He is mighty to save...

Bad things happen. Sad things happen. There are times in life where we feel rejected, dejected, hurt and confused. The wonderful thing to remember in these times is that God is walking beside us and in us by his Holy Spirit....

Zephaniah 3:17 – “The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing."

The Lord your God is with you. You are not alone. God never intended for you to live this life alone. God didn’t design you to do it alone. In fact as we draw close to God we find that life becomes just that little bit easier. We can take the things that are troubling us to him. We can rest in the fact God is walking along side us, rejoicing in us, loving us, delighting in us and telling us, it’s ok. We have a God who loves us completely as we are, and is interested in every detail of your life.... if we go back to Philippians we are reminded that the Lord is near, and that we should take everything to him, by prayer and petition and that as we do this, he will fill our hearts with his peace.

When we take the time to give these things to God, we are saying to God you are in control, you are faithful, you know what’s best and I can trust you. The great news is, he won’t let you down. He is ‘mighty to save’ us from sin and death, from hurt, from confusion, from all things... This is not saying that hurt won’t happen, that pain won’t happen, that temptation won’t happen..... it will. We are in a broken, sinful, hurting world. But....God offers us hope in the midst of hopelessness, God offers us peace in the storm and God offers us his Love when we need it.

The challenge for us today is to trust God in all and every circumstance, especially when it’s hard and believe passages like Zephaniah 3:17 when it says.... The Lord you God is with you, he is mighty to save.

Isn't it more than just standing??

Today is less of a thought and more of a rant as I reflected on Sunday nights theme of standing up against poverty and then I reflected on me. Read the following scriptures...

Matt 6:2 ‘So when you give to the needy....’
Micah 6:8 ‘....And what does the Lord require of you? To act Justly and love mercy and to walk humbly with your God’
Matthew 25:40 ‘The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me’
Matthew 28:19 ‘Therefore go and make disciples of all nations’

I stood up. I then sat down again. How many people did that with me across the church and across the world. We stood up. We sat back down. We were stirred for a moment, and said ‘yeah I want poverty to be history’, and then we sat down again, relatively unchanged. We even got excited about the prospect of breaking a Guiness World Record for the amount of people standing up..... standing up?? We can stand up, we can talk, we can even have amazing thoughts or ideas but if that’s it, poverty is not going anywhere. This email is not directed at those who do act.... but if we are honest those people are the minority.

The reality is, if all those people around the world instead of standing, stayed seated and gave just $1, the debt problem is solved, yet we just stood. Basically if we all stand and none of it is backed up with action, we should’ve stayed seated, because standing should be more than just.... well standing.... shouldn’t it???

This got me thinking. Why should we be standing and acting against poverty? And then more than that, what should it look like? I think the answer is found in Matt 28:19 – when Jesus said go and make disciples.... our faith is based on Love. Love in word and deed, not just in intentions. When we become a disciple of Christ, we then share in his burden for this crooked and depraved (Philippians 2) world. We should want ALL to know him and his Love and display this love by caring, by giving, by speaking, by doing what it takes, to show them how much God loves them, and what lengths Jesus went to save them from hell.

God gives us so much in money and talents not so we can live better, but so can give better.....

Non-Christians all around the world, serve the world, stand up against poverty, and do countless other good deeds. So what make us different? We are concerned about more than just their physical well-being but their spiritual well-being as well.... We desire to show the world that Jesus loves them.... Jesus didn’t say in Matthew 28.... ‘feed the poor, cancel debt’ no! he said ‘make disciples’ – and as we show the love of God that is when lives are changed, healed, mended.... and poverty of spirit is broken. God’s priority is to have all people reconciled to him, not just improve their standard of living. He calls us to give (Matt 6:2) he calls us to act (James 2:14-26) he calls us to love justice and mercy (Micah 6:8), and we do this to show them who Jesus is.... so they can come home with us!

What a world it would be if Christians not only stood up, but acted. Not for any self-righteous reason but in response to wonderful and amazing grace shown to us through Jesus Christ....

let it go....

Do you ever find that you can be at church and all you can do is be critical? That is me to a tee. To my shame i spend way too much time being critical and not enough time worshipping God....

last night i was in church doing my normal thing, having negative thoughts about this and that and then it was like God said to me 'let it go Andy' - and reminded me why i was at church. It's not so i can critique the service, but more the spend time with Him.

Do you let the music, the welcome, the preacher, the money thing, the people, the colour of the chairs, the rubbish on the floor effect whether you worship God or not?

The truth is.... if we focus on people, the service, the music etc, sometimes we will be encouraged to worship, sometimes we won't. but if we focus on God.... we worship regardless.

So the challenge for me is this..... if the music sucks, let it go and worship God. If the expression and vibe of the service is dated, dorky, traditional, happy clappy or anything else in the long list i don't like... worship God.

If we only worship God when the music is good then we have missed the point. hasn't it got something to do with Jesus???

have you missed the point? i am working to fix this.

You know it....

We all knew it was going to happen. I just need to mention Manly. They dominated the NRL grand final and so i am feeling smug.

Loving it.

Fitness Age??

Well today i went to the gym and had a fitness test done on my body. What did they find out? Well, they found out the i have the body of a 57 year old, the cardio fitness of a 79 year old, the flexibility of a 20 year old and the strength of a 58 year old. Which gave me an overall fitness ago of..... 56. Wow i must be pretty healthy.

Interestingly though, i then jumped on a bike and rode for 20 mins keeping my heart beat above 160 the whole time. I'd like to see a 79 year old do that...

I guess if they were trying to shock me into getting fit.... then it worked. well done fitness first....

In the news today...

I was looking through the sydney morning herald and i was shocked at the stories that are in the news. In a short moment i read about young girls between 10-14 suffering from low self-image and esteem. I read about how we are a fatter and sadder generation than ever before and finally i read that we are busier than ever, to the extent that we are not sleeping and thus we are more exhausted than ever before....

What is going on with our generation?? we need to learn to stop. We need to learn to rest. We need to remember that we have been fearfully and wonderfully made by our loving Lord.

If we could only catch a glimpse of how perfectly we have been made, and if we were to understand our need to rest and the joy found in knowing Christ than what a community we would be apart of....

mmmm

wanna come for a run?

I have been reading through Philippians 3:12-4:1. During this passage Paul paints a metaphor of us running in a race. The finishing line is heaven, the goal is Jesus and to be Christ-like...

Philippians 3:13-14

Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

During this passage Paul reminds us to forget the past but focus in on the fact our citizenship is in Heaven with God. I don’t know about you but I am shocking with focussing in on my past. I look at my mistakes, my failures, my hurtful words, my regrets and the like and get so caught up in these that I forget that I need to press on. I forget the need and the benefit of repentance and moving on.

Is that you? Are you someone holding onto a sin, a regret or a failure and allowing it to hold you back from the race that God has called you to run? If it is, the good news is this.... God wants you to hand it on to him, agree not to do it again and press on... You could, on the other hand, be that person that has a sin, regret, failure or whatever but continues on with the race without first handing the problem onto God.... this is self-defeating.... it’s like running this race without your shoes on, or with a limp. God wants to restore you. You’ve just got to have the humility to admit that there’s a problem you need to address, then you can forget about it and press onward.

I can imagine this process being us bringing our sin to God and him saying to us in return “forget about it”

Let’s focus our eyes on the goal who is Jesus, and live out the life he has called us to live!

I’m going to start running..... want to join me?

What is happening?

Well my thoughts today have been dominated by the sudden news of two people I have come to look up to in recent times. One being Mike Guglielmucci and the claims of him not really ever being sick and the other being Todd Bentley, who has had to step down from his ministry due to a break down in his marriage..... shivers.

The only word I can use to describe how I am feeling is rattled. It has caused my brain to go into a spin and caused me to think about God and what I (we) can learn from both of these events....

God..... why do You use people to execute your will here on earth? We are broken, sinful and the like....

We see it all through history and obviously we are still seeing it today. We saw it in King David, we saw it in Moses, we saw it Peter..... we now see it in Mike G, we see it Todd, I see it in me..... I just haven’t been caught out yet.... and you can probably see it in you..... and so let's not be quick to judge, but be quick to pray and to love.....

Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians that we are cracked pots. God uses us, to show it is not us doing the amazing things but Him. I have always thought when it came to Todd Bentley.... I don’t understand why him but gee whizz I love what God is doing. I still believe that God is working in and through the brokenness that we see and is in the process of orchestrating something good out of this mess.... but who knows what it will look like, other than God, Shivers.

I still believe in God and his ability to heal, and to amazing things among us....

here goes...

I am new to this and i am now ready to get some of my thoughts out there....