Category: Christian Living

Listening is something of a lost art which needs to be recaptured, retaught, and reapplied in our relationships with God and with others; both because it will greatly improve our quality of life, and because it lies at the heart of what it means to be like the God who Himself listens to us. In his book The Listening Life: Embracing Attentiveness in a World of Distraction, Adam S. McHugh talks about listening as one of the best gifts we can both give and receive. At the time of writing this I’m four chapters in to his book and already I’ve been encouraged and challenged about the importance of listening with all my senses—not simply listening with one ear while my fingers text and my…

There’s a dangerous rhetoric that has invaded the Christian vernacular, and the three small words of this subtle message have had a massive, subversive influence on many young Christians’ understanding of themselves, and by extension a cheapened view of the cross and ultimately of God. What are these words, and how could they be so damaging? It’s the notion memorably set to music in Christina Aguilera’s 2002 hit “beautiful”, captured now in inspirational Instagram quotes superimposed over strong mountains or tall trees. You Are Enough. The only problem is, it’s a lie. So the next time a preacher, pastor, public speaker, self-help guru, or friend tells you that “you are enough”, don’t believe them. Don’t buy into the lie that says you should trust in yourself…

Heavenly Father, we pray for the Christian church worldwide, which You have called into existence for a witness and testimony of Your grace, mercy, love, and truth. We ask Your forgiveness for ‘peddling the gospel’, for making your sacred truth and benevolent grace a profane product to be advertised, marketed, and merchandised. Lord forgive us for pursuing material gain, worldly success, and personal happpiness as the highest priority in our lives. Cause us to seek first, and above all else, to love You with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength—to seek first Your Kingdom, the Kingdom of God, and Your righteousness and true holiness. Make us to realise that You are building Your church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.…

The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? – John 4:11, ESV If you’ve grown up in church, you’ll be familiar with the story of the woman of Samaria who encounters Jesus at a well, and the way that she reacts to Jesus bizarre, puzzling, not to mention culturally taboo question. If you’re not, pause and re-read John 4:1-45 here. Now perhaps if it were you or I standing there with Jesus, we’d react the same way that this woman did. She looks at Jesus, considering the act of drawing water, and reminds him “but you don’t even have a bucket, Jesus”. It’s not so strange that we…

O God, help us to view the Christian Church from a kingdom perspective. May we see the church as You see the church from your heavenly throne; a church without walls, a church without man-made denominational labels and organisational divisions, a church made up only of true believers who are spiritually connected to Christ and to each other through faith and obedience to Him who loved us and gave His life to save us. Help us to see the big picture; that we belong to a people group who span the corridors to time from Adam to Christ’s Second Coming, a people of faith, a universal church of saints triumphant who have faithfully finished their course in this life and have gone to be with You; and…

If you’re in Australia at the moment it’s hard to miss the fact that we’re in the midst of cultural conflict. I am, of course, referring to the upcoming vote on whether Australia should legalize what is being referred to as Same Sex Marriage (SSM). It’s easy to tell because on one hand the editorial columns are filled with statements on why this is a thing that we must do, while my Facebook feed is being filled with people sharing articles on why this would be the worst thing in the world. Both sides have (what they believe to be) a compelling case, but there seems to be a lack of serious, mutually respectful debate and I think we need to take a step back…

I am undoubtedly being taken on a journey. It’s uncharted water, and in some part I feel like a passenger. The journey is about me though, and so I can’t be passive, nor can I come out the other side unchanged. In fact I’m convinced that I won’t even see the shore until I change. To extend the metaphor, this journey has seen wind and waves from many sides, but somehow they’re all pushing me to stay the course until it’s done. So, where have I sailed so far? Learning to Listen In the book named for him, James the brother of Jesus writes My dear brothers and sisters, understand this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger (James 1:19,…

Electronic devices are discipling our children – sometimes for hours a day. They are telling them what to think and feel; how to act and react; and are shaping them socially and spiritually. In a world where technology is ubiquitous and our children can no longer live without it (laptops and/or iPads are increasingly compulsory in schools, sports teams communicate via text, etc), parents have a responsibility to teach their children how to sail the technology storm so that these means don’t surreptitiously become their masters. But what does that look like? There’s no doubt it looks a little different in each household, and (as with everything) discipleship in this area falls under two categories: (1) activities or behaviours that the bible clearly speaks against, or (2)…

Our home library is a carefully tended collection of kids books, fiction, biographies, history, and Christian books of all kinds that I’ve accumulated over my years at Bible College. I love that our kids love to read, and I’m looking forward to sharing the journey with them as they read through our library in the coming years. Personally, I know that my relationship with God is richer thanks to many authors who have teased out how to practically apply the teaching of the Bible for myself and my family. I’m grateful for the resources that help me understand hard doctrines or difficult parts of scripture. Recently however, I’ve come to realise that there’s also a hidden risk of pride, greed, or worse that could take…

A few years ago, I took a week-long prayer retreat on a small island off the coast of Queensland. It was a time of crisis in my life, and I needed time to process, pray, and pursue God’s will for my present, but also my future. The afternoon that I arrived on the island, I took the sage advice of my pastor; I dropped my bags inside the door, and went straight to sleep. This might not have felt like a particularly appropriate or highly spiritual way to begin a prayer retreat, but actually it was both. Trying to seek God when I was emotionally exhausted and mentally spent would have been unfruitful; likewise – as my pastor encouraged me – taking time to rest was actually one way…

To be “saved” according to the New Testament means to become part of the people of God. A person is not simply restored to relationship with God in order to live as a Christian individual, isolated from the world and separated from the church. Rather the Christian becomes part of the body of believers; the community which has been called and gathered by the Holy Spirit, among whom God can dwell and through whom he can reveal his life and character to the world. In considering the fact that we now live as part of the Christian community, there are a number of implications for how we live both for ourselves, and for our brothers and sisters in Christ. Aside from the many means of grace…

Over the last few weeks I’ve observed (or participated in) a number of discussions on hot topics. In almost every conversation, there comes a point at which the art of effective argument disappears and comments become personal attacks instead of rationale and fact. It’s a sad thing to see that often opportunities for mutually beneficial discourse give off more heat than light. All too often, the sad state of affairs is that Christians (not exclusively, but frequently) tend to define themselves by what we’re against. Killing unborn babies. Homosexual relationships. The refugee crisis. We sure can be vocal when it comes to that which we find immoral, unjust, or otherwise against our ideologies. But where’s the good in being known by what we oppose? How does…

There’s an underlying assumption in the Christian church that somehow if you travel overseas and help out in an orphanage that you can assign yourself the designation missionary. Building houses, rescuing girls from trafficking, and equipping villages with clean water are all wonderful acts, but it seems to me that this broad use of the term brings with it widespread negative implications for the entire evangelistic enterprise of the church. In a recent article linked to by the International Missions Board the author provides this definition of mission: [Mission] is God’s plan that people from every nation, tribe and language will come to saving faith in Jesus through the preaching of the Gospel. Perhaps that seems simplistic. And in a sense, it is. But it’s also worthy of…

Recently I’ve been getting so much out of North Pine Baptist Church’s series on the Temple and Tabernacle that I’ve made an unofficial transcript of the latest message. I’m sharing it here because of the gospel-soaked, scripture-rich content and the immense good news and practical application that it presents for Christians today.

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Morning everyone, good to see you all today. Let’s pray shall we.

Father this morning we continue in this series entitled God in Our Midst and we want to thank you that you are indeed here with us this morning. Lord we are in the presence of a Holy God. This morning as we look at this bronze altar and what it signifies – what it points to – we pray again that you might have grace upon us. That you might help us to understand and grasp in a deeper way the significance of sacrifice; of the sacrifice that has been made for us through Jesus Christ. Lord this morning as we hear from your word we ask that our minds and our hearts would be clear; that they would be attentive to what you have to say to us today. Lord convict us in our hearts, help us to know the very things you want to speak to us about this morning. For you – indeed we know – want to speak to us, and we thank you for that. We pray this morning as we open up this passage together that Jesus Christ might be honoured and glorified. Amen.

Romans 6:23 says this: “For the wages of sin is death”. The wages of sin is death. Wages have featured a lot in the news this week. Those of you who have been across the news this week will know that there has been penalty rates and things like that discussed in the media. When we think about wages we understand them to be those things which are owing to us because of the work we’ve done. We work, we get paid; they’re our wages. But the bible clearly states that when it comes to the things that we’ve done, the work that we’ve done, the sin we’ve committed before God, then we have something owing to us for that. And that is death. We all deserve to die because of our sin.

Puts a real cloud down on everything, doesn’t it.

And you might think this morning as we start off this message and we think about sin and the fact that it deserves death you might think “well you know what, that’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?”

Last week as we began the series on the tabernacle, we focused on the fact that God is a holy God. That his holiness points to his absolute perfection. His absolute purity. His absolute goodness. His absolute glory. His absolute justice and righteousness. His separateness or his apartness from everything else. Nothing can come even close to this holy God because he is so perfect and glorious and righteous and just. He is so pure. If we liken God in his holiness to the sun, it is both good and terrifying at the same time. It brings heat and light in order for life to grow and flourish, but it also has the capacity to kill anything that comes close to it. And because God is holy, it means that he is like that sun in that he cannot have anything to do with sin, that as soon as we draw close, as soon as sin comes anywhere in the vicinity of God it is consumed by his holy fire. His holiness naturally condemns and destroys sin and anything affected by it.

Well then, how do we ever hope to approach this holy God? How can we ever hope to have any kind of relationship with him? To come into presence? Well we discover how we do that through this imagery of the brazen altar in the tabernacle. This bronze altar. And we’ll see this and what it ultimately points to.

In the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18:21-35), Jesus tells of a servant who owed his king a great sum of money. The king ordered the man be sold, along with his wife and children to pay the debt. However the servant fell on his knees imploring the king to have patience with him, and the king ended up forgiving him; the servant now completely released from the debt. But then that same man went out and seized a fellow servant who owed him a relatively small sum and demanded he paid back what was owed, throwing the man in prison until the debt was paid. Having witnessed this, several people went and told the king and the unforgiving servant was himself thrown into…

Humans were made to wonder. Built into each of us is a curiosity about things and a capacity to pause and ponder. When it comes to meditation, it shouldn’t surprise us that the world has taken hold of this means of grace that God designed to aid our spiritual journey and turned it into a human-centric self-help endeavour. Whereas world religions (and other groups) would define meditation as the act of stilling your thoughts, emptying your mind, and focusing on nothing outside of yourself, Christian meditation is different. Almost the complete opposite in fact. God designed us to hear his voice, primarily through the reading of his written word. Moreover, he not only wants us to hear but also to reflect on what we’ve heard. In his…

I’m a terrible runner. I’d like to think of myself as a runner, but the reality is that I’m inconsistent and the fruit of that is evident to every other true runner around me. Don’t get me wrong; like many others I come to the run with energy, enthusiasm, and a strong desire to do better than the time before. However without discipline to back up my determination the result will be much the same; willpower is not enough and I’m inevitably betrayed by my own body. I reach that point in every run when my body begins to tell me that it’s not too happy with the current state of affairs; it would much rather not be moving so fast or working so hard, thanks very much.…