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One of my favorite Bible passages/maybe even my favorite is Romans 8:31-39. It goes like this . . .

“What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? …

“No in all things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height,  nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

In just over three weeks our church is off to Port Stephens for our annual Spiritual Retreat. This year we will be exploring what Jesus meant when He said He came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10) and what this means and looks like for His followers today.

During this weekend we will be praying a similar prayer to what Leeland Mooring prayed one day when he was sitting at his piano just worshipping God: that God will give us His heart for the lost. This is the song that emerged for Leeland and this will be our theme song at the Retreat: Tears of the Saints. Let me know if you want to be there! Click to continue »

I have to say I’ve been rather surprised by all the feedback from my last two “sermons.” I guess that’s because I didn’t think we were making so much of a change per se, I just thought we were becoming more of who we’ve always been. Of course it has been a big (and scary) change for me – losing the manuscript etc – putting aside the lecturn – but I’m excited by the response and I’m excited by where God might take us. My only concern is for those who didn’t think it rated high on biblical content but I’ll try to remember to include my Bible references next time

Will I do this every week? I don’t know. I just want to do whatever I need to do for people to see and meet with Jesus.

This weekend I’m going to trade the lecturn for a stool. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time but I’ve finally decided the age of the monologue is over and no matter how scared I will be not to have my notes to depend upon I need to take the risk so that others can also risk.

At the end of the day “church” is more than a Worship Service. It’s more than teaching and preaching. It’s about engaging God’s Word with others so this weekend our “sermon” times is going to include as many questions as it does answers, and by God’s grace I’m praying that our humility, honesty and openness will take us another step towards becoming the kind of community God created us to be.

Earlier today I spent some time with some people who needed to know God would look after them and I’ve just sent them Psalm 28:6-9 to remind them He will do just that. This is a pearler of a promise and maybe one that will encourage you too?

“Blessed be the Lord, for he has heard the sound of my pleadings. The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts; so I am helped, and my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him. The Lord is the strength of his people; he is the saving refuge of his anointed. O save your people, and bless your heritage; be their shepherd, and carry them forever.”

When I was in the USA I learnt about the one in sixty rule. I have to confess to having never heard about this rule before and in case you haven’t heard of it either, it relates distance from a point to distance on an arc, and this is of supreme importance to navigators because one degree off course, given time, will result iin a very different destination to the one originally intended.

Now the guy explaining the rule didn’t convince me to check my compass because of his illustration. He said that if a pilot set out for Hawaii from the USA (I think he meant LA) and flew one degree off course for a period of time s/he would end up in Australia, and I didn’t think that was such a bad thing What I do agree is a bad or maybe sad thing however, is when pastors and churches or individual Christians end up in a different point to the place they had originally intended simply because they had not created check points to ensure they got there.

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Well it’s great to be home. I have to say I had an awesome 3 weeks in the US of A but by the end of it I was not only ready to come home, I actually couldn’t wait to get home and one of the reasons is because I couldn’t wait to start the next era in my life/my church’s life.

That might sound like a big call but I believe it’s true. A month before I left I was convicted while reading The Acts of the Apostles that I among others, have been guilty of “idly waiting for some special season of spiritual refreshing by which (our) ability to enlighten others will be greatly increased;” that we have been guilty of neglecting current opportunities to share our faith and have allowed our own lights to burn dim while waiting for “a time when, without any effort on (our) part . . . (we) will be transformed and fitted for service.” (p 54) This was very confronting.

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Those of my church who have birthdays in the next 4 weeks know that I’ve been busy planning for my trip to the USA because they have already received their birthday emails for 2008 Others have received emails and calls about our May Testimony Day, Fellowship Lunch, GETCONNECTED! Socials etc, and all in all I’ve decided there’s no such thing as time off; one just works twice as hard before they go and twice as hard when they get back I expect

But that’s okay. It will all be worth it. I have no doubt God has paved the way for this trip and I can’t wait to tell you about it when I get back. What’s exciting me even more right now however is our newest Home Group at Chatswood Seventh-day Adventist Church. I was speaking with the leader before their meeting on Monday night and I told him then that I’d ring him on Tuesday to debrief. Well I didn’t get the chance. He called me bright and early Tuesday morning to tell me his group had been brainstorming how they might become a truly biblical mini-church and I cannot tell you how much this excited me.

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A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I’d been reading from The Desire of Ages and that I’d been impressed by all the insights to be gleaned. Well these last two weeks it’s been Patriarchs and Prophets and as I’ve read the stories of Abraham, Joseph and Samuel, I’ve again been blessed by the application of these stories to our lives today.

These are just two books that have helped me immensely in my walk with God this last month but what I’m wondering today is what books are helping you? Just this last week I’ve had a number of people tell me they are struggling in their walks with God and they’ve asked me to recommend books they could read. Instead of writing a list of books that have helped me however, what I’m thinking is that I will compile a list of books that have also helped you and by the grace of God we’ll all be able to help each other!

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Last Sunday I went to the Blue Mountains with some friends and knowing the plan was to walk, eat, read, whatever, I took The Desire of Ages and The Acts of the Apostles with me. I’d been chatting with the Senior Pastor from my previous church the night before and after patiently listening to me for far too long, he’d humbly recommended I read a couple of chapters from these books.

I was not disappointed. I could not believe how many insights could be gleaned from just three short chapters, nor the quality of reassurance that would follow. And this is precisely my thought for today. In John 8:32 Jesus told His disciples that the truth would set them free and this is the very reason Ellen White explains in The Desire of Ages why the Spirit of truth: the Holy Spirit, is also called the Comforter; because “There is comfort and peace in the truth . . .” (p 671)

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