Church

Truth or Lie?

Earlier on this year, I went on Katoomba Mens Convention (MKC). It was a great time with the men at our church. We had only been at the church for a few weeks, so it was a helpful time for me getting to know the men at our church.

The theme of the weekend was Temptation. The speakers were David Cook and Justin Mote. The teaching on the weekend was so good, that I’ve started listening to the talks again. You can get them here. One quote, or theme from the weekend has stood out to me time and time again. It is this.

“A half truth, told as a whole truth, is an untruth” – David Cook on Gen 3.

The quote comes from David Cook’s sermon on Genesis 3 and the fall. In Genesis 3 the serpent gets Eve to eat the fruit through many small half truths about God and what he had told Adam.

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

From this passage, I’ve been trying to reflect on how the serpent (satan) tells me half truths in order to tempt me. And also the times when I tell half truths, and how I can stop doing it.

Do you have the right tools?

Because I’m training to be a Christian minister, I feel the need to have good tools to help me do my job. It sounds simple, a carpenter needs good tools that work. If it is not a good hammer (nail gun), his work might be compromised. This is the same for Christians, you need to have a good bible. A bible that you can trust in.

This year ive been trying to work out what I should do about bible software on my computer. Traditionally there have been two main programs that have served the Mac, Logos and Accordance. From what I have heard, they are both good pieces of software. Really helpful tools for studying the bible,and sharing it’s contents with others. Recently both programs unveiled versions for the iPhone and iPad, meaning that you can have all your tools available to you even when you don’t have your computer handy.

The problem sometimes lies in the price of these programs. The middle package from Logos is priced at $629.95, and the accordance pricing is so confusing that I ran out of patience.

This is where Glo Bible comes in. Glo Bible is a program that has been on the PC for the past year and a bit, and just quietly, I was a bit excited when I found out that they had released a version for Mac, iPad and soon to be iPhone. The interface is really easy to use, and the content is amazing. On a really simple level, it is a bible. And the aim of it, is to get you to read the bible. But it also offers timelines, photos, an atlas and heaps HD video content. And it only cost $50 US, because they are having a launch discount.

Ill probably end up getting Logos, because that has lots of stuff that I think ill need in the future years. But at the moment I couldn’t justify the $629 price tag, so the $50 Glo Bible got my vote. It’s a great tool, and ive already found it extremely helpful in my bible study.

Lets start at the very beginning…

The last couple of weeks at church we have kicked off a series in Genesis. Also at College, my Old Testament lectures have been on the book of Genesis. It has been great to have a rare opportunity to study this book in both contexts.

Often at college, subjects take an academic flavour. Simply a downloading of information, in the ambition that we will be able to synthesise what he have learnt and heard, into an essay or an exam. This isn’t what normally what happens, but it does sometimes. This can be frustrating, but it isn’t really a problem, College is a University after all.

But it has been great learning this book in two very different contexts. Mostly because is has allowed me to use this knowledge from College to help love and teach the people at church. I’m preaching again in a couple of weeks, and I’m looking forward to being able to continue to do this to a fuller extent.

I thought I would share some of the things that I have learnt from the first 2 chapters.

  • God creates with his word, or his speech.
  • Creating is not a by-product of some other event, it was created in it’s own right.
  • God created Man under himself, but above the animals.
  • God created Woman out of the side of man. (Implying that they are not above or below each other, but side-by-side)
  • Everything that God made was good.

Jesus’ Crucifixion | Matthew 27:27-44

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been doing a little bit of preaching at our church. Most recently I did a sermon on Matthew 27:27-44 about Jesus’ Crucifixion. I’ve had a few people ask me where they can go to listen to it. Well you can just click below because I’ve worked out how to embed files into my webpage from a program called SoundCloud. Winner. If you don’t want to listen to it I’m not bothered, I wont even be offended.

Introducing – Albert Midlane

For the last 2 weeks I have had the privilege of preaching to the people at our church. I’ve loved doing back to back sermons over two weeks, it has given me a rare opportunity as a student minister to prepare two sermons in short succession. Over the two weeks, I worked through Matthew 27, as part of a wider series on the last 24 hours of Jesus life. A series we are doing specifically in the run up to easter.

Matthew 27 can be summed up pretty well by a poem that I discovered by a dude called Albert Midlane. He lived from 1825 to 1909. He wrote heaps of good stuff over the course of his life. But this short verse caught my attention as I was preparing.

Himself He could not save,
He on the cross must die,
Or mercy cannot come
To ruined sinners nigh;
Yes, Christ the Son of God must bleed,
That sinners might from sin be freed.

My main job in preaching these two weeks was to make sense of what Jesus was going to the cross to do, and why he didn’t just pull out and save himself when the beatings and the verbal abuse got too hard. This poem helped me articulate that well.

Infomercials are bad, Infographics are good.

Im not at all a fan of infomercials. I am however, a massive fan of infographics.

Recently I had the great opportunity to go away for a weekend with a group of Guys from our church. The reason we went away was to go along to Men’s Katoomba Convention. MKC is run by KCC. It was a really great weekend.

The weekend was titled “Men Facing Temptation”. One of the things that was highlighted during the weekend, was how pornography is something that seems to be constantly invading the minds and marriages of many Christian men.

Recently I came across this infographic which highlights the prevalence of pornography, particularly in America, but it also has some interesting points that can be applied outside of America.

Raising Healthy Kids

Recently I wrote about a website I had developed for our new church, St Ives Family Church. One of the features that we really needed was a place for people from the school community of St Ives North Primary School to see what we are about, and who we are.

Another function we needed was a place that people could easily register for events that we are holding.

This month we are holding one of these events, we have called it “Raising Healthy Kids“. We are getting Professor Kim Oates to come and speak about how we can raise healthy kids. It is going to be great evening. Kim had tons of experience with working with kids, you can see the flier here.

If you have Kids, then it would be a really great night to come along to. It only costs 5 bucks.