Tire like an Eagle

Ever feel exhausted, physically, and mentally?
I’ve been going through that a bit lately.

One of the reasons for it may be my new laptop, although I don’t want to blame it for all my problems. It’s stupid addictive games (spider solitare and pinball) keep filling my rest-time and tiring me out with its screen glare.

Computers are obviously of the devil ;-) They blink evilly, fill your minds with rubbish, and distract you from your true calling. – Obviously evil.

Anyhow, I need a rest.

Brother Yun said it well:
The Lord God jealously desires us for himself. He is the lover of our souls. If we ever put anything before our relationship with Jesus – even our work for Jesus – then we will be ensnared. If you are burned out, Stop! Rest! Your lamp needs a constant infilling of the Lord’s oil or your light will be snuffed out. (from the book the Heavenly Man)

God can ‘raise us up on wings like eagles’ so we can ‘run and not grow weary, walk and not faint’ (Isaiah 40:31) but I think we have the responsibility to not over-run and over-walk to the point that we stop flapping our wings and crash into the mountain-side.

Known

You know how sometimes you think you know something, but then you find out you really didn’t understand? I had one of those moments recently.

I’ve been doing a book review for Bible College on the book ‘Knowing God’ by J. I. Packer. It’s interesting, but has been taking me a while to get through.
Anyway, I came to a section where it talks about God knowing us, something I have always been aware of, by the author puts it like this:

There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me. (page 45)

That hit me.

Every now and then, we fail in our Christian walk. We slip and do something that we find hard to forgive ourselves for. ‘If I can’t forgive myself,’ we think, ‘How can God ever hope to forgive us?’ But as Mr. Packer explains, God already knew we would do that, and he STILL loved us, before we even did it, knowing we WOULD do it.
He has forgiven us in advance, before the moment of failing.

All we have to do is accept that forgiveness.

It’s not an excuse to keep on sinning, and thinking ‘Well, God will forgive me’, but it is a comfort for those moments we legitimately fail.

Praise God.

The Passion of the Christian

Usually, when I am asked to bring a message, I have to find something that God has put a passion in my heart about to bring. I find that God is a very passionate God, and so, when I am following Him, and near Him, I start getting passionate about things too.

Well, when I was asked to bring a message this week at my church, I wasn’t feeling passionate about God much at all. I had been on holiday, and I was just kind of drifting, not really doing anything useful, and I guess not really serving God much at all.

But when I started realising this, that I needed a passion for God to bring a message from God, it blew me away. The first passage that God brought to mind in that moment was Acts 2:46: Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts…

Wow! Isn’t that incredible? We meet together once or twice a week as believers, or maybe three times if we go to a Home Group, and yet these believers met daily. How could they cope? Didn’t they get ‘bored out of their gumtree?’ I mean, you have to realise that when the believers met together, these were not short meetings. Remember in Acts 20, where Paul brought a message to the believers in Troas? It says in verse 7, “On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept talking until midnight… verse 9: Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead.”

Sure, Paul raised Eutychus from the dead straight after this, but the point remains he talked for so long he bored one member of the audience to death! So I ask again, how on earth could the believers cope with meeting together every day? Not only that, but they did so ‘filled with awe’ (Acts 2:43), and ‘with glad and sincere hearts’ (Acts 2:46).

I think one of the best ways to understand this is to look at what these daily meetings in the temple courts were actually about. If you have a quick read of that passage (Acts 2:42-47), its actually quite weird. They were devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching, they were having fellowship, breaking bread, praying, praising God etc. and were meeting in the temple courts. What could they possibly have to do after all that? Part of it would probably have been listening to the apostles teaching, but I believe that the most important thing they were doing is not specifically stated here, but is instead the final commandment given by Jesus before he ascended.

Acts 1:8 : But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Here we see that the source of passion for the believers is the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit enabled them to do the most important thing they could do: be witnesses for Jesus. The temple courts were one of the main meeting places in the city of Jerusalem, and so the best way to be a witness would be to meet there and discuss what was happening.

One definition of witness I heard recently is that of ‘someone who hears something, and talks about it.’ It is not enough just to see something. If you don’t tell someone else, you’re only doing part of the job. These believers were seeing wonders and miraculous signs, seeing people added daily to their numbers, and they were witnessing to that. But that is not all that witnessing entails.

The word that is translated as ‘witnesses’ in Acts 1:8 is a very interesting word. Martys means ‘witness, testimony, martyr (witness unto death)’, and is used 35 times in the New Testament, to mean witness, witnesses, testimony, testify, martyr, and bore testimony.

Remember, we are called to be martys for Jesus.

I believe that being God’s martys is a very important part of being a follower of Christ, but I also believe it is one that we are often guilty of not living up to. The saints of God are those who martys to Jesus, and we all have the chance to be God’s saints. Paul wrote letters to ‘the saints in Ephesus’ and Philippi, and talked about the saints in Achaia, greeting the saints, praying for the saints, washing the feet of the saints, having a love for all the saints….

The interesting thing to realise from all of this is that the saints were just ordinary people. They were living everywhere. They didn’t have to perform three miracles and be canonized by the pope - they were shown as saints by how they lived. And we are called to be saints as well.

Saints live for God, and saints are willing to die for God.

It really hit me how lightly we take the call of God, when I started reading on two subjects: church history, and Christian biography. The powerful thing is that there are still saints everywhere, living and dying for God. And we are called to do the same.

A letter I got from Voice of the Martyrs, an organisation that deals with persecuted and martyred Christians worldwide, has these statistics:

Even in 2005, there are more than two hundred million Christians who live each and every day in fear of harassment, persecution, imprisonment, torture and even death because of their faith and witness to Jesus Christ. They are known as the PERSECUTED Church because, despite danger and discomfort to their own lives, they choose to love and obey God in countries that are hostile to the Gospel. Safe in New Zealand, it is often hard for us to believe that this could be happening in the world. Yet more than 160,000 Christians die each year because they live as followers of Jesus Christ! That means - 438 Christians TODAY ! And they are all members of OUR CHRISTIAN FAMILY.

I would never support the idea of suicide bombers, or actively seeking to kill people, as both are completely opposed to Jesus’ teaching, but one thing I admire about those who do is their total devotion to their cause.
One of the most powerful messages I have ever heard was a message by Christine Caine at Get Smart, where she talked about how suicide bombers are trained from kindergarten up, and by the time they reach 11 or 12 years of age, they are willing to die for their cause. And, although she again stressed that this was not to be taken literally, and that suicide and murder are both completely contradictory to Christianity, she challenged us personally - are you willing to be that devoted to Christ? Not to blow yourselves up, but to forget about your own lives, to not care whether you live or die, and to be absolutely public with your faith.

I think that one of the points to meeting in the temple courts was to witness to what was going on in the faith. To hold each other accountable to lift each other up, and to refill their passion for God by sharing their faith with one another. I think that if we spend time finding out about what God is doing or has done in other peoples lives, it can inspire us, challenge us, fire us up, and prepare us for more service.

It’s certainly something I have to think about.

Letter from God

My child,
Listen to the river, hear the sounds of the birds, the insects.
Feel the warmth of the sun on your skin.
Put aside all your worries about what tomorrow may bring, for today is a gift of love from me to you.
Yes, the world is still going on just like it was yesterday, there is still pain, still suffering, still sickness and death.
But I want what is best for you, not what is worst.
My heart grieves when you grieve, and rejoices when you rejoice.
The world may hurt you and hate you, but I love you.
I always have. I always will.
It was my love for you that created this all for you.
It was my love for you that fashioned the trees, the butterflies, the river. It was my love for you that made me give up everything to attempt and win you back. I was heartbroken when you left me, when I could see you were going to die.
So my love for you caused me to send my son to earth to be judged in your place, and take your punishment of death.
You may have hated me, but that doesn't matter - I loved you.
You may have forgotten me, but I remember you.
You may not have lived for me, but I died for you.
Everything you have lost, I want to give back.
Every one of your failures, I want to remove.
Every one of your mistakes, I want to forgive.
Come home, I miss you.
I'm calling out to you.
From Your Father God.

Reply to Stephen

Article:
http://www.apologeticspress.com/articles/1973

Email:
this argument is not convincing. not sure if you read it or not, they are using bison slaughtering from 100 years ago, suggesting their fossils are not seen today. okay fair enough but then they go on to say dinosaurs were able to be fossilised becausae of something massive (flood), but why then are humans not fossilised with dinosaurs, afterall didn't the flood cover all the earth, and therefore humans. they then go on to say, of all fossils found, only 1% are vertabrates suggesting that there are little found. I would like to point out that dinosaurs are vertabrates as well as humans so this is contradictory as the 1% should include humans, there surely could'nt have been as many dinosaurs as humans as lack of space and resources. vertabrates is any creature with a spine. sorry but these people who wrote this article are not convincing what so ever and their arguments do not lead to any outcome. my favourite example of this reading is to suggest the bones of humans and dinosaurs may have been found together but........someone just thought it was a pile of old bones so pass me the dynamite to get more coal out, shows the level of intelligence of the people who wrote this. i mean if they want to seem educated in this area they would not use POSSIBLE nowadays scenarios to back their argument. if we were sticking with this idea, wouldn't most people at least move the bones to be re-examined later. i know i sure would if i stumbled on dinosaur bones as it not an everyday thing to find.
have a read over it and see if you agree to what i 'm questioning

Reply:
I read the article attached to your email, and your reply, and can see what you are saying to some degree, however I think that your objections can be answered.

As you said, “[the article states that] dinosaurs were able to be fossilized because of something massive (flood), but why then are humans not fossilized with dinosaurs, afterall didn’t the flood cover all the earth, and therefore humans.” I guess the answer to that is that there would have also been humans fossilized during the flood, but this doesn’t mean to say that their fossils would be discovered with dinosaur fossils. As you picked up, “of all fossils found, only 1% are vertebrates suggesting that there are little found.” I would agree that humans would be included in that 1% along with dinosaurs, and the article does say human fossils have been discovered. But, I think that what the article is trying to show is that because all vertebrates that have been fossilized only make up 1% of fossils, and because fossils are very rare, there are very few fossils of either dinosaurs or humans to be found (according to the article, only about 2100 ‘articulated’ dinosaur bones, and a number of hominid fossils that would ‘barely cover a billiard table.’).

And what the article seems to say to me is that if both dinosaur and human fossils are rare, then finding dinosaur and human fossils in the same place is far more remote. It asks “Can we prove that Dodo birds and humans once lived together by observing their fossilized remains together in a particular layer of rock?” The answer is quite obviously ‘No’. But why? Because despite the fact that humans and Dodos co-existed, and even interacted (eg. Humans killing off all the Dodos), finding them buried in the same place would be very unusual. In the same way, finding humans buried with elephants would be unlikely, because the two species don’t live in the same area anyhow. Wouldn’t this be the same for dinosaurs? If dinosaurs were still around, what would the chances be of finding humans living in the same area, close enough that when they died their bodies would fall in the same place. Even if they did, the article points out that very few of those bodies would turn into fossils. So, the chances of finding dinosaurs and humans fossilized together, even if they were contemporaries, is virtually nil.

As far as to why if humans and dinosaurs were fossilized at the same time there are more dinosaur fossils discovered than human fossils, it probably has something to do with the way they were fossilized. The article states that “In order for something to become fossilized, it must be buried quickly in just the right place.” As you stated, this would fit nicely into the story of a global flood. But if they were buried by such a catastrophic global event, and quickly buried, under layers and layers of rocks, this would result in the bodies being tossed around by water and pounded by rocks before burial. Whereas tiny animals, such as rodents, or non-vertebrate creatures like insects, fish etc. would be buried quickly and not receive such a battering (meaning that there would be more fossils of these creatures and also better preserved ones), bigger creatures would receive this pounding and crushing before burial, resulting in less fossil remains and far less complete fossils (such as with the lack of human remains). However, once a creature got bigger than a certain size, although the pounding and breaking apart of bodies would still continue, the individual bones would have better chance of a) being at least partially in tact, and b) being discovered after being fossilized. And this is what we find with dinosaurs – very few bones still together, but remains far more common than those of humans.

Meanwhile I don’t want to second-guess the authors of the article, but to me the story of someone blowing up dinosaur/human bones together with dynamite is just trying to use a bit of humour to show that in most cases where digging is done, it is done with heavy machinery and/or explosives, and that bones etc. could be blown apart before they were even seen by people. I don’t really think it makes a huge difference, though, if we remember that the possibility of finding humans and dinosaurs fossilized together had already been shown as implausible.

However, you didn’t say a lot about the last few paragraphs of the article. What do you think about the metal hammer with a wooden handle being dug out of Cretaceous limestone dated at 135 million years old, or the human artifacts and footprints being found in coal – both of those layers being ones “in which dinosaur bones supposedly should be found)”.

Hope this helps, feel free to email me back if you are not happy with my response, or if you want to discuss anything more.
God bless.

Irrelevant Christians and the Real Relationship

Atheist Michael Martin tries to convince people to reject Christianity by asking, “Who wants to be like them?” (Christians). To him, following Christ means being “punitive, unforgiving, violent, mean-spirited, hypocritical and inconsistent; and... we would tacitly approve of slavery, forsake reason, and have no opinions on the central issues of the day”.
Even Christians can agree with some of those claims. One Christian leader pointed out, “Christians are largely irrelevant… if there’s a life-changing message to present, we’ll make it boring and put it in a context you’re not involved in.”

Okay, hang on a minute. What’s going on? Jesus claimed to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life, so how is it that those people who are supposed to be following his example are presenting a boring, irrelevant, hypocritical message? Has the Bread of Life gone stale?
If you look back a few hundred years, Christianity had it all. We were leaders of the scientific world, the art world, the music world, the theological world… And now we are seen as ‘largely irrelevant’ even by our own admission! What happened?

Leonard Sweet, in his book Out of the Question… Into the Mystery (also the source of the above quotes) claims the problem is that we have lost Jesus as the centre of our lives, and our religion. He argues: “Sometimes it seems as if the Buddha has more authority for Buddhists than Jesus has for Christians… The first Christians didn’t proclaim a creed or a statement of faith; they proclaimed the Resurrection... They proclaimed Jesus. Faith is not vested in creeds, or invested in institutions, but vetted in relationships.”

That means that the mark or a true Christian isn’t the amount of preaching they do, its not the number of church related events they attend during the week, and its not how good a life they lead - it’s how much time they spend on their relationship with God. Sure, all those other things are good, but doing things for God is not the same as spending time with God.

Any human relationship is the same. If a man feels like he is neglecting his wife, and wants to spend time with her, he can do everything for her if he chooses - he can mow the lawns, make the dinner, work hard so he can save money and buy her the best presents in the world - but if he doesn’t actually sit down and spend time with her, talk with her, listen to her, then all the rest is in vain, and won’t help the relationship at all! In fact, during the time he is working so hard to do everything for her, he would be drifting further and further from her, actually hurting their relationship by working so hard for her.

It’s the same with us and God. We can work all day, every day for Him, and yet end up not in as good a relationship with Him as if we had just sat and spent some time listening to Him, or reading His Word.
And, if we did spend more time around Him, He would have more room to work in our lives. Again, human relationships reflect this. If you hang around with a bunch of drug-smoking hippie-wannabes all day, every day, then you are going to start taking on a few of their more charming personalities traits: you’ll start looking like them, talking like them, perhaps even smelling like them, and probably acting like them!

So, if you want to be a good reflection of God, if you want to look like Him, talk like Him, smell like Him and act like Him, then spend time with Him, and He will be reflected in your life! If we were all reflecting God, then there would be a change in the way people see us. Simple arguments such as “Who wants to be like them?” would no longer have the same effect. Instead, like in the 1st century church, we would live in such a way that “those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us.” (Titus 2:8)

If Christians are seen as hypocrites, the answer isn’t by trying to do good, we can never manage to consistently do good on our own. The answer is spending time with God. If you do, he can shine through you.

Superheroes

What do you think of when you think of Superheroes?Superpowers? Capes? Underwear on the outside? Courage?How much of this is important in order to make a superhero? What do they need to be a superhero and what can they do without? Batman has no superpowers, but he does have lots of gadgets and a cool belt. Do you need them?

To me, you don’t need a cape to be a superhero, you don’t need to wear your underwear on the outside, and you don’t need superpowers or a gadget belt. All you need is the courage to try your best, even when it seems hopeless.

The Bible is filled with lots of Superheroes: people who heard God’s voice, and obeyed it against all odds. Now that is one thing that is quite interesting. How do you hear God’s voice? What if you don’t hear God’s voice, how do you know what he wants you to do?

In Numbers 13, we meet a normal man, with no superpowers, without a cape, without a utility belt, and who hadn’t heard the voice of God. But he managed to obey God’s voice anyway. Listen to this.

Numbers 13:1-4 The LORD said to Moses, “Send some men to explore the land of Canaan which I am giving to the Israelites. From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders.” So at the LORD’s command Moses sent them out from the Desert of Paran. All of them were leaders of the Israelites. These are their names: (yada yada etc.)

So these twelve men go into the land of Caanan, and spend 40 days looking around at it. They find out it is a land filled with giants, but it also is a land of plenty. Two of them manage to get this cluster of grapes which is so big they have to carry it between them on a pole. Then they come back to Moses and the others.

25-29 They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the Desert of Paran. There they reported to them and to the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land. They gave Moses this account: “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak [a giant] there. The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Caananites live near the sea and along the Jordan.”

Now the hero of the story enters the scene. Caleb is one of the spies. He had seen the same giants in the land, and the same war-tribes of people, and the same fortified cities. But instead of being scared…

30-33 Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.” But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those people, they are stronger than we are.” And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”

So, we have this group of people facing off against unsurmountable odds, not chance of victory according to what the other spies have said, but Caleb is yelling “Give me a sword, let me at them.” Why would he do this? What made him so confident that he knew he could win the battle against the tribes and the giants and the cities?

The answer is right at the start of the story.

1-2 The LORD said to Moses, “Send some men to explore the land of Caanan which I am giving to the Israelites.”

God had promised victory, but the other spies were too afraid to understand it. Only Caleb, and later Joshua, were brave enough to say “We can do it, let us at them!” Eventually what happened here is that the 10 other spies convinced the people not to enter Caanan, and so they all wandered around in the desert for another 40 years, until everyone who was afraid of entering the land had died. And get this. After 40 years, when Caleb and Joshua were the oldest two men in the whole of Israel still alive, they led the next generation of Israelites into Caanan and won, against the giants, the tribes, and the cities. No one could stop them, because God had promised them the land. The way Caleb knew what God had said was by listening to Moses, by finding out what God had already promised. We can do the same today. Even if God isn’t speaking to us directly, we can read the bible, and see what he has already asked us to do, and what he has already promised.

In 2001, in Pakistan (which is a mostly Muslim country) a young man was riding his motorbike down the road, when a car swerved out and hit him, breaking his leg. As he lay in the street, a woman he had never met came out of the crowd, put her hand on his leg, and prayed to Jesus to heal it. This was a hugely risky thing to do. Muslim people don’t pray to Jesus, they pray to Allah, and often if you pray to Jesus you can get in a lot of trouble. But just as the man was thinking this, and getting really angry, God healed his leg, and the woman left. The only other time he saw her was when she came up to him again and handed him a bible.

That woman risked her life to pray for the man, and God might not have done anything. Obviously, she heard God’s voice calling her to pray for him, and she obeyed. She was definitely a superhero then.

And the man, who is known as ‘Asif’ became a hero for God too. You can read the rest of his story in the book 'Jesus Freaks II' starting on page 29.People keep trying to kill him, and he has been kicked out of his home for his faith, but Asif knows that God has called him, and keeps preaching God's Word.

A superhero is willing to face any obstacle for the cause. They know that evil needs defeating and that they are called to defeat it. So, if you want to be a superhero, listen to God, find out what he wants you to do, and get to it.

Up, up and away!

Virus Detected

As I sit here to write this, I can't help but notice the 'virus detected' notice in the corner of my screen.
It's kind of disturbing really...

I guess that going online at all is always going to be risky, as viruses and other such stuff can get into your computer, but the thing thats really disturbing about this virus is that even though the anti-virus on our computer has found it, it seems unable to do anything about it.

What I mean by this is that if I click on 'Heal', 'Delete File' or 'Move to Vault', the three options available for dealing with these little evil programs, I get a message pop up stating 'Requested Action is not available for this object!' What does this mean???!!! How will I get rid of this evil invader?!!!!!

However, this virus does present an analogy for me to do with Christianity. Just as being on the Internet opens you to the risk of viruses, there are things we do in our lives that open us up to the potential of sin.
When a sin enters into your system, we find that most of the time our 'Anti-Sin' can pick it up, and deal with it.

The problem is that eventually, if you keep exposing yourself to sin for long enough, you have the possibility of catching a sin that your Anti-Sin just can't deal with! Once that happens, you are stuck with it.

The only thing you can do in a time like this is to rely on help from 'Tech Support', the one who knows more about dealing with sins than your own little anti-sin filter. That Tech-Support is God.

So, if you have an issue in your life at present with a sin-virus having attached itself to you, just call on God to help you with it.

His number is toll-free, open 24/7, and you don't even need a phone to use it.
Just call out to him, and he will answer.

Blaming God for Our Mistakes

Well, here I am, back at my computer, writing a post for my blog.
Has it really been two months since my last one?
Wow.

I've been through an interesting patch with God, a few ups and downs, but he has still been doing amazing things. I guess I just haven't been making the time to write them down. Instead, I've been working on all kinds of other things, and creating blog-novels with one of my friends (very random, beware!!! Read them here).

Organising myself to do things has actually been the hardest part of my life lately. I don't know why.
God keeps providing me with opportunities both to serve him and to do something worthwhile in my life, but I tend to overlook them, or forget to do them until its too late.

Why is this happening?
Because I am choosing to not make the time, to decide what is important and do it.

The funny things about people is that it is so hard to admit that. It has taken me a long time to get to that point, to be able to say that I am at fault. Instead, we try to blame other people, or God, even if we don't believe in Him.

Strangely, thats what I have been doing.

God presents me with an opportunity (lets say, a chance to have a song recorded) and has a timeframe to accomplish it in. I sit around for the two weeks (or more) I have to complete this, all the time thinking to myself "Yes, I have to do this," and then try and accomplish it in the last possible minute, when there is really too little time to make a good job of anything.

So I fail. And then, somehow, I find some way to blame God!

'God, why didn't you give me enough time?!' (well, actually, he gave me two or more weeks)
'God, why didn't you give me the equipment?!' (He did, but I didn't take the time to make sure it was working)
'God, how could you let me fail?!' (Who let me fail? I did)

But isn't that the way we so often are? 'God, why don't you do this for me? How can you be so uncaring? Why haven't I had my way?' We try to get the good stuff out of opportunities, without putting in the work necessary, and then blame God when we fail.

God loves us, and wants the best for us in our lives. Why do we blame Him when we make a mess of things?

Just something to think about.

Survivor

I help run an Intermediate Youth Group, and tonight we're having a Survivor theme night. Here is the talk I wrote for it:

The Christian life is a lot like survivor.

In 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, Paul says: Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the (Olympic) games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.

When Paul was younger, he had been an enemy of the Christians, hunting them down and killing them for a living. But God reached out of heaven, and let Paul know how real he was, and turned him around to help God instead. God promised Paul a great reward when his life was over, and he promises the same reward to everyone who believes in him.

So, what did Paul do? Did he sit around and watch TV saying "Yep, God is coming back real soon. I'll just enjoy myself and eat some potato chips while I wait"? No, he says that he "beats his body", or in other words, he takes charge of it, and he starts doing all he can for God. There is a verse that says, "Whatever you do, do it as if you were doing it for God" and this is what Paul does. He lives his life 100% for God. Thats where the Survivor metaphor comes in. He makes the comparison to olympic athletes. Whats an olympic sport? Well, if you want to be an olympic class athlete at that sport, you have to focus on it all the time. It takes years of training, and those who are the best are completely devoted to doing everything to be as good as they can be.

Well, Paul says it is the same when you are a Christian. In fact, he says that the olympic athletes compete "to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forver."

What Paul is saying there is that even though the olympic athletes may get a bit of glory for a while, and a cool gold medal to hang on their wall, what we get if we stick with God will never be lost. Who won the 100m at the Berlin Olympics? Who won the freestyle swimming at Moscow? Unless you are an historian, or someone who has researched this, you probably won't know. But, God promises that everyone who follows him, and gives their all for him, will never be forgotten. Their names will be written in God's Book of Life, and will never be erased.

I know a lot of Christians who gave up walking with God, and now live just like everyone else in the world. God loves them just as much as he loves you, and he always will, but if they don't finish the race, if they don't survive, they will never get the crown waiting for them.

Don't let yourself be voted off in the journey of life. Stick with it, do your best, and get that prize!

Magi Q&A

These questions were written by a prisoner somewhere overseas, to a family that correspond to him here in New Zealand. I have tried to answer them briefly but hopefully well enough to provide answers. From the style of the questions, its probably safe to conclude that English is not his first language.

Are the Magi people belong to believers?
Which religion they belong and what they worship?
Why they come and worship Jesus?
The Magi came from the east, probably from what was previously the Persian empire. In Old Testament, the Jews had been exiled to Persia when Judah was finally overrun. It was also in Persia that Daniel prophesied when the Messiah would appear (Daniel 9:25). Because the prophecy was so detailed, saying that the ‘Anointed One’ (Messiah) would come six nine weeks (years) after the decree to rebuild Jerusalem, the Magi needed only to take notice of when the decree to rebuild the temple was given, and then calculate when the Messiah would come. Once the time when the Messiah was to come drew closer, they would have been on the lookout for any unusual signs (such as stars that appeared) to signal his birth.
When the exile in Persia ended, the Jews living in Persia were allowed to go back to Israel. However, as the book of Esther shows, some decided to remain in Persia. Because of this, there would have been Jews living in Persia even during the life of Jesus, and so the Magi could have been Jews, even though we don’t know for sure. If not, they could have simply been Persians who knew about Daniel’s God and the prophecy, and wanted to worship him. Either way, they knew the power of God, and wanted to honour him, so they must have had some knowledge about Judaism, and may have become believers through finding Jesus, although they wouldn’t have learned about his ministry then, as he still hadn’t done it.

Why people wait for Messiah but don’t recognize the Messiah?
Although the prophecy in Daniel was clear to those who recognized it, many people living in Judea probably did not understand the prophecy. Also, they were expecting the Messiah to act differently to the way Jesus acted. For example, the Old Testament prophesied that Jesus would come as a King, so they expected that the Messiah would destroy the Romans, and rule on a throne in Jerusalem. Because Jesus made no moves to become king, but stayed among the people, teaching them peacefulness and love, many people refused to accept him as Messiah.

Is it possible that the Lords angel can talk to us? I mean now?
Yes, it is, but now we don’t need angels to talk to us so much, because we already have God’s Word written in the Bible for us to read. Angels can also visit us without us realizing that they are angels (Hebrews 13:2). They often appear in order to protect people, and sometimes can only be seen by certain individuals. Some people planning to beat up a pastor in Africa saw six huge men guarding him, when there were no men there. They were angels.

If the magi people have now, do they have the knowledge to see the sign of Jesus second coming back?
Whereas Jesus’ first coming could be accurately predicted by the Magi, thanks to Daniel’s prophecy, the Bible says that ‘not even the Son’ knows when Jesus is coming back, ‘only the Father’ does. There are still signs that we can look for that let us know that Jesus’ second coming is getting closer, but we won’t be able to predict it as accurately as his first coming was.
However, the Persian empire was overthrown by the Greek empire under Alexander the Great, and Jews from there began to spread out across the world, and later gathered back together in 1947 when Israel was reformed as a nation. It is quite likely because of this that the Magi do not exist anymore, or are part of Israel if they do.

Hacked off

Well, my links and email are back up again, but it took me a little while to figure out what had happened.

I realised something was wrong about a week ago, when I couldn't open my blog. Well, I could open the page but there was nothing on it. After trying to figure out whether something I had posted had somehow got a virus into it (and concluding eventually that it would be impossible for a virus to get into words I had written myself!) I looked into my blog template....

SHOCK! HORROR!! It was gone!!!!

I mean, GONE! As in: "Not there."

I don't get how that could have happened, but re-installed my template, and have spent a while re-creating my links etc. The best I can figure is that someone hacked into my blog and deleted my template. But that seems kind of random, and pointless....

Oh well, life goes on. God is good.

Integrity: Image of Gold or Feet of Clay?

An important, and often overlooked, aspect of Christianity is the matter of integrity. Integrity is being the same in public as you are in private, not having two standards, but a consistent one, so that those looking on can always tell your stance on things.

Unfortunately, nowadays integrity is not only less common, it is also less supported. A well-quoted saying is that “what people do in the privacy of their own homes is their own business,” and our culture in general seems to have taken a hold of that. Now, it doesn’t matter what we do in private, or when no-ones looking, as long as we act a certain way when in public. Integrity is relegated only to the work-place, not to the home.

Is it any surprise, then, that people are starting to lose their integrity altogether, both outside the church and within it? Now there are the problems of priests being sexually immoral, people stealing money from offerings, and others viewing ‘images’ online. As long as no-one finds out, the reasoning goes, then it doesn’t matter.

However, not only is this wrong thinking, it can seriously damage a person’s standing in the community if this character flaw is discovered, and, in the case of Christians, can seriously damage non-believer’s views of Christianity and God as well!

Just that statement alone should be enough to make us think about our values. The bible says that teachers will be judged more harshly, because they are responsible for instructing those who follow them in the right ways to go. The same applies for Christians who, by simply being a Christian, are giving an example to those around them of the right way to live. If they are not living the way they say they are living, then they will not only have to live with the consequences of their own actions, but with the repercussions this may have on those that look to them for examples of right and wrong.

I personally know how hard it is to be someone of integrity, and have struggled with being the same in private as in public myself, but I also know how important this aspect of life is, and so I am working hard to present a true image.

I want to reflect God as truthfully as I can. I don't want to have feet of clay, that will crumble if someone hits them. My faith has to be more real than that!

My God is far more important than that.

St Valentine's Eve, and the sort of love that isn't printed on mushy Valentine's cards...

This is going to be a bit longer than most of my blogs, because it is actually a sermon I wrote to preach tonight at my church. I have edited it slightly to make sure it flows as a blog and is readable, but otherwise it is the same message.

If you aren't coming to the service, then feel free to read on. If you are coming, then don't spoil it but reading the sermon yet, wait until afterwards.

LOVE SERMON....

Today is unofficially a holiday, and I love holidays. Today is February the 13th, which makes it St. Valentines Eve, and tomorrow St Valentines Day. I have never actually celebrated St Valentines Day before, but I'm still looking forward to it, not because of the Valentines cards, the roses, or the little cherub angels that go along with the celebration, but because St Valentines Day is all about a very Christian concept – love.

Often people try to separate love and Christianity from one another, but it doesn't work. You couldn't have Christianity without love, and you couldn't have love without God!

Why is this? Haven't a lot of people who aren't Christians felt love? Maybe, but love comes from God. The Bible goes so far as saying that "God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him." (1 John 4:16 NIV). If you have ever felt love on earth, and this is true love, not just 'like' or 'luurve' – then you have felt what its like to be in the presence of God. Some people think that being in heaven with God forever would be immensely boring, but (bad pun) you'd love it!

Love is completely tied in with Christianity. You couldn't have Christianity without love. In fact, this is one of the aspects that makes Christianity unique. We are part of the only religion that is not about what we have done, but about what God has done for us. God chose to love us.

2 Timothy 1:9 says: God saved us and chose us to be his holy people. We did nothing to deserve this, but God planned it because he is so kind. Even before time began God planned for Christ Jesus to show kindness to us. (CEV)

If you can get a hold of this, it is incredible. Before God had even created the universe, let alone us, he loved us so much that he was prepared to die on the cross for us. C. S. Lewis puts it like this:

"God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing… the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath's sake, hitched up… Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves."
C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, Pg 116

In any other religion the burden is on us, the creation, to try and attain perfection in order to get to God. There is no certainty of heaven to those in other religions, they are left to try and please God when it is impossible to meet his standards. For example, the Koran states: He forgiveth whom He pleaseth, and punisheth whom He pleaseth (Surah al-Baqarah 2:284). Even if a Muslim lives a perfect life, he can still be condemned to hell, just because Allah 'feels like it.'

However, our God reached down from heaven to bring us back to him. Instead of sitting up there, watching people run around helplessly trying to live good lives, and then condemning them to hell anyway, He actively entered into our world to help us reach him. On earth, he showed us examples of how much he loved us, through his sermons, his miracles, and, most importantly, his death.

God didn't have to love us, and that makes his sacrifice even more incredible. We were fallen creations, we had no redeeming features. C. S. Lewis makes this second illustration:

"Suppose yourself a man struck down shortly after marriage by an incurable disease which may not kill you for many years; useless, impotent, hideous, disgusting; depending on your wife's earnings; impoverished where you hoped to enrich; impaired even in intellect and shaken by gusts of uncontrollable temper, full of unavoidable demands. And suppose your wife's care and pity to be inexhaustible… But what the extreme example illustrates is universal. We are all receiving Charity. There is something in each of us that cannot be naturally loved. It is no one's fault if they do not so love it. Only the loveable can be naturally loved."
The Four Loves, Pg 121

We are fallen. If any human could fully realise everything we've done in our lives, and everything we are going to do, then they would be unable to love us with a natural love. But God, who can see into our very souls, who knew us from conception, shows another sort of love, a love not just born of attraction to another person, but a love born of choice. There are at least four words in the NT that are translated as love, and the one that describes this 'God-love' is agape or agapao. Agape, roughly, means: The decision to care about another person unconditionally, regardless of the outcome, in spite of their response.

God may have known from before the beginning of creation that we were going to fall, and cause enough evil to completely corrupt this world, but he chose to love us so much that he was willing to create us anyway. He knew we would turn against him, ignore him, do disgusting things against each other, against ourselves, and against him, but he still chose to love us enough, that he was willing to go through the agony of the cross for us.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus sweated drops of blood in agony, full-knowing what was coming before him. At any stage he could have decided that we weren't worth it. By all accounts he should have. But he didn't.

As someone pointed out: The cross is the ultimate symbol of love.

If God is love, then for 3 years the disciples lived with love in their midst. Those who were close to him would have got an even deeper view of the love of Jesus than we could possibly imagine, and one in particular, John, knew Gods love so much that he is remembered as 'the beloved disciple.' This love transformed John's life, and he spent the rest of his life preaching about it to all who would hear. In fact, the word agape appears in the works of John 95 times, over one third of all occurrences in the bible.

Despite this, the first occurrence of agape in John doesn't come until half way through the third chapter. John first mentions love when he explains Jesus' ministry on earth: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:16 NIV).

God gave up his Son, his own life, for us. He never forces us to accept this sacrifice, but he promises that if we do, everything we have ever done wrong will be forgiven, and we will have eternal life. The bible promises that he will cast our sins as far as the 'east is from the west.' The world has a north pole, and a south pole, but there are no east and west poles. You can continue travelling east or west forever, and never reach their limits. Thats how far away God throws away our sins. They are gone, and we are redeemed, if we simply accept Jesus' sacrifice for ourselves.

Agape love is not a natural love. It is not something that we simply feel. It is a choice, and it is not a part of our fallen nature. But when we receive God's gift of agape love in our lives (Jesus' death for us), we receive a new nature, pure and holy before God. Now we can show this agape love in our lives, in two ways: towards God, and towards others.

Why do you serve God? Is it out of fear of hell, or is it the desire to feel good about yourself... You should serve God because you love him. Columbine martyr Rachel Scott recognised this. In an excerpt from her journal, published in the book 'Rachel's Tears', Rachel wrote about the reason for her decision not to go out and get drunk with her friends. She wrote:

"Well, I thought about it (as you know) and I thought that since you would forgive me anyways I may as well do it. Then I realized that you will always, always forgive, but you may not let it go unpunished. Then I decided not to do it strictly out of fear. Then I thought about it more, and thought that if I did it out of fear it would not be done because I loved you, I obeyed you, and I followed you. That is my reason for not going now. I know that I will always be faced with temptation, but because I love you, I obey you, and I follow you, I will not fall into the core of it. Thankyou, Father."
– Rachel Scott as quoted in Rachels Tears, by Darrell Scott and Beth Nimmo, pg 49/50

Our love for God should be a reflection of God's love for us. It is our choice to love him, but he is also easy to love. Sometimes loving others is not so easy.

When we accept God's gift of agape love, we are redeemed, and we have the choice to show agape to others. We receive God's love-gift freely, but then we have to do our part, and our part is to pass this gift on. Remember, we as Christians are called to be salt and light in the world. As Pastor David said this morning, what good is salt in a salt shaker? It has to be out mixing with the food to make a difference. We have to get out there and let people see that we're different. Let them see the light, and the love of God within us.

But what about those annoying people out there? The ones who really frustrate us. It can be very hard to like people like that. Its the same with those who hate us, or hurt us, or ignore us, or sin towards us, or sin in general. We may absolutely hate them!

But we are called to love them! Remember, this is not the natural love, this is the spiritual love, the choice you can make. You don't have to like what they do, but the Bible instructs 'Hate the sin, but love the sinner.' Jesus reminded us this in Matthew 5:43-44:

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (NIV)

"But, they don't deserve it!" Well, so what? Did you? Remember, the Bible says 'while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.' We don't deserve it. God could have obliterated the world, and killed everyone on it, and he would have still been a just God. But he chose to give everything up to save you, and to love you. We need to do the same.

Now I want to make some challenges.

First, if you haven't accepted the love-gift of Jesus' sacrifice for yourself, and you want to, then I want to challenge you to do that. Take a moment, and think about the things you've done that you need forgiveness for. Then, in the quiet, ask Jesus to take the punishment of that sin for you, and ask him to cast your sins as far as the east is from the west. If you truly asked that, then you have been forgiven.

But tonight, I also want to challenge you to think about your response to this sacrifice. Jesus loved you enough to die for you. How well are you showing that love in your life? How well are you showing God that you love him? How well are you letting others see that same love of God?

Return of the Bible College

Today I had my orientation day at Bible College, in preparation for starting back there next week. It was a long and relatively dull day of sitting and listening to the changes that have taken place in how the course runs, and it was far too hot to be listening to anyone for a long period of time (especially since this area has been experiencing a heat wave lately) but I still managed to enjoy it.

This could only have been because I enjoy what I do. I really enjoy my course, and when I was away in the holidays, I missed it. Now, things are starting up again: I am taking over the Intermediate aged youth group, and am helping run the 3rd form home group (the first one was last night) and absolutely love it.

Some people think that when you become a Christian you have to stop enjoying yourself. After all, the Bible does say that when you become a Christian, you have now died to yourself and are living for God. But, this doesn't mean that God is going to take away everything you love.

God has given you the gifts you have for a reason, and rather than ignore that, he would want to develop them, and you along with them. Thats why for me, a people-person, administrative, love-to-talk type guy, I find joy in what God has called me to: leading people, writing, etc.

And anyone would find the same thing if they gave their all for God. If you are doing what God wants you to do, no matter what it is, you will find joy and fulfillment in it, because why would God want it any other way? He loves you, and he wants whats best for you.

And he wants you to enjoy having the best for you, too.

Effectiveness, or Spiritual Boredom?

I read something this morning that really spoke to me. It was from the Word for Today (although it was the Word for two days ago, actually), and it talked about spiritual boredom. The message was:

Do you ever get bored with church or your spiritual life? If so, consider this: hearing without doing becomes boring - every time!... You're bored because you're not doing what you've heard preached.

That really challenged me. Aside from doing this blog (which I only do semi-regularly, and even then am probably only reaching a small audience), what am I doing with my Christianity? Outreach is a very important part of our faith, and one that we can often overlook. To that end I have also written another letter to the editor, and made my first fledging steps at an outreach of sorts...

Remedy to Verbal Blather
Sir,
I always follow the creation/evolution debate when it turns up in this newspaper, and was recently ‘impressed’ by the entire page filled with correspondence on this subject (Mailbox, January 29), although I believe that some people out there would be getting sick of it all by now.
Both sides can have solid arguments, but others write without thinking through what they say, putting people off their opinions no matter which side of the debate they are on. Many of the correspondents would benefit from having someone to answer their queries, to look into the facts and respond to them, rather than boring the public with verbal blather. Therefore, I would like to offer my services in this area.
Rather than simply stating opinions, I would suggest that those involved in this debate (or interested in finding out the facts), email me at crevodebate@yahoo.com.au, which I have set up for this purpose. I don’t pretend to know all the answers, but will happily research them for you. I have my own opinions, but will attempt to only respond with “scientific “findings” not speculations (G Beardmore).” Feel free to advise anyone who writes in on this subject of my services.

This, of course, is only a start. Another small step is adding my new email to this site as well, and letting people talk to me (and suggest blog ideas). But, the biggest step is nothing to do with computers.

The only way for me to be really effective is to get out there and be effective. I am still being challenged by God to speak to people, and in the end, I know that doing that is the thing I must do.

Pray for me :-S

The Inherent Evil in Inherent Goodness

One of Christianity’s most unpopular doctrines is its belief in sin. If only we could do without believing in sin, then it wouldn’t be so hard for people to accept us.

This is because, lets face it, no-one likes to be thought of as a rotten lousy sinner. I’m sure even Hitler would have objected if he had been called one. It’s not in our nature to allow people to think badly of us, even if we are plainly bad!

Because of this, in fact, many people have snubbed the idea of sin, claiming instead that human nature is inherently good. Given the right social factors, upbringing, and conditioning, they argue, people will choose the right path, and the world will become a utopian (perfect) society.

This belief has gradually been introduced more and more into society as it becomes less popular to believe in sin. To this end, the education system and laws (among other things) are adapting methods to produce these ‘right social factors, upbringing, and conditioning.’ People are told that sin does not exist, and this leads people to the eventual assumption that they have no real choice in life. If they have done wrong, then it is obviously not their fault, but rather the result of wrong social factors, upbringing, or conditioning. A thief is a thief because his father ignored him, or his family taught him to steal… he never really had a chance. A murderer is a murderer because of similar things. We shouldn’t condemn these people for doing wrong, we should pity them because of their bad upbringing.

Because these beliefs undermine an individual’s choice in life (well, you couldn’t help it), over time they erode the very concept of right and wrong. We now see things such as homosexuality, abortion, and adultery becoming more and more acceptable in society, not because they are necessarily seen as right choices, but because the ones who act them out “never had a choice in the matter”. The idea that a person is responsible for their own actions is an idea fast becoming extinct.

Another problem with the theory of human goodness is the next logical step in progressing it. If humans will inherently choose good when given the right environment, then it makes sense to try and produce that environment. But how is that possible?

People such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao all took this idea to the logical conclusion: if the right factors are to be produced, then the wrong factors must be eliminated. Anyone who does not agree with the social conditions necessary is obviously unable to be a part of such a society. To this end, if we truly believe in the inherent goodness of mankind, then we should praise Hitler and his counterparts as trailblazers, for trying their best to produce a perfect world for our descendants.

Its strange how the belief in inherent goodness produces such evil when left to its own end.

Its almost as if human nature was bent towards evil…

Science and Religion - Mortal enemies, or a Lover’s tiff?

In school, I loved science. I wasn’t necessarily hugely good at it, but I still enjoyed it none-the-less. The most frustrating part for a Christian, of course, is having to sit through classes which deny the existence of God, and try to use science to back up their claims.

Evolution for example. Aaagh! Don’t get me started on evolution. “In the beginning was the nothing, and the nothing was with gas, and the nothing was gas. Through nothing, all things were made, and without it nothing was made that was made….”

It bugs me. Not because they teach things that a) they can’t prove and b) don’t really seem feasible, but that they teach them as facts, and never allow for the possibility of c) God (maybe I’ll do a bigger blog on it at some stage).

The biggest problem is that science and religion are seen as being at war with each other. Most secular scientists believe that, the public believes that, and even some Christians believe that. We need to understand as Christians that that is not true!

Indeed, the church and science were synonymous for a thousand years or so. Before Christians came along, the Greek philosophy was that everything had been around forever, and with no change, or that everything had come from a soupy-type mess, that had been around forever with no change.

Sounds familiar?

When Christians came along, and began looking into creation, that is when science challenged those ideas, and began to understand the scientific laws around us. Of course, as I mentioned in my last post, having Christianity as the prevailing culture did have its disadvantages, and over time some ‘Christians’ in authority began to become so stubborn in their beliefs that they refused to allow science to advance, and science broke away.

This is a real pity, because science and religion work well together, and without God, science reverted back to the whole ‘constant universe’ or ‘constant soup’ argument, up until it was shown that the universe must have had a finite beginning.

Now see, if religion and science were still hand in hand at the discovery of a finite beginning, everyone would be happy that they had proved that God must exist, and we could have carried on investigating how, and why, and looked at scientific laws to back it up.

Unfortunately, because science and religion have had their fall-out, science is left trying to explain how something can come out of nothing for no reason and create everything in an amazing way that works so well that it would appear to have been designed if not for the fact that design would mean a creator, and as that would be ‘religion’ we couldn’t allow that! As Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey explain in ‘How now shall we live?’:

Naturalistic scientists try to give the impression that they are fair-minded and objective, implying that religious people are subjective and biased in favor of their personal beliefs. But this is a ruse, for naturalism is as much a philosophy, a worldview, a personal belief system as any religion is (page 52).

Indeed, the main religious idea of Naturalistic scientists tend to be that their God is ‘No God’, and they worship that idea, and defend its existence against all odds.

The moment a Christian questions evolution, he or she is labeled a backwoods Bible-thumper, an ignorant reactionary who is trying to halt the progress of science… their imaginations are peopled with blustery, ignorant Christians going toe-to-toe with intelligent, educated, urbane defenders of Darwin… Our first task, then, before we can even expect to be heard, is to shatter that grid, to break that stereotype. We must convince people that the debate is not about the Bible versus science. The debate is about pursuing an unbiased examination of the scientific facts and following those facts wherever they may lead (page 54).

Christians and science should not be divided; they should be reunited. There are many areas of science that, when looked into unbiasedly show signs of a Creator behind them. Lets work at fixing the rift between them, and go back to having 'a nice happy family'.

We should not oppose science with religion; we should oppose bad science with better science (page 61).

History, Culture, Media, and Unfair Generalizations about the Effects of Christianity

The sad thing about Christianity is the amount of bad publicity it gets, and the really sad thing is that most of its bad publicity is due to Christians themselves. I know people who have been put off Christianity altogether simply because of the example (or lack thereof) of Christianity given to them by ‘Christians’ that they know.

The crusades for example. If ever there was a good idea, it was the crusades. What does the bible say about those that don’t believe in God? It says to be a witness to them, showing them how to live, and showing them the love that God has for them. And what better way to do that than by slaughtering them in their thousands!
(In case you didn’t pick up on it, I don’t actually think the crusades were a good idea. Just making sure you didn’t think I was serious there).

The real tragedy is that Christianity failed to learn anything from this. Look at other such instances, such as the Spanish Inquisition (no-one expects the Spanish Inquisition), Northern Ireland, and the Reformation. These ones are possibly even more tragic than the crusades, as they show Christians fighting and killing Christians!

And yet they fail to learn.

Forgive me for commenting on history when I probably have no right to, but I think the major problems that Christianity faced began when, in 324 AD, Emperor Constantine became the sole Roman Emperor, after becoming a nominal Christian and bringing an end to religious persecution. It may sound weird to think of the end of persecution as being a negative thing, but listen to this explanation:

…as Christianity went from being persecuted to being fashionable, a trend was begun that still poses a challenge to believers today: cultural Christianity…. To become a Christian was suddenly an easy decision; there was no longer heartrending dedication required - it was just a matter of being born into the right culture or hanging out with the right crowd. Christianity became an institution depending more on correct ritual, tradition, and memorization than heartfelt dedication to God. Christianity was melded with Roman culture to the point that they were indistinguishable, and the church lapsed from commitment to complacency. (Jesus Freaks Volume 2, by dc Talk, pages 229,230)

Christianity is not a matter of being born into the right culture, no matter what people may tell you. The problem happens when people think that it is. People can do evil things in the name of Christianity, without even fully understanding what Christianity is, and give Christianity a bad name.

Look at Islam. In most of the Islamic countries around the world, western culture is seen as Christian culture - the two are ‘indistinguishable.’ Then, when western tv programmes, which show increasingly lax morals, are broadcast into their nations, they come to believe that Christians themselves think and act that way. Because of the spiritual decay of our western nations, Muslims see Christianity as empty, superficial, and spiritually decayed as well.

And then there are the scandals that receive increasingly more media coverage, where priests, who have taken vows of chastity (I don’t believe these should be enforced so much, Paul talks about marrying to avoid giving into your lusts, and when priests are forced not to, then over time they give in. If you choose to take a vow of chastity, that’s different) have been found to be abusing children, etc. People look at those cases, and judge the entire idea of Christianity on them. The millions of true-believing priests, who are committed to God and have served him faithfully in the community, are seen as hypocrites and liars because of the few priests who weren’t so sincere and did the wrong thing. Its tragic.

People judge Christianity off the negatives, without stopping to look at the positives. Instead of looking into Christianity’s claims, and understanding what it teaches, and whether or not its true, they judge it before they even get the chance.

That’s just sad.

If you are not a Christian, I challenge you to find a committed Christian, and talk to them about what they believe and why.

Jesus works in the lives on individuals, so look to those individuals to see his works.

Commitment: He who loses his life....

Have you ever made a commitment to something, and then struggled to keep that commitment? I have, and I’d say that most people probably have as well. After all, we are human, and humans definitely aren’t perfect.

The great thing is, of course, that God isn’t like that. Even the pagan prophet Baalam understood that, when he uttered an Oracle in Numbers 23:

“God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” (Numbers 23:19)

As all those listening to that Oracle would have understood, the answer to those questions is ‘No.’ God is holy, and perfect, and as such cannot allow the slightest imperfection or untruth to be anywhere in his character, and therefore he cannot lie.

This is very reassuring, as God has promised us amazing things, and will never (be able to) fail to deliver. Even when the promises may take a while to eventuate, if God has promised them, we know they will come to pass. Take Abraham for example. God promised him countless descendants, and he had to wait until he was 100 and his wife 99 to even have their own child! He must have been getting a bit worried by then that there was something wrong with that prophecy, but God promised it, and so it happened.

The greatest commitment that God ever made, however, was his commitment to save us if we falled away, to give us eternal life through whatever means necessary if we failed to hold on to it in the Garden of Eden. Many people have debated over why God would create the world like he did if (seeing the future) he knew that people would turn away from him. I don’t know the answer to that, and we may never fully be able to understand his reasoning on this side of eternity, but the most important thing is that he loved us enough to plan a way back to him if he did.

The bible explains that before the world was even created, God had prepared his master plan (Jesus) to redeem us. Take a moment to understand that: before we were even created, God decided that he loved us so much, that it was worth dying the most hideous death imaginable - death on a cross - just to give us the choice of whether we wanted to love him back or not. That is incredible. If you can get a hold of that concept, it can be life changing. It was for Paul. Listen to how he introduces himself in the letter to Titus.

Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ for the faith of God’s elect and the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness - a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time… (Titus 1.1-2)

God’s commitment to love us limitlessly was enough to turn Paul’s life around. I’m sure that in his life Paul made many commitments that he did not live up to (luckily he didn't live up to his earlier commitment to exterminate the Christians), but in Jesus he found something worth betting his life on. Even though Paul never even saw Jesus in the flesh (except maybe in a blinding light on the road to Damascus), he was able to commit himself fully to his cause, following him faithfully even to a martyr’s death.

That same commitment to God is one I will strive to keep.

Trust: Leaning off the bridge

The world is like a bridge. The wise man will pass over it, but he'll not stop and build his house on it.
- Unknown

Lord, you know that I've been trying to build my house on the bridge of this life for some time. I have all these plans of what I want to do, but no ideas how to do them. I can get so frustrated trying to get my life to turn out how I want it to, when I should be trusting in you.

The cause of our discontentment is simply because we do not believe God. The wilderness leads to the Promised Land... Do we think we can find a better way to God?
- Elizabeth Elliot

It can be very tough to trust in God to look after your life. After all, who would ever want to trust in something you can't even see, and hope that it will look after you?

I guess thats why God made some vital things invisible, like gravity and air, things that we have to rely on each day to help us survive. It is simply so that we can realise that we can trust them, even if we can't see them, and we can trust Him too.

If you're having trouble trying to give your life over to Him, look at some of the promises He has given you. I carry a book of quotes around with me, and most of them are bible verses. I haven't been looking at them enough lately, as I've tried to run my own life, but there is power in them.

He is wooing you from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from restriction, to the comfort of your table laden with choice food.
- Job 36:16

God's plan for our lives doesn't end with this life. The world we live in is by no means perfect, so God has prepared a place even better for us. Instead of focussing on this life, and trying to get all we can out of it, we should try to focus on God, and plan for the eternity to come.

We may find ourselves restricted in this life, perhaps even trapped, unable to do the things we want to do, when we want to do them, and in the ways we want to, but if we trust in God, rely on Him, lean on Him, then He will lead us on to everything good He has planned for us.

This empire of dirt

Today the song 'Hurt' (written by Nine Inch Nails but performed in this version by Johnny Cash) has been going around in my head. I saw just the end of the music video this morning on tv, and it reminded me just how powerful it is.

Candid and intense, it sees The Man In Black perform the song in his home, with no effort made to hide his age or increasing frailty. The poignancy is increased as the performance shots are cut with old images of a young and vital Cash jumping trains and striding the earth. (http://www.nme.com/features/104451.htm)

To me, the video (which you can see if you click in this blog title) is amazing, as you see him, surrounded by all of the possessions he has accumulated over the years, thinking about how little his 'empire of dirt' means (he died soon after recording this). In the end, you can't take anything with you when you die. How much does it all mean to you, when it is only fleeting?

Lyrics for 'Hurt'
I hurt myself today
to see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
the only thing that's real
the needle tears a hole
the old familiar sting
try to kill it all away
but I remember everything

what have I become?
my sweetest friend
everyone I know
goes away in the end
and you could have it all
my empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of thorns
upon my liar's chair
full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
beneath the stains of time
the feelings disappear
you are someone else
I am still right here

what have I become?
my sweetest friend
everyone I know
goes away in the end
and you could have it all
my empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

if I could start again
a million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way

Wasting time while waiting for antivirus upgrade to download

Original Version
Have you ever played with any of the translation tools on the internet? They can be quite fun actually. What you do is go to one of them, such as the google one which I will be using, and type in what you want to say. When you finish, you can translate it into other languages, and then back into English. The fun part is that the translation is not perfect, and results in different orders of sentences, or even entire meanings, when translated back into English. This is not a spiritual post, really. I just like to have fun, and so does God. After all, He created senses of humour in the first place.

German Version
Haben Sie überhaupt mit irgendwelchen der Übersetzungshilfsmittel auf dem Internet gespielt? Sie können Spaß durchaus wirklich sein. Was Sie, ist gehen bis eine von ihnen, wie dem google einem, das ich benutzen werde, und eintippen, was Sie sagen möchten. Wenn Sie beenden, können Sie es in andere Sprachen und dann zurück in Englisch übersetzen. Das Spaßteil ist, daß die Übersetzung nicht vollkommen ist, und ergibt unterschiedliche Aufträge von Sätzen oder sogar gesamte Bedeutungen, wenn es zurück in Englisch übersetzt wird. Dieses ist nicht ein geistiger Pfosten, wirklich. Ich mag gerade zu habe Spaß und also tue Gott. Schließlich verursachte er Richtungen der Stimmung an erster Stelle.

New English Version
Did you play at all with any of the translation aids on the InterNet? They can be quite real fun. Which you, is go to one of them, how type that google one, which I will use, and, which you would like to say. If you terminate, you can translate it into other languages and then back into English. The fun part is that the translation is not perfect, and results in different orders of sentences or even entire meanings, if it is translated back into English. This is not real a mental post. I like straight too have fun and thus do God. Finally it caused directions of the tendency in the first place.

Feed a fever, Starve a sin

One of the greatest struggles that Christians face must surely be against sin. As I talked about in a previous post, we are supposed to be new creations, but the old creation sometimes is not as dead as we would like it to be. Paul illustrates this in Romans 7:15-20, where, in one of the most humourously worded passages in all of scripture, he admits:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate to do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

It is amazing how accurate this passage plays out sometimes. When you are struggling with sin, and seemingly unable to defeat it, it truly feels like the sin is ‘living within you’, forcing you to obey it. It is not just a matter of deciding that you are going to get right with God; it is a war against your inner self.

And this is where a lot of people struggle, and where I myself have often struggled. You can get so determined to beat sin, that it becomes harder to do so.

It may surprise you to learn that nowhere in the bible (to my knowledge, I had better be careful claiming something like that) does it instruct people to “resist temptation.” It does instruct us to avoid sin, but not to resist it (it also instructs us to resist the devil, which forces him to flee, but that is not the issue here).

Don’t understand? The following example (from a book dealing with homosexuality: 101 Frequently Asked Questions About Homosexuality by Mike Haley,) might help.

Listen to me now: Don’t think of the number eight. Don’t think about it. Careful…don’t think about the number eight! What are you thinking about right now? That’s right - the number eight.

The point of this is that the more you try to resist sin, the more you think about sin, and therefore, the more likely you are to do sin. Instead, we are instructed not to think about sin at all, but rather the ‘focus on the things above’. The less we think about sin, the more we avoid it, and the more we avoid it the less we have to fight it, and the less chance we have of succumbing to it.

Rather than trying to kill sin in hand-to-hand combat, and ending up battered and bruised from your attempts, it is far easier to kill through neglect. Starve it to death, but feed yourself on good things at the same time. That way, if you do face off with sin, you will find that you are stronger (and well fed), while it is malnourished and able to be beaten down far easier.

Letters to the Editor

Our local newspaper (the Nelson Mail) has often got a lot of letters about God written to it. Every now and then I feel compelled to reply to something I have read. The difficulty is trying to say what you need to in 200 words or less, but that can be part of the fun too. A recent letter read:

God's work?
Sir, Natural disasters happen all the time, and kill millions. Writing about the recent mega-disaster around the Indian Ocean, Shirley Dunne (Nelson Mail, January 8) says that it "is no one's fault, least of all God's."
Ms Dunne is clearly a Christian believer, so let's get this straight - this is the same God that Christians believe created the world. He designed it so that disastrous events are commonplace, but he's not responsible for the fact that they kill and harm people?
This business highlights a dilemma for Christians. They find the Jesus story in the Bible to be well-supported historically, and compelling personally, based on a remarkable series of reported events and sayings from a three-year period about 2000 years ago. However, what has God done since then that has been of any benefit to mankind?
Individuals believe that their lives have been affected for good and Christians do some good (in addition to a lot of harm), but where is the collective benefit?
The same question can be asked of all the major religions and from my reading of history, the answer is - nothing. What is the use of a God who sits on his hands and does nothing?

Although I could not cover all of the points he raised in 200 words, I sent a reply in today which may hopefully answer some of his questions, or talk to others who read the paper.

God and Tsunamis
Sir,Peter Balance (Mailbox, January 13), seems to assume that because he hasn’t heard from God personally, God has been ‘sitting on his hands.’ How so? God could be affecting the world immensely without his knowledge. Tremain (January 13) pointed out that we haven’t heard from Osama for some time, but does that mean Osama is doing nothing, or perhaps does not exist?
Mr Balance’s main concern is the tsunami. He claims God made the world, designed tsunamis, and knew they would kill. However, if one looks at the God of the Bible, the world was not designed in this way at all. Earth was perfect when created (eg. no death/tsunamis), but has since been corrupted and is slowly decaying. Things such as earthquakes come because of this decay - not through design by God.
Maybe God could step in and save those people, but how much dictatorship would we accept? Wouldn’t that remove our free will? Instead, God allows us to choose our own paths, even going through death, without being forced to follow Him. God provided the chance for eternal salvation through Jesus, and gives us a choice, then stands back and lets us make it without coercing us. That’s love.

'F Words' - Powerful and Misunderstood

Filling in my holidays, I've taken a temporary job thinning kiwifruit (yes, in New Zealand we call them kiwifruit to distinguish them from kiwi people and kiwi birds), which has been mostly good, but it has been a little bit tough having to put up with the conversations carrying over from neighbouring rows.

My mum always said that those who used 'the F word' a lot must have limited vocabularies, and I am tending to agree with her. To these people, the word is used the way others might use 'um' or 'er' - as a space filler. Because of this, I get to hear the word quite often during the day, which kind of gets to you after a while.

Also, they're not even using it correctly! I mean, if you use other words, you have to know what they mean, and stick them in the correct place, or it doesn't make any sense, and people could laugh at you. Not so with the F word! According to the dictionary, it has a set meaning to do with sexual relations, and that has nothing to do with most of their conversations (luckily).

(God has been helping out, though. When I have been really getting sick of the language, I have asked him "Please do something about it" and have suddenly found a light patch of thinning, or a gap, or something else to do, and have moved out of ear-range. Thankyou God!)

However, the constant misuse of this word being loudly and frequently brought to my attention has reminded me of another 'F Word', one not so offensive but still perhaps not fully understood by those who use it.
The word is 'Faith'.

Faith seems to be thrown about a lot by Christians and non-Christians alike (although usually in a Christian or religious context). "If you just have faith," they say, "then everything will turn out right." Faith is claimed to be a cure-all, a miraculous way to obtain everything you ever wanted, at no cost to yourself. Those with faith will get the cars, houses, and men/women (all plural) of their dreams, and will be able to sit back in health and wellbeing for all of their lives, while the poor 'unfaithful' sit in the gutter lamenting the fact that they are not able to be rich.

This is not what it means! The bible says that "without faith it is impossible to please God." I know for a fact that many poor people please God (look at Job who lost everything, or Joseph when he was in jail, or Noah when his whole generation thought him insane), so having cars/houses/men/women etc is obviously not a requesite of faith. There are also many rich people who are definately not pleasing God!

Hebrews says that faith is "being sure of what we hope for, and certain of that which we do not see." Its that simple. Faith isn't having the ability to turn water into wine, or walk on water, it is simply 100% trust. For example, I know that God is real. I cannot necessarily show you proof, and I have never seen God, but I still know it. That is my act of faith. It is being certain of that which I do not see. I am also sure that if I follow God, I will go to heaven. I am sure of it, even though I probably only can hope that I'm right. It is being sure of what I hope for. That is faith as well.

The exciting thing is that this faith results in a lot of neat things. As I have said, faith doesn't mean that you can walk on water, but Jesus said that with faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains. A mustard seed is very small (understatement), and so if I already have faith enough to know God is real and that heaven awaits me, I believe that I have that much faith.

Why haven't I been moving mountains then, you may ask? Well, God hasn't asked me to. The thing that you realise when you become a Christian is that in yourself, you are nothing, but with God you are everything and so much more! In myself, I can't move a mountain (except perhaps with a strong shovel and a lot of hours hard labour), but with God (who spoke and created the universe) it is a piece of cake. If I allign myself with God's will, and do the things he wants me to do, then he will work with me to see them happen. If he tells Peter to walk on the water, then Peter is able to because God helps him to. But, if I go off on my own, and think "I can move mountains" then I am going to be disappointed, because God is not in it.

Thats why I seek to do God's will, and follow where he leads me. Because I know that many of the things I want to do, I can't.

But God can.

Perspectives on the Brain Battle

Being a Christian isn't easy. Whoever started that rumour has some serious explaining to do, because it really isn't!!!

Basically, we all have 'sinful natures' which means that sometimes we don't want to do the right thing, even when we know its the right thing, know that God wants us to do the right thing, our friends want us to do the right thing, and deep down inside part of us realises that we should be doing the right thing as well.

This doesn't change when you become a Christian. You still have to fight with the part of you that wants to do wrong, the 'sinful nature' within you. However, Christians do have an added thing to help them make the right decisions. Paul refers to it in 1 Corinthians, where he says "So, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone and the new has come."

To be completely honest to the point of transparency, I have been struggling with my 'old creation' a bit lately, mostly in my mind. I've been trying to figure out why this is. I mean, if "the old has gone" then shouldn't it not be there anymore?

I suppose over all you are still going to face the same issues whether you are a Christian or a non-Christian. The only difference is the way you view these issues. To a non-Christian, suffering, battling to do good, sickness, or anything like this is something you have to deal with on your own, or at the best, with a friend or two. I can not only rely on my friends if I need them, but I have God there always, right beside me, to help and support me as well.

Also, whereas any major problem, like an ongoing sickness would be tragic to a non-Christian, and possibly ruin their life entirely, a Christian, although still having to face the problem, can always be secure in the knowledge that all problems in life are temporary. This life is just the dot at the start of the endless novel of eternity.

That is an amazing perspective to be able to see it from.

Now - For Dummies

This post is the result of two books I am reading at the moment (Mere Christianity and Where is God when it Hurts?) plus a conversation I had with two of my friends yesterday. It is probably quite a bit more confusing than most of my posts, but if you can get your head around this idea it can help understand some things about God better.

In Exodus 4, God appears to Moses in the burning bush, and tells him that His name is "I am that I am". Elsewhere in the bible, we are told that God is the same yesterday, today and forever. God is also called the 'Alpha and the Omega' (or the 'first and the last'). He existed before the universe began and will continue to exist after it ends. He knows everything that has happened, and everything that will happen in this universe.

The problem for us as people, is that we exist within creation, and part of creation is the concept of time. Time is something that God created along with everything else, and we are told this in Genesis 1. God says 'Let there be light' and later there is the first day and the first night. This shows that time is created at that point.

Some people who have problems with Christianity ask where God came from, the whole "Who created God?" argument, but they fail to grasp the idea that because God created time, he exists outside it. Without the concept of time, there is no such thing as beginning and end, or before and after. Everything is now.

It can be quite difficult for people to understand this fully. God doesn't simply 'foresee' the future, or 'remember' the past like we would do. He actually lives in those moments as if they were happening right now, because to him they are! God tries to explain this to Jeremiah when he says (Jeremiah 1:5) "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you". God knew Jeremiah because at the same time as he IS creating the earth, he IS talking to Jeremiah, just as he IS watching you read this right now, and IS watching the universe finally end whenever it will. This is how God knows who will choose to follow him in the end, because he sees them following him now.

If everything for God is now, then there is no need for anyone to create him. That would imply having a beginning, but without time there is no beginning, just as there is no end.

If everything for God is now, then He didn't know that Satan would rebel when he created him, or that people would choose to disobey him, he sees them disobeying him now. He sees every single act of rebellion and disobedience that ever was or every will be as if they are happening right now, and yet he still chooses to create them and give them the chance to obey. This means also that for all eternity He sees his son give up his life to set us free from our sins. There is no pain that we could imagine that could ever even comprehend that in any way. No wonder He turns his face away from the sight.

Imagine watching the one you loved most of all dying, and then having to watch them die forever. Then think how much you must love someone else, in order to allow that to happen.

That is how much God loves you.

Thats why I love Him.

If you want to talk to me about any of this, leave me a note, and I'll email you. God loves you that much, He deserves a chance from you.