Wow

OK it has been some time since I blogged here....I think I need to dust off a few things :) Perhaps if the few folk who read this blog could add some comment we'd get some more discussion going....so please add your 2 cents!
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Anyhow we've been journeying through Galatians and particularly looking at the major issue of law vs. grace that Paul tackles elsewhere too. It is such a struggle to accept grace - that God is in fact not the cosmic bean counter.

2 Corinthians 5:18-19 "All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation."

So many Christians find this truth so tough to absorb - that Grace is the answer and not right action. Perhaps one of the most moving and challenging books on this is Philip Yancey's "what is so amazing about grace" is definitely worth a read!

The tension is that whilst we cannot be made right by the law - we are expected to live as if we where under it. I guess when we get it right we thing we're especially blessed and when we think we've essed up that we are cursed - yet Grace works beyond and above both those realms. It is a fundamentall difference between our God and other religions.

What an awesome God we serve.

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This Sunday being Pentecost we're talking about...well, tough guess, the work of the Hoy Spirit!

Worship Pastors?

Worship pastors seem to me to be a strange thing. I believe that we should really lose the term entirely (my church is still small and we don't have a worship pastor. yet? ) 

Here is the issue: we have often elevated worship music to the status of worship....and it is not. It is part of worship, and an important part at that, and I love sining songs to God, old or new. That being said we to often see singing worship as the totallity of worship, and that is to make a fatal mistake.

I'd argue that unless we worship God with all of our lives (Rom 11, 1 Cor 10:31) Monday to Sunday in whatever we do, we are not really worshipping him, no matter how intese or spirtual our sunday singing may have felt. Of course that brings the obvious point that it really does not make a difference how we feel, it really matters what God feels about our worship. 

Which makes me wonder again: if we sing songs repeatedly to worship God becuase it feels good has it then ceased to be worship and instead become the idolatry of self?

John Piper

John Piper is an outstanding preacher...good old shcool reformed teaching check out his website at Desiring God  his sermons are available for donwload and well worth listening to. He preaches from time to time at Mark Driscol's church Mars Hill which is where I picked up his stuff.

SermonJams

http://relevantrevolution.com/home.html

 

Some great stuff here, if you can get past some of the frustratingly annoying backing music...short, punchy sermons with good substance by some well known names...make copies, pass them on and let’s get Jesus message out there!

Great Article on the Divinity of Jesus

Mark Roberts is a PCUSA minister who’s blog I read. He has written a great series on Jesus divinity. In this outstanding article he outlines some of the early development of the theology of the Early church with regards to the divinity of Jesus. It is very helpful as an apologetic tool against those who would suggest that the divinity of Jesus is a much later invention.

Chinese liers

I feel so cheated after watching the Olympic opening ceremony on TV and being wowed by it all. We are now told the girl who sang the song was actually lip synching because the girl who had the voice was not pretty enough and it "was in the national interest" to have a pretty face and a good voice. Likewise many of the fireworks where pre-recorded too.

It seems that so much of what China shows the world is a lie when the truth behind the scenes is something far more serious and devious. Whilst they might be the next superpower I think that their misinformation, lies and rhetoric will outdo even that of the current superpower, the USA.

It seems like nothing around us is what it seems. Lying seems acceptable if it will get us riches or power and what I find most disturbing is that people accept it and carry on as if nothing happens.

Perhaps it is time we stood up for the truth and for the one calls himself the Truth. Perhaps it is time that the church took a stand against corruption and lies that face us each and every day. I am not suggesting that the church become political, but I am suggesting the church speaks out against corrupt politics and lying politicians. Otherwise we stand to be mislead like we were at the Olympics and we fail to see what is really happening. We have the wool pulled over our eyes and we miss the wood for the trees.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ^He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. ^The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it."

Perhaps it is time that we allow Jesus light to shine into the darkness of this world.

So long bud...

Yesterday my close friend Hannes died whilst climbing on Mont Blanc in the Alps.

His last mail a week back was “next week i am off with Mark Johnston to climb something big and alpine and so and so for 3 or 4 days...grim life! ciao H”

Here is a pic of Hannes (left) and I on the summit Mount Kenya almost three years ago to the day in happier times!

Hannes loved the Lord, amidst the questions and wrestles we all have as we face the confusion and difficulty of life. The sadness is losing him when he was at the highest point. It seemed that everything had finally come together and he had recieved answer to prayers prayed over many years. He had just relocated to Switzerland to be with his girlfriend Angelika and he was happier than he had been for a long time, they where planning to come back in a couple of months and already we'd begun to speak of what we'd climb.

There are so many moments that we shared roped together, sometimes just the two of us, other times with Ty another close friend. We shared laughter and fear, we had moments of silliness and other moments where we reflected deeply on life. There is a kinship of the mountains that can never be explained to those who have not shared it, a brotherhood of the rope - a bond that runs deep. There is something amazingly surreal about sitting on a ledge hundreds of meters above the scree slopes, arms buzzing after an epic pitch of Cape Town sandstone, your mind in a place so free, feet dangling barefoot over the void, a gentle breeze and the African sun warming your back - moments when it almost feel like you're touching heaven in God's creation - it is those moments with Hannes that I will remember forever.

Hannes died doing what he loved most, perhaps in heaven we get to do those things we love most again - I sure hope so and Hannes my prayer is that you're busy cranking the crux on some epic heavenly route!

Cheers bud, we’re gonna miss ya!