Something to ponder...

Revelation 1: 1 NLT "This is a revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him..." I'm reading through the Bible at the moment and I came to Revelation as you do when you're getting near the end. This verse jumped out at me because it was so interesting! The verse from the Gospels saying that onl the Father knows the day or the hour of Christ's return ties in with this. God revealed the prophecy of the end times to Jesus Christ. It says it here in Revelation! Before God revealed this to Jesus, Jesus didn't knw about it. The vision that John recieved, Jesus also recieved at some point in eternity. This distinction in the trinity is astounding! The Godhead who are One, are also distinct individuals to the point where only God knows when these things will come to pass. He revealed what would happen to Jesus, but still only He knows when. Hmm, reading back over this I'm not sure if it will make sense to anyone else what I'm thinking but hey...I thought it was cool! :)

Unintended...

So I was wondering the other day… Did Jesus ever do anything unintentionally? We often do things without thinking. When we go to the shops we go to buy something, not to impact the people that we might meet there. When we go to a friend’s house we usually don’t think about the impact we could have on them or the encouragement we could be to them. Granted, sometimes we do things with intention. As a youth group leader I have conversations with the intention of building a relationship with my leaders or young people. I make phone calls with intention. But not all the time. Often we do things without any missional or ministerial intention. I wonder if Jesus ever did that?
In John 2 he went to the wedding in Cana but he ended up performing his first sign there of turning water into wine. Did he think about that on the way to the party? Did he intentionally go to the wedding with the purpose of fixing their relationship crisis and establishing his identity as the Son of God. Or did he go to have fun and celebrate the wedding but ended up doing all the other things as well because the opportunity arose. Similarly when he visited Mary and Martha, or when he took longer to go back there when Lazarus was sick. All of those things had an affect on the people around him. I don’t think Jesus, during his life of public ministry ever did anything unintentionally. If you read the first couple of chapters of the Gospel of John you see that John recorded Jesus actions day by day. Not a day went by without something significant happening in Jesus’ life. Jesus lived on purpose. He knew why he was here on earth and he knew what he had to do, so he did it. When we know why we’re here and what we have to do, shouldn’t we also live life on purpose?

Quick summary...

In the 15 minutes since I posted the photo and speculated about whether I would blog this year or not, I've decided to blog again. So I'll continue for today at least because I'm playing on my dad's cool laptop while the rest of the family watches TV. So here's a quick review. I'll get the news out of the way so that I can blog interesting things for the rest of the year...

I slid my car into a gutter :( Cost $2340 :( :( :( I'll be paying that off for a while.
I went on a Youth Dimension (with Scripture Union) beach mission called Coffee Shop to North Stradbroke Island. Very beautiful, very tiring, lots of fun, saw God work, very exciting. I'd post photos but I don't have them at the moment.
Got back from there and haven't been doing a whole lot! Been on holidays which is fantastic! Been hanging out with Laura most days, watching TV, watching dvds, going to the movies, going to the beach, eating, eating, eating.
My parents and sister came up from Melbourne so I've been hanging out with them for a bit.
Went to the cricket on Sunday with dad to see Australia lose to South Africa :(
Having a bbq on Saturday night for my 21st, very exciting. Should be fun.
And that's the last month in review!

Long time no post...

Been lazy. Been away. Been on holidays. Did I mention that I've been lazy. I'm just mucking around with photos at the moment so I thought I'd post this one of my girlfriend Laura :) Disclaimer: I may get in trouble for posting this photo, but I like it so I'm going to do it anyway!

Still undecided about whether or not I'll keep blogging this year or not.

Risk

Played the board game Risk tonight with some fellas. I bowed out in only the fifth round after a bit of bad luck. It's a strategy game but luck comes in when you go head to head in the first round and get a few bad rolls of the dice! It was good fun, Eric cleaned up again making him world conqueror twice in a row!

Slack!

Woohoo, been slack as with this blog page! Here's the communion thing as promised. I didn't actually use this on Sunday night because I felt led to speak on something else...but I'll use it eventually.
Found out that I get to preach my first sermon at the morning service in February...on John 2. The Water into Wine. Doh! I think they're setting me up with a nice controversial topic: alcohol! Should be good :)
I couldn't figure out how to link to the document...so here it is, a little long for a web page.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”
Genesis 1:1-2

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
John 1:1

In the beginning was God the Father, God the Son & God the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, Three in One. This sets God apart from any other religion because he isn’t bound by his own limitations. For eternity he experiences 3 persons in one, he experiences community. So when God created us in his image, he created us to have community. God said that it wasn’t good for Adam to be all alone in the garden of Eden, so God created Eve. He commanded them to fill the earth with their family, to keep growing the community that God had established here on earth.

But when Adam and Eve sinned in Genesis 3, it wrecked God’s plan for perfect community. Since then there have been divisions between us and God and between us and each other. Genesis 3 outlines contention between men and women, the tower of Babel outlines contention in languages, there soon became contention in social classes and different races. These divisions and contentions remain in the world today.

When Jesus Christ died on the cross, he died to restore God’s perfect plan for community. He died to restore our vertical community with God and he died to restore our horizontal community with each other. In John 17:21 Jesus is praying to God before he was to be crucified. He prayed for his disciples and he prayed for all who would ever believe in him, that includes Christians today. He prayed that we would have unity just as God and Jesus have unity.

So our vertical community is restored. When we trust Jesus for our salvation we are declared right before God. Our relationship with God is restored because Jesus took away the sin barrier. Jesus died to take away the divisions between us and God.

Our horizontal community is also restored. Galatians 3:28 says “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
When Jesus died, he died to take away these divisions and contentions.. Physically they still exist, but in Christ they don’t matter at all. As far as God is concerned and as far as we Christians are concerned, they are inconsequential. There are no racial divisions, we are one in Christ Jesus. There are no social class distinctions, we are one in Christ Jesus. There are no gender distinctions as far as God is concerned, we are one in Christ Jesus.

When Jesus died on the cross, he restored community, he restored unity. Individually when you trust Christ for your salvation, you have unity with God. Together, we have unity with each other because the divisions don’t matter anymore. We are family not because of common interests or hobbies. We are family not because of how hard we work at ironing out our differences. We are family all because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And that’s why we celebrate communion each week. In a moment the stewards will come down and after I pray they’ll be standing in the aisles. If you’re trusted Christ for your salvation, please join us in taking a cup and a bit of biscuit and finding a quiet spot to reflect on what Christ did on the cross 2000 years ago. As you get your cup and biscuit from the stewards have a look around the church, take some time to look around and see who your family are. Thank Jesus for what he did on the cross. For restoring community both vertically and horizontally!

All over red rover...

I preached last night on John 9, the man born blind. That pretty much signals the end of the whole string of things I had on this month! All my assignments are done, I just have to hand them in...my speaking engagements are all over...and youth group is over for the year! What in the world am I gonna do now?
I've got communion next week, I'll post that actually cos I'm thinking about doing something a bit different. I'll get that up in a few days. We've got 'Coffee Shop' training every night this week. Doing Youth Dimension's beach mission called Coffee Shop. Never done it before so I'm really looking forward to it.
Then from now till Christmas, all I have planned is hanging out with the kids in our youth group, planning for next year etc. I know stuff will come up but that's cool.
Righteo, it's my day off so I need to go and do something constructive...like sleeping!

The Book Brigade

Finished this book early yesterday morning at about 5am. I woke up at 4.30 with a toothache and couldn't sleep so I read...crazy. Anyway, finished this book Community 101 by Gilbert Bilezikian. Excellent book, it's a theological kind of thing on God's plan for community. Really interesting, solid teaching and concepts. New stuff to me a lot of it; stuff on women in ministry and gender roles. Nice and short, only 200 or so pages. Recommended.

In other news: finished all my assignments. Woohoo! Just have to prepare my sermon for Sunday night now. Having a planning/strategy afternoon today (Thursday) for youth ministry next year then picking up a friend from the airport at 7am Friday. Did I mention that I finally sold my Ford Laser? They're picking that up on Friday as well.