXxxx---- Lk.16:10 "Whoever is faithful in small matters will be faithful in large matters; whoever is dishonest in small ones will be dishonest in large ones" ...

I thank my parents that as a child I was taught to write an "I want" list. This helped me identify those things I "really" wanted well after the initial plea had faded. Then came the hard part of giving up some things to save up the money to buy my heart's desire. The same principles apply to our Christian walk. We want to serve, but are we prepared to pay the price? We want to be humble, but are we prepared to be humiliated? We want to be a true disciple, but are we prepared to truly discipline our body, mind and soul? We want to be loving, but that includes the "unlovely", and carries the cost of sacrifice, non-reciprocation, even outright hostility. We ask in pray, but are we willing to accept and obey the answers given? ----xxxXxxx---- Lk.18:18-23 "'What must I do to have eternal life?'...you lack one thing, sell all you have and distribute to the poor...he was very sorrowful for he was very rich" Mt.16:24 "If anyo...

That's the title of one of the exercises I have to do in the coming weeks in preparation for a career planning seminar. I've done various goal setting and life-style evaluations in other training courses, but "Obituary" has a ring of finality about it. As an old preacher friend advised on sermon structure, "First tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em. Then tell 'em. Then tell 'em what you’ve told them". The progressive life (as in moving forward in a direction) is like that, a beginning, a middle and an end.  Another view is "Plan, Do, Evaluate". In the Christian life, the planning stage is a matter of obedience and seeking God's will personally. In obedience, the doing follows (super)naturally as we are driven and empowered by the Holy Spirit. The evaluation is ultimately the Lord's - will our obituaries include "Well done my good and faithful servant"? ----xxxXxxx---- Rom.11:29 "God's gifts...

If you weren't at the evening service a couple of weeks ago to see 50 of our young people, fresh back from camp, arms linked, singing God's praise, you missed out on a great soul stirring night. Yet our children grow up so quickly. In a matter of 5 years or less, a thriving church can go into decline if there is no on-going flow through from nursery, pre-school, primary, juniors to youth groups. But even with the best Christian parenting, our children must become children of God in their own right - God has no Grandchildren . They must discover for them-selves God's salvation. So continue to pray for the youth and children’s leaders and teachers at all levels. The children of today are the church leaders of tomorrow. ----xxxXxxx---- Pr.15:20 "A wise son makes his father glad, but a foolish man despises his mother" Ecl.12:1 "Remember your creator in the days of your youth" Pr.29:5 "The rod and reproof bring wisdom. A child left...