Merredin Uniting Church

Christian greetings to all of you. Shalom. Peace.

A little while back, Margie bought me an iPod Nano. They were at reduced prices at Target. I loaded up all my favourite music – real classic rock stuff, the blues and those songs which have been my personal “golds” through the years. I haven’t had much opportunity to listen to this music since we got married because Margie doesn’t really like it. It was great to listen to the driving beat of Ten Years After, Blind Faith and Eric Clapton’s early days with Cream. But after a little while I realized that my taste in   music, and the things I actually wanted to listen to, had changed. I dumped the rock music and refilled my iPod with Il Divo, Josh Groban, Andrea Bocelli, Chris Tomlin and Amy Grant. And I added a couple of sermon podcasts from iTunes, including, Bill Hybels, Louis Giglio and Rob Bell. And for those serene moments, I put on some  Gregorian chants.

I began to think about why we change our music tastes and life preferences. My parents hated my music when I was a kid and I thought their taste was pretty dull. And yet, if they were alive today, I think that they would really like the music I listen to. I don’t think that I’ve become dull as the years have piled onto my life. In fact, as I matured, I think that my listening tastes have become fuller and far more discerning.

As I thought about it, I began to discount all the usual answers – that I was “finally” maturing, that I was become more risk averse as I approached the end of my life, and so on. No. I think it is that I have come to appreciate the really good things in life, and, by the way, that still includes really good rock music – I still go crazy when I hear Alvin Lee’s guitar riffs in “I’m going home” and Ginger Baker’s drum solo in  “Do what you like” on the Blind Faith album. As a child, everything is just amazing, we have to try it, have to do it, even when it is really rubbish. For a child, the new and the novel is the attraction, but as maturity comes we become more discerning. We want the good things, the things of value and truth, rather than just the latest gimmick, or hot pop star.

I think that this has a whole lot to do with God. We might not always recognize His hand in our life, but He is constantly guiding and directing His creation back    towards Himself. And as we come into His view we begin to “throw off the things that so easily entangle” and we desire more to enjoy the good and pleasant things that God has blessed us with in this world. We look for quality, we appreciate the wonderful, and we see value in eternal things.

And, by the way, this has very little to do with age. It has, it seems to my way of thinking, much more to do with understanding life and what it is all about. Sometimes, perhaps mostly, it is about a new appreciation for God, who is the author of life and who has redeemed our lost life through the Cross. And, even though I have been a Christian for most of my life, I have, through this process of thinking about music,  realized that I am drawn closer to God and have, in the last few months, come to  appreciate more and more the wonder of God’s grace towards me and His creation.

I hope that this little reflection will give you cause to think about why you do things you do, and like the things you like. I really believe that God loves us much more than we can imagine and that His desire is for us to enjoy all things and to be at peace with everything that He made so well.

God bless.

What are your thoughts about life and the reason for existence? Does it have anything to do with your faith, your destiny, your plans? And if you had a view based on the Bible, what would it look like?

I jotted down some thoughts … (It took just ten minutes so don’t expect a brilliant theological treatise)
1. All that is came from the pre-existent God who is sovereign, holy and omnipotent.
2. Man has a special place in God’s creation, being made in His image (likeness) and has been given stewardship as God’s representative in the created realm. (Man includes every single human being of whatever race, tribe, language, nationality, gender or creed)
3. Man sinned – he desired to be like God (knowing good and evil and thus able to make choices that do not necessarily please God). NOTE – God’s heart breaks when we sin; which by definition is when we make choices which He does not want us to make.
4. Man’s sin has its origin in the temptation which came from, and still comes from Satan.
5. Satan is the ‘ancient serpent’ – a spiritual being (an angel according to Job) who was hurled to earth (with his angels) to lead the world astray (away from God).
6. Man’s journey throughout his existence has been, and is, accompanied by the Presence and guidance of God in which He constantly seeks to bring this special creature back into relationship with Him.
7. God, who is Love, has a passion to redeem man from his consuming desire to sin.
8. This passion became a reality in the incarnation of Jesus (YHWH is my salvation) and the great love of God was shown in the laying down of His life.
9. The incarnation itself is a sign of God’s great love – God, who is infinite, omnipresent and omnipotent, became flesh, containing Himself not only in Man’s image but also within time and space.
10. The laying down of this ‘taken-up’ life was a ‘sacrifice’ in the sense that God was prepared to give up everything for the sake of the redeeming of Man. (When we say ‘by His blood’ we are referring to the fact that in God’s total self-giving He has redeemed us utterly and completely – for He who is Alpha and Omega has stopped at nothing for the redemption of the body, mind and spirit of Man.)
11. But death could not hold, or limit, the Mighty One. He is risen! The victory is absolutely complete – all that was lost is restored, all that was dis-eased is made well, all that was wronged is made right, all that was separated is brought back.
12. Satan is defeated.
13. Jesus ascended to heaven and He has empowered His church by the Holy Spirit to be His body on the earth to declare the good news of His victory and to prepare His special creation for His return.
14. The good news is that it is not God’s desire that any should be lost but that everyone should be saved.
15. Every time we show God’s love we are declaring the good news. Every time that we do not show love – in either attitude or action, we sin.
16. If I am to live as God wants me to live in this world which He created, I need to know Him. I need to know His mind and His heart. I need to know what pleases Him and what displeases Him. And when my life is lived like that then I find the real joy of life and the peace which passes understanding.
17. When I choose to do this – He fills me with His Spirit to help me live the life which is God’s gift to me.
18. And why do I have this life? Because God wants me to be His friend! (This is not a flippant comment. Somewhere in being God’s friend is a very profound sense of being!)

Tags: bible, worldview

Good Day and welcome …

Today is Trinity Sunday – I was thinking about the reason for having a special day for this; after all, its not at all like Easter, or Christmas, or Pentecost in which we focus on an aspect of the faith story. But today is about a particular doctrine – a teaching which we believe is essential to our faith. I guess that the Church (long, long ago!) realized the complexity of this aspect of our faith in which we believe that there is only one God but who exists in three Persons, and so ordered its    ministers to teach on this doctrine at least once a year. It’s the same with baptism. We are required to teach on baptism, this essential step for the initiation of our faith journey, also once per annum. I suppose that it is so easy – and its our default mode – to neglect that which we do not fully understand. And the result is that  powerful concepts of our faith become dilute and wishy-washy.

Margie and I have been reading the Biblical account of Solomon this past week and we have seen the danger of this. Solomon, the son of David, was a wise king but he failed to keep God’s commands and his reign ended in disarray through the worship of false gods. If he had but only kept to the basics of God’s intention.

And so today we are going to have a brief look at the Tri-unity of God. It is a difficult concept but it is central to our faith. We worship One God. In the tri-unity of the Godhead there are three-in-one, of the same substance: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. They are equally God in their being, power, holiness and eternality. God is one in essence and three in person. Scripture affirms both the oneness of God, and the deity of the Father, Son and Spirit. The  Father is our Creator, the Son our Redeemer and the Spirit our Sanctifier. They are distinct and yet not solitary. We, in our limited human understanding, attempt to define the three persons by a role which seems dominant and yet all three Persons are  forever together. Father, Son and Spirit were present in creation; Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” and He promised to be with us always in the Person of the Comforter (Holy Spirit).

Today we also have Matthew with us. He is a student from Iran and will share the testimony of his faith journey with us. We all have a faith journey to share for God deals with each of us in a unique way and it is in the sharing of our testimony that we build each other up in faith. Thank you, Matthew for coming to share your story with us this weekend.

After the service today we will have our quarterly Congregation Meeting. I have had peep at the agenda and while there are some items dealing with past things (the journey), there are also some exciting things about the future. The greatest thing about following Jesus is that He is always leading us into the future. Our faith is about that which lies ahead and the certainty of our hope. I want to share a little of what I believe the Lord is saying to me and we will also hear something about Ride for Life, Internet broadcasting of services and propose membership of Pneuma. In a way these are all connected and are aspects of the journey which still lies before us. Kennon Callahan said, “Hope is stronger than memory. Memory is strong, hope is stronger. We are the Easter People, the People of the Empty Tomb, we are the People of Hope.” God bless you and may He be with you

Margie and I have the weekend off, though we will be attending events in Perth. I had a Ministers Supervision Meeting on Thursday with Rev Dr Ian Tozer and     others, and on Saturday we attended the “Exploring the Ministry Day”. Part of the reason for the latter was to familiarize myself with the process into ministry in the UCA, and also to investigate options for my son-in-law who has felt called into the ministry. So this morning Steve Higgins and his Dad will share the pulpit in both Merredin and Mukinbudin. May the Lord bless you as you minister to us in His Name.

I was also supposed to be one of the Spiritual Directors on the Walk to Emmaus in Perth this weekend but it was cancelled at short notice. There were unfortunately too few people enrolled. I have been part of the Emmaus movement for several years and I really want to encourage you to consider joining. Basically it begins with a “pilgrim” weekend which you attend. The weekend consists of a lot of discipleship teaching and worship opportunities. In essence it is a short course on Christianity. But the beginning “pilgrim” weekend really is just a beginning. You never attend the Walk to Emmaus as a pilgrim again but you are encouraged to be part of the “team” who run future weekends. Through participation as a teacher, or a carer, or hands on stuff like cooking and other practical things, you learn a great deal about being a servant Christian. Every Emmaus pilgrim enters a “Fourth Day” after the pilgrim weekend. The Fourth Day signifies the role that every Christian needs to play out as a consequence of the Resurrection. There is an amazing simple logic to the Walk to Emmaus movement (which obviously takes its cue from the two disciples who walked from Jerusalem to Emmaus with Jesus but who failed to recognize Him at first). It not only teaches the basics of the Christian Faith but encourages each person to put that into practice. It teaches servanthood and leadership, empathy and understanding and so much more. Many people think that it is just about the Pilgrim weekend. Nothing could be further from the truth. Continued involvement leads to continued growth as a Christian. In fact, every single person on Angus Buchan’s team which organizes the Mighty Men’s Conferences was a regular in the Emmaus Community to which I belonged in South Africa. And much of the “success” of those conferences stems from what they learned about being a practical Christian through the Walk to Emmaus movement. I have been invited to be one of the Spiritual Directors at the September weekend of the Great Southern Community in Kattaning. Both Steve Higgins and Sal Marais will also be on the team. If you would like at attend this 72 hour event then speak to one of us.

Next Sunday we have a young Iraqi man who is coming to share the testimony of his conversion from Islam to Christianity. While he is a very new convert, he is utterly committed to his new faith.

Last Thursday was Ascension Day – the celebration of our Lord’s return to heaven to take His place at the right hand of the Father. By and large the significance of the day has been lost – after all, who wants to celebrate a “departure” – and yet it is the coronation in heaven of our Lord Jesus. In Daniel 7 we read of how the    Ancient of Days takes His seat on the throne, and then, one like a son of man comes with the clouds of heaven. He approaches the Ancient of Days and is given authority, glory and sovereign power. All peoples, nations and men of every language worship Him and He is give an everlasting dominion and a kingdom that shall not pass away. The Book of Daniel is an amazingly accurate prophetic book. Hundreds of years before the events, it describes with uncanny accuracy, the rise and fall of the empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome – even with   specific detail of the amazing victories and sudden death of Alexander the Great. The  coming of the son of man into the throne room of the Ancient of Day (Jesus entering heaven) is described as taking place towards the collapse of the Roman Empire. How good is that!

We so often view the Ascension of Jesus from the perspective of the disciples looking forlornly up into the sky as Jesus rises on the clouds of the air. But what really matters is what happens on the other side, and the significance of that for us on this side of heaven. Jesus, having prepared and commissioned His church, takes His place as Lord of lords and King of kings. He has all authority and power and He expects us, as His people to continue, in the power of the Spirit, the work that He came to do on the earth. We have the task of reaching the nations, of spreading the good news abroad, of declaring God’s kingdom come upon the earth. The first disciples didn’t quite get that at first (and sometimes we, the later disciples, don’t get it either) and so they locked themselves up in the Upper Room for several days. But they did do something very significant – they prayed about what to do next. Ten days later, the Holy Spirit came upon them at Pentecost and the church burst forth with power. Thousands came to faith, they began to pray for people and they were healed. The good news began to spread out from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. Friends, the task is not yet done. Stephen Covey, in his book about the Seven Habits, says that we live within two circles of life. The inner circle is called the Circle of Influence and the outer circle is the Circle of Concern. We can do something about our Circle of Influence but have no control over the outer circle – except to make our inner circle grow bigger ie to extend our Circle of Influence. Some things in the outer circle we cannot influence, like the weather for example, but if we focus our lives into being proactive in the areas where we do have influence, we can also be workers in the Kingdom of God as we share the Good News with those around us, and push our influence into the areas of life which concern (worry) us. I encourage you to take time this week, in the lead up to Pentecost, to pray earnestly for this generation of people for whom we are responsible to share the Good News about Jesus.