Short Snippets of the Weekly Sunday Sermon – Full Audio Version is Available on the Recent Sermons Page
5th December 2025
One of the best-known figures in the New Testament, outside of Jesus and his disciples, has to be John the Baptist. Although he occupies relatively few short verses in the gospels, his impact was immense, and his contribution to preparing the people to receive their long-awaited messiah is still having an impact today. It might seem odd that we celebrate John’s ministry during Advent, after all, it has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus. But then again, Advent isn’t supposed to be about waiting for Christmas, it’s about being prepared for Jesus to come again as Lord and King to judge the world.
John’s ministry lasted perhaps eighteen months, maybe two years. Herod Antipas had him arrested because he publicly condemned his adulterous marriage to Herodias, who was his brother’s wife. Then, at a banquet in Herod’s palace a teenage girl danced, a rash oath was sworn, and John’s head was brought in on a platter. John was murdered, but not before he’d done his work. He had prepared a people ready to recognise the Messiah when he finally appeared.
John’s message still calls to us today. It is the voice that cries: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!” The axe is still at the root of the trees. The winnowing fork is still in Jesus’ hand. Jesus Christ has already come once in humility, and he is coming again in glory. So, turn, confess, and be baptised into Jesus’ name. Bear fruit worthy of repentance. For the Lamb who was slain is now the Lion on the throne, and the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdom of our God, and he shall reign forever and ever. Amen! Rev. Andy Carley
14th November 2025
Every now and then I come across articles and video clips about the coming ‘end times’, some of them are quite well balanced, but others tend to drift into doomsday prophesy, you know, ‘the end is nigh’ type of thing. Now, it is right that, one day, the end of this age will come, but the bible warns us not to try and work these things out as it is impossible for us to know. Every generation since the 1st century have thought they were living in the ‘last days’, and there have always been times of war, famine, and persecution, just as there are today. It is not that we shouldn’t be aware of the signs of the coming of the end, it is that whatever age we think we’re living in God still has a job for us to do in preaching the good news of Jesus Christ to a world which desperately needs to hear about him. My guess is, the reason a lot of people are interested in this subject today is because we have been living in an unprecedented time of peace and prosperity for the last 80 years, and now we’re beginning to experience the type of hostility towards Christianity that our ancestors faced their entire lives, and this unsettles us. So, my advice is this: Be aware of what’s going on in the world around us, don’t lose heart, persevere in the faith, and keep on telling others about Jesus. Rev Andy Carley
9th November 2025
What happens after we die has been a puzzle to all human beings since the beginning of time. It’s a universal desire to want to know if there’s more to life than this. But, unlike God, we cannot see beyond the vail of death. As much as we might want him to, Jesus doesn’t give us a definitive description of what heaven is like, and neither does he tell us what happens between when we die and the time when all of humanity is resurrected and stands before God to face judgement. The only hint we have of that is when Jesus is dying on the cross where turns to the thief at his side saying “today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43), and if the encounter Jesus had with the Sadducees in Luke’s gospel is anything to go by, we can be fairly certain that life in heaven will not be a continuation of life here on earth. In fact, it seems that the only part of our earthly life that will continue in heaven is that we will continue to be children of God.
The thing is, we can’t ‘prove’ any of this with rational arguments, because we can’t explain things we have not seen. So, on this subject at least, we just have to take Jesus at his word and accept, by faith, that that is the way things will be. The Message here is that life in heaven is about a new life, and it is only Jesus’ death and resurrection that makes this new life possible. It is better than anything our current life can offer. It is a new birth, a new age, lived in the unveiled sight of God. Rev Andy Carley
24th October 2025
It can’t have escaped your notice that we live in a world where sin abounds and the barriers of morality, decency and integrity are being pushed further and further back with, as far as I can see, few restraints remaining. The problem we face is that we are so accustomed to the world as it is now, that it is sometimes difficult for us to recognise when we’re are crossing the line. We are constantly faced with the temptation to compromise and be like everyone else around us.
Then there are those who like to think of themselves as Christians, but at the same time, they refuse to accept they’re sinners in need of God’s forgiveness. They may well be nice, kind, honest people who are thought well of by their neighbours, and after all, only murderers, robbers, rapists and thieves are sinners, aren’t they? But they are more like the Pharisees that Jesus condemned than they realise. The thing is, we have, by nature, a tendency to think ourselves better than we really are, and we are never in more spiritual danger than when we refuse to admit to our true condition.
The reality is, that it is only when we’re able to say ‘Lord, forgive me, I’m a sinner’ that Jesus hears our prayers and forgives us. As the apostle Paul said in his letter to the church in Rome: “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God… (Rom 3:21-24) It’s actually quite sobering to realise how undeserving of what God has freely given us we really are. It’s also mind bowing to realise just how much God loves us, even when we’re so mean to him, and all we have to do is to trust what God has done for us through Jesus Christ, and he will bless us, and one day bring us to heaven. Rev Andy Carley
26th September 2025
The world we live in often dismisses absolute truth. Social media, cultural trends, and even some voices within the church, suggest that God’s Word is outdated or negotiable. But Jesus reminds us in Luke 16 that scripture is unchanging. The smallest letter of the Law – down to the tiniest stroke of a pen – remains authoritative. So, as we navigate a society that prioritises personal preference over divine truth, we must anchor ourselves in the Bible, trusting that it is God’s perfect guide for life.
The world is saturated with information, from posts on X to AI-generated content on Facebook and Instagram, so we must be discerning in what we watch and read. In amongst all the information thrown at us is the Word of God, but the Bible is not just another voice in the noise; it is the voice of God. So, when cultural pressures tempt you to compromise on issues like marriage, integrity, or justice, let God’s Word be the foundation you stand on. Ask yourself; are you shaping your life around God’s Word, or are you letting the world shape your understanding of God’s truth?
In the end, people can laugh at Christianity all they want; they can mock and ridicule it if they like, but we know that it works. For those of us who have made our decision to follow Jesus, we need to be mindful of our attitudes and actions. We don’t want to be indifferent to the fate of those around us, we want to make a difference, because if Jesus Christ is in the business of changing lives, then so should we. Rev Andy Carley
19th September 2025
A Guest Post from The All Saints’ Vicar’s Warden
Last week millions of people saw the news of conservative Christian speaker Charlie Kirk murdered in front of his wife and children while speaking to college students at a university event. Like me, whether they knew him or not, they were heartbroken and viewed it as an heinous crime.
Then on X, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok etc, millions of people were stunned to see doctors, nurses, teachers, counsellors, political leaders, journalists and many, many others not just defending his murder, but actually celebrating it.
How could anyone be so vile as to publicly post such hateful vitriol celebrating anyone’s death? Shockingly, the opposition parties in our own parliament blocked a motion condemning such politically motivated violence.
Now millions of people around the world have suddenly realised that there really do exist people who wish to see them dead for their moderately conservative political beliefs and their Christian faith. They’re asking themselves if the violence visited upon Charlie might one day come to them. There is real potential for this to get very dark and ugly.
And yet, in the darkness there shines a light. I have seen many people come out in support of Charlie and his family. People saying they haven’t been to church for 20 years but now feel that they need to. People saying they need to come back to Jesus. People saying that they need to find the courage to share their faith in Jesus because that’s what Charlie did; ‘Charlie wasn’t afraid so I won’t be either!’. I’ve seen posts by Christians urging restraint, Christians reminding people to pray for the shooter and his family too. I saw one Christian who took pains to remind people what Paul was like when he was Saul! These posts have tens of thousands of likes and so many beautiful comments.
In his life, Charlie Kirk only wanted to point people towards Jesus. Through the grace of God and in spite of his tragic death, his work continues. The actions of those who sought to silence Charlie’s message, rather than putting an end to it, have made a modern-day Christian martyr. May he rest in peace and rise in glory!
Simon Walmisley
12th September 2025
There is a lovely line in the 23rd Psalm which is perhaps one of the finest pieces of scripture that we have, and which uses this picture of God as being like a caring shepherd. The Psalm concludes with the statement ‘surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.’ I had enough difficulties at college learning New Testament Greek, and I find the Hebrew of the Old Testament even more difficult. However, I’m reliably informed that these words ‘shall follow’ aren’t a great translation, they’re too passive and give the impression the God’s love and mercy just follow us around. An alternative translation could be this: ‘surely your goodness and mercy shall relentlessly pursue me all the days of my life’. That puts quite a different perspective on it, doesn’t it. Jesus knew this Psalm well, and he makes sense of it in his parables of the Lost Sheep and Lost Coin in Luke 15 as he shows us a God who relentlessly pursues us, a God who ‘tracks us down’, not in a negative way like some stalker, but like a parent who has such a love for his children that he will not let go until we respond.
We should remember this when life becomes difficult and we to feel far from God, when our prayers seem to go unanswered, or when worship fails to raise our spirits. When we don’t feel God’s presence or power or hope, remember this: God is still looking for you to bring you home, back to him, back to where you belong. And he will not let you go until he finds you. Rev Andy Carley
29th August 2025
The world we live in is restless. Even in our daily lives we’re bombarded with demands… from work, from family, getting to grips with never-ending changes in technology, even our own to-do lists! And yet our souls crave peace, a place of stillness and complete contentment where we can be refreshed and renewed. The good news is that God offers us exactly that: a rest that transcends our human circumstances and anchors us in his eternal presence, a divine gift that speaks to the deepest longings of our hearts.
God’s rest is rooted in his finished work. When God rested on the seventh day, it wasn’t because he was tired. His rest signified the completion of his perfect creation… a world in harmony, where everything was “very good” (Genesis 1:31). This rest is the state of shalom, or wholeness, that God intended for his creation. It’s a rest that reflects his sufficiency, where nothing more needs to be added. It isn’t something we can earn though, it’s a gift we receive through faith in Jesus Christ, the who declared, “It is finished” (John 19:30) on the cross. Jesus’ work on the cross completes our salvation, and has secured our access to God’s rest. Provided we put out trust and faith in him.
Imagine you’ve been invited to a lavish banquet, there are tables overflowing with food prepared just for you. But instead of sitting down to enjoy it, you insist on working in the kitchen, trying to cook your own meal. That’s what it’s like when we try to earn God’s favour through our own efforts, instead of trusting in Christ’s finished work on the cross. God’s rest is ready for us… the question is, will we sit down and receive it? Rev Andy Carley
15th August 2025
Division… it’s a devil of a thing isn’t it. In fact, the devil delights in division. Our world, at least the one we experience around us and hear about in the news, has seemingly never been more divided than it is now. It’s a real challenge isn’t it. We’ve been used to things remaining pretty much constant for the last few hundred years, at least culturally speaking, but today many of us feel divided or uncertain about what the future holds. Such uncertainty seems almost unavoidable, because we have different views on all sorts of issues, on immigration, race relations, politics, economics, and those are just the ones that make the news. Yet we’re told that diversity of opinion and tolerance for those who express opinions different to ours is a good thing, and for the most part it is. However, any casual observer can’t help but notice that such sentiments ring rather hollow, instead of respectful dialogue we see constant disparaging of any view that doesn’t align with ours. The problem is that most people can’t handle any opinion that’s different from their own. Hence the growing levels of division and hostility in public life.
Of course, the church isn’t immune to all this. In the past, Christians have argued about all sorts of things, there have been schisms and splits in the church for a thousand years or more, sometimes for the right reasons, but not always! Unfortunately, this hasn’t done our reputation much good.
But there is an answer to all this. The opposite to division is unity, but it’s not a unity at any cost! True unity can only be found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s there that our heart, mind, and spirit find their rest in God. With his Holy Spirit working within us, we can stand together and put aside those things the devil might use to divide us. We do this by standing united around the truth of God’s word and demonstrating what true unity looks like by the way we live together. When we can do that, we’re able to be a beacon of hope in a world of despair. Rev Andy Carley
3rd August 2025
There are times when we have to make a judgement call on some issue or other, like an employer having to decide whether a candidate is the right person for the job in an interview. But there are also times when we cross from making a judgement call, to being judgemental, and no one wants to be thought of as judgemental, do they? Trouble is, we do it all the time; like when we criticise someone’s temper while ignoring our own anger issues, or condemning gossip in others while spreading rumours ourselves. Jesus has something to say about this in his sermon on the mount in Matthew’s gospel, and his point was clear: before we judge others, we must examine our own motives first.
Jesus tackled this very issue in John’s gospel when the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery to him. He judged them the same way they had judged the woman. And they were found wanting. You see, they came not to judge, but to condemn. We are so good at judging others in ways that we would never want to be judged ourselves aren’t we.
Back in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus uses the somewhat ludicrous example of ignoring a plank of wood in your own eye while pointing out the speck in someone else’s. His point is that you may well be able to see fault in others, but your own problems are far bigger. The answer to all this is to be humble enough to examine your own heart. You see, humility is the lens that helps us see our true selves clearly. When we can acknowledge our own sinfulness and seek God’s forgiveness, we’re better equipped to approach others with grace, not condemnation. Rev Andy Carley
18th July 2025
What is Love? Things just don’t mean what they once did. In theory; the meaning of love hasn’t changed; the dictionary definition is simply “a deep affection to a person or persons.” Is that what it means in our world today? Love used to embrace the concept of devotion, but today love has become a synonym for pleasure. Love used to be “other person” centred, now it has become “self-centred.” We see this played out in our relationships. Sure, we still commit ourselves in relationships, but for only as long as it remains convenient for us. We have lost the significance of what love is.
The bible tells us that God is love, so if our definition of love is wrong, then our view of God may well be wrong too. God’s love, unlike ours, is not prone to being fickle, it’s not like the weather, it is never uncertain nor does it change with the seasons. God’s love is unconditional, impartial, everlasting, infinite, perfect and enduring – it’s a love that last forever. And for that, the right response from his people is thankfulness. But when things are tough, thankfulness is often not what first comes to mind? However, Psalm 100 says we can still rejoice because, whatever our personal circumstances, the Lord is good and his love endures forever; and his faithfulness will continue through all generations.
So, what should we thank God for? On one level we can thankful for all that God has given us, for our families, our friends, and yes, our material possessions too. But I think he would much rather have us give thanks for who he is and what he does. Or at least begin our prayers there. As Psalm 100 says: Give thanks because he is God, because he is faithful, because we are his people, and because his love endures forever.
Rev Andy Carley
4th July 2025
When I was at school, I was never one of those kids who had lots of people who wanted to hang around with them, I had just a few friends and that was enough for me. Of course, we all want to be liked, no one wants to be hated, do they! But in Matthew’s gospel Jesus warns his disciples was that they cannot be a popular disciple, loved by all, they cannot share in the world’s popularity stakes as one of God’s people. Why? Because they’re called to be different. Likewise, if we become like everyone else around us, we are like salt that has lost its saltiness or a light that has been covered up. Our very reason for being here has gone.
So, what are we to do? Well, Jesus says we should ‘let our light shine before men, that they may see our good deeds and praise our father in heaven’. Generally speaking, when people someone doing a good deeds, they praise them for it. But Jesus is talking about good deeds that cause those who see them to praise the Father in heaven, good deeds that people will say ‘God is at work in their life’. The Mount tells us what those good deeds are. Good deeds, or good works, are about living the Christian life, about being different to the world around us. Wearing a cross or a fish, going to church, even reading your bible doesn’t make you a Christian in and of itself. It’s about how you live your life before others and before God that counts. You see, Christians are Christians because the way we live is spiritually different to those around us. Or at least it should be! How are you doing in that area, is your life any different to the world around you? Worth thinking about? I think it is!
Rev Andy Carley
20th June 2025
It’s been quite a disruptive week in our household this week as we have had contractors in replacing all the drainage pipework damaged (apparently) during the Christchurch earthquakes some years ago. We only found out because the company doing the work did a free drainage inspection. Fortunately, all this work paid for by the Natural Hazards Commission. It got me thinking though. Is there anything in our spiritual lives that stops us functioning properly, something we’re unaware of because it’s hidden beneath the surface of our everyday lives. And how would we find out?
Well, there’s a habbit I’ve been practicing for some time now where I pray that God will show me if there are any areas in my life, bad habits, character faults that sort of thing, that he’s not happy with or are hindering my usefulness to him, and if there are, that he would help me deal with them. I pray that prayer because I’ve learnt that I can’t do this on my own. I need the Holy Spirit to help me, to show me my faults and sins, and strengthen me to put things right in my life. This is important because without the Holy Spirit I recon we do quite a good job of deceiving ourselves that everything is ok when beneath the surface something is broken. Since I’ve been practicing this, I’ve also learnt that it isn’t a one-off thing that we do in a vain attempt at holiness, it’s an ongoing process of slow sanctification. Will we ever get to state where everything is perfect in our lives? No, of course not! But if we remain sensitive to God’s Holy Spirit in our lives, we will be better prepared to face whatever situations come our way.
Rev. Andy Carley
8th June 2025
It’s Pentecost this Sunday, an odd word that marks the time when we remember the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the church. The bible recalls the dramatic effect this had on the lives of Jesus’ disciples in the book of Acts. But what part does the Holy Spirit play in the lives of believers today? There is, I think, a certain amount of confusion about this, with Christians generally falling into one of two camps; either they ignore the Holy Spirit, effectively consigning his role to the era of the apostles and the early church, or they over emphasise his role in the lives of believers today by seeking after spiritual experiences. Both camps miss the mark.
You see, the point of the Holy Spirit is not so that we can have great spiritual experiences, though that does happen. The point is that through the Holy Spirit we are united to Jesus and the Father, and also, to each other, and empowered to do for the world what Jesus, and later his disciples, had been doing. Remember what Jesus told his disciples? “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you” (John 20:21). The challenge for us is to take that charge seriously, to make Jesus known to a world where God has been forgotten, or more likely, ignored. And how are we to do this? Well, strengthened and empowered by the Holy Spirit, we, as Jesus’ disciples, are to declare in God’s name his message of salvation, of forgiveness of sins to all those who believe in Jesus. And yes, sometimes that will involve the Holy Spirit miraculously healing someone, or revealing the truth about a certain issue through a word of knowledge or a prophetic word, but that isn’t the main point. The main point is that we are empowered to go out into the world to tell them about our wonderful saviour, Jesus Christ, and what he’s done for us.
Rev Andy Carley
23rd May 2025
The question of Jesus’ second coming has perplexed many Christians right from the early days of the church. The delay in Jesus’ return has prompted some unwise attempts to work out exactly when it will happen, all of which have thus far failed to come to anything. So the big question is this: If nothing can stop Jesus from returning, why hasn’t he? What’s the hold up?
It’s been Two thousand years since Jesus made his promise to return, which seems like a rather long time to us, and to us it is. But not to God, because God lives in eternity. You see, the concept of time only really means something if you have a beginning and an end. In fact, if you have always existed and always will exist, time is a meaningless concept because. The only people who measure time are those for whom it’s running out! God, however, is not bound by time.
What matters to God isn’t time, it’s people. God loves the human race; he made us so that we could love him. And because of that he wants everyone to have the opportunity to turn from their selfish ways, acknowledge their own wrongdoing, or sinfulness, and turn to him for forgiveness through the means he has provided, Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross. You see, God is so kind and merciful, he’s holding off Jesus’ return so that as many people as possible have time to repent and know the joy of his forgiveness. What we need to get our heads around is Jesus’ promise that he will indeed return. And that when he returns, he’s going to judge the world. So, let’s make good use of the time that God has given us to preach the good news about Jesus to those around us.
Rev Andy Carley
13 April, Andrea Coster
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame.
Heb 12: 2
As humans we were never designed to carry the weight of the whole world, and yet today the weight of the whole world is being beamed into our computer screens through news feeds and social media 24/7 screaming, wailing and demanding our attention. Injustices and the sheer lunacy of human nature on a global scale tromp across our vision day in, day out and it’s doing our souls untold damage.
This is where we need to understand the power of the cross.
When Jesus rode into Jerusalem at the beginning of Passion Week he was making an important point about who he was. But as the week unfolds, everyone’s glorious messianic vision starts crumbling under the weight of betrayal, crucifixion and death. Wasn’t Jesus supposed to be the victorious king? Wasn’t he supposed to save Israel?
Yes.
And in the same way no.
Not in the way they were expecting. They certainly didn’t expect to find themselves at Gethsemane, or in a courtyard awaiting the outcome of a show trial, or fleeing into the night as their only hope for Israel’s freedom was put to death on a roman cross.
Their vision was still too small to grasp what Jesus was really up to. Jesus’ battle was way bigger than some domestic squabble with foreign occupiers.
He came to carry the weight of the sin of the whole world.
It’s part of the Anglican liturgy.
Lord Jesus Christ, you take away the sin of the world have mercy on us.
Richard Rhor, a Franciscan friar, quotes Archimedes who said, ‘give me a fulcrum and a place to stand and I can move the whole world’. For Christians, our fulcrum and place to stand is the cross. It contains the power to absorb all the evil that was ever conceived in the world.
Everything.
Jesus took it to the cross where it met its complete and utter defeat and destruction. What was meant to destroy him and turned it to life and love and victory through the power of the resurrection so that we can be free and become his joy.
The great reversal is on its way. Victory is about to be snatched from the jaws defeat.
It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming…
6 April, Simon Walmisley
Recently I read the following: truth without love is harsh and love without truth is weak. I happened upon it while reading a conversation on social media and it’s stuck with me.
I accept without thinking that God is love. Love cannot therefore be weak?
Truth alone can be harsh. This seems obvious; cutting like a knife without regard for the hurt it leaves. As such it risks becoming a weapon of judgment. What struck me here is the idea that love without truth devolves into weakness; avoiding hard realities and so failing to guide or protect. You certainly are not loving someone if you keep the truth from them.
For either to be at their best, I think they must be merged together.
On reflection, it does seem that love needs truth to remain strong and meaningful. Ephesians 4:15 urges believers to “speak the truth in love”; not sidestepping reality but embracing it with courage. Love without truth risks avoiding confrontation and accountability. This would result in an inability to challenge injustice or foster growth. When love lacks backbone, it would be more likely to stumble under pressure, unable to stand firm.
Proverbs 27:6 says, “Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.” This suggests that facing difficult truth – with support – builds character. It also advises against accepting lies that flatter!
But together, truth and love create a whole greater than the sum of the parts; a whole that corrects without crushing and nurtures without coddling. Truth keeps love from being blind and love keeps truth from being brutal. Only together can they shape our lives and communities with purpose and strength.
So, the next time someone says to me that God is Love, I’m going to say “and truth too, don’t forget truth!”.
30 March, Lesley McKone
Therefore, since we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses… Heb 12: 1
Today (March 20th) a Tauranga boy named Sam Ruthe became the first 15-year-old ever to run a sub-4-minute mile. He took 3.58.25 minutes.
He was paced by two older runners, one of whom made it to the tape fractionally ahead of him.
What a great picture of encouragement…being matched stride for stride by an older, stronger athlete who drew the younger to succeed in his goal.
Scripture talks about running the race and the heroes of the faith who are our cloud of witnesses, urging us on from the grandstand.
The apostle Paul says in 2 Timothy 4v7. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
The book of Hebrews talks about the example of Jesus (12v3), and exhorts us to run with perseverance the race that is set before us (12v1b)
I have met one or two heroes of the faith albeit very briefly. Elisabeth Eliott who was such a bastion of peace and security; you just wanted to stand close to her to catch whatever it was she had. She ran her race, that oddly enough ended in some years of dementia where she finally didn’t recognise her loved ones.
I met Terry Waite who just exuded strength and calm but has forever been changed by his suffering as a political prisoner, chained to a wall blindfolded for 5years.
Not all heroic endings or even beginnings… but when I cross the finishline, I know I will have been paced, step by step, breath by laboured breath by my Saviour and King.
The message translation is fairly blunt; get on with it. Strip down, start running – and never quit! Dear brothers and sisters you are not alone.
23 March, Andrea Coster
For Yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.
This ‘In 300 words’ needs to start with a disclaimer: The last line of the Lord’s Prayer is not actually part of the Lord’s Prayer as recorded in Matthew or Luke. This is because the phrase was missing from earlier manuscripts and there has been debate about it’s authenticity so later translations don’t include it. But I thought it worth commenting on since it is essentially a signpost towards our most important mission.
Worshipping God.
We are often frantic to discover God’s will for our life. The subject ‘What is God’s will for my life’ is the subject of many sermons, seminars and books and it’s certainly true that we are called to God given tasks that are unique to us. These are specific vocational callings and yes, they are a vital part of our mission.
But worship is the one mandate and calling from God that we can fulfil every day. Our specific callings take time to reach their fulfilment, but worship can happen at any time. Worship doesn’t have to be musical although musical worship has a way of bypassing the head and going straight to the heart. It can look like practicing gratitude, remembering God’s presence moment by moment, doing the mundane tasks for the love of God and making use of the ‘dead time’, like driving somewhere, or taking a shower, mowing the lawn or watering the plants as an opportunity to turn our thoughts towards him and acknowledge him as our God. There is something about worship that opens our hearts and minds to God’s impossible things. We start to see things from God’s perspective and not our own cramped line of sight.
And that means that when we have reached the end of the day, we may not have ended world hunger, preached a sermon or written that book, but we have worshipped God.
We have fulfilled our purpose on earth, and He is well pleased.
Hallelujah.
16 March, Andrea Coster
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil
Those little whispers in your head just seem so darn reasonable, don’t they? All the little excuses:
I needed that extra piece of chocolate cake because my blood sugar is low.
Well, I lost my temper and yelled because I was tired.
This line in the Lord’s Prayer is a little confusing because at first glance it seems to be that God leads us into temptation but let’s be clear. James 1: 13 states emphatically that [God] tempts no one with evil, but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Remember those reasonable sounding excuses? We need clear sight to see just what is going on and God’s strategies to extract ourselves from it.
And the good news is that we were never built to argue or fight with temptation by ourselves. This is why Jesus instructs us to pray for salvation from temptation. He had already walked through the wilderness where he faced intense temptation.
The temptation to do the right thing in the wrong way or for the wrong reasons and create his own solutions to the presenting problem rather than trusting God. We’ve seen story after story in the bible about how well that goes… (Sneeze – Ismael).
The temptation to doubt God’s character and intentions towards him. That’s a temptation that’s as old as the garden itself.
The temptation to manipulate the situation. You try to take control and make things happen which was behind the temptation for Jesus to throw himself off the temple so that God would catch him. Tim Keller observes that in Kings 19 Elijah learned the hard way that flashy shows of supernatural power didn’t bring about the national transformation that he hoped for.
The temptation to take the easy or expedient solution instead of God’s way of difficulty and sacrifice.
Jesus didn’t argue with temptation. He sided with God’s word and then hung up on the conversation. He won the battle that had crippled humanity from time immemorial. And he will help us in our own battles too if we are willing to walk with him and let him show us how.
He will save us, if we let him.
9 March, Andrea Coster
As we forgive those who sin against us…
It’s wonderful to know that we have been forgiven and healed from our brokenness but the next line in the Lord’s Prayer sticks in our craw a bit.
We are commanded to forgive the brokenness in others.
Oh dear…
Forgiving those who have wronged us goes right against the grain of our human nature. We want to exact revenge. We have devastatingly eloquent arguments in our heads in which we tell those who have wronged us exactly what we think of them. We imagine delicious scenario’s where they receive their come-uppance. It’s the particular temptation of authors (nervous cough) to write them as characters in our books and then kill them off in inventively nasty ways.
And with each argument and with each fantasy we’re digging ourselves deeper and deeper into a pit of bitterness and resentment until eventually we’ve dug ourselves so deep that that’s all we can see.
So, we need to forgive. Not for their sake, but for ours.
Now if you’re like me and get quite hot under the collar about issues of justice forgiveness seems like we’re giving people a get-out-of-jail-free card. But that’s not how forgiveness works. Forgiveness is not about saying that what the other person did was okay. It is not the same as trusting them again or never setting boundaries. Forgiveness is an invitation to get off the hamster wheel of resentment and bitterness and accept God is our champion and ultimate vindicator. We let people off OUR hook, and onto God’s. God is a God of Justice, but we have to let him determine what justice looks like.
But forgiveness is a process.
Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar, points out that often forgiveness can only come when all the hurt has healed enough to make forgiveness possible. And the only way it can be healed is to bring our wounds to the Lord for healing. But the Lord sometimes requires of us is to be willing to face in that direction of forgiveness and start walking.
And He will walk with us.
2 March, Andrea Coster
Forgive us our sins
You don’t have to have been a human for very long to realise that there is something deeply and distressingly wrong with us. Most people scratch their heads as to what the problem is, talk about more education and make documentaries, but as Christians we have an answer.
Sin
Now sin seems rather an old-fashioned concept. However, gravity is also an old-fashioned concept and it’s still in effect on the human race. You can step over a cliff and complain that it was all to do with your upbringing, but gravity won’t care. You will fall and die.
Sin’s a bit like that.
But the concept of sin doesn’t really resonate with the average person. They equate the word with really terrible things like murder, human trafficking or not recycling. “Well,” we think, “I haven’t murdered anyone lately, so I think I’m alright.”
But what if I were to reframe the word sin and say that sin is essentially being ‘broken’.
We are broken in ourselves, towards others, and towards our planet and there seems no remedy. We are desperately in need of rescue and healing.
And Jesus’ teaches in the Lord’s Prayer that that rescue is at hand. When we pray, we need to acknowledge our brokenness and seek the power of the cross to absorb that brokenness and transform it. That is traditionally called repentance. A call to ‘stop, turnaround from our broken ways and go in the other direction.
And the promise is solid. In old fashioned language, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from every kind of wrong.
What a relief.
Not only the power to be healed from our brokenness but the power to be restored to what we were created to be.
As St Anselm said: “the glory of God is a man made fully alive”. And the role of repentance is the first step towards that process.
23 February, Andrea Coster
Give us this day our daily bread…
Sometimes when we teach on prayer, we can get a bit thingy about the idea of ‘asking’. We treat Asking like a nasty selfish thing that needs to be gotten over with quickly so that we can get to the more worthy subject of worship and adoration. Asking seems so closely tied in with our consumerist culture and its incessant obsession with stuff. “Don’t treat God like a glorified genie in a bottle!” we admonish. And so thanks to the excesses of the prosperity gospel, that teaches that everyone is entitled to health and wealth on tap, we shy away from the idea of Asking.
But we need to consider that Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer teaches us to ask for our daily bread.
“Oh yes,” a nervous part of us gabbles, “but we’re to only ask for what we need.” Some early rabbis used to teach people not to ‘bother’ God with requests. But this kind of thinking really puts us in the position of orphans who have to beg for the basic necessities when in reality we are beloved children, who can rest in the provision of a loving, generous father.
Asking is all over scripture. God equates us with children who can ask without fearing scorn or anger from the Father. We are not ‘bothering’ God when we ask. We are told to ask. In the Heavenly Father’s house there is the blissful complacency of children who know things are provided for. They simply need to ask, and it will be given to them.
Except if they want chocolate cake for breakfast. That might need another conversation…
So, God doesn’t consider asking nasty or selfish. He expects it from us. As we grow in spiritual maturity the marks of our relationship with him is more dependency not less. Let us not be afraid. If it’s important to us, it’s important to him.
16 February 2025, Simon Walmisley
We Protestants rarely display crucifixes in our churches, if at all. Instead, we have the empty cross, which encourages us to think about the risen Jesus. I’ve always liked this as it’s the happy ending to His story and I’ve never much enjoyed looking at Jesus actually on the cross. It makes me feel uncomfortable.
Recently however, I listened to a podcast by a Catholic priest who was talking about John 3:14-15. Now, I know John 3:16 without even thinking about it but had never really paid much attention to these preceding two verses.
Here they are. ‘Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.’
Listening to the priest, I realised these verses offer an insight into the nature of salvation that I had never considered before. Jesus makes a connection between His impending death and the event described in Numbers 21:4-9. Moses erected a bronze serpent on a pole to heal those bitten by snakes, and Jesus paralleled the raising of the serpent with His being lifted up on the cross. The healing from snakebites in the Old Testament takes on greater meaning in Jesus’ sacrifice – while the bronze snake healed the Israelites physically, Jesus on the cross brings us spiritual healing.
Here, then, is the part where my personal discomfort resides: it wasn’t the lifting of the serpent that healed; God commanded the Israelites to look at the serpent on the pole to be healed. Jesus therefore seems to be saying that we need to look at Him lifted up on the cross to fully understand the salvation he offers.
So, despite the discomfort it causes, perhaps we need time looking at Jesus on the cross reflecting on what He endured for us, as well as celebrating the empty cross.
2 February 2025; Andrea Coster
Without faith it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him. Heb 11: 6
Have you ever thought that God might actually exist?
“Well Duh, Captain Obvious. Of course he exists. We don’t meet every Sunday to practice interpretive dance you know.”
But the reason I bring this up is that we are so prone to forgetfulness. We move through life as practical atheists. As if God doesn’t exist or have any impact of our day to day lives. I know I’m very guilty of this.
My favourite book in the Narnia series by C S Lewis is The Silver Chair. At the beginning of the story Jill, one of the main characters, has been brought into the magical land of Narnia to rescue Prince Rilian from the clutches of an evil witch. She is instructed by the great lion Aslan about how he will guide her:
…remember, remember, remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs… Here on the mountain, I have spoken to you clearly… The air is clear, and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind….That is why it is so important to know [the signs] by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the signs and believe the signs. Nothing else matters…
The entire story is a battle to remember Aslan’s signs and not get distracted from their task by the enchantments of the witch.
When life gets strange, or difficult or we simply get weighed down by the mundane it is tempting to forget that God is at work, and we are not on our own. We too must remember God’s signs to us from his Word and what he has done for us in the past.
God exists. Remember, remember, remember the signs.
26 January 2025; Andrea Coster
Your will be done
So, we’ve established that prayer is talking to God. But what about the idea that God might have something to say back to you? Prayer is not only about talking but also listening and learning to hear God’s voice. This all ties into the line in the Lord’s Prayer that says, “your will be done”. How can we know the will of God unless he tells us what it is?
A good starting point is to say that the will of God is found in the scriptures. If we’re reading our bible every day, then we’re finding God’s will in a general sense and apply it to our lives. It’s a good starting point but it’s also rather impersonal. It’s treating the word of God like a set of instructions rather than being living and active. For the Word to live we must be cultivating a sense that God has something to say to us in this very moment. Authors like Brother Lawrence and Greg Boyd call this ‘practicing the presence of God’, the living Word.
In the distracting process of living, we are so often prone to forgetting that God even exists, let alone that he is working out of his will through us. Practicing the presence of God is simply the act of being awake to the possibility that God exists in a moment-by-moment basis, receiving whatever he wants to give and yielding to his will as he reveals it. God is not silent. He always has something to say and he knows how to speak so that you understand. We just need to be awake enough to hear it.
Once we get a sense of the will of God in that moment we can then join in and agree with it. This is what it means to ‘pray without ceasing’. Corrie Ten Boom once said to her assistant, “child, we just need to be mirrors of God’s love. A mirror doesn’t do very much, it just hangs in the right direction”.
Are you awake?
19 January 2025; Andrew Murray (Quoted)
“Can God?”
Ps 74:19
“Can God?” Oh, fatal question! It shut Israel out of the land of Promise. And we are in danger of making the same mistake. Can God find me a situation, or provide food for my children? Can God keep me from yielding to that besetting sin? Can God extricate me from this terrible snare in which I am entangled? We look at the difficulties, the surges that are rolling high and we say, if thou canst do anything, help us!
They said, “Can God?” That hurt and wounded God deeply. Say no more “Can God?” Rather say this, “God Can!” That will clear up many a problem. That will bring you through a difficulty in your life.
There is no strength in unbelief.
Has the life of God’s people reached the utmost limit of what God can do for them? Surely not! God has new places and new developments, and new resources. He can do new things, unheard of things, hidden things! Let us enlarge our hearts and not limit Him. “When thou didst terrible things which we looked not for, thou camest down, the mountains flowed down at thy presence.” (Isaiah 64:3)
We must desire and believe. We must ask and expect that God will do unlooked for things! We must set our faith on a God of whom men do not know what He hath prepared for them that wait for Him. The Wonder-doing God…must be the God of our confidence.
12 January 2025; Andrea Coster
Your kingdom come
Jesus started a lot of his parables with “The kingdom of God is like:
Yeast
a mustard seed
a man discovering unexpected treasure.
All very biblical images but kind of far removed from the modern imagination. Have you used yeast lately?
And that’s the problem. In western culture we really don’t know how to imagine things anymore. Our culture is dismissive of imagination because it’s just ‘making things up’. But what if a sanctified imagination is a way the Holy Spirit uses to speak to us.
We are told to desire the kingdom of God, but we can’t desire what we can’t imagine. If all we can imagine is sitting on clouds playing harps or the never-ending church service because that’s the ‘spiritual’ answer, then it’s going to be very, very boring.
God is speaking to our imagination all the time, causing us to imagine the kingdom through our favourite stories, movies and our dreams. When the desire for his kingdom awakens, he then asks us to pray for it to come.
I once watched a school prize giving where the students performed Viva la Vida by Cold Play. It was clear from the start that they had be practicing all year. The production was amazing to the point of transcendent. When I watched, I thought “this music, this joy in performance, this celebration of achievement, this is a foretaste of the kingdom”.
So, what is the kingdom of God like in your imagination? Here’s a few things that my own imagination has thrown up:
The kingdom of God is like:
Gandalf and Eaomer riding to the besieged forces at Helms deep in Lord of the Rings.
The cessation of pain after a long illness…
Monty Python’s Spam sketch… (spam, spam, spam)
Playing piano for abused elephants
Handel’s Messiah
Let God help you make your own list. Ask him to make the kingdom of God vivid in your imagination.
A useful resource to help explain the use of imagination in prayer is ‘Seeing is Believing’ by Greg Boyd.
5 January 2025; Andrea Coster
Our Father in heaven
Hallowed be your name
When you come to pray you are entering into a conversation. You aren’t just talking into thin air, so here’s the kicker. Do you actually believe God is going to answer you?
Oh yes, we rush to say, of course God loves us and cares about us and listens to our prayer (nervous laughter). But what do we really believe in our hearts? Maybe these thoughts lurk below the surface:
God is distant
God isn’t interested in my problems or isn’t even listening
God is angry or annoyed with me
A lot of boredom and feelings of futility in prayer come from these deep heart beliefs. But Jesus, in the first line of the Lord’s Prayer, teaches us that God is our father who is intensely interested in our lives. Bill Johnson has said, “if it’s important to you, it’s important to Him.”
I don’t know about you, but that quote put my brain in a cramp. You see my experience of ‘father’ was rather negative. I believed deep down that God was like my earthly father: angry and annoyed at me, completely uninterested in anything that concerned me and certainly not interested in stirring himself on my behalf.
Yet Jesus addresses God as Father. He invites us to do the same.
This is why one of the jobs of prayer is finding out just what it means for God to be our father. That sometimes means clearing away a lot of rubbish that has accumulated from our earthly parents and from the way life has worked out for us. This is a process that takes a lifetime of letting the active spoken word of God do the cutting work and finding his mercy and grace at the other end. (Heb 4:12-16)
We are talking with the kindest, wisest, adultiest adult in the room. Why wouldn’t you want to talk to him about everything that is on your mind?
Christmas Day 2024
The birth stories of Jesus are interesting, but they gain their significance in that they tell us about God’s anointed Saviour and what he’s like. God did not choose for his Son to be born in a palace to a powerful human family, he did it the other way round. Jesus was born to a poor young woman. There is no room at the inn. He is visited by a bunch of rough workmen. Yet in spite of this ordinariness, this is humanities Saviour. This baby is God’s answer to our hope and trust in him.
Now we’re faced with a challenge. The birth stories are only as important as the reality of the Saviour in our lives. Luke gives us this information to encourage us to recognise that Jesus is special, not an ordinary baby but God incarnate, God in the flesh. Now it’s up to us to welcome him into our hearts this Christmas time. Today we celebrate the birth of the Saviour, one who is Emmanuel, God with us, a sentiment summed up in the final verse of that great Christmas carol: O Little Town of Bethlehem. I’m sure you know it well:
O Holy Child of Bethlehem
Descend to us we pray
Cast out our sin, and enter in:
Be born in us today
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell:
come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord, Emmanuel.
20th December 2024
There’s a new film out, just released on Netflix in time for Christmas… It’s yet another attempt to tell the story of Mary up to the birth of Jesus and their run from king Herod. It’s a tale we should all be familiar with as we can learn quite a lot about her in the pages of the Gospels. The thing about Mary, the real one not the film version, is that some church traditions make quite of a lot of her, perhaps more than is warranted from what we read in our bibles. Over the centuries, quite a lot extra detail has been added and traditions created, which seem more like later embellishments.
For example… some traditions make Mary out to be almost god-like. It’s as if the vulnerable peasant girl was jettisoned in favour of a ‘super Mary’, someone the equal of the other female deities of the ancient world. Perhaps the church back then wanted Mary to sound better than the others. But as she took on more god-like qualities, she became removed from real life. Mary, they imagined, must have been sinless, and is now an intercessor in heaven praying on behalf of us sinners. The trouble was, as Christianity grew in the Greco-Roman world, it took on some strange characteristics. Other worldly spirituality became prized, the bodily, physical world was a devalued, so they had this idea that it was important to ensure that Mary was untainted by the stuff of our existence. But here’s the thing with that idea… Jesus became real man, with flesh and blood like ours. So do we really need this other worldly ‘goddess’, or do we want a real Mary, the one we find in the pages of the gospels?
13th December 2024 – Guest Post
I once heard someone way that ‘enjoyable prayer’ was an oxymoron. We all know that prayer is an essential part of the Christian life but many of us struggle with it.
We get distracted. Philip Yancey noted that when he would settle to pray, he’d find himself fixing the toilet cistern! Or else our minds become a riot of worries or we steam about the nasty comment our co-worker made yesterday.
We get bored. We think of prayer as getting through a list of requests that seem to be largely ignored. God seems absent or disinterested. If prayer is presented like filling out a form (list appropriate praise in box A) then it’s no wonder we get bored.
We feel guilty. Our inner critic kicks in that ‘we’re not doing it right’. Either we haven’t prayed for long enough, or we haven’t prayed about the right things or we’ve accidentally spent the time chasing mental butterflies or even dozed off.
It’s easy to give up. But the good news is that we don’t have to do anything perfectly. Like the poor widow in Luke’s gospel, we can give the two cents that we have. Sometimes that’s more valuable than praying six hours a day and writing a smug instruction book about it. Because in the end prayer is about connection. We want to know God, and God wants us to know him. He is always ridiculously glad to see us. We are the sparkle in his eye.
90% of the battle in prayer is just showing up. God counts that as a win! Like showing up for coffee with a dear friend. There may just be a conversation to be had. So don’t aim for an hour. Start with five minutes. Sit with being yourself and let God be himself. That’s a good start.
6th December 2024
I sometimes wonder if we inadvertently let ourselves slip into a non-threatening cosy religious faith, like an old pair of slippers that fit us nicely, it never makes us feel uncomfortable. How easy it is for us to become accustomed to our Christianity, so that the words of Jesus no longer challenge us.
As it’s the second Sunday in Advent this week, John the Baptist makes his usual appearance in the lectionary, and we’re forced to look at our own lives and consider if we’re ready for Jesus to return. It’s tempting to think that God’s condemnation of sin is directed at people outside the church. We imagine that we are the good ones and that the challenge is to people who have no faith. But the harshest words that Jesus spoke were always directed to those who were the most religious.
So ask yourself, if Jesus were to return today would he be happy with what he finds us doing? He’d want to know how our faith was changing us and if it was making a real difference to the world around us, wouldn’t he? If it’s not, then sing no more songs, say no more prayers, because God doesn’t desire our religion, he wants much more than that, he wants our hearts, in fact our very lives. If we say have a genuine heart for the lost, then we must continue to tell others about what God has done for us through Jesus Christ, and what he can do for them… if they let him.
29th November 2024
Advent starts this Sunday. Yep, it’s only four Sundays to Christmas Day. It’s traditional this time of year for churches to have an advent wreath of some sort, replete with five candles, one lit each of the four Sunday before Christmas, with the final one being lit on Christmas Day. They tend to serve as bit of a countdown to Christmas, which is odd, because that’s not what Advent is about at all.
Another popular symbol of Advent is the Advent Calendar. When our children were growing up, we always had an Advent Calendar. In fact, we had several. The children had their own calendars – the ones with chocolate in them, they liked those ones. But we also have a family one which told the story of salvation leading up to the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day. Advent calendars are all very well, but they miss the point. Advent isn’t about receiving a gift of chocolate each day, because there’s really only one gift that matters, and that is the gift of Jesus to the world.
So what is Advent about? Advent is its own season, a time of waiting and preparation, but perhaps surprisingly, not for the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ on Christmas Day, although that is part of it in some ways. You see, Advent is there to give us the time to reflect on our need for Jesus to come to us in the first place, and ask ourselves if we’re ready for the time when Jesus will come again. If we don’t go through this season of Advent, waiting, watching, preparing ourselves, then we won’t really have anything to celebrate when he comes again the second time, or for that matter really appreciate why he came that first Christmas Day.
21st November 2024
As I’ve been studying the Lord’s prayer over the last few weeks, one of the things that struck me was how missional a prayer it is. It’s clear that Jesus’ intent in giving us this prayer was so that we intentionally proclaim God’s kingdom, power and glory throughout the world. The world needs to know that there is no glory in earthly power, the only power that matters is the power and glory of God. His power, his glory can be seen in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God’s Son.
The problem is that while we may pray for God’s kingdom to come, for one reason or another we often act as if we don’t really believe it’s going to happen. This is because we unconsciously acquiesce to the powers of this world in our daily lives. But if the church is not prepared to make a stand and subvert the kingdoms of this world then we may as well not bother praying at all.
You see, the Lord’s Prayer is a prayer of incarnation and empowerment. Jesus was able to do what he did because he was the true king. And as the true king he has brought us into his kingdom as brothers and sisters, not his equal, but part of God’s family never-the-less. And as such, we’ve been anointed with his Holy Spirit, empowered to be active in the world, working to proclaim the forgiveness of sins, and working for justice and mercy for all as we look for his glory to be revealed.
Friday 15th November 2024
Deliver us from evil. It’s a famous line from the Lord’s Prayer which acknowledges that evil is a real and powerful force, that it is not only ‘out there’ in the world, it’s also present and active all around us. You see, evil is not merely what we see as a result of human actions. When human beings worship that which is not God, they give authority to forces outside of themselves, forces of destruction and malevolence.
Such an evil force has a name: Satan, the Devil, the Accuser, the Evil One. However, we also know that this Satan is not the equal but opposite of God, he, or it, is not God’s cosmic rival, as some imagine, far from it. But we should never deny that evil is a powerful force, that Satan is implacably opposed to God’s creation, and that he is particularly opposed to those human beings whom God wishes to put in authority over his world.
Rest assured, though, that Jesus’ victory over Satan is also very real and very powerful. His victory is not only ‘out there’ as a fact of history for all who care to see, it is also available to us, right here, right now. When human beings turn from their idolatrous worship of manmade things and turn to Jesus, they turn from darkness to light, from following the way of the strong man to serving the one who has bound the strong man. So, to pray ‘deliver us from evil’ is therefore to rejoice in the victory of God.
Friday 8th November 2024
Forgiveness… One the one hand, we want to be forgiven for the things we’ve done wrong, or at the very least we don’t want to be made to feel guilty about them! But on the other hand, we sometimes find ourselves filled with resentment towards those who’ve hurt us, and, if we’re honest, we’re not so keen on letting them off the hook so easily. But Jesus taught his disciples to pray: ‘Forgive us our sins’ how? ‘As we forgive those who sin against us.’ Hmmm.
So forgiveness is tricky enough for Christians to deal with, but if you’ve grown up with a philosophy of life which revolves around individuality, a philosophy which says if it feels right do it, as many younger people have today, then you will feel that you haven’t done anything that needs forgiveness from anyone, let alone God.
So instead of forgiveness, our society has come up with a clever little substitute notion, one that allows us to do whatever we want, whatever anyone else thinks about it, so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. And we’ve given it a name… we call it tolerance. But at its best, tolerance can only ever be a parody of forgiveness. What it actually does is hide the real issues away as we casually sweep them under the carpet.
Jesus, however, doesn’t say we should be tolerant, instead he draws our attention to things we do that offend God and are contrary to his will for us, and names it for what it is… sin. But he doesn’t leave us to wallow in our guilt and shame, he offers us his grace in the form of forgiveness, not some man-made substitute, but the genuine article, and who in their heart of hearts wouldn’t want that?
Friday 25th October 2024
We’re doing a series on the Lord’s prayer at church at the moment, and this week hear that we should pray for God’s kingdom to come. In part, God’s kingdom has already come in Jesus, it is here now, because he’s left us his Holy Spirit. But that leaves some rather obvious questions: Like, why is there still injustice in the world? Why is there still hunger? Why is there still guilt and shame? Why, then, is there still evil in the world? And those are all very good questions!
The temptation is to spiritualise what Jesus meant, to claim that it was a spiritual experience that Jesus was talking about, an experience which leads us into God’s presence in heaven. But that would be wrong. Because what Jesus did, was open the gates of heaven and lead the way by his life’s example. The coming of the kingdom is not yet over, we still have our part to play, captives still need to be set free. The gates of heaven may have been opened but the people still need to be shown the way in.
Make no mistake, Jesus’ part in all of this was unique, no one else could have accomplished what he accomplished. What Jesus did he did once and for all people. That is an essential part of the gospel. We don’t go on repeating his sacrifice again and again, in fact we’re not even able to. The kingdom did indeed come with Jesus. Like a doctor, Jesus came from heaven to earth with the cure for sin and evil. Now it’s our turn. When we pray “Your kingdom come” we remind ourselves that we have our part to play. Having been cured, we in turn are to lead others to Jesus so that they too may be cured, set free from their own captivity to sin. Amen!
Friday 11th October 2024
“I am the greatest!” Whose famous catchphrase was that? Of course, it was the boxer, Mohammed Ali. He loved to brag that he was the greatest, it was like his trade mark, everyone knew about him, and he was a great boxer. The tennis player John McEnroe used a similar technique. His slogan was “You cannot be serious!” as he berated the umpire if the game wasn’t going his way, and that, along with his bad on court behaviour was his trade mark, and people either loved or loathed him for it. He too was very successful.
The thing is, it says in the bible that we shouldn’t be like these people. You know what it says: the first shall be last, the meek shall inherit the earth, whoever wants to be first must be a slave of all. Not exactly aspirational qualities are they, in fact they may even deter some people from following Jesus! This got me thinking about what stops people from giving their all to Jesus. What are the things we cling to for security? Is it Money? Possessions? Our entitlements? The position we hold at work or in the community? But here’s the thing, following Jesus is an act of the will that sometimes requires us to choose between what we want and what we actually need.
When we look at the lives of those who gave up everything to follow Jesus, we see that the truly great aren’t self-proclaimed or boastful. The truly great are those that are willing to humbly take Jesus at his word and follow him. And remember, Jesus hasn’t left us in the lurch, we have the Holy Spirit to guide us. So, listen to his voice, and take up your cross and follow him.
Friday 4th October 2024
Divorce is a difficult topic to preach on. So many people have been bruised by the whole experience of marriage breakdown that to raise the topic, let alone take a strong line on it, seems, as some might say, ‘unchristian’. It touches too many raw nerves, so we often avoid talking about it. But that’s not helpful. Divorce can have devastating effect on families, especially children, of all ages. It’s simply wrong for adults to make whatever arrangements that suit them without seriously considering the impact on their children.
While divorce may not be a second ‘unforgivable sin’ that some Christians today make it out to be, it’s definitely not God’s plan for us. But God also knows that we are sinful human creatures, and it seems to have been allowed under certain, very limited circumstances, such as adultery. Remarriage after divorce is equally fraught with difficulties, and it’s been a question that the church has struggled with, at least for the last few decades as prior to that the church never allowed it. The church today, in the west at least, has lost its way on these issues. Perhaps we need to come to a fresh appreciation of what the bible has to say on the matter, and not just capitulate to the prevailing immoral culture in which we live.
Friday 27th September 2024
Christians down the centuries have been prepared to lay aside everything for the sake of following Jesus, to be disciples who remained faithful to God’s word; preaching, teaching, discipling those around them, so that some might be saved from the fires of hell, and rejoicing in the success of others who followed in their footsteps. Christians today need to display that same level of devotion to God and the truth of his word as they did so we don’t become a stumbling block to other’s faith. As we worship Jesus and remember that he purchased us with his blood at the cost of his own earthly life, isn’t it only right that we hold nothing back from him?
Friday 20th September 2024
As modern-day disciples of Jesus, we need to understand that God calls us to a different way of living. Following Jesus means that we’re prepared to share with him in turning the world’s ideas of greatness on its head, and that’s something that requires a change in the way we think and act. The world says that greatness is measured by how many people serve you, or by the number of lives that you control. But Jesus says that true greatness is measured by how many people you help, how many people you serve along the way.
The disciples may have got it wrong when it came to their understanding of greatness, but notice that Jesus didn’t condemn them or rebuke them for desiring greatness. He didn’t say that it’s wrong to want to be great, or to want to succeed. He just redefined what sort of greatness they were to desire. Of course, we all need to learn this lesson because none of this comes naturally to us. If we desire greatness, then good! But let our desire be for the right things. We must be willing to be a servant “to all”, and that usually means learning to be vulnerable and dependent on God. Perhaps we need to learn to take ourselves less seriously, and realise that we don’t have to be in control of everything, and we don’t have all the answers. But Jesus does, so let’s just trust him for our future.
Friday 13th September 2024
I think it’s fairly obvious that we live in a consumer society, where people demand choices not eternal imperatives. This makes it difficult for them to accept the gospel, and even if they do, they approach their religion in the same way. They come to churches as consumers asking themselves “what am I going to get from this?” They want a full church service, not too long though, with pleasing worship, a good youth and children’s program, pastoral care when they need it, and at least some passable preaching, nothing too challenging though, because they don’t want to change the way they live. They want the latest and best eye-popping programs that we can throw at them. But they’re not always willing to pay for it. They opt for a la carte religion, opting for starters and deserts, but not the main course with its hard demands for obedience to the word of God, and they shy away from anything that smells remotely of sacrifice.
If we buy into this sort of consumer orientated church, we’ll end up just offering spiritual junk food. And like all junk food, it’ll never truly satisfy us. It’ll just make us feel good for a short time, while in the end we get spiritually flabby, unable to move out of that comfy chair, being entertained by TV church, while our souls slowly die from lack of nourishment. The thing is, we have to do more than merely believe that Jesus is the Messiah, we actually have to decide to do what he says and change the way we live. Hard to do sometimes, but well worth the effort!
Friday 6th September 2024
Throughout the western world, or so we’re told, there is a resurgence of nationalism, racism, and xenophobia, and quite often it’s mixed up with religion. It’s almost as if we’re being enticed to put up walls that divide us from one another. But that runs counter to the gospel. Divisions like that have no place in the church.
Now, I’m guessing that none of us think we hold any prejudices ourselves. In fact, I think Christians work very hard at not being prejudiced against others. But prejudice can be quite subtle. Think about it, think of your friends, is it like looking in a mirror? They’re people like you aren’t they, because it’s natural to only want to mix with those like ourselves. But as chapter 7 of Mark’s gospel shows us, God hasn’t limited his kingdom to just a certain group of people, now all those who profess faith in Jesus as their Lord and Saviour are included in his kingdom, no matter what their nationality, ethnicity, or social status. God’s people come from every tribe and language and nation, and his church should be a reflection of that. Perhaps we ought to remember, like the disciples had to learn, that none of us are God’s favourites. We all come to God’s table only by grace, and it’s a table much larger table than we probably realise.
Friday 30th August 2024
We all like things the way we like them. Or to put it another way, we all have our preferences. One thing I can guarantee though is that personal preferences can and have caused no end of conflicts in churches. The problem is the longer we’ve been doing things a certain way, the less likely we are to want to change and become more flexible and open to different ways of doing things. Most of us will happily admit that we prefer to stick with the familiar. It’s a bit like having a favourite arm chair, our preferences help us to feel warm and secure because they never make us feel uncomfortable. And to justify our position, to give our preferences as much weight as possible, we pretend that what we prefer is actually what God wants.
Here’s the challenge though… Much of what we prefer, especially when it comes to our worship, is nothing more than accommodating cultural norms or human tradition. This is what Jesus confronted the Pharisees with in chapter 7 of Mark’s gospel. Just like the Pharisees, we too can give too much weight to our human traditions, not rituals around personal cleanliness and clean and unclean foods, but our preferences around how we do church together. The thing is, what we like, what we prefer, isn’t important. What matters is that we are walking closely with Jesus. Living a life, not of unnecessary rules and regulations, but of following the commandments of God, and of love and charity to our neighbour. And yes, that might mean putting up with a service that isn’t to our particular taste from time to time, because ultimately our worship it isn’t about us, it’s about what is pleasing to God.
Friday 23rd August 2024
Have you ever wondered why Jesus deliberately said things that he must have known would annoy the very people he was trying to reach? Reading the gospels, especially John’s Gospel, it seems that Jesus upset mainly those in positions of authority, so perhaps we can say that he wasn’t interested in massaging someone’s ego. Well yes, he was certainly concerned with telling people the truth and not merely what they wanted to hear, but that’s not the whole picture. You see, it wasn’t only those in power that got annoyed with Jesus’ teaching, it was also the crowds who came to hear him teach. When it came to helping them understand who he was and that they had to put their faith in him for their salvation, and not the law or the temple, all their assumptions about being the people of God were challenged. This made him exceedingly unpopular, so much so that in John chapter 6 we’re told that many of his followers deserted him. But Jesus appeared to be unconcerned with how popular he was. He had a message that needed to be said no matter what it meant for himself.
So why do people have such strong reactions to the message of Jesus today? I think it’s often because we’re set in our ways. You see, the message of the gospel is still challenging to many people because it threatens our comfort zones and challenges our presuppositions; about ourselves, and about God too. The truth is that each one of us has to be prepared to listen afresh to the words of Jesus, and be prepared to be challenged and give up old habits and ideas. That’s how we grow as Christians, both in knowledge about God, and spiritually. But it isn’t easy to do.
Friday 16th August 2024
A growing trend over the last few years in this idea that everyone should have a bucket list, a list of things you want to do before you die, perhaps a hundred places to visit, a hundred restaurants to eat in, recipes to cook, activities to do, books to read, films to watch, and so on. The popular philosophy behind it is that this life is all there is, so you need to cram in as much as possible to make it worthwhile. But this is not a philosophy that Christians can subscribe to. True, we only get one chance at life in this world, but the philosophy that says when you’re dead you’re dead is not one that Christians believe. We believe that there is eternal life after this life, a life beyond the grave. And that eternal life is related to how we live our life now. So, for the Christian, the question becomes not ‘how can I get the most out of this life?’ but ‘what can I do in this life to ensure I have eternal life with God?’ And that leads to a very different bucket list.
Friday 9th August 2024
As a Christian, I believe that God truly loves all people, and it is his desire that everyone would accept his free offer of eternal life through faith in the death and resurrection of his only son, Jesus Christ, as a sacrifice made on our behalf to pay for our sins. But of course, such an offer requires a response; first a level of humility and acceptance that what the bible says about Jesus is true, that he suffered death and separation from God the Father so that we wouldn’t have to; and second that we actually need his forgiveness, indeed, we’re lost without it, which is a tricky thing to accept when you’re used to calling all the shots for yourself.
But suppose we do that, what then? Well, we still need God’s help and guidance to help us draw near to him, and point us in the right direction to be able to live godly and holy lives. Not all people manage this though, and some fall away, distracted by the attractions and temptations of this world rather than focusing on the next. Those who do follow through on their response to God’s love and allow his Spirit to work in their hearts and minds, will live their lives in grateful thanks for what Jesus has done for us, sharing God’s love with those around them, put aside their natural inclinations to selfishness and criticism, and always seek the good in other people. The common thread in all this, is that we can do none of that on our own, right from our first response to God’s call, to faithfully living our lives proclaiming the Kingdom of God, is the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and minds. We cannot do it without him. Amen, come Holy Spirit.
Friday 2nd August 2024
The question of why we go to church is an interesting one. Is it for friendship and fellowship? Is it just for the company of like-minded people? Is it because you like to be spiritually uplifted? Or perhaps you come to learn something new, to be built up in your faith? All those are valid reasons, but there’s one thing about all of them which, unless we get the balance right, can mean we lead a somewhat self-centred spiritual life, and actually miss the point of what it means to be the church of Christ. You see, all those reasons, good as they are, are about what God can do for you, about what you can get out of church.
But where does your faith fit in to your life outside of church? The crowds who followed Jesus around as he performed his Galilean ministry were challenged on this very point. What were their motives in wanting to be with him? After all, they’d come from all over the country to hear what he had to say, but why were they there? What were they, and perhaps us too, hoping to get out of meeting Jesus? It’s a worthwhile question to bear in mind as we think about our own motivations when we come to church; are we seeking merely to have our own physical needs met, or are we also looking to be spiritually nourished by Jesus so that we can be his witnesses to the world around us?
Friday 21st June 2024
Throughout our lives we face all manner of storms and crises which, understandably, make us fearful or worried about our future. We can’t stop ourselves from being worried or afraid when we are in perilous situations, that’s only natural, but our fears and worries can be like a loose cannon smashing around our spiritual hold, unless we deal with them, we’re in danger of being spiritually shipwrecked. It’s at times like these that we need to remember that Jesus is always with us, that he will never leave us.
As his Holy Spirit works quietly within our lives, to help us overcome the sin that seeks to pull us down and separate us from the love of God, we should remember what the apostle Paul said to the church in Rome: “…neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39).
Nothing can separate us from God’s love. What a wonderful truth that is, and how easily it is that we forget it! But that is what we need to hold onto when life’s storms come upon us. Only by trusting in Jesus, even when we are afraid, can we come to know the reassurance and peace which only he can bring
Friday 14th June 2024
I have a bible verse in the header of my bi-monthly parish council report that says: “Do not despise the day of small beginnings, for the LORD rejoices to see the work begin.” (Zechariah 4:10). It’s a constant reminder to me not to worry about numbers so much as concentrate on being faithful minister of the gospel. Jesus spoke about smallness in his parable of the mustard seed in Mark’s gospel. But the mustard plant in this story isn’t about the size of God’s church, it’s about the final bringing in of God’s kingdom in our world, the time when evil is judged and tears are wiped away, the time when there’s a multitude gathered around the throne of God from every tribe, and language, and people, and nation, and together with once voice, they lift up their praise to God. You see, even though the Christian faith is big in some places, the mustard plant still hasn’t grown to full maturity.
Perhaps we should beware of being too impressed with bigness. We tend to be overly impressed with large churches, we go to their conferences, study them to find the secret to their success, and try to replicate what they’ve achieved. But we don’t study small churches because we want hundreds to come forward at an outreach event… not just a handful. But this parable reminds us not to despise small beginnings. Often, it’s the small where God is working the most powerfully, in the little things where God is working in the most hidden and mysterious ways to work miracles in people’s lives as they come to salvation
Friday 7th June 2024
Decluttering… it’s become a thing, apparently. I reckon that most of us have probably got a lot of ‘stuff’ in our houses that we’ve bought over the years, items which now clutter up our drawers and cupboards. Maybe it’s time for a clear out. After all, it’s surprising how many things we own that we don’t really need, things that aren’t necessary in order for us to live comfortable, debt free lives. So why have we got them?
Some of the blame can be placed on the advertising industry… they’re experts in the art of getting us to want something that we really don’t need, by offering us a solution to a problem we never knew we had. But what does it deliver? Not much. It doesn’t deliver satisfaction, because the desire to have is greater than the satisfaction of having it. How many times have you saved long and hard for something, then, when you’ve had it a while, something else grabs your attention, and you start desiring that instead?
Advertisers spend a lot of money trying to persuade us that if we buy a certain item then we’ll be happy. And we will, for a short while, but not in the long term, or even the medium term as we soon get bored with it. Now, it’s not wrong to dream and desire, because without these two things we’d never do anything! The trouble is that we’re far too easily pleased, we’re always wanting what others have got, rather than appreciating the good things that God has already given us. Decluttering is all very well, but we’d probably have been happier if we’d saved our hard-earned cash and appreciated what we’ve already been given.
Friday 31st May 2024
In 1948 George Orwell wrote a very famous book. It was called 1984 and depicted a future in which the government never told the truth, they lied, all the time. Everything they said was the complete opposite of the truth. The book was banned in most communist countries, maybe because it was a little too close to the truth for them. Commenting on this, George Orwell reportedly said: “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
Do you know what most people value in another person? I think it’s honesty. Yet, ironically, it’s those who tell the truth who are most often attacked. Their views are frequently misquoted or taken out of context just so that they can be made out to be some sort of extremist. The suppression of truth, the limitation of free speech in the guise of preventing so called hate speech, it’s a dangerous thing to go down that path. After all, what would such a law mean for Christians who say that Jesus is the only way that someone can be saved?
The problem is that people often believe what they hear without really checking whether it’s true or not, usually because it suits their own prejudices. All I’m saying is be careful what you hear and read. The reality is that truth and lies are often mixed in the same breath, so let’s not be caught out ourselves!
Friday 24th May 2024
Why do people steal? There are probably a number of answers to that question, but contrary to what some may claim, it’s not usually because of poverty. The main reason people steal is because they think they can get away with it. In fact, according to ANZ bank, employee theft has little to do with income, and has more to do with having the opportunity to do so. And then there’s greed, people steal because they want what others have got. It’s not surprising then that the bible tells us that ‘the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil’ (1 Tim 6:10), and urges us to ‘Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).
The problem is that we live in a society that honours and values the accumulation of wealth and possessions. And it’s not surprising, every day on the TV we are bombarded messages which say that you must have this or that thing to be complete.
The trouble is that most of us don’t have the income or the means to have those things. So, we end up living in some sort of fantasy world where we imagine ourselves to have the resources to live the lifestyle we want. Only for most of us that will never be true. But that doesn’t stop us trying, some people end up horribly in debt. Worse still is that some end up gambling what they do have in the hope of gaining what they don’t. The trouble is, this love of money is destructive. It blinds us in our relationships with others, and makes it hard for us to trust God for our wellbeing. What was it that Jesus said? It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God (Mark 10:25).
Friday 17th May 2024
The pages of history a smothered in broken and adulterous relationships. Human sexuality, that wonderful gift from God, has been made into something it was never intended to be. Corrupted by sinful minds where lust and desire are given free reign, Satan is having a field day. And yet we have this command from God: You not commit adultery (Exodus 20:14). Faithfulness in all our relationships is something that God takes very seriously, because the relationships we have between each other, especially that between a husband and wife, are supposed to be an image of God’s relationship to his people.
Human sexuality is both a wonderful, and dangerous gift, when corrupted by sin it destroys everything that it was intended to convey. Instead of unity with God, adultery brings heartbreak and despair, and feelings of betrayal and abandonment. And yet incredibly, God doesn’t abandon us to our fate, holding out instead the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation through the death of his Son, Jesus Christ. You see, this commandment is all about faithfulness; faithfulness between husband and wife, our faithfulness to God, but more importantly, God’s faithfulness to his people. Trouble is, humanity has proven itself to be persistently unfaithful when it comes to God.
Friday 10th May 2024
What do you think about the bible, is it just a collection of manmade stories passed on down through the ages, or is it something more? I guess it depends on what you think about Jesus Christ. Do you believe, as the bible teaches, that he is the only begotten Son of God? Or do you think that he was just a good man, a good teacher who had sone useful things to say, but not much more than that? You see, there are many people who think that you don’t have to believe what the Bible says, and that you don’t have to believe everything that is written about Jesus, you can just believe some of it. Maybe you think that not all of it is true, so you’ve decided that there are some bits you can ignore. In fact, a lot of people do that.
But if I understand Christianity correctly, there is no middle ground. You either believe that the bible is the infallible Word of God, or you don’t believe that it is the Word of God at all. You either believe that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God or you don’t believe that He is a Son of God at all. You see, if you believe that the Bible is the revealed Word of God, and if you believe that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, then you’ll believe that the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are real historical events that were seen and witnessed by many hundreds of people. The early Christians thought so. They were the ones who say they saw Jesus raised from the dead and ascend bodily into heaven 40 days later, and I doubt they would be prepared to die for that belief if it wasn’t true! So… what do you believe?
Friday 3rd May 2024
I’m a daily bible reader, I use a chronological bible reading plan that has me reading the whole bible in a year. I’ve been doing it for about 10 years now and one thing that you can’t help but notice is the cycle of sin, punishment and redemption for God’s people. The books of the kings of Israel and Judah are full of these cycles. But it hasn’t stopped, in the Christian era there have been cycles of failure in church leadership that led to new movements and denominations being raised up, which for a time revitalised the church.
Such a time happened around 200 years ago. The protestant church was in a mess, there were absentee ministers, ministers with little or no knowledge of the Bible, and there was little care for the poor and the needy in society. But then God raised up a generation of evangelically minded leaders who made it their mission to change things, men and women whose love for God and the people led to the repeal of slavery, free education for all, and the building of many schools and hospitals. They entered politics, became prime ministers and presidents even. This was the time of the Evangelical Revival, and the spread of the gospel was ensured by those who gave up their comfortable lifestyles to endure poverty and hardship in far flung places of the world like New Zealand, and all for the sake of seeing a few people come to know Jesus as their Lord.
Sadly, the cycle continues. For the last few decades, we’ve seen ministers who don’t accept the authority of the Bible as the word of God, who want to do their own thing and not honour the teaching of their spiritual forebears. But I sense things are changing, once again God is raising up ministers who are prepared to speak the truth which changes lives. The results of their ministry might not be apparent yet, but their ministry and preaching give me hope for the future
Friday 26th April 2024
Have you ever thought about what drew you to your particular church? I’m guessing there are a variety of reasons; perhaps you like style of worship, or you feel welcomed and accepted, maybe you enjoy the singing or the sermon, or that your minister preaches and practices the truth of the gospel as handed down by the apostles. And to all that I say, fantastic! But what keeps you going to worship week after week? Do you think it might have something to do with having a sense of belonging, of knowing that you belong, not just to God, but to that particular part of his body, the church?
When we find ourselves in a place where we belong, where we feel we fit in, we find that we’re more open to God working in our lives, moulding and shaping us into the people he wants us to be, both as individuals and as church together. But be prepared for God to put his pruning shears to your life, as that too is part of your spiritual formation as God brings out the fruit he wants to see you produce, which aren’t always the same as what you think you have. That’s the time when being in a place where we belong is so important, as we place our trust in God, and his appointed leaders, and are supported by those around us. So if you think you’re ready to go deeper with God, then be ready to be pruned as well!
Friday 19th April 2024
When you arrive at church, what do you usually do? It’s my observation that more often than not we start chatting to our friends, catching up on the latest gossip, sorry I mean news, while the rest of us get there just in time to find our seats before the service starts. But not everyone is like that. Some like to get to church early, at least 5 or 10 minutes before the start of the service, and while the rest of us are busy catching up with our friends they’re sitting quietly thinking about God. They’re preparing their hearts to give God their thanks and praise, and receive what God would have them learn today. And what about when you leave the service, what do you say to one another as you get in the car? ‘That was a great service today’, ‘The sermon really spoke to me’? Or is it something more akin to ‘Thank goodness that’s over with, what else have we got on today?’
Now, I don’t want to guilt anyone here, but we might ponder which attitude best illustrates the sort of heart that God wants us to have towards him, and which one best describes you? You see, I worry that sometimes we don’t show our appreciation for who God is and what he’s done for us. I know that none of us means to do it, but it’s just too easy to take God for granted and trivialise what we have come to do as we gather together on a Sunday!
Friday 12th April 2024
I often hear people say things like: “I think God is like…” or “God, to me, is like…”. But to talk like that is to fall into a subtle trap, because God is not who you imagine him to be, he’s not some imaginary friend, God is who he is. What our society has done, and many liberal Christians have bought into this, is create a parody of God by making a god in their own image. In other words, they’ve made a representation, an idol, of the god they want, not the God who is. And they’ve done this because it serves their own sinful lifestyles to have a god who doesn’t condemn, where there’s no sin, only love and acceptance. They have made a god who serves them, a fluffy father Christmas god who is weak and powerless and unable to tell them what to do. They have reduced God down to a god who serves them rather than the all-powerful, almighty, transcendent creator of the universe.
Theologians used to say that ‘the chief aim of man is to glorify God’. But in effect, some have transformed that into ‘the chief purpose of god is to glorify humanity.’ They have made spirituality into something that helps us get along in life, rather than something which leads us to absolute standards of truth and goodness. What they have done is made a manageable god. But a manageable god can never truly be God, because we would always be able to control it. It’s a dangerous illusion to think that we can reduce God into something that fits into our own lifestyle, who is only there to serve our purposes, and at our convenience.
Friday 5th April 2024
We live in a multicultural country with a lot of religions represented and where there are as many opinions as there are people. Now in our liberal egalitarian society many New Zealanders, perhaps even the majority, would agree with the sentiment that ‘all religions lead to God, they’re just using different paths, and all religions and cultures are equally valid’. Now whether you agree or disagree, millions of New Zealanders, regardless of their own religious beliefs, would, I suspect, wholeheartedly agree with it, because it seems such a reasonable statement. No one wants to be associated with hateful, arrogant, self-righteous people who say, “My way is the only way!” Do they?
But for Christians, there’s a problem with that, and the problem is the first commandment. “You shall have no other gods before me.” Which is to say, the LORD is the only true God. Or to put it another way, “All religions do not lead to God using different paths.” Christians believe that here is only one God, and that his name is not Allah, or Buddha, or Gaia, or any other name that might be used. And that one God demands to be worshipped exclusively. The trouble is that it grates against our democratic sensibilities. “But everybody is equal” we cry! And yes, in the eyes of the law, everybody is equal. But not everybody is right when it comes to who God is. Remember… it was Jesus Christ who said, “I am the way, the truth, the life. no one comes to the Father except by me.” I didn’t make it up. And it’s the same God who reveals himself in the Bible who says “You shall have no other gods besides me.” So which God are you flowing, the God of the bible or something of your own imagination?
Friday 29th March 2024
The thing about Christianity is that it’s a fact of history. After all, the church is still here after more than 2000 years of people trying to get rid of it, or at least silence its message, as is happening in many western countries today. And since one of Christianity’s central claims is that Jesus rose from the grave, that claim ought to be able to be proven or disproven, because Christianity stands or falls on the validity or truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. For Christianity to be true, Jesus’ resurrection cannot be matter of opinion, it must be a matter of fact, true or false.
One thing I was taught as a police officer in the UK, was that believing something to be true isn’t good enough, opinions count for nothing, for something to be true you must be able to prove it, and eyewitness testimony is amongst strongest evidence you can get. It’s the same with the Christian claim that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. If you can’t prove that it happened then Christianity is a miserable hoax that has enslaved the lives of millions of people. So what evidence is there? Well, there were certainly plenty of eye witnesses accounts of the resurrected Jesus; the apostle Peter saw him, Mary saw him, two men on the road to Emmaus saw him, various disciples saw him on 5 different occasions, more than 500 hundred saw him at once, his own brother, James, saw him, and Jesus appeared to the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus. Could all those people be liars? Unlikely, especially as some of them went to their deaths proclaiming the resurrected Jesus! That’s surely enough proof, isn’t it? The question is, are you going to accept their testimony, or rely on your own opinion?
Friday 22nd March 2024
Having been born and raised in England I do love a bit of pomp and ceremony, especially those grand military parades like Trooping the Colour to celebrate the King’s official birthday, or the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. We love our ceremonies in the church too, all that fancy dress and so on, and for large public occasions like royal weddings we get to combine the two, replete with hundreds of thousands of cheering crowds lining the streets all shouting their praise at those passing by.
As the crowds who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem on the day we call Palm Sunday found, there’s a certain buzz being in a crowd, a certain excitement in numbers. And at large church gatherings we too can experience great times of worship and learning. It’s easy to be a Christian there. It’s easy to applaud Jesus when you’re in a large crowd all doing the same thing. In a frenzy of celebration, we gladly focus on Jesus, and we can shout praises loudly enough to make any Pharisee complain. It’s between the celebrations, when we go home, that we don’t do so well. Come to think of it, when you leave Church on Sunday, will you give any further thought to Jesus Christ the rest of the week? Or will you be like the disciples who made promises by day and then fled by night, or one of the crowd who praises him one day and then loses interest in Him the next?
My point is, we can’t gauge our commitment to Jesus Christ based solely on the applause we give him. Being a Christian is more than just giving him public praise, it’s about developing a right relationship with God. And the easiest way we can do that is simply to spend time reading his word, in prayer, and with fellow Christians who support and encourage one another to live godly lives. Going deeper with Jesus will sustain us in this life and into the next. Isn’t that what you want? I know I do!
Friday 15th March 2024
For those who call themselves Christians, there is the very real challenge to give our all to Jesus. In fact, in chapter 12 of John’s gospel, Jesus calls those who want to follow him to ‘hate’ their own lives, and by ‘hate’ he means turning our backs on the things that have kept us out of the family of God. This is an important thing for us to grasp. Jesus is challenging all of us to give our all for his sake. We must allow ourselves to be ‘planted’ and grow into a new way of being, dying to our old way of living, and live in the light of God’s glory instead.
Actually, it’s not as difficult as we might imagine. For one thing God doesn’t ask us to do things that he knows we cannot bear. But mostly because God has given us his own Holy Spirit to help and to guide us through any hardships we may face. He has not left us to face the world alone, he is there with us, helping us through it. Discipleship is not for the faint hearted, that much is true. However, Jesus is still looking for disciples, those who are willing to put the will of God before their own. In this season of Lent, I hope that we are able to reflect on the true cost of discipleship, and ask ourselves the question many of us avoid: are we prepared to follow Christ, come what may?
Friday 8th March 2024
Christians often talk about life after death, usually in terms of ‘going to heaven’, but the bible usually calls it ‘eternal life’. But what is ‘eternal life’ exactly? Many people take it to mean that we will live forever after our bodies have died, and in once sense that’s true. But I have to tell you, everyone, both good and bad, will live forever after they have died. Why? Because our souls are immortal. So the question is not ‘will I live forever’ but ‘where will I spend eternity’, will it be with God? Or will it be in that other place, the one we call Hell?
You see, the eternal life that Jesus talked about is life in all its fullness, it is life lived in the full presence of the light of God. Eternal life for you began the moment you made the choice to believe in Jesus and live according to God’s ways. Not believing, on the other hand, means remaining where we are; trapped in the darkness of sin and death.
You’d think, wouldn’t you, that we’d all like to be in the light. But sadly, that’s not the case. You see, what a lot of people really want is to be the one who controls where that light shines. Like someone holding a torch in a darkened room, we want to stand behind the light. We’re happy for it to illuminate what’s around us, and we’re happy for it to illuminate the things were proud of. We’re even happy for it to illuminate others people’s faults, but only so long as our own faults remain sufficiently hidden from view! As Christians, we’ve moved from darkness into God’s light, a risky thing is some ways as it means our deeds are exposed for what they really are. Well, it might be risky, but eternal life in the presence of God is absolutely worth it!
Friday 1st March 2024
One of the problems modern western churches face is that there’s a huge temptation to do what sociologists call ‘attractional church’, that is to say, a church that makes it easy to belong, offers a concert like church service with a sermon packed full of amusing anecdotes, and leaves the worshipper feeling good about themselves. On the face of it, it’s an attractive proposition for the would-be church goer, but it’s all a bit too convenient. You see, a religion of convenience ends up merely catering for, and maintaining everyone’s comfort levels. Its main purpose is to keep the practice of religion going by making religious life easy and enjoyable for the majority, so it seldom, if ever, challenges them or asks them to give more than a token amount, either in time, money, or effort. It’s convenient because its central focus is personal happiness and selfish gain.
But this problem isn’t isolated to the more Pentecostal style churches, members of traditional churches can fall into this trap too. The temptation there is to fall into the habit of merely coming to church on a Sunday, saying their ‘confession’, sharing communion, singing a few songs, giving their ‘nod-to-God’ so to speak, and then the rest of the week acting and doing just what everyone else does around them.
But here’s the thing… God isn’t there for our convenience, someone to salve our conscience while we hope we’ve done enough to get into heaven. A religion of convenience loses sight of our true purpose, which is to love and serve God, and our neighbour as ourselves. Sometimes that’s inconvenient, and it can be costly in both time and resources, but it is what Jesus expects of his disciples.
Friday 23rd February 2024
It’s been my experience that at the end of a great conference or church event we come back excited and fired up about achieving great things for God. But then, after a short time, reality hits; there’s some crisis at home, or someone immediately challenges our faith or says something that makes us wonder whether it was all real. How do you cope with the realities of life that you come up against? Do you try to do it in your own strength? Or do you rely on the power of God. You see, mountain top experiences are great things, but the test of them is when we come back to the real world, to a broken and hurting world where the glory of God is sometimes hidden.
Then the question is whether we remember and trust what we’ve discovered on the mountain top; that everything is possible for those who believe in Jesus, because Jesus is far more powerful than anything we could ever imagine. That was the lesson the disciples needed to take with them from the Mountain of Transfiguration. This Jesus that they were following transcends any categories they may have had for him. He’s the divine Son of God. Everything is possible for him, and everything is possible for those who are joined to him through faith, because the name he has is far above every other name.
So, when those times come where God’s answer to our prayers isn’t what we’d hoped for, remember what the disciples saw on the mountaintop: that Jesus is the Lord, the divine Son of God. He is the one who came to die for us and change the future forever, and who rose from death to assure us that his mission had been completed, and that there’s now a life with God awaiting us in heaven with him
Friday 16th February 2024
Lent started this week… It’s one of those Christian festivals that pass most Christians by. Oh, we might give a nod to Shrove Tuesday, better known as pancake day to most people, but only because we get some tasty pancakes out of it! But Lent is far more purposeful than that. It’s a way to place ourselves humbly before God as we accept his assessment of us; that we can bring nothing to Him to buy our salvation. It is a way to strip ourselves bare of our pretence to self-righteousness, and come before him in humble acceptance of who we really are, emptying ourselves of the false pride and perfectionist tendencies that blind us to the log in our own eyes.
But it isn’t all a negative, inward-looking experience, it’s also an opportunity to grow closer to God through prayer as we recognise and respond to God’s presence in our lives and in our world, a time to place our needs, our fears, our failures, our hopes, indeed, our whole lives in God’s hands once again. It’s a time where we remind ourselves who God is as we allow his transforming grace to work in us once more. And when we come to worship him on Easter Sunday, we can do so with a renewed understanding and hope that goes beyond mere chocolate and festive music.
Friday 9th February 2024
It isn’t always easy being a disciple of Jesus is it. Sometimes he takes us to uncomfortable and unfamiliar places, sometimes he gives us difficult jobs to do, and sometimes the skills he wants to learn are hard and take lots of practice. But through it all we should remember that our job, like those first disciples, is simply to follow Jesus, and not tell him what we think he ought to do! If nothing else, Jesus demonstrates the importance of remaining faithful to our God-given mission of sharing the Gospel, by not let anything get in the way of that, no matter how appealing it may seem at the time. You see, it’s very easy to be carried away by the desire to appear relevant, and do things that we know will attract the crowds. But unless what we’re doing is centred on sharing the gospel, then our apparent success may actually be a failure, because God isn’t in it.
Friday 2nd February 2024
When we read the gospel stories about the way Jesus conducted his ministry, it’s not too difficult to see that there’s a tremendous difference between the ministry of Jesus and the ministry of the typical TV evangelist or mega church pastor. Some preachers seem to court fame and popularity, they like to please their congregations with funny stories, uplifting messages and professional quality worship music. On the face of it, they’re quite successful, their churches are full every Sunday, their bank accounts are bulging and they pay generous salaries to their staff. They’re popular, but is that really what it’s all about?
One thing’s for certain, Jesus never mistook popularity with success. He knew that he had a job to do, and that job was not to be the resident miracle worker of Capernaum. The kingdom of God is something that only God can create. It is not something built through human effort, even if it is well-intentioned. This is why Jesus so often withdrew to solitary places to pray. It was his heavenly Father’s will that he wanted to accomplish. In doing so he provides all of us with a model to follow. The antidote to our natural desire to please the crowds is actually quite simple. It is to seek the will of our heavenly Father. In other words, if we want to do God’s will, then we need to take our prayer life seriously, both together and when we’re on our own.
Friday 26th January 2024
One of the more well-known metaphors that Jesus used when talking about the relationship between God and his people is that of sheep with their Shepherd. In John’s gospel, Jesus said this: The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.” (Jn. 10:3-5).
Now, I’m told that it is characteristic of sheep not to think about where they are going. They must be led, and therefore, they can be easily misled. Jesus said his sheep would know his voice and follow Him. But we can only do that if we learn to listen to what that voice is saying and become familiar with it, instead of listening to all the other voices around us that are clamouring for our attention. Those are the voices we hear on our tv’s and radios, or read in books and newspapers, or watch on YouTube, some of which are helpful and informative, most though are anything but! It’s only when we become familiar with God’s Word that we are able to clearly discern his voice amongst all the others. We learn to recognise the truth and apply it to our lives. If we don’t, if we fail to pay attention to what God is saying and has already said in his word, it will be all too easy to be misled and get caught up in the cultural influences and values around us and find ourselves conforming to a very different lifestyle than the one to which God had called us to.
Friday 5th January 2024
I have a confession to make: I used to be a binge Bible reader. I’d read big chunks of the Bible for one or two days, then go a few days without reading that much at all. And then I’d have another big reading day. So I determined that I needed a more balanced spiritual life, and read my bible more regularly, even if it’s just a couple of chapters a day. Anyone, I reasoned, can read at least one chapter a day. Well, that worked well… for a couple of weeks… then I’d have a couple of days where I was worried and concerned about other things, and I didn’t make the time to be with God.
What I learned from that experience was this: Making a promise to God that you’re going to this or that may not be good enough. Because we’re sinners, and as such we find ways to break our promises all the time. Because there’s a something inside each of us that gets concerned and distracted about many different things, and God gets pushed out of the picture.
You see, that’s one of the reason why we need to keep meeting together, and not just on a Sunday, but at other times too. We all need someone in our life who will ask us: “How is your time with God? What have you been reading in the bible? What have you been praying about? Are you getting closer to the Lord. or are you slowly drifting away from the shore?” It’s about being accountable for what we say we’re going to do. After all, what’s that old saying? The road to hell is paved with good intentions!
Friday 29th December 2023
My role as a Vicar has seen me visit numerous people in retirement homes over the years, and one theme which crops up again and again is just how difficult life can become for them. But it’s not the physical aspects of ageing that really bothers them, it’s the stress of our constantly changing world, and how they find it impossible to keep up. Actually, I can relate to that, technology changes so quickly even I find it difficult to keep up sometimes.
The thing is, this isn’t just a yearning for a return to the good old days, there’s a genuine sense of despair at the way things are. And it’s hardly surprising is it, just watching the news is enough to paint a very bleak picture of our present world. It’s no wonder that sometimes we start harking back to a time when the roads were paved with gold, or at least had the pot holes filled in! And that’s the trouble isn’t. When things are tough, we have a natural tendency to remember the past through rose tinted glasses. We romanticise the past and imagine things as better than they really ever were, convincing ourselves that everything back then was brilliant and everything going forward is rubbish. Go on, admit it, we’ve all been there at some time or other.
So, if you’re feeling a little fearful about the future, take a step back and remember the past for how it really was. Because in every place in every age there have been good times and bad times. More importantly, remember the promises of God; that no matter what happens, he will never leave you nor forsake you, that nothing, nothing at all, can separate you form the love of God. With Jesus Christ as our hope, we do not need to be imprisoned in a dungeon of despair because our future with God is certain
Christmas Day 2023
For most people, Christmas doesn’t really mean that much beyond a good time for families to get together over a nice meal and exchange presents with those who mean something to them. Except for Christians, who embrace it as a time of great thankfulness and Joy for what God has done for the world through the birth of Jesus Christ, the greatest gift of all. Do you feel the kind of joy that Christians do? Do you really understand what Christmas is all about? Perhaps you’ve looked for its meaning before, but never really found or understood what God has done, at least, not in the places you’ve been looking, and have you wondered what it is that Christians see in Jesus?
In Bethlehem on that first Christmas, a baby was born, but it wasn’t not just any baby, this one was been born without human intervention, a miraculous birth, an act of the Holy Spirit, not a man. This was a child born of the promises of God as spoken through the prophets of old. When the shepherds arrived, they told Mary and Joseph what the Angel had said to them; that this baby was the Messiah, the Lord himself, the Saviour of the world. The shepherds left, and the gospels tell us that Mary pondered all these things in her heart. Everything the world needs is right there. Everything that anyone could ever ask for is lying right there… in the manger. The key to understanding God, the key to understanding the meaning of life, the key to eternity, is right there… lying in the manger. Merry Christmas everyone.
15th December 2023
As we look back on the birth of Jesus Christ that first Christmas, we see the birth of a baby destined to change everything. Here was God coming among his people… in the form of the baby Jesus. His birth marked the beginning of the end of the things which separated us from a relationship with God. People would be released, set free, from all that had bound them to a way of life that reenforced their sinfulness, and kept God at arm’s length, instead of bringing them closer to God. They would be released from everything that was holding them back, free to live a life as a new creation in God’s new kingdom, free to be the people that God intended them to be. Their lives, routines and familiar regulations and ways of understanding life and God would never be the same. On that first Christmas, a baby came into the world and changed everything. The light of God had come into the world. No longer could God be considered remote or uninvolved. Here he was, Jesus, the long-awaited messiah, among us in human form. Are you ready to let his light shine on you today?
8th December 2023
For the last 20 years it’s been my privilege to minister to people from all walks of life, young and old, rich and poor, and during that time I’ve taken the funerals for a good number of them. I’ve sat with people as they’ve prepared themselves for their life’s end, and I cannot tell you how encouraging it is to her someone say: “God is with me, God has spoken to me.” Those nine simple words sum up the entire Biblical Story – God is with us. At every turn of the Old Testament that is precisely the message: “Wake up! Be strong, have courage, God is with us.” And in the New Testament Jesus is described as Emmanuel, which means “God is with us” something we’ll all be celebrating in a few weeks’ time at Christmas.
So, God has spoken to us, but what does he say? “I love You.” that’s what. It’s what God says throughout the Bible. That whole Jesus story about his birth, death and resurrection, is God saying “I love you, and look, I’ll prove it to you.”
But back to funerals for a moment. It’s common these days to view funerals as just a celebration of a person’s life, not the dying bit or the bits about when everything went wrong… just the good bits. But is that all it is? No, I don’t think so. For Christians, while we can celebrate someone’s full life and all that they meant to us, we mostly rejoice in the testimony that God loves us, and that our loved ones are now in the presence of God. So, as we go on with our lives, remember what God has said: “I love you”. Christians reply “Thank you, Lord”. What would you say?
1st December 2023
There’s always been a fascination with trying to predict the future; people read horoscopes, have tarot card readings, go to see clairvoyants, and read books by people like Nostradamus just to try and get a glimpse of what might happen in the future, particularly their future. But such curiosity isn’t something Christians are immune from. There’s always been a fascination with prophecy and prophets, particularly those trying to predict an actual date for Christ’s Second Coming. But, as we all know, despite numerous attempts, the Second Coming hasn’t happened yet, and all predictions of Jesus’ imminent return turned out to be false. Jesus warned us about such foolishness when he said: No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come. (Mk 13:32-33)
Now you may wonder, what on earth does any of this have to do with Advent? Most people think of Advent is the time when we look forward to celebrating the birth of Jesus in a stable in Bethlehem, a kind of prelude to the main event of Christmas Day. But that’s not entirely correct. You see, Advent is also the time we look forward to Christ’s Second Coming, and consider our own readiness for Jesus’ return. So, while we prepare to remember Jesus’s coming to this earth two thousand years ago, we should also be preparing ourselves for his Second Coming in glory by doing the task he has left us to do in his absence… which is making disciples. Because one day he will return, whether we’re ready or not.
17th November 2023
King David wrote in the Psalms “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it…” (Ps. 24:1). That being the case, we ought to see ourselves as stewards of all the good things God has given us, our gifts and abilities, yes, but also our time, money and possessions for the benefit of his kingdom, using the opportunities he gives us to serve his purposes, rather than just lining our own pockets. Because, if we refuse, even the little we have will be taken away. We will become like the Dead Sea, lifeless, and of no use to anyone.
Upstream from the Dead Sea is the Sea of Galilee, a sea full of life and activity. Indeed, we have the stories of the disciples catching so many fish in it that their nets were about to burst. It was a very productive and life-giving sea. Flowing out of the sea of Galilee is the Jordan River, which flows south until it reaches the Dead Sea, a sea that has no life because it has no outlet. It does not use what it receives, and because of that, everything that was in the river dies. God expects us to be like the sea of Galilee, a conduit of the gift which brings life to others, not a dead-end Sea in which there’s no sign of life
10th November 2023
Isaac Asimov, a writer of science-fiction novels, apparently once said: “I don’t believe in an afterlife, so I don’t have to spend my life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven will be even worse.” But from what the apostle John describes in the book of Revelation, heaven isn’t a place of boredom, far from it, it’s bliss! It’s finally getting to enjoy the purpose for which we were created, which is eternal life on a redeemed earth with God. You see, God made us to live in relationship with him. It’s the breakdown of that relationship that’s been the source of all our woes, and its restoration will be the source of all our blessings.
When we are with God, we are truly home. That sense of home, of belonging, is concept that taps into something deep within all of us. Our fascination with genealogy and family histories shows that everyone longs for a sense of ‘home’. That longing is an echo of that deepest sense of home that we lost long ago, one which God has placed within all of us. And that’s why we will never fully feel at home in this life, because our true home is yet to come. We’ll be truly home when God comes to dwell with his resurrected people on his renewed, redeemed earth. Yes, we might occasionally catch glimpses of what it might be like, those blissful moments on some holiday somewhere, but it pales into insignificance compared to what awaits us.
3rd November 2023
Death is an unavoidable reality for all of us. It’s not a subject we like to talk about, in fact we avoid it whenever we can. But it’s sobering to think that every minute of every day someone dies. According to our government stats, 38,574 people died in New Zealand last year. That’s 1 person every 13 minutes, the size of a town like Gisborne or Upper Hutt. Worldwide, 69 million died… more than the entire population of the UK or France, 2 people every second. And one day, you and I will be one of them. But what then, what comes after death? Atheists would have us believe that there’s nothing after death, you just die and that’s it. That’s fine… if they’re right, but what if they’re wrong, what if, as many believe, there is a God? What if there is life beyond the grave? What if the decisions we make now determine what happens to us in eternity? The reality of the afterlife is spelled out for us in the pages of the bible, famously so in the book of Revelation, chapters 20 & 21. Over the next couple of weeks at church we’re going to try and answer some questions that those chapters raise, starting this Sunday with the judgement of God and, for those that refused God’s offer of salvation through Jesus Christ, the reality of Hell. Come along if you want to know more.
26th October 2023
Samuel Clements, better known as the writer Mark Twain, is supposed to have said “It’s not the bits of the bible that I don’t understand that bother me, but the bits I do understand”. It highlights the difficulty we sometimes have in accepting God’s laws for how we should be living. For example, the command from Jesus to ‘love our neighbour as ourselves’ (Matt. 22:39) can be a difficult command to follow, especially if you have annoying neighbours! It’s hard to follow because we like to put each other into boxes. In our minds we sort people out into groups… those we like and those we don’t like, those like us and those not like us. We’ve polarised society into factions of conservatives and liberals, right wing and left wing, rich and poor, victims and oppressors. And in our minds, we can justify all those boxes we put each other in.
This is not the way of Jesus, not the way we’re supposed to be if we’re to call ourselves God’s children. You see, if we’re to take seriously Jesus’ command to ‘love our neighbour as ourselves’ then we can’t think like that about others. Jesus has shown us the way, he loved both those that came to him, and those that rejected him. Just because someone opposed him didn’t mean that Jesus wrote them off as a lost cause, repentance and redemption is always possible. This is why we should pray not just for those we like, but also our enemies, that they too might come to worship Jesus as Lord and Saviour.
20th October 2023
During his ministry, Jesus managed to get seriously off side with the religious leaders in Jerusalem, they found his criticisms of their lifestyle and understanding of the scripture’s particularly offensive. In chapter 22 of Matthew’s gospel there’s an account of their efforts to trap Jesus into saying something that will really get him into trouble with the Roman authorities. They want to know if it right for Jews to pay taxes to Caesar. It’s a bit of trick question because if he says no, then he’ll be in trouble with the Romans, but if he says yes, he’ll really upset the crowds who have come to listen to what he has to say. In their hands they hold a coin that they have to use to pay the tax, a coin that represents all that was idolatrous about the cult of the Caesar. Jesus asks them to identify the image on the coin, just so everyone is clear what’s at stake, and of course, it is the picture and name of Tiberius Caesar, the Roman emperor. Then Jesus says this now famous phrase – “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
Let’s just think about that for a moment. It’s as if Jesus is saying to them: “Caesar can have his tax, it’s his image on the coins used to pay it after all. But you pharisees should also be giving to God what belongs to God, because you bear God’s image, or at least you should be.” In this instance, image is everything. The image on the coin was Caesar’s, so Caesar had a right to the coins. But we bare God’s image. Genesis chapter 1 tells us that we’re made in the image of God. So if the image of Caesar on a coin meant that it was his, then the image of God on humanity means that we belong to God. That being the case, maybe we ought to be paying greater attention to how we’re living; do we live in a way that gives glory to God, or just to please ourselves?
13th October 2023
I’ve observed over the years that apart from the avowed atheist everyone secretly wants to believe that they will enjoy eternal afterlife in a paradise of some sort, that their god will accept them just as they are. Some Christians secretly believe something similar; that when we come to Jesus it doesn’t matter what we are or what we do, we can stay exactly as we are because God loves us and will forgive us and let us live in his kingdom. But it isn’t true.
God calls us wherever we may be, whatever we may have done, whatever we may still be doing, and says ‘Come to me, you’re invited into my Kingdom’, that much is true. But it’s only half the story. When we read the gospels, we see encounters where Jesus reached out in love to the marginalised in society, people like the prostitutes and tax collectors. But what happened when he reached out to them? Well to those who responded to Jesus’ offer of forgiveness of sins, he didn’t say “you’re forgiven, and you are all right as you are” did he. No, he said “Go and sin no more.”
You see, knowing how much God loves us, and what it cost him to make it possible for us to come to him, should motivate us to want to change. Of course, God knows we can’t do it on our own, so he’s given his own Holy Spirit to help, teach, and guide us into his presence. And when we conform to God’s standards of love, respect, and holiness, when God can look upon us and see the image of his son, Jesus Christ, shining through, then God will say “well done good and faithful servant. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing to hear.
29th September 2023
Two thousand years ago, a handful of people turned the world upside down. How did they do it? Was it because they were especially smart? Well, there’s no evidence of that. Was it because they were powerful? No, because they were from the bottom rung of the social ladder. Was it because they were strategically placed? No, because they were Galileans, country bumpkins from the isolated far north of Judea. They had such an impact on the world because they were totally dedicated to following Jesus. They’d given their lives to Jesus and he’d turned them into fishers of men. They’d made themselves vulnerable, let go of their traditions, and took God at his word.
Of course, it’s easier said than done, isn’t it? It’s easier to follow our familiar religious traditions than it is to trust God with our lives and step out into the unknown, to take God at his word and share our lives with those around us. Don’t get me wrong, religious traditions are fine, but only when they serve the purposes of God.
Perhaps we should remind ourselves that when we first came to Christ, we did two things; We declared that Jesus is our Lord and Saviour, and we made a promise to be his people, to be his servants here on earth. The question is, have we kept that promise? We probably all have times when we might say we will do something, but for some reason that seemed reasonable to us at the time, we failed to do it. But we don’t like it when people fail to keep their promise to us, do we. Well, I don’t suppose that God appreciates it when we break our promise to him to be his disciples in the world. The good news is, it’s never too late to do something about it.
22nd September 2023
‘It’s not fair!’ How many times have you heard a child say that? Well, sometimes life isn’t fair, and we just have to learn to deal with it. Thing is, we’re not consistent in the way we apply it. Have you noticed anyone complaining when they benefit from unfairness? No, neither have I. So where does our sense of fairness come from, how do we judge what’s fair and what’s not? Or does our sense of fairness only really come into play when, much like a small child, we haven’t got what we think we deserve?
Well, I’ve got news for you, none of us will get what we deserve, and for that we can be very, very thankful. And the reason for that is that God is not like us, he doesn’t operate a system of good deeds equals nice rewards, that just seems like bribery, or it leads us into thinking we can earn God’s approval. No, God’s idea of fairness is dominated by his love, grace, and mercy. If God gave us our just reward based on merit, then we would very quickly discover that we all fall far short of God’s required standards. What we need is his forgiveness, not rewards, a forgiveness which comes through our faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour. It is out of his love for us that he freely gives us what we do not deserve and could never have earned… Eternal life in heaven.
15th September 2023
Forgiveness is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? After all, we all like it when someone forgives us when we’ve said or done something hurtful to them. But actually, I think it’s rather tricky. It seems to me that everyone loves the idea forgiveness, until they need to forgive someone themselves, then it’s not so easy. You see, forgiveness actually requires us to love one another, to love our enemies, those who have wronged us, and that, we find, is hard to do. I know it’s hard, because there was a time when I felt deeply wounded by false accusations against me, and it took a few years to learn what forgiveness in that case looked like.
If forgiveness is to have any impact in our own lives, then we have to believe everyone is capable of being redeemed and transformed by the message of the cross and the empty tomb. So If God is willing to forgive all those who come to him in repentance and faith, then we in turn have to be willing to forgive even those who have done hurtful things to us. Thankfully, this isn’t something that God leaves us to do on our own. God is the ultimate forgiver, so since forgiveness begins with God, God works in us by his Holy Spirit and enables us extend forgiveness others. And for that we can be very thankful.
8th September 2023
How well do you handle conflicts or disagreements with those around you? I ask because the reality is most people aren’t particularly good at dealing with these things. You know how it is, rather than sort things out we just gossip about our hurt feelings with our friends, and likely put the other person down for good measure. School kids do it all the time. But we never really grow out of it, we keep on finding fault with others way into adulthood, without ever really making the effort to resolve things.
The thing is, conflict is corrosive. Resentment and hurt feelings, if they’re not dealt with in the right way, leads to sinful hearts and attitudes. The thing about sin is that it’s a bit like rust, it can appear in the most unexpected corners of our hearts, and is never quite done away with. Just when we think we’ve resolved the problem, another piece of our emotional baggage raises its head and we grind to a halt, just when we thought we were making progress.
Because sin can be so damaging, and because of our reluctance to deal with it ourselves, there’s a great responsibility on the church to address it, particularly the leaders, but we all have a responsibility to play our part too. Jesus has a few words of advice on how to go about this, you can find in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 18. Go read it, and then ask yourself how you measure up. Be warned though, it might be a sobering exercise when we realise how easily we put off this vital part of our life together as Christians!
1st September 2023
The thing about the people in the first century who met Jesus is that knew that there was something quite remarkable about him, but they didn’t quite understand that he wasn’t like all the prophets that had gone before him, even the disciples struggled to figure out who he really was. I also think it’s fair to say that nothing much has changed over the last 2000 years, people are still struggling to work out who Jesus is. They might recognise that he was an enigmatic charismatic figure whose message continues to attract people, but despite all the evidence, too many of them still fail to see who Jesus truly is. Instead of seeing him as the Christ, the Son of the living God, they prefer nonsense ideas put forward by those who are essentially just as confused as they are.
Here’s the thing… Just because someone agrees that Jesus is the Messiah, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they have a right understanding of what that actually means. The apostle Peter confessed Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, but he failed to understand that the Messiah must suffer and die, and Jesus rebuked him for it (Matthew 16.21-28). And there are many pseudo-Christian cults today who claim to follow Jesus, but refuse to accept that he’s the divine Son of God. As for ourselves, it’s sobering to think how often we go about our lives without giving God a second thought throughout our day. We readily confess our belief in Jesus as Saviour and Son of the Living God, but then, without realising it, proceed to live as if we know better than God how things should be. My prayer for us all is that we will all be led by the Holy Spirit to confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God… and then live our lives accordingly.
25th August 2023
I sometimes hear people say that New Zealand is a Christian country. Well Christchurch and Canterbury may have been founded on Anglican Christian our values, but any claim to being a Christian country is long gone in most people’s minds. New Zealand today is largely a secular society with a multitude different beliefs and faiths. Truth be told, people today aren’t looking for a Messiah because the great gods they worship are lifestyle and the traditional pursuits of money, sex, and power. From my observation, people are looking for material things that are in line with their aspirations. We can say that Jesus is the Messiah or that he’s the saviour of the world all we like, but that doesn’t mean anything to someone who doesn’t think they need saving.
When we come to sharing the good news of who Jesus is, we need to take a different approach. For the most part, people are interested in wealth, material possessions and beauty. Those are the gods they worship. Our task is to be able to present what Jesus has to say about those false gods. I say false because the benefits they supply are only temporary, and can only ever act as a mask to hide our true desire, which is to know true inner peace and contentment. We must tell others that they will not find what they’re looking for in possessions, or wealth, or beauty, as they only offer a hollow deception of true peace. Only Jesus can satisfy our deepest of needs, only Jesus has the power to transform lives and give the peace that they’re really searching for.
18th August 2023
Have you ever had your faith challenged? I don’t mean challenged by a non-believer; I mean challenged by the Holy Spirit. You probably have, because that’s actually how we grow as Christians. Most of us have certain beliefs about who Jesus is and what he came to do, but those beliefs didn’t come to us all in one go, someone had to teach them to us. When you first started coming to church, you probably didn’t know too much about God. You probably also believed some things that weren’t actually true, ideas you’d picked up about Jesus from those who don’t even know him, things like questioning the virgin birth or the resurrection. But as you grew as a Christian, you began to see that your ideas about God, about Jesus, needed to change, because they turned out not to be true. My guess is that that’s how it was for most of us.
The Jews in Jesus’ day had some particular beliefs about the Messiah, about what he would do when he came, where he would come from, how he’d act, and who he’d come for. Except, when he did come, they didn’t recognise him, most of them didn’t anyway. But a few did, and not just jews, but pagan gentiles too. And that was a problem for some of them. It was a bit of a case of their vision of God being too small. And that got me thinking… Is our vision too small? Do we inadvertently limit what God might do among us because it doesn’t fit with our expectations? And if we are, what can we do about it? This is worth thinking about as God’s mission to the world around us may be far wider than we think.
11th August 2023
Have you ever thought of the church as a boat? Well, here’s an interesting little fact; In a traditional gothic style church, the area the congregation sit in is called the nave. It comes from the Latin word navis, which means ‘boat’. It has its origins in the passage from Matthew’s gospel where Jesus calls Peter to get out of the boat and join him walking on the water (Matt. 14:22-33). It’s the idea that we, the church, are all in the boat together, safe and sound as we go through the storms of life, but there comes a time when we have to leave the boat and join Jesus in his ministry to the world. Well, when it comes to playing our part in God’s mission, like Peter we need to trust that he won’t leave us to sink. Yes, we will probably make the occasional mistake, we may even fail sometimes, but we have to be prepared to get out of the boat and give it a go.
It’s Good to know that as we leave the safety of the boat, we can be assured that God’s not going to leave us to sink, he’s going to be right there with us, helping us to live out our faith before others as we go about our daily lives. Good to know too that as we return to the boat every Sunday we’re refreshed and renewed for the week ahead. You see, we’re not supposed to stay out in the storms of life on a permanent basis, we ‘re to go back and forth, taking the good news of Jesus into our world, returning to the boat on a regular basis, both for fellowship and to be fed and refreshed for our week in the world once more.
5th August 2023
Earlier on in my career I was vicar of a small church in one of the poorer suburbs of Christchurch. I’d been asked to go there for six months to cover for the vicar who was on extended leave. Long story short, he never came back and I ended up serving there as vicar for six years. It was a great little parish with wonderful people who’d built up a ministry to their community through running a drop-in-café, an emergency foodbank, and a budgeting advice service form the church premises, all managed by volunteers. It certainly met the needs of the community, although we never seemed to attract many new members to the church.
The thing is, it’s easy to see physical needs, maybe even do something about them, but there’s a greater need that everyone has, even the powerful and wealthy of this world. It’s a need that we often overlook because we don’t want to be accused of having ulterior motives. And that is to know Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord, he is the only one who is able to provide what everyone really needs… a pathway to forgiveness and reconciliation with the God who created us and loves us.
As a small church, or even as individuals, we might think our efforts aren’t significant enough to make a difference, but this isn’t so. When Jesus fed the 5000 with five loaves of bread and two fish, which clearly wasn’t going to be enough, he still gave thanks to God for what he did have, then he trusted the Father to supply the rest. So too, even though we might feel our efforts to share the gospel are small and insignificant, God will use what we offer as he takes our words and his Spirit works in the hearts and minds of those who are willing to listen.
28th July 2023
A few years ago, we visited Salisbury Cathedral in the UK. It’s a magnificent building and has the tallest spire in England. It’s huge, the columns are vast and magnificent, and I admire it. But it does nothing to communicate the kingdom of heaven to me. It speaks of a gospel that I find difficult to relate to Jesus, the humble carpenter from Nazareth. In human terms yes, it’s an impressive building, but it doesn’t represent the kingdom of heaven to me. You see, the kingdom of heaven is not as flashy as we might imagine. It can’t be, because it’s made up with people like you and me. It’s not like an imposing building, and it’s not overwhelming and obvious to everyone, but it can be found in local accessible gatherings of Christians, not just on Sundays, but anytime and in any place during the week that they happen to be. It’s like… well it’s like yeast which quietly works its way through a batch of dough, providing unseen life and goodness, and whose results can be clearly seen in the finished product. So likewise, as Christians quietly engage with the world around them bringing good news to those they meet, so the kingdom of heaven will be revealed in all its glory at the end of the age
21st July 2023
Have you ever wondered why God allows seemingly bad people to prosper? We’ve all seen them, those people who cheat and lie to get what they want, who ride roughshod over others as they climb the corporate ladder of success. Why does God seemingly tolerate such bad behaviour? It’s hard to understand why God would expect us to live side by side with such people. We struggle with the notion that we’re called to be patient and tolerant, because it goes against our natural desire for justice, or more likely, revenge, especially if we’ve been hurt by their actions.
But here’s the thing with the Christian faith, as tempting as it might be, our place is not to set ourselves up as God’s agents of retribution. For whatever reason, and God always has a reason for what he does, God allows the bad to co-exist alongside the good. So we cry ‘how long Lord? How long must I put up with this person?!’ Well, until the day of judgement, actually, at which time God will separate out the wheat from the weeds, the good from the bad, as he stands to judge the world. Of course, God might choose to deal with that person before that time, but that’s up to God, not us. In the mean-time, our mission is to preach the good news of Jesus Christ, tend to our own spiritual wellbeing, drawing ever closer to God in prayer as we nourish ourselves on his word, and do good to those around us.
14th July 2023
I’ve been trying my hand at vegetable gardening this year, and I have to say I’ve been quite pleased with the results. Mind you, I’ve had quite a bit of helpful advice from experienced gardeners along the way, so I’d be quite disappointed if it hadn’t worked out. One thing I’ve learnt is the importance of keeping up with soil maintenance, feeding the plants with the right fertilisers and keeping an eye on the moisture content of the soil and so on. There are of course many parallels between gardening and our spiritual lives, something that Jesus drew on in his many parables. Just as a good gardener will keep up with their soil maintenance, so we have to make sure we prepare the soil in our own lives so that we’re ready to receive what God might plant in our hearts to do for the building up of his kingdom. Because when God sows the seed, we need to be ready to receive it
7th July 2023
Let’s face it, life isn’t easy at the moment. We’re living in an era of great change and uncertainty where we can no longer be certain what the future holds. Put that alongside ever-increasing costs of living, possible energy shortages, and looming economic hardship and the picture isn’t looking particularly rosy. There’s a letter in the bible written by Jesus’ half-brother, James, to encourage and guide Christians who were struggling with similar issues; the pressures of life, financial hardships, health issues, and the ever-present sin which blights our lives. The remedy for all of this, according to James, is to draw close to God. Now I’m sure that there’s not a single one of us that doesn’t want to know God in a deeper, more meaningful way, a way that brings peace and rest to our lives no matter what our situation. The way we draw close to God is by making the time to be with him as we read his word, pray, and allow his Holy Spirit to shape our hearts and lives. When we do that, God works in our lives to help us to maintain a spirit of contentment and maturity no matter how uncertain our future may be.
30th June 2023
I wonder how many people bought a lotto ticket this week, after all, $33,000,000 is an awful lot of money! But I also wonder, if they were to win, what impact would it have on their life, their family and friends, would it make things easier? Maybe, but we also hear about those whose lives have been ruined by a sudden increase in their personal wealth. There’s a story in Luke’s gospel of a rich man and a beggar called Lazarus. While the rich man lived in great comfort, Lazarus lay at the man’s gate longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. In time they both died, Lazarus went to ‘Abraham’s side’ while the rich man went to hell (Luke 16:19-31). So, what was it that the rich man did that was wrong? The answer is nothing. That’s what he did that was wrong, he did nothing. But that’s the problem isn’t it, we can feel justified because we haven’t done anything ‘wrong’, but what did James say? ‘If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.’ (4:17)
The thing is, money, wealth, changes us, so it takes a particularly godly person not to be corrupted by it. Indeed, there are many wealthy Christians who are very generous to the church, and give away tens of thousands, if not millions of dollars to help others. You see, you can be wealthy and live righteously, wealth isn’t the issue, there’s nothing wrong with money, in fact you can do a lot of good with money. But it takes wisdom, godly wisdom, to not be corrupted by it and spend what you have only on your pleasures.
23rd June 2023
It’s funny how as we get older, we exercise our muscles less and less, all except one particular little muscle, the tongue. We’re quite good at exercising that muscle right up to our last days aren’t we. But even small words can cause great damage. An unkind word, a little white lie, the cutting statement said in the heat of an argument, they can all cause enormous damage, especially when it’s repeated by others. James, the half-brother of Jesus Christ, in his letter to the church, calls the tongue a world of evil among the parts of the body. He says it corrupts the whole body, setting the whole course of one’s life on fire until it itself is destroyed by the fires of hell (James 3:6). The thing I think we need to understand is that although we try to fight the battle to control our tongue we will never win, because as James also says: no human can tame the tongue, it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison (3:8). When we truely understand that we will never beat our tongue, we’ll begin to be very careful about when and how we exercise it.
16th June 2023
Evangelical Christians have always taken the word of God very seriously. And by ‘evangelical’ I mean those Christians who believe that the bible is indeed the word of God, that it has a message that speaks to us today, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, we’re able to understand that message and put it into practice in our lives. And I think it’s important to make that distinction because there are many people who go to church, who don’t think that taking the bible seriously is all that important. They like the idea of Christianity, but not what the bible says about how we should live. You see, the roots of evangelical Christianity are based on as much as what we do as what we say, on as much as right actions as right belief, and on humility and taking God at his word.
But it’s a sad fact that there are many Christians who fail to live up to their calling to live out the gospel. They have a faith that’s founded on what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called ‘cheap grace’. It’s the type of faith that doesn’t lead to a changed heart, just a mental ascent to godly principles. It’s the preaching of forgiveness without the repentance for sins. It’s grace without true discipleship, without the cross, and without Jesus Christ living and alive in our lives. It’s cheap grace. Ultimately, if we say we ‘believe’ but don’t obey the call of God on our lives to live out the gospel, then we don’t really ‘believe’ at all. You see, real truth is truth put into action. It’s something to be lived, to be done. It’s not something we just read, think about for a bit, but do nothing about. Because the truth about God can only really be understood when we do what it says.
9th June 2023
I’ve noticed that some people seem to think that just because they’re a Christian they’re exempt from life’s troubles, trials and temptations. I’ve also noticed that when trouble comes upon them, they either go into denial and try to ignore what’s happening around them, or they see it as an attack by the devil (which to be fair it sometimes is). And if they observe others going through trials, they assume it must be because of some sin or other in their life. But I don’t think that’s how it works. No one is immune from trials, they’re an inescapable fact of life.
But where do these trials come from? Well, I think some of the trials that we experience are just the result of being human and living in a fallen world, that’s especially true when it comes to our health. Other sorts of trials are a result of living the Christian life, there are many in our world who experience persecution for their faith. There are also those trials that come from the unexpected events of life, events we have little or no control over, like the recent flooding in the North Island, or the Christchurch earthquakes. These kinds of trials can be, and usually are, extremely stressful. But we have to acknowledge too that at least some of the trials we face come upon us as a result of own sinful human nature.
But here’s the thing… God doesn’t usually help us by removing the trials, what he does is work in our lives to bring us to a place of being at peace, and help us to draw close to him so that we grow in faith and maturity. Satan may want to use trials to tear us down so that we curse God because of our circumstances, but God uses trials to build us up and bring us closer to him. How we handle them just depends on our response, and who we let guide our emotions.
2nd June 2023
As I’ve been preparing my sermon this week, I’ve been thinking about how we take care of one another in our society, particularly our elderly. It occurred to me that we live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and apart from a very small section of society, we all live in houses with more than one room, we all have furniture, most of us have one or two cars, some of us even have more than one house. I think it’s fair to say then that most of us spend most of our wealth on our own comforts. What do you think Jesus would have to say to us about that?
The thing is, visiting rest homes as I do, I can’t help but notice how many residents are lonely. No family nearby, no friends who visit them, and staff too busy to do anything about it. Makes me wonder if we’re really doing right by our elderly, or are we using rest homes to shirk our responsibility to take care of one another. One lady I met, she was 93, told me that the worst day of the week was Sunday. She would sit in her room and see other residents being visited or taken out by family members. She would spend the day alone, no one to talk to, except maybe a passing staff member. And the worst day of all was Christmas day. And it wasn’t that she didn’t have family, it was that none of them lived in New Zealand. Is that how we should take care of our parents, shoving our own responsibilities onto to the hired help? Yes, I realise that for some who have high needs, a rest home is the best place for them, but I suspect that isn’t the case for most. We have a responsibility to care of one another, so perhaps we ought to use our wealth with that responsibility in mind
26th May 2023
Life is full of ups and downs, isn’t it? One-minute things are going great, the next… well let’s just say there are times when we wonder what on earth is going on. Our lives can be thrown into turmoil at any moment, a sudden illness, loss of a job, the death of a loved one, they’re all very hard to deal with. But with support from others, we get through. Even so, we still wonder what God is doing, and imagine that if Jesus were around now life would be so much easier.
I wonder what the disciples would say to that. Because if the gospels show us anything at all about what the disciples thought about Jesus, they show us that they were no different to us, they just didn’t really get Jesus until after his resurrection and ascension into heaven. I think it’s fair to say that when Jesus walked the earth with his disciples most people couldn’t work Jesus out at all, just as they can’t work him out today.
But here’s the thing, in one sense Jesus never left us. He is still present in our world, in our lives even, today, right now. He is present in the form of his promised Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God himself that came to the disciples fifty days after the resurrection, on the day we call Pentecost. It’s God’s Holy Spirit who sustains us when times are tough, who inspires and enables to live as God wants us to. It is the Holy Spirit that enables us to obey his command to go into all the world and make disciples as he draws people to himself. And that’s why we celebrate Pentecost, not for our own benefit per se, but for the benefit of all those who don’t yet know Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.
19th May 2023
I’ve noticed that the number of Christians who go to church on a weekly basis has dropped markedly over the last few years, in some cases down to merely monthly attendance, or less. This is a worry. You see, sometimes, we get things wrong. It’s not something we easily admit to, but when we see the world only from our own perspective we can misunderstand God’s word, and convince ourselves that we’ve had a message from God when it’s really just our own imagination. This is one reason of many why being a part of a church is so important. Because not going to church, being a ‘lone ranger’ Christian, deprives us of one of the ways that God communicates with us: through godly friends, those who look out for us and have our best interests at heart, even if we may not like what they have to say to us sometimes! Church is where we can relate to people who know us well, people known for their godly wisdom and insight. This is important, because as clever as we like to think we are, as well adjusted and self-aware as we might be, we just don’t see our own blind spots. A wise and godly friend or two are invaluable, they may not tell us what we want to hear, but they can often see the bigger picture… and they may well be right.
12th May 2023
It’s strange isn’t it, that we happily use the language of having a personal relationship with Jesus, but we almost never speak of having a personal relationship with the Holy Spirit. We might look to him for guidance, but he can’t guide us if we don’t have a relationship with him. Crucially, we need to remember that he’s not an ‘it’, which is often how we inadvertently treat him. The Holy Spirit is a person, one who wants to be known and loved. It’s a good thing for us that the Holy Spirit is always patient, kind, gentle, loving, so he’s not put off by our seeming indifference to him. He won’t force himself on us either, because he respects us. He won’t communicate with us any more than we allow or a ready to hear. In that case, we might wonder how the Holy Spirit guides us, but there’s no simple answer because he will communicate with you differently to me. He will only reveal things to you to the extent that you invite him to do so, and to the extent that you’re ready. What he does do is drive those who listen to him closer to Jesus, so that we give glory to his name, even when it costs us, even when it hurts us. That’s how important our relationship with the Holy Spirit is.
5th May 2023
Life doesn’t always deliver what we expect does it. Have you ever noticed how you can do all the right things, pray and read your bible regularly, live a godly life, and things still seem to go wrong for you? And what about the times when your best laid plans come to nothing? Well don’t worry, it’s nothing personal, think of all the troubles that the apostle Paul went through (2 Cor 11). Think about Jesus’ warning to his disciples that we can’t expect to be treated any better than he was. (Matt 10:24)
We know that God promises that all things will work together for good to those who love him (Rom 8:28). But there are some things we don’t understand; like the reasons our prayers go un answered, or when everything seems to be against us. But that’s ok, because God is sovereign. If he wants us to wait for the things we’re hoping and praying for, we just have to be patient, and keep on planning and praying, and waiting for the time to be right.
In the end, remember this: God does guide his people. It might be by direct guidance, a word of prophecy, a vision or dream, but that’s not usually how he does it. Or it might be by allowing you to use your mind, transformed by the Holy Spirit, so that you can work out the right thing to do. But remember that God’s primary method of guidance is through his written word, the Bible, to train us in righteousness so we can be wise and mature, and able to discern God’s ways and choose what’s right.
28th April 2023
I have come to the conclusion that we live in a rather confusing world. Words, it seems, can change their meanings. Take for instance the word “love.” In theory, the meaning of ‘love’ hasn’t changed, the dictionary still defines it as: ‘a deep affection for another person’. Yet in practice, our definition has radically changed. Whereas love always used to embrace the concept of devotion, today love has become a synonym for pleasure. Love used to be ‘other person’ centred, but now it’s become ‘self-centred’. We still commit ourselves in relationships, but for only as long as it remains convenient for us, at the first sign of trouble or disagreement we’re out the door, and off we go seeking the greener pastures. But love isn’t supposed to be fickle or fair weathered. Somewhere along the way, we’ve lost the significance of what love really is.
The psalmist declares: Give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever (Psalm 100). God’s love is not like ours, it is not fickle, and it’s not like the weather in that it’s never uncertain and doesn’t change with the seasons. As someone once noted: “There is nothing you can do to make God love you more! There is nothing you can do to make God love you less! You see, God’s love is unconditional, impartial, everlasting, infinite, perfect! It’s as the psalmist proclaimed, God’s love endures forever.
21st April 2023
The Bible often talks about God’s relationship with his people in agricultural terms. Take shepherds, for instance; they feature prominently in some of the most important scenes. King David was a shepherd before he was king, shepherds feature in the nativity, and Jesus mentions numerous times, both in his teaching and his parables. With God as our shepherd, our lives are fulfilled in ways we cannot even begin to imagine. Not, as some who advocate a prosperity gospel, in the abundance of possessions, or in the size of our bank accounts, but in the giving of God’s love, peace, joy, and goodness. If you have these things and nothing else, you are infinitely richer than if you had all the material possessions in the world. John D Rockefeller, once the richest man in the world, was asked “How much money is enough money?” To which he replied, “Just a little bit more.” Money and possessions will never satisfy us to the point where we’re content because there’s more to this life than this present earthly existence.
So when we come to God in faith, trusting in his provision, depending on his protection, we know that we can rely upon his promise. With the assurance of faith, we can declare our confidence as well. As King David wrote in Psalm 23: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, I will not fear, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord… forever!
16th April 2023
A few years ago, a survey in the UK found that 50% of Britons believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. That all sounds fine and dandy, but believing Jesus rose from the dead is not enough. We are called to be his disciples, to live as he taught us to live, and to have a relationship with him 24/7. A simple intellectual belief that Jesus rose from the dead is not enough because when the bible talks about belief, it means belief that results in action.
When the apostle Thomas, the one we rather unkindly refer to as ‘Doubting Thomas’, when he believed it drove him to his knees to confess Jesus as “My Lord and my God”. But Thomas’ confession of faith wasn’t simply an intellectual assent to the proposition that Jesus rose from the dead. It transformed his life. Church history tells us that Thomas died for his faith as a missionary to India.
There are still many people in the world that would say the same thing today. ‘Unless I can see and touch the risen Jesus for myself, I will not believe. He did it for Thomas, why won’t he do it for me?’ And the answer is: Because he did it for Thomas… so that we can all believe. Thomas, the one who like some of us doubted, saw and believed. He is our witness. It is not a sin to be sceptical. What is a sin, is to go on disbelieving when you are given the evidence, the evidence of the disciples, of Thomas, and of Mary Magdalene, all faithfully recorded for us by the apostle John in his gospel.
Easter Sunday – 9th April 2023
It’s Easter this Sunday, the day when Christians celebrate Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. But here’s the thing… when we read through the resurrection accounts in Matthew’s gospel, and then compare it with the other accounts in Mark, Luke and John’s gospels, the impression we get is that nobody quite seems to know what’s going on. Some things are abundantly clear: The body of Jesus is gone… no one disputes that, and the stone was no longer over the tomb… that’s obvious too. How the stone got moved is a matter of confusion, Matthew says it was the angel, the other gospel writers don’t seem to know. There is also some confusion over how many other people were there that first Easter morning, and who they were, nobody seems to be entirely clear. So, we have four similar, but also quite different accounts of the most momentous event in human history. Odd that isn’t it. What’s is clear is that the disciples thought Jesus was dead, only now it appears that he isn’t. They thought they knew where to find him, but what exactly has happened to Jesus, why is he not dead, and where he is now… these things are all complete mysteries to the disciples. Nothing seems to be turning out quite like they expected it to.
So why is there seemingly so little detail that the gospel writers agree on? Perhaps it’s because the spectacle wasn’t the point? The real point was that Jesus was no longer in the tomb. All the gospel writers tell us that the tomb was empty; that Jesus was no longer there; that he’s alive. That’s the great significance of this day… We worship a risen saviour. Jesus is alive.
Good Friday – 7th April 2023
It’s Good Friday today, that fateful day when Jesus was betrayed by Judas Iscariot, and let down by Peter, one of his most trusted disciples, the day when he was murdered on a Roman Cross. Amongst the awfulness though are gems of forgiveness and mercy.
Take Peter’s case as an example. We can probably all imagine how Peter felt when he heard that cock crow after he denied knowing Jesus, we can almost feel the cold feeling in the pit of his stomach and his heavy heart as he walked away into the night with tears running down his face. Where do you go after a failure like that? Do you just give up and hide yourself away, unable to face the awful truth? Or do you hope that maybe, somehow, God will forgive you. Peter walked away, ashamed at what he’d done, but he didn’t stay away. By Sunday morning he’s back with the other disciples, who, by the way, also denied Jesus, maybe not with words, but they still ran away and hid themselves while all this was going on, abandoning Jesus to his fate. Only Peter and John we’re brave enough to stick around, and when it came to the crunch, even Peter let Jesus down.
But no-one’s failure is final. Jesus’ death on the cross is sufficient for the worst crimes you can imagine. Our failures are nothing when compared to the love and mercy of God in Jesus Christ. Jesus asks only one question of us, the same one he asked of Peter: “Do you love me more than these?” You know in your own heart what “these” are. Is Jesus more important to you than anything else? If that’s the case, then be reassured that he holds out to you forgiveness for anything you might have said or done, and invites you to come to him once more.
Friday 31st March 2023
The story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey is a great example of the mismatch between our human hopes, plans and expectations, and God’s answers to our prayers. The crowds that welcomed Jesus as a king on that first Palm Sunday would end up disappointed because he didn’t do what they wanted; a fact proved so publicly 5 days later on Good Friday when they all called for him to be crucified. To be fair, they were rightly fed up with being oppressed by the Romans, and they desperately wanted something to happen. They’d been ruled by foreign powers for over two hundred years, and were looking to God to help them get rid of their oppressors once and for all.
Then, out of the blue, along comes Jesus of Nazareth, their long-awaited Messiah. Only he didn’t do what they wanted and expected him to do. They may have felt imprisoned and oppressed by the Romans, but what they failed to see was that it was their own sin that held them captive. As difficult as it was to be living under Roman rule, it was sin that was their true enemy, getting rid of the Romans wasn’t going to fix that at all.
People today still want someone to ride into their city, into their lives, and sort things out. A pseudo-messiah to help them pay their bills, give them a job, heal their sick friends and relatives, and take away their pain. They want someone to save them, alright, they just don’t want the person God has sent!
Friday 24th March 2023
As we’ve been going through Lent, we’ve seen Jesus meet various people, people like Nicodemus, like the Samaritan woman at the well, like the man born blind, and now this week Lazarus, Mary & Martha. What they all have in common is that their lives were transformed by their encounter Jesus. He brought light into their darkness, he brought forgiveness, and he brought healing, sometimes physical but always spiritual. But most of all he brought them hope.
I think that’s an amazing gift, but it is also a challenge. It challenges all of us who say we follow Jesus because we too should be agents of hope; in our relationships, in our witness, in our mission to the community, both as individuals and as a church. Jesus said “I am the resurrection and the life.” He is the one who has the power of life and death and who’s able to bring transformation to the darkest of situations. Jesus is the proof that the world can do its worst but will not have the final say. If our own encounter with Jesus should show us anything, it’s that we have the hope of a transformed life with God, one that cannot be destroyed, one that will last beyond the grave. Best of all, it’s a life that begins now, today, we don’t have to wait for the life to come to enjoy being in the presence of Jesus.
Friday 17th March 2023
Blindness can be a debilitating thing, especially if it happens unexpectedly. The thing is though, we don’t have to be physically blind to not be able to see what’s right in front of us. There’s also the sort of blindness that stems from having all the information in front of us, but either misinterpreting it through our lack of knowledge, or choosing to ignore it because it doesn’t fit with our desires and expectations. We call it spiritual blindness.
This was the blindness that the many religious leaders Jesus encountered suffered from. These respected teachers of God’s people, with all their knowledge of the scriptures, claimed to have spiritual insight, but couldn’t see what was right in front of their eyes. They of all people should have realised who Jesus was. Instead, they were so blinded by their own rules and regulations, blinded by all their religious traditions that had been placed around the law, that they failed to see what was happening right before their eyes. The thing is, it’s quite easy for anybody to act like that and not even realise they’re doing it. People can be so convinced of their own ideas about God, spirituality, or the afterlife, that they close their minds to anything that falls outside their thinking. Our mission as Christians is to witness to Christ’s saving power, through prayer, through the way we live our lives, and through our words so that their spiritual eyes may be opened to what God has done for them in Jesus Christ.
Friday 10th March 2023
In the run up to easter we’ve been reading in John’s gospel about some of the people Jesus met on his travels. The two that stand out are the story of Nicodemus, and the story of the Samaritan Woman at the well. On the face of it, there’s a huge difference between these two individuals, isn’t there. One’s got it all, position, status, power, privilege, and the other has nothing to commend her. But we should read these two stories together. You see, for both of them there’s a transformation that happens, and it’s a transformation that’s open to all those who come to Jesus.
The basic message is that an encounter with Jesus should transform those who meet him, regardless of who there are. Just as Jesus miraculously transforms water into wine at Cana, he offers new life and transformation to all people, from the highest to the lowest, from those who are part of the religious establishment, to those with no status at all, to men and to women, to those who are respected in society and those we see as outcasts, to those who already think of themselves as God’s chosen ones and to those once considered as enemies.
The challenge is this, and it comes in two parts: Firstly, are we willing to have an encounter with Jesus where we might be challenged? Sounds an odd thing to say, but you’d be surprised how easy it is to avoid encountering Jesus. All you have to do is keep yourself busy, fill up your time with other things, good things even, but not actually desire to come to Jesus, to spend time with him in prayer, and to seek his will for your life. And, secondly, are we willing to let that encounter with Jesus transform our lives? You see, it’s one thing to encounter Jesus, it’s quite another thing to then go and do what he says!
Friday 3rd March 2023
During the five weeks before Easter, what the church calls the season of Lent, Christians are sometimes encouraged to give something up. Usually, people give up something they like, a favourite food or drink perhaps, chocolate or alcohol comes to mind, physical things that are a part of our daily lives, things that can, in some ways, exert some control over us, if we let them. Giving something up is all well and good, but have you ever considered giving up your independence from God? What do I mean by that? Well, we might not realise it, but too often we’re so busy that we actually forget to make room for God in our daily lives to speak to us. We’re just too comfortable doing things our own way, the familiar way, the safe way, when what we really should be doing is taking the time to listen to what God is saying to us. So rather than giving something up this Lent, wouldn’t it be better if we just made some time for God to speak into our lives each day?
Friday 24th February 2023
As Christians we’re called to the privilege of loving and worshiping God, and to reflect his glory to the world around us by the transformation of our lives. God has called each one of us to be his witnesses in the world. The absolute best way for us to do that is to know his word, and with the help of his Holy Spirit, live it out in our lives, trusting that it will not fail us. The five weeks in the run up to Easter that we call Lent, gives us an opportunity to do a kind of spiritual stocktake of our lives and see how we’re going.
So, being honest with ourselves, as we reflect on how we’ve lived our lives over this last year, what do we see? Maybe we see the temptations we’ve succumbed to, the things in our lives which we need to repent of, things which we need to get sorted out, relationships that need to be restored or renewed. But beyond those, important as it is to recognise and deal with them, we’re also able to see what God has already done in our lives through the work of his Holy Spirit. Sometimes we just don’t spend enough time looking, and we stop before we see how far we’ve come, that we’re no longer who we once were, we might not be perfect, but we have been redeemed and forgiven.
Friday 15th February 2023
In his sermon on the Mount Jesus calls his people to ‘be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect’. Frankly, it sounds impossible. So what’s going on here? Well, like any parent today, teaching your child how to live and behave doesn’t mean that you expect them to become perfect overnight. Parents are patient with their children until they are old enough and able enough to understand what it’s all about. Likewise, God is patient with us. Actually, we don’t even have to try that hard, we’re to work at it, yes, but if we spend our lives just trying harder all we’ll get is stressed, anxious, and even fearful that we don’t measure up, because if we’re trying to do it all in our own strength we will fail. The problem is that we often try to be what we’re not, and when we do that, our lives get wound into a very tight spring, and every now and then it snaps. That’s not what loving God and following Jesus is about, it’s not about trying harder to be perfect all the time.
To put it another way, it’s a bit like a marriage relationship. I’m sure most of us are familiar with what I’m saying. Like a marriage, a relationship with God is a learning process, one where we grow and discover what it’s supposed to look like. And like a marriage, we don’t always get it right. But it’s also a place where we can find forgiveness and a new strength, a new power in our lives which comes from his Holy Spirit, who helps us bring a new reality of God’s kingdom to the world around us.
Friday 10th February 2023
I’ve been contemplating the meaning of a covenant relationship with God. It seems to me that such a relationship isn’t found by merely following empty rituals, or by going through some process which means we can tick a box called service, prayer, worship or some other topic. Nor is it achieved by debating the minutiae of sub clauses of certain texts like a good Pharisee. A Covenant relationship with God is surely being willing to live a godly life, one that involves a change and transformation of heart and mind. Our ‘nod to God’ on a Sunday morning, or our intellectual acknowledgement of God’s existence might make us feel good, but it doesn’t really cut it. So, what does that godly life look like?
Previously, God had called the nation of Israel to be the light of the world, but through their constant disobedience to his commands, they’d fallen woefully short. Their light had grown dim and become part of the darkness itself. Now, the sayings which originally applied to Israel, would apply to those who choose to follow Christ. Jesus not only teaches what we should be doing, he also gives us practical examples of what this might look like in life: Be reconciled, make friends, love your enemies, turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ and so on. Through them all, Jesus called the people of his day to be true to the Israel of God. And to this day, he still is.
Friday 4th February 2023
In his Sermon on the Mount Jesus said that his disciples must be the ‘Salt of the Earth’. Now salt is such a seemingly insignificant substance isn’t it, but just a few grains can make a real difference to the way something tastes. So it’s a good metaphor for the ordinary Christian. We may think of our efforts to spread the gospel as insignificant, and yet God still gives us a part to play. Our ‘salt’ may not affect the whole world, but it can certainly affect those it comes in contact with.
With that in mind, consider how you’re living right now. Are you really living in a way that shows you’re different to the rest of the world? You see, Christians are called to do more than just fit in with the world, we’re supposed to make a difference to those around us by the way we live, act and speak, by being salt and light so that they might see how we live and give glory to God. We’re called, not to merely reflect society, but God’s will for us all. So if all we’re doing is simply absorbing and mimicking the prevailing attitudes around us, then aren’t we more like dumb thermometers? Christians shouldn’t be simply indicators of what is happening in the world, we should be more like thermostats, able to change the temperature of society, not just measure it! And we can do that by being ‘salty’!
Friday 30th December 2022
We are so fortunate, aren’t we, to live in a time when the light of Jesus can still be seen. And yet, so many still insist on living in darkness, refusing to repent and ask for forgiveness, preferring instead to live by their own rules, making rash promises and resolutions that they hope will make them a better person (it is the New Year after all!) It’s futile of course, but they can’t see it. Why? Because of Sin. You see, sin isn’t just something we do; it’s also something we think and feel, and much of it remains hidden from the world outside our own heads, maybe even from our own conscious thoughts. So we end up living in denial… about who we’ve judged, who we’ve hated, who we’ve been jealous of and what we’ve coveted.
This thing we call ‘sin’ is like a cancer. It can go unrecognised, even by ourselves sometimes, until we come into the presence of a holy God, who shines a light into our hearts and exposes our deepest thoughts. I’m glad Jesus is able to do that. Like a divine surgeon, he’s able to put an end to the power that sin has over our lives. He can do that because nothing, not even our deepest, most secret deeds are hidden from his gaze. It’s a sobering thought that one day we will have to stand before God and give an account of our lives; no amount of new year’s resolutions will save us then, no matter how well meaning they are. So best let his light shine into our lives to do his work now lest we not be ready to meet Jesus when he comes again
Sunday 25th December – Christmas Day
On Christmas Day millions of people around the world will be celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. The way the gospel of Luke tells the story of the birth of Jesus reassures us that God is concerned with ordinary people. You see Luke is the Gospel writer who sees all people as having worth, not just the wealthy and the powerful, those with influence, but everyone, including the poor. What’s remarkable in his account of Jesus birth is that Jesus was born as just an ordinary baby to a poor and insignificant family who got pushed around by the powers that be, just like everybody else. You might have thought that to be given the best start in life he could at least have been born to someone with more influence, wouldn’t you?
But this is why his birth was ‘Gospel’ or ‘Good news’. Luke uses the word ‘euangelion’, which we translate as ‘Gospel’, a world that has taken on an identity and meaning of its own. But it wasn’t a new word, in fact, people were quite used to hearing ’euangelion’, because it was the word used when good news arrived of the emperor being successful in battle. But Luke makes a change. It is now announcing, not news of victory in battle, but news of peace. When the angel announced the good news of ‘peace on earth’ to the shepherds out in the fields, he was announcing a different sort of peace than the one they were used to. This isn’t just Pax Romana, Roman peace, this was God’s peace, peace on all the earth, a peace, the angel says, that was for ‘all people on whom his favour rests’, and not just the few at the top
Friday 16th December 2022 – Advent 4
Have you ever wondered what the world would be like if there was no Christmas? All of our favourite Christmas traditions would be gone. There would be no family gatherings for Christmas dinner, no gifts beneath the Christmas tree, in fact there wouldn’t even be a tree. There would be no Christmas decorations, no Christmas holidays or Christmas carols, and definitely no Santa – although some might say that’s a good thing. Without a doubt December 25th would be much less enjoyable if there was no Christmas. It would be just another day passing by much like all the rest. However, as disappointing as all of that may be, there are some far more serious deficiencies that would emerge in a world with no Christmas. Because Christmas isn’t just another public holiday. It marks the birth of the son of God, Jesus Christ, into a world which desperately needed to change.
People easily forget what Christians have brought about as a result of their belief in Jesus Christ. You see, if there was no Christmas, no Christian faith, along with the Christians and their churches, would go all of the great universities, the hospitals, night shelters, many of the charities, and of course, city missions. Because they were all founded by Christians in the name of Jesus. If all of that suddenly ceased to exist, it would be enough to plunge the world back into the dark ages. You see, whether they realise it or not, the world needs Christianity in more ways than one. Without the church and the organisations and institutions founded by them, the world would be a far darker place than it is today.
Friday 9th December 2022 – Advent 3
During Advent the Anglican lectionary makes a bit of a feature of the ministry of John the Baptist, an important figure in history as it happened. It was his God appointed role to prepare the people to receive their long-awaited Messiah. But Jesus wasn’t the kind of Messiah that John was expecting. Surely one of the first things a Messiah would do, in John’s mind anyway, would be to sort out the Romans and those who supported them, and become Israel’s new king. If this was the case then why then was John still locked up in Herod’s prison? John would reasonably expect that it would have been the other way around!
We all expect our heroes to be people who sort stuff out, because we think that in God’s plan the bad people get what they deserve, and King Herod Antipas was a very bad man who should get his comeuppance. Jesus’ response to John’s confusion was to reassure him that he hadn’t made a mistake, Jesus is the Messiah, but his role was be different from John’s, and everyone else’s, expectations. Jesus draws John’s attention to the words of the prophet Isaiah about what the Messiah would do. The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, there is the resurrection of the dead, and the poor hear good news. God was at work for those with eyes of faith to see (Isaiah 26:19, 29:18, 35:5, 42:18, 61:1), just not in the way John expected.
Which brings us to today. As we wait for Jesus to return, what are we expecting to happen? The bible only tells us so much, there’s nothing about time or dates, no real details of where or when, and it’s tempting to fill in the gaps with our own ideas. We must resist that temptation, rather we should rely only on what the bible has already revealed, and focus on our own calling to preach the gospel to the very end.
Sunday 4th December 2022 – Advent 2
This Sunday is the Second Sunday in Advent, when our attention is drawn to the ministry of John the Baptist. If there’s one thing almost everyone could agree on about John it’s that he could be insulting, appear angry and use violent language. I sometimes wonder how he got to that stage, did he try being polite at first, or was it straight in with this forceful style? Clearly John was fed up with the pretence of the religious leaders whose faith was only skin deep; full of show but devoid of the substance of real faith. ‘Snakes’ he called them, an image they clearly understood as referring to another snake, the one found in the Garden of Eden who deceived Adam and Eve. His message was clear – we either live lives which are worthy of the Christian Gospel or we are, like that first snake, just deceivers.
This is all part of the Advent message which tells us to sort ourselves out. When Jesus Christ comes again to judge the world, his first questions to us might not be ‘What have you done and how have you lived?’ but ‘Are you ready?’ How ready we are will depend on the preparations we have already made whilst we wait for His coming. So what preparations have you made in your life for when that day comes?
Sunday 27th November 2022 -Advent 1
In traditional churches at this time of year you’ll likely find an advent wreath of some sort, replete with five candles, one lit each of the four Sunday before Christmas, with the final one being lit on Christmas Day. They tend to serve as bit of a countdown to Christmas, which is odd, because that’s not what Advent is about at all.
Another popular symbol of Advent is the Advent Calendar. When our children were growing up we always had an Advent Calendar. In fact we had several. The children had their own calendars – the ones with chocolate in them, they liked those ones. But we also had a family one which told the story of salvation leading up to the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day. Advent calendars, especially the ones with chocolate in them that my children liked so much, are all very well, but they miss the point. Advent isn’t about receiving a gift of chocolate each day, because there’s really only one gift that matters, and that is the gift of Jesus to the world.
So what is Advent about? Advent is its own season, a time of waiting and preparation, but not for the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ on Christmas Day, although that is part of it in some ways. You see, Advent is there to give us the time to reflect on our need for Jesus to come to us in the first place, and ask ourselves if we’re ready for the time when Jesus will come again. If we don’t go through this season of Advent, waiting, watching, preparing ourselves, then we won’t really have anything to celebrate when he comes again the second time, or for that matter really appreciate why he came that first Christmas Day.
Saturday 19th November 2022
What is heaven like? It’s a question many Christians have wondered. Well Jesus gave us a little clue at the end of Luke’s gospel (Lk. 23:43). As Jesus is dying on the cross, he says to the thief who asked Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom, ‘…today you will be with me in paradise’. Paradise… it’s an interesting choice of word, isn’t it? Is Jesus talking about heaven? We can’t be sure, but I think probably yes, but how do we know? Well in the ancient world the ideal earthly ‘paradise’ was to be found in the king’s garden. In fact, kings had beautiful gardens with exotic animals not usually seen in that part of the world. They would have flowing water and trees, and were a place of serenity and peace. When someone had done something heroic, they were invited to the king’s garden. King Solomon’s palace had such a garden.
So, when Jesus speaks of paradise he gives us an image of heaven, and it’s not something hard and sterile like the streets of gold or pearly gates in Revelation. Jesus says heaven is paradise, the king’s garden, a place of beauty, peace and rest. And since he is the King of kings, he has the authority to invite whomever he likes into it. It’s an image that brings to mind the very first garden in the bible, the Garden of Eden, the place where God would come in the cool of the day and Adam and Eve would enjoy being in the presence of God, their Creator. Can you imagine what that must have been like? Well, that’s Jesus’ promise to us, he’s the king, and heaven is his garden, and he’s inviting all who would follow him to join him there.
Friday 11th November 2022
This Sunday marks the day when many nations remember the end of the First World War on the 11th November 1918, we call it Armistice Day. For us on the other side of the world to Europe this has largely been supplanted by ANZAC Day. The so called ‘war to end all wars’ hasn’t really lived up to its name has it. Evil forces are still at work in the world in those who seek to pull down and destroy those things they do not understand in order to replace it with some ideology of their own. Never-the-less, it is still worth observing as it not only provides a poignant time for us to remember all those we’ve lost in the many wars since then, but also those we love and from whom we’ve been parted.
Jesus spoke quite a bit about death, particularly his own, and he was quite clear that his own death would put an end to its tyranny over humanity, and it now holds no power over us. Jesus’ promise of a new kingdom gave real hope to his followers, it was to be a place of feasting and laughter quite unlike anything they had experienced on earth; the hungry would be filled and those who’d been oppressed would be freed. This gives us hope as we entrust to God those who have died. But that’s not all Jesus said. He also made it clear that real change must start to take place now in the hearts and minds of his followers. So perhaps we can use this time to remind ourselves of our part in bringing his message of hope to our world by telling others about what Jesus has done for them. It can be for us more than just an act of remembrance, but a promise that we will do our best to serve Jesus Christ by serving others in the cause of peace, not just between nations, but also with God.
Friday 4th November 2022
What happens after we die? That question has puzzled all human beings since the beginning of time. There’s a universal desire to want to know if there’s more to life than this. But, unlike God, we cannot see beyond the vail of death, and from what the gospels tells us we can be sure that this question was high in the minds of the Jews at the time of Jesus. However, as much as we might want him to, Jesus doesn’t give us a definitive description of what heaven is like, and neither did he tell us what happens between when we die, and the time when all of humanity is resurrected and stands before God to face judgement. The only hint we have of that was when Jesus was dying on the cross where he turned to the thief at his side and said “today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).
That said, we do have an indication of what life will be like after the resurrection of all people has taken place. When Jesus debated this very subject with one of the religious groups of the day, the Sadducees (see Luke 20:27-38), he gave us an indication that life in heaven will not be a continuation of life here on earth, rather it will be something different, something new that we’ve never experienced before. What we can say with certainty is that when we die, we will be with God, safe and secure for all eternity.
The thing is, I don’t think we can ‘prove’ the resurrection of believers at the end of time with rational arguments, and we clearly can’t explain things we have not seen. So on this subject, we just have to take Jesus at his word, and accept, by faith, that that is the way things will be. The Message here is that life in heaven is about a new life, and it is only Jesus’ death and resurrection that makes this new life possible. It will better than anything our current life can offer as it will be a new birth into a new age, in the unveiled sight of God.
Saturday 29th October 2022
Too often we judge others by outward appearances, God however, does not. One of the great things about being a minister is that I get to meet all sorts of people from all walks of life, you name it, I’ve probably met someone like that. Most of those I’ve met were genuinely nice people, but not all of them, some of them wanted nothing more than to punch me in the face, or worse! But here’s the thing, in the eyes of Jesus, no person is more valuable to God than another. Among his own people Jesus would write no one off; the Pharisee was no more valuable than the tax collector – all were equal in the sight of God. What mattered was how they responded to his teaching as he looked for those who heard his word and put it into practice, whatever their background, and no matter how they were perceived by society.
You see, the Christian life is not just about listening to Jesus, as many of those who followed him around the country did; it’s about letting his teaching have such an impact on us that it leads us to change our lives. Perhaps in the unlikely person of Zacchaeus in Luke 19 we see an example of someone who does just that. His is a story of hope for us all, really, because it doesn’t matter one jot what we might think of ourselves, what matters is what God thinks of us. Unlike us, God doesn’t judge by outward appearances or by what other people say about us. He looks at our hearts. One day, we will be judged on how we have responded to God’s call to love him, and to love our neighbour as ourselves. I wonder what would he say about the we’ve responded to his teaching?
Saturday 22nd October 2022
A while ago God impressed on me the importance of understanding just how different to him we really are. Ok I thought, if I’m in this for God then that’s what I’ll do. So I prayed: “Lord, open my eyes that I may see my life as you see it.” It took a few weeks but God answered my prayer, and, honestly, I didn’t like what he showed me. Now I’m pretty sure that I’m no better or worse than any of you, and I’m also sure that, as Christians, we ought to know about God’s perfect love and our own sinfulness. But when confronted with the glory of God… well let’s just say that I never realised quite how far from God’s perfection we really are.
You see, on our own, we actually have nothing to commend us in the sight of God. When placed next to the holiness of God, we are, as the Anglican Book of Common Prayer puts it, “miserable sinners”. We don’t like to think about it, but on the grand scale of things, we simply cannot approach a holy God because of our sin, which makes what Jesus did for us one the cross all the more incredible – he died so that we can be made perfect in God’s sight and able approach him without fear of losing our life. Our response to all of this should be one of praise and thanksgiving, and a life lived in grateful devotion to God and for the glory of his kingdom.
Saturday 15th October 2022
Have you ever considered how wealth can affect our relationship with God? I once heard someone say that ‘money doesn’t make you happy, it makes you more of what you already are.’ What he meant was that if you’re discontented or unhappy with your life, then having more money will only make you a discontented, unhappy richer person. If we can be honest with ourselves for a moment, most of us would love to be financially self-sufficient… and comfortably off with it. The danger with that mindset is that we can convince ourselves that earthly wealth means heavenly blessing; that having material riches means we’re spiritually right with God. But that would be a mistake. The church in Laodicea from Revelation 3 were proud of the fact that they were rich and didn’t need help from anyone (Rev 3:17), and Jesus condemned them for it.
I am sure you see the danger we all face. Compared to the majority of the world, we also have great earthly and material wealth. Do we think we are blessed because we deserve it; because we’re so good? Do we think that just because we can supply our own material needs that our salvation is under our own control? Isn’t this the biggest danger of riches – that those who have it neglect their need for God (Prov. 30:8)? You see, if those with riches don’t need God for their daily needs then they easily forget their need for God for their salvation. And Christians who don’t need God for their daily bread will often forget to be excited about Jesus and the faith they claim to profess. They become, as Jesus said to the Laodiceans, lukewarm, a bit like a cold cup of coffee; no longer fit for purpose.
Sunday 9th October 2022
If I were to ask you to name a successful church, what would you think of? One of the large Pentecostal churches with their hundreds of members? Or one of those churches where the minister or pastor is well known in the media? Perhaps it’d a church with lots of programs running for the full range of age and demographics? And by some measures that wouldn’t be wrong. What I’m pretty sure of is that I doubt you would think of a small church, one that’s maybe struggling to keep going, but nevertheless, maintaining a focus on obeying God’s word in whatever they do. One that remains faithful and true to his word, that upholds the name of Jesus in the face of opposition, no matter how many people worship there. But here’s the thing… that’s the sort of Church Jesus wants to see. We know so because he praises one such church in Chapter 3 of Revelation, the church in the ancient city of Philadelphia, modern day Ataşehir in Turkey. You see, despite what we may think, size isn’t important, Christian faithfulness to God’s word and perseverance under pressure is.
Saturday 1st October 2022
One of the Reformers of the English church was a bishop by the name of Hugh Latimer, and among the many things he said was this: “When we are best at ease, when all things go with us according to our will and pleasure, then we are commonly furthest from God.” It’s a bit of warning not to be complacent about how we live our lives, or take for granted what God has entrusted to us, but to actively work together for the building of his kingdom. Unfortunately, it seems to be a lesson many of us only learn the hard way.
A couple of weeks ago I suggested in a sermon that a church suffering persecution is more likely to produce fruit than those living in comfort. Not a nice thought I know, but complacency can easily slip in, subtly seducing us so that we end up just coasting along, taking for granted our status as God’s people as we enjoying our persecution-free life. Do you ever think about coasting? You have to admit it’s quite attractive isn’t it. You can come to church, give your ‘nod to God’ and pay your dues, then just get on with the rest of your life, doing what you like when you like. It’s easy, isn’t it? However, while you may be enjoying life free from any real hassle, it does make us pretty ineffectual when it comes to making a difference for God. The message here is to stop coasting and flex our spiritual muscles by rediscovering our spiritual gifts and telling others about what Jesus has done for us. Perhaps we need to stop taking our status before God for granted and begin to produce the fruit that Jesus expects of us.
Sunday 25th September 2022
One of the things that continues to amaze me is our seemingly endless capacity to deceive ourselves. It’s like that old Simon and Garfunkel song ‘The Boxer’ says: ‘It’s all lies and Jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.’ And we do, don’t we? When we want to justify a certain course of action we just ignore the things we don’t want to hear. It’s true in the church too.
At the personal level, it’s very easy to compromise what we believe to get what we desire, especially if we’re prepared to ignore certain parts of the bible. But what we’re really doing is wilfully ignoring the word of God, and that can get us into a whole heap of trouble.
The trouble Christians have is that, sometimes, we can be just too nice, so nice in fact that we’re willing to turn a blind eye to those things we know are wrong because we don’t want to offend anyone or make an unpopular but necessary decision. And that can be a real danger for church leaders. Tolerance of false teaching leads to being indifferent about the sin in our midst. Some in the church are clearly aware of what’s happening and have rejected the false teaching being promoted around things like human identity and sexuality. Our church leaders need the courage to address the elephant in the room and name such teaching for what it is, evil.
Saturday 17th September 2022
We live in a society where there are many competing voices, both religious and political, and they’re all wanting to be heard. The trouble is, many of these voices are hostile to the Christian message and the way of life it teaches. So there’s a great temptation for Christians to compromise their beliefs just in order to fit in. What I see is Christians watering down what they believe to be true to a matter of opinion or interpretation, that truth is relative, that there are no absolutes, that all roads lead to God. We call it ‘tolerance’, a loving response to difference. But while it tolerates all things and judges none, it ends up losing any concept of truth. You see tolerance is the attitude of those who don’t believe anything, as a result, no one knows who to trust or what to believe.
So let me ask you: do you believe that faith in Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation? If you do, do you believe it absolutely? For some people, this remains the single most offensive aspect of Christianity. But if salvation is really a multiple-choice issue, how do you explain a God who would send his only Son to die a horrible death on the cross? It’s unthinkable, isn’t it? Why would God do such a thing if there were alternatives that were just as effective? So, what’s the answer? Well, the call is to persevere, to continue to hold fast to the faith taught by the apostles, and to overcome the temptation to compromise what we believe and how we live in order to fit in.
Saturday 10th September 2022
Maybe it’s my age, but I seem to get quite a few emails relating to pension savings. Apparently, if these emails are to be believed, none of us is doing enough, we must save more, put more into Kiwisaver, and do it before it’s too late. And it’s not just emails, there’s TV adverts advising us to invest in shares or property, I’m sure you’ve seen them.
But here’s the thing… To me, it seems to be a question of where we put our trust; do we trust God for our future, or are we relying on our own resources to see us through our old age? Don’t get me wrong, careful planning and use of the resources God has given us now is a good thing. But not everyone has that luxury. If how were going to live when times are tough is solely reliant on what we do for ourselves now, then what does that mean for the poor in our society? Who, then, do you really trust for your future? Might I suggest that it’s only in the tough times that we really find out where we put our trust and faith.
Saturday 3rd September 2022
If you’re anything like me then I’m guessing that you get lots of emails and a few letters each week from various sources, most of which end up in the recycling bin. Some, though, I take more notice of than others. There are those that I deal with immediately, while others are put in a pile to be dealt with later. How do I differentiate between these three groups? Well, I usually give the contents a quick scan and if it’s something like an offer for life insurance or another credit card they go straight in the bin. But in other cases, I check who they’re from. I got one from my bank the other week, it was our credit card bill, so I dealt with that one straight away. The point is, the sender of a letter makes a big difference to the attention we give to it.
There are a few letters in the bible too. The trouble is, even though they’re full of helpful advice on how to live the Christian life, we have a tendency to leave them in the pile of letters marked ‘to do later’, treating them as if they’re not really important. It’s a mistake, of course, especially when we remember who wrote them. You see, these letters, though they’re written down by the apostles, contain God’s advice to us on how best we can live lives that are pleasing to him, advice which if we follow it will ensure our place at his banqueting table at the end of time. So maybe we need to pull them out of our ‘to do’ pile, dust them off, and give them a good read.
Sunday 28th August 2022
All too often we act like we’re the most important person in the room. We don’t mean to, but some Christians act as though they have a divine right to all God’s earthly blessings, that all their material desires will be met far beyond their actual needs, treating God’s good gifts as though they were their own, instead of using them for his glory and for the benefit of others. Instead of gratitude they exhibit a prideful arrogance, that the way their church does things is the ‘right way’. But it is not our place to think that we are any better than our neighbour, because we’re not. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, Wesleyan, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Reformed, Pentecostal, Brethren, Independent or Roman Catholic, so long as you love the Lord Jesus Christ and hold fast to his word, and proclaim the Good News of God’s grace to all who come to him in repentance and faith. You see God has not left it open to us to assume were any better than any other church or any other Christian. Sure, we all make mistakes, but let’s not let our differences get in the way of our commitment to God’s mission. As we gather together as church, not everyone God brings our way will be to our personal liking, but they are no less a child of God than we are. So let us humble ourselves, see others as God sees them, and continue to preach the good news of Jesus Christ to our community.
Friday 19th August 2022
We all face challenges in our lives in one way or another, for some of us those challenges are very real as we struggle with illness or disability. One of the things that keeps us going is the knowledge that, though life is tough for us, God is always with us in our struggles, he hasn’t abandoned us to get on with it on our own. Perhaps the challenge most of us struggle with is our own fear and insecurity as the world changes around us. But change is nothing new, just look at the way we worship God. For hundreds of years there was no music in the church, and the only songs that were sung were the Psalms. There were no seats either; people had to stand for the entire service. Now we sing all sorts of hymns and songs and we sit in pews or chairs. I’ll bet that each time there was a change in the way the church worshipped together, there were those who said “that’s not the way we do it!” It’s easy to forget that all we do today was once seen as an innovation and something to be discouraged.
We must be careful that we don’t hold on so tightly to what we perceive to be ‘ours’, our traditions, our way of doing things, that we miss what God is offering us. We mustn’t stifle God’s Spirit and limit his transforming power in our lives. We should choose a better way, one that reminds us that through his death and resurrection Jesus has set us free from all of that worry, free to be transformed by his mercy and grace to worship him, free to be and do what he created us for, to worship him with all our heart, mind, body, and soul. Amen to that!
Friday 12th August 2022
Too many people hear an incomplete message about Jesus. It’s the one that says that he was a great teacher, philosopher and guide, a healer of the sick and the personification of love. The one that says that since God is love it doesn’t matter who we love as long as we truly love them. The one that never challenges our preconceptions or asks us to change anything about our behaviour or the way we worship our God. But that isn’t the complete story about the Jesus that we read of in the bible.
The Jesus in the bible challenges us about our lifestyles; that we should live godly lives, lives worthy of him, lives which bring glory to God the Father. This is the Jesus who challenged the religious establishment and their preconceived notions about worship and God. That is the Jesus we need to listen to, because one day we will meet Jesus as our judge, and what then? What possible defence could we use to mitigate our inaction or our unbelief? I fear that far too many Christians have become too comfortable, complacent even, with the life they have, and seemingly unwilling to surrender their lives to God and do his will. It’s a sobering thought, that we might be inadvertently working against God, but there’s simple remedy; start each day by dedicating it to the glory of God, and choose to serve his purposes with whatever comes our way that day.
Friday 5th August 2022
Christianity claims to know what the future holds for all humanity, that there are consequences that lie beyond death for all of us who live on this earth, and that these consequences are contingent how we live our lives. For those who put their trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour and live according to God’s will there are the blessings of eternal life in a paradise we call heaven. One the other hand, for those who choose to reject any faith in Jesus the consequences are less desirable, eternal separation from all the goodness that is God, in a place we call Hell. No wonder some people are fearful, perhaps that’s why they look for an alternative future, one that doesn’t have such harsh consequences for their refusal to trust God with their lives.
So how is Christianity any different from any other religion, or from horoscopes or clairvoyants, or ancient prophesies from long extinct civilisations? Well the Christian faith has at its heart someone who has passed through death and back to life again, Jesus Christ, proving once and for all who care to see that death is not the end. He also provided us with a tangible way of living, one which makes sense of our world and of our lives, one which teaches us to live in a way that benefits God’s creation. It is simple enough to be taught to children and yet profound enough to challenge the most intelligent minds. What it isn’t, is self-seeking, it just wants the best for all humanity.
Friday 22nd July 2022
‘Our Father in heaven’. It all starts with that first word – OUR. I guess we all know somebody who’s said to us: ‘I am a Christian but I don’t go to church.’ But the very first word we pray is ‘Our’, isn’t it? So, doesn’t that make a bit of a mockery of such statements? That word is ‘Our’, tells us that the Christian faith a shared experience, it’s not something lived in isolation from other people. I really don’t see any way in which we can pray the Lord’s Prayer and mean it, and then claim to be a private Christian.
Actually, someone (I don’t know who) has even gone to the trouble of writing a short little poem to illustrate this very point. It goes like this:
You cannot say the Lord’s Prayer, and even once say “I”.
You cannot pray the Lord’s Prayer, and even once say “my”.
Nor can you pray the Lord’s Prayer and not pray for another.
For to ask for “our” daily bread, you include your sister and brother!
All God’s children are included in each and every plea.
From the beginning to the end of it, it does not once say ‘me’. In short, we cannot say OUR, if our faith has no room for others and their needs. Powerful little word that ‘Our’, isn’t it?
Friday 15th July 2022
The gospel can sometimes feel a bit like a good news bad news story. The good news – and it is indeed incredibly good – is that Salvation is free. We do not have to do anything to earn it, in fact we can’t do anything to earn it, it’s totally and utterly God’s free gift to the world. The bad news, and by ‘bad’ I mean something we don’t really want, is that along with Salvation comes discipleship, and discipleship is very costly indeed. So for some people, following Jesus may not be all they imagined it to be, because they failed to appreciate the cost involved. You see, our natural desire is to control our surroundings, the people and events that surround our lives, but that’s not God’s way. Following Jesus means submitting to his will for our lives, sometimes that means suffering for his name’s sake; being ridiculed for our faith, maybe even losing our job because we took a stand on a moral issue. The tragedy is that for too many people deem the price of following Jesus too high. Let not that be said of us.
Friday 8th July 2022
This Sunday, our theme is ‘Who is my Neighbour’, a subject that concerned a certain ‘expert in the law’ who asked Jesus about it. Many of us live in our houses without ever really getting to know our neighbours, and I get it, its hard sometimes as we all live such demanding and busy lives. And yet, isn’t ‘community’ something most of us long for? Knowing our neighbours not only keeps our community safe as we look out for one another, it can foster trust and a sense of belonging, which must surely help when it comes to sharing the gospel as people are more like to listen to those they already know than a total stranger.
But the term ‘neighbour isn’t limited to those we live next door, or even our street or neighbourhood. Neighbour, in the Christian sense, is anyone who might need our help, whether we know them or not. It might even mean those noisy people down the road who irritate us with their loud music and noisy cars, if they’re in need of help, the Christian thing to do is to offer ours.
Having said that, when it comes to close neighbours, a kindly, helpful one is more likely to be listened to when it comes to spiritual matters than the ‘strange, religious man’ next door! So don’t be a stranger, be a neighbour!
Friday 1st July 2022
Have you ever noticed how some Christians think of their faith from the point of view of what they can get out of it? Take prayer as an example: it’s sometimes seen as a convenient way of asking God for things for ourselves. Think about it, how often do we ask for material blessings or good health, rather than for the salvation of those around us? On one level that’s ok, but only up to a point, because what happens when we don’t receive the things we want from God? Just because we imagine God’s benevolence will prompt him to shower good things upon us, doesn’t mean that what we ask for is right. If we ask with the wrong motives all we’ll be is disappointed and disillusioned. The problem though was not with God, the problem is with us, more specifically our own misplaced desires, driven as they are by our own sinful nature.
The kind of prayers Christians should be concerned with is for the mission of the church and the commitment of Christian workers. We ought to know this already because we remind ourselves of it every week when we say the Lord’s Prayer; when we pray for the coming of his kingdom and for spiritual needs of others to be met. The trouble is we often get caught up sorting out other issues which, in the long run, don’t really matter! Too much of our time is taken up with unimportant distractions like worrying about which hymns and songs we’re going to sing or whether or not we use liturgy in our services. But you know what? In the grand scheme of things, none of that really matters. What is important is the very real need to take seriously the teaching of Jesus; that our motivation and prayers should be directed towards the important business of spreading the Gospel and changing the world, and not making the church into some sort of club run along the lines which suit our personal tastes.
Friday 24th June 2022
Every now and then, and increasingly more so in the last few years, we hear stories about Christians being attacked while they worship, their churches burnt down, and Christian pastors being imprisoned, or worse abducted and killed, it makes one wonder how we would cope if such a thing were to happen to us. But of course, not all persecution is so blatant. For us in the west we’ve been spared most of that, in fact we’ve not suffered to any great extent at all. But things are changing.
Increasingly we’re finding that we seem to be suffering the sort of persecution where our faith is openly ridiculed, where Christians are picked on as if they were the only ones ever did anything wrong, and Christian organisations, especially schools, are attacked and harassed by activists and the media. I don’t think there’s any doubt that, at some stage, we will all be confronted buy some sort of low-level persecution. And some of us, when were confronted with such difficulties, might be tempted to wander off from our faith and make excuses for what we believe instead of being prepared to defend it.
So, if such a thing should happen to you, where will you go to find support and guidance? To whom are you going to turn if someone in authority, your employer perhaps, asked you to compromise your Christian convictions? Who will you go to for help if your family turns against you? Who will you go to for guidance if a family member asks us to attend their same-sex wedding ceremony? Those are all questions that are faced by Christians, somewhere in New Zealand today. So, before any of that happens, might it be a good idea to know who you could turn to for encouragement if something should happen to you?
Friday 17th June 2022
We’ve all been through some difficult times these last couple of years as the world changed quite dramatically and unexpectedly; certainly, I never saw any of it coming. And some Christians are beginning to wonder if we really might be living in the end times, or at least that we might be heading that way. For many of us, that’s quite an unsettling thought. Well, as unsettling as things may be, being fearful of the end won’t help anyone. Even if everyone around us seems to be losing their head, the pastoral letters in the bible urge us to stay calm (see 1 Peter). It’s not exactly radical advice, but it’s certainly necessary. Because when it comes to the end times, too many Christians have been anything but clear headed, some seem to be obsessed with it. Every time there’s some new conflict in the world we get a whole slew of new videos and books on the end times… it’s bizarre!
It’s the sort of thing that the apostle Peter warns us against. He says we’re to think clearly; we are not to try and guess the date of the end, we’re merely to be ready for when Jesus returns; neither are we to withdraw from society, hiding ourselves away in some remote commune, we’re to proclaim God’s praises to the world. We’re to wait, be sober minded so that we can pray effectively for those around us. You see, people who lose their heads don’t pray, they panic. So, as we follow in Jesus’ footsteps, in the midst of all our anxieties, we express our hope of salvation through our praise of God and through our prayers.
Friday 3rd June 2022
Judging by the way some Christians live their lives, I wonder whether they’ve really understood what it cost Jesus for them to be forgiven. I think if they truly understood what it cost him, they might be moved to conduct their lives in the fear of God rather than out of fear of what their friends and family think of them. But living to please God kinda makes us stand out, it makes us seem strange, a bit odd, because we’re now different from those around us. After I’d become a Christian, I tried to tell my biker friends about my newfound faith. Of course, I’d changed, and they didn’t like it. They seemed surprised that I no longer wanted to live as they did, and some were openly hostile.
You might well have a similar story. If you have, then you’ll know that it’s one of the hardest things new Christians have to face. Your friends liked you because you liked and shared in the same things they did, it was probably great fun at the time. But you came to embrace Jesus and left behind your former life. You changed, but your friends didn’t, they still pursue the pleasures of this world, still follow the will of men, and they’re still surprised that you don’t join them in their way of life. You see, becoming a Christian, affects more than just ourselves. If we choose to live for Jesus, there will always be those who mock us. But they’ll one day have to give an account for what they’ve done ‘to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead’ (1 Peter 4:5). Yes, living for Jesus may mean being picked on our whole lives, by friends, family, maybe even the government itself, but in the end, we will be vindicated by Jesus.
Friday 27th May 2022
Whenever you hear a feminist criticise the Bible, they usually do it on the issue of perceived gender stereotypes. They paint this picture of a domineering male who rules the roost and the wife just does what she’s told. To our shame, too many men validate their argument. But the reality is male domination is a result of the fall, not God’s design. The Bible is against such actions just as much as any secular feminist. Men who dominate their wives to the extent they reduce them to domestic servitude, are not living out Lord’s command to respect and honour their wives. Marriage is a partnership not a dictatorship, one where each partner puts in 100% effort to make it work, any less and it’s on shaky ground.
Perhaps we could think of marriage being like a dance, the type where the man leads and the woman follows. Now I confess, and my wife will tell you freely, I can’t dance, I’m just not that rhythmically inclined. But I’m assured by those who do dance that when two people dance together they have to know each other well enough to be of one mind, each able to anticipate the others move, otherwise it’s all a bit of a mess. Knowing one another well… that’s the key isn’t it. But like a marriage, it’s all easier said than done isn’t it!
Saturday 21st May 2022
The world we live in isn’t what it used to be is it, but then everyone says that, no matter what time they happen to live in. Today isn’t the same as yesterday because the world changes; people and governments change, and just when we’re getting used to how things are, just when we think we’ve got everything under control, it changes again. Its unsettling isn’t it.
So how are we to live in our changing world? This is actually something that the apostle Peter has a lot to say about is his first letter. First he shows us just how privileged we are that we’ve been chosen by God to be his people, that in spite of our suffering, we can be assured that God is in control and he’s given us a new identity and a new mission.
I think we can all agree that mission is important, but it also seems like the church has lost sight of what our mission is. I’ve been in many a Synod where the main topic of discussion has been social justice issues. The importance of telling people about Jesus was hardly ever mentioned. Mission agencies too seem to be more concerned about providing aid, providing teachers and doctors to poor countries than telling people about Jesus. Don’t get me wrong, both of those are good things in their own right, but our mission is incomplete without telling people about Jesus Christ, in fact it’s decidedly lacking. Doing good works is all very well, but it’s not meant to replace our mission to tell the broken, the hurt, the oppressed and abused that not only has Jesus has come to put an end to all injustice, and will return again to bring in his kingdom of righteousness and justice and peace, but primarily to tell them to repent and believe in Jesus and become part of God’s church.
Saturday 14th May 2022
When the leaders of the Jewish people had Jesus crucified by the Romans, they unwittingly rejected the very messiah that they longed for, the one God had sent to be the cornerstone of his new ‘spiritual’ temple for his people, the living stone that began the process of building a new spiritual temple for God. Jesus seemed to them to be a reject, but in fact, he was the most precious treasure you could imagine.
As Christians, God has also called us to come to Jesus, so we too can become ‘living stones’ in his new temple. No longer would it be just the priests who ministered within the walls of the old temple, that means of sacrifice has served its purpose and is now redundant. Today, all God’s people have a part to play. You see, its people, not stones, who are the building blocks that form the structure of God’s new Temple. The church is nothing if it doesn’t have you and me to hold it up.
There’s a rather tired old joke amongst clergy, that if it wasn’t for the people, church would be a wonderful place. But it wouldn’t be much of a church would it. In fact, it wouldn’t be a church at all. No, the church is the people. We are living stones, being built into a living temple, a place where those seeking for truth can come and encounter God in the lives of his people. Our task, as building blocks of the temple, is to bind together in unity to create a strong and stable structure. Being living stones means we need to keep growing, not merely in size, but in strength and maturity, so that the bonds we have with one another become stronger and stronger as time goes on.
Friday 6th May 2022
I think it’s true to say that God expects high standards from his people, which tragically hasn’t always been the case, as the courts can too frequently testify. You really can’t mess around and think that God won’t mind though. It’s one of the reasons why the apostle Peter calls Christians to live out their lives in reverent fear (1 Peter 1:17). The concept of the fear of God is often misunderstood by Christians today. There’s even a trend in some church traditions to play down God’s judgement on sin to make him more ‘accessible’. Instead of treating God as he has revealed himself in the Bible, we create a god in our own image, the kind of God we want, one we can manage. When we do that, we no longer fear God or his coming judgement. That is not the God of the bible.
The problem we have is that many Christians have a domesticated view of God. They forget that when they meet him, they’ll meet a lion, not a pussy cat. The fear of the Lord is knowing that the God whom we call Father is also the judge of all the world. It is knowing that he will judge everyone on the evidence of what they’ve done on this earth. Make no mistake, judgement is coming. Peter’s intention is not to make us fearful, but to help us have a healthy respect for who God is, and be reminded that there are consequences for how we live our lives. It’s true that Jesus is our friend and brother, and if we love him, if we’re truly grateful for all that he’s done for us, then we’ll naturally want to please him. But let’s not forget that he’s also God, and as God he deserves our reverence and respect. He is not to be domesticated like some pussy cat, He’s a lion, the lion of Judah, and it’s wise to fear a lion, isn’t it?
Friday 29th April 2022
What are you placing your hope in? Is it a hope just for this world, that you’ll have no financial worries, or that your life will be easier, more comfortable, less stressful? I wouldn’t blame you; it’d be nice wouldn’t it. But is that what God has promised us, an easy life? Judging from most of what we read in our bibles, I’d say no.
The hope that God has given us through Jesus’ death and resurrection is much more than just some vague promise that our lives will be easier if we just ‘believe’, the thousands of persecuted Christians around the world today can testify to that. What he’s given us is a ‘living hope’, a hope that helps us focused on living life, whether our current circumstances are good or bad, with a vision of our eternal future firmly in mind.
As Christians we lay claim to the one hope that will never let us down, the living hope of an inheritance that that cannot perish, spoil or fade kept safe for us in heaven. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is the sign that we too will be raised to new life. His Holy Spirit has been given to us, as the guarantee that God’s life is flowing through us and will help us persevere through the trials of this life until the last day. So, as you go about your life this week, I pray that your heart and mind will be strengthened to persevere, to remain strong in your faith in Jesus Christ, and confident of the great inheritance that’s waiting for you in heaven.
Friday 22nd April 2022
What does it mean for us to worship God? I guess we could come up with all sorts of answers, but perhaps that’s the wrong question. Perhaps we should really be asking how does God want us to worship him? In the Old Testament, worship was centred on the system of Temple sacrifices. But in the New Testament, Jesus’ life, death and resurrection changed all that.
New Testament worship is centred on what Jesus achieved for us on the cross, and our practical response to what he’s done. And if I could sum up in one word what that response should be, I would say ‘gratitude’. Grateful worship is done in reverence and awe, our acceptance of the gospel is an act of grateful worship. In practical terms that means giving control of our lives over to God, dying to our own wants and desires, and devoting ourselves to serving his purposes in the world. And we can do that anywhere, there are no special holy places, no ‘sacred spaces’, no special buildings that we have to go to in order to be in God’s presence. Any place is a good place to worship God… and not just on Sundays! We worship with our ears, when we listen to scripture being read, with our lips, through our songs of praise and the words we say, with our hearts, when we care for others, with our hands, when we do good to others. Whenever we do those things, we worship God. And that, I hope, is what we’re all trying to do.
Thursday 14th April 2022
Life… it’s full of surprises, isn’t it? Most of them are pretty good, things like an unexpected gift perhaps, or a financial windfall. Those sorts of surprises put a smile on our face and make us feel good. But there are other sorts of surprises that just confound our senses, times when we look and wonder, not quite believing what we’re seeing or knowing how to respond. So imagine everyone’s surprise when Jesus rose from the dead. No one was expecting it, not even the disciples. If they were, why weren’t they hiding in a locked room and not waiting at the tomb on that first Easter morning? And why had the women gone to anoint Jesus’ dead body if they thought he was going to be resurrected?
This then, is what Easter is all about: The surprising news of a dead man risen from the grave, alive again for all to see, alive for all eternity, never to see death again. The doubly surprising message of Easter is that this sort of ‘risen life’ awaits all those who follow Jesus, a life lived in eternal fellowship with God Almighty, the Creator of all things, who calls to share in the glory of the resurrected Christ. None of us deserve such an offer because, actually, none of us are good enough. And we never will be. The surprising thing is that in Jesus Christ, God has done it all for us. All we have to do is put our faith and trust in him.
Friday 8th April 2022
For the past couple of months, we’ve been studying the book of Revelation at our Sunday services, and this week marks the final sermon in the series. Part of the task of making sense of Revelation has been trying to understand what John was saying to those Christians he was writing to, and not extrapolating his words to make it say something he didn’t intend. They were living under the temptations and threats of the Roman empire, and John likened this empire, and in fact all empires, to Babylon, and called his fellow Christians to ‘come out from her’. But for many, there seemed to be little or no alternative to the Roman way of life. Many Christians were enjoying the wealth and glory that Rome offered, so the gospel call to disassociate from Rome’s idolatry, injustice and prosperity was a massive challenge, to do so meant a very uncertain future. What they needed was reassurance and the hope of a new home. This is what the apostle John’s vision of a new heaven and a new earth provide; an alternative to the comforts of Rome, to the wealth and glories of empire, and to the cultural values of a religious past. He’s offering another place to belong, another, better place to call home.
It’s actually not so different to our situation today is it. We all face the temptations of wealth, and the pleasures that this world offers are seductive. And yes, it’s hard to break free from the pressure to conform to the world around us, to ‘come out’ from the seductions of our culture. The question is, are you prepared to do it?
Friday 1st April 2022
One of the central claims of Christianity is that, one day, God is going to call time on the world. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by the world of films and TV entertainment, they’re fascinated by the concept, portraying it through natural disasters, climate change, deadly plagues, asteroids hitting the earth, alien invasions, world wars, even robots and artificial intelligence taking over and killing all the humans. You name it, they’ve made a film about it. Unsurprisingly, given the book of Revelation, there’s a whole genre of Christian books and movies devoted to it too, the Left Behind series of films and books being the most well-known.
I used to think it doesn’t really matter what we think about how the world will end, Revelation is quite confusing after all, fascinating but difficult to make any sense of. And anyway, Christians always seem to argue about when and how it will happen. All I knew was that, in the end, God wins… so what’s the point in worrying about it?
What we can be certain of, is that the victory that Jesus won on the cross is no illusion, we can see it in the growth of the church as the gospel has been proclaimed. We also have faith that Jesus will one day return to defeat his enemies and renew creation. In the meantime, Jesus reigns through the message of the cross and the proclamation of the gospel. I still think there’s some merit in being a bit oblivious to the actual details of the end, but nowadays, that comes with this proviso: It might not matter to us when the end comes… so long as we’re continuing to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ right until the last moment.
Friday 25th March 2022
It’s easy to get caught up in the life of the world around us, there’s so much to be tempted by: wealth, fine homes, flash cars, fine food, exotic holidays. We see it, we desire it, we strive for it. We gamble, play lotto, work harder and longer hours as we sell ourselves to the dream and become slaves to our desires. But this image of wealth we hold in our heads is deceptive.
Consider this… Evil commonly exercises power and control through seduction; typically offering the promise of an easier life, wealth, or at least enough wealth to make us feel comfortable, and security. It’s very tempting, for all of us. But it’s a slippery slope that draws our affections and security away from God on to material comforts, and the gospel falls by the wayside. Where seduction fails, control is often exerted through the threat of violence, keeping many in fear of making a stand for the gospel. Either way, Satan gets what he wants as Christians fail to practice what they preach.
You see, evil will always present itself as an angel of light, the answer to our problems, our saviour in times of distress. But, once it has us in its grasp, it will turn on us, destroying all who oppose it. It can offer us all the wealth of the world, but only Jesus Christ can offer us true salvation.
Friday 18th March 2022
Reading the bible can be quite confronting for some people. Non-Christians often criticise the Old Testament for its seeming brutality and images of death and destruction. And you can’t blame them can you, our modern western sensibilities aren’t used to seeing entire cities and people groups wiped out, women and children included. And when they get to reading Revelation, the finality of God’s judgements on the world is alarming. Because, if what we read there is true, then millions, perhaps billions of people are going to die. And yet, this is all part of the gospel message, the good news of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God. But it really doesn’t sound like it’s going to be good news for everyone does it.
So what’s our answer going to be when people ask us about our faith in Jesus? Will we tell them the whole gospel? Or just the bits we think they can stomach so we don’t put them off. Is the gospel good news for everyone, or is it not? And if it’s not, what are we going to do about it?
Sunday 13th March 2022
At All Saints we say the Apostles Creed every Sunday, it’s a reminder to us of the basic doctrines of our faith, about what we believe God has done for us though his only Son, Jesus Christ. It also makes absolutely no mention of the devil, because believing in the devil isn’t what makes you a Christian. Never-the-less, the bible does tell us a lot about the devil, that he plays no small part in God’s unfolding plans for the world. God clearly wants us to know about him, to know that the devil is real… and that we can expect to encounter him. But the devil uses many disguises. In Revelation Ch. 13 we see his work depicted as the two beasts, which together with the devil (depicted as the dragon in Ch. 12) make some sort of un-holy trinity, a false god, to deceive the world.
The first beast is blatant in its use of power and coercion, persecuting God’s people for their faith and their testimony about Jesus. The second beast is a different story, its work is more subtle, but just as deadly as the first. He dazzles and deceives; people are amazed and seduced by the pleasures on offer. His work is done through those who’ve acquiesced and joined with the beast in its debauchery. Make no mistake, the devil is real, and he has the power deceive and cause some to doubt their faith in Jesus, using any and every means to do so, whether through the threat of persecution and terror, or the seductive pleasures of the world around us. It’s time for those in the church to wake up from their comfortable slumber, take a good long hard look at what’s going on around us, and decide whose side we’re on.
Sunday 6th March 2022
The forces of chaos seem to be having a field day around the world, the war in Ukraine is especially disturbing. But it’s not just happening in far-off places. At home here in New Zealand the violent breakup of the protests on the grounds of parliament by the police this week is particularly disturbing. There’s a growing realisation that we’re being divided as a nation, divided by race, by politics, and now by our vaccination status.
Emotions are running pretty high at the moment, differences of opinion are creeping in to our everyday conversations, positions are being taken, arguments formed, and before we know it, we’re arguing with one another over things that are actually beyond our knowledge or control. And what does it gain us? Families are divided, friendships are broken, and Satan rubs his hands with glee. So how we respond to all this is important, for all our sakes. As Christians, we’re called to love our neighbour as ourselves, to love even our enemies. But it isn’t easy is it. My prayers this week have been around the call for unity in the Spirit. It’s about respecting those who hold a different view to ourselves rather than just try and win an argument, praying for God’s blessing to be on our families, friends, and neighbours, and praying for Godly inspired wisdom for our leaders – both spiritual and temporal. And I will continue to be thankful for God’s blessings every day. Will you do the same?
Sunday 27th February 2022
The world has seen a great many disasters over the years, some of them natural, like famine, earthquakes, tsunamis, tornados and so on, but I think the worst ones have been entirely man made. In the last 100 years we’ve seen terrible atrocities, hundreds of thousands, if not millions dead that the hands of tyrants.
Then there’s our Christian brothers and sisters around the world being persecuted for their faith, never sure who they can trust, who will turn them in or attack them for talking about Jesus Christ. Even in the west Christians are being forced out of Jobs or mercilessly persecuted on line for standing up for Christian values. So we rightly ask “Why is this happening to us, why doesn’t God do something to stop the suffering of his people in this world, why does he not return now and put an end to our suffering?” But still it goes on. Totalitarian regimes seek to control nations. People rebel and replace them, often with equally corrupt governments, and so the cycle continues. Some might wonder if this is perhaps part of God’s judgment on a fallen humanity, that he lets people suffer because of their own willingness to put up with unjust government, even, dare I say, to vote for them, but I doubt it. It seems to me more like God allows us the reap the inevitable consequences of our actions, while at the same time reserving his judgment for the end times.
The hard answer to those who plead with God to bring about his final judgement is to be patient. There are still those on earth who need to hear the gospel; those for whom God’s final judgement would be the end if it came too soon. From our point of view, the answer to this delay is to get on with the task of sharing the gospel with as many as possible so that the full number of the elect might be saved.
Sunday 20th February 2022
With all that’s going on in the world you’d be forgiven for thinking that the only way to gain control is through the exercise of power. Why does it have to be that way? Well, of course, it doesn’t, but political power, military might, political activism even, are all very seductive. There’s this belief that we can take control of history and steer it towards what we want. But, as we’ve seen so many times in recent decades, in situations of conflict our actions can have unpredictable consequences, rather than solving anything we only make the problem worse.
There’s also this seductive idea that we can bring world peace through globalisation and technology. We create the illusion that we’re all connected and informed, but it’s just an illusion, because we still only see our small part of the world. You see, most people only see what they want to see, because even though we’re connected to the rest of the world, we still invariably only ever listen to the voices in our own small corner, like an echo chamber, we only hear the voices that agree with us. Who today can really survey the whole world and sum it up? Who has eyes to see and comprehend the bewildering complexities of the entire world? No one, no one like us anyway.
But in heaven, there is someone who sees everything. Heaven is the only vantage point where you can survey all things. In the book of Revelation chapter 5, we find the ‘Lamb who looks as though he was slain’, the one who has ‘seven eyes which are the seven Spirits of God sent out into the whole earth’. Seven is the number of perfection. Seven eyes therefore, represents perfect sight. The Lamb is Jesus Christ, and he sees the full picture, he understands everything and misses nothing. The BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, may well have reporters in almost every country around the world, but only God sees and understands everything.
Sunday 13th February 2022
When you think about God, what do you imagine him to be like? Our answers will of course be quite different depending on our circumstances, some might see God as judgemental, controlling, while others see him as forgiving and compassionate. But are our simplified images of God actually sufficient or indeed even accurate? I suggest not. The apostle John was given a revelation of God’s throne room which we can read about in Revelation Ch.4. Here he sees the throne of God, gleaming with unapproachable light, surrounded by fantastical angelic beings, with thunder and lightning crackling all around. This isn’t just popping in to see your mate, it’s not even like having an audience with the Queen, this is a whole new thing altogether, quite unlike anything on earth.
This heavenly glimpse into God’s throne room is not what we might have expected. God is Almighty God, holy and just in all he does. Any image of what we imagined God to be like probably wasn’t this. More likely it was an image drawn out of our own self-interest; someone we can call on in times of trouble, someone who’ll forgive our never-ending catalogue of sins, someone who gives us comfort when life is tough. Instead, we’re offered an image of God who is transcendent, unapproachable in his holiness, surrounded by the greatest of angelic beings, who can think of nothing they’d rather do than fall down at his feet and sing his praises.
So, if someone ever asks you why you worship God, tell them without hesitation: I worship God because he is… in the words of that great hymn:
Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible, hid from our eyes,
Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, thy great Name we praise.
Sunday 6th February 2022
I have a Roman coin at home from the time of the emperor Tiberius, the emperor at the time Jesus was crucified. And on that coin is the inscription ‘Pontifex Maximus’ or ‘Chief High Priest’, and on the other side, ‘Tiberius, Son of the Divine Augustus’. It’s a symbol, a reminder in every pocket, that the Roman emperor is to be worshipped as a god. This worship of the emperor was a big part of commercial life, the problem for Christians was that to be able to trade meant participating in worship of the emperor. The pressure from friends and neighbours to not rock the boat or make trouble, but just be grateful for Roman rule was enormous. You can see the problem can’t you. How could Christians make a living without compromising themselves with the surrounding culture or getting into trouble with the authorities. To be a faithful Christian meant holding on to their faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the true great high priest, and the only saviour of the world. But to say that out loud would be culturally very awkward, not to mention commercially disastrous, and potentially treasonous!
We can see the parallels to the situation the church finds itself in today. How many of us are wary of speaking out on matters of faith? Or expressing our Christian views on matters of morality? Because to do so, especially in a country like ours, is to invite hatred and ridicule, making life so difficult that you find yourself shunned by family and friends, urged just to keep quiet and toe the line, or risk losing your job. But do not be afraid, Jesus says “I am the first and the last”. Jesus had the first word in history, God spoke the world into being, and Jesus will have the last word in history. Jesus Christ is before all human empires, Roman or otherwise, and he will outlast them. Christians, both then and today, may feel like the world is spinning out of control. But that’s not the case, Jesus has a plan, and that plan will come to pass. Rev Andy Carley
Sunday 30th January 2022
One of the comments often heard from non-Christians is that they quite like the idea of a Jesus like figure, but they’re not so keen on God. Their Jesus is all about love and forgiveness, while they imagine an angry god full of judgment and disapproval. It seems that they’re happy to have a saviour who always forgives them, who’s longsuffering, patient and kind; but they don’t want a god who keeps them accountable and demands commitment and obedience.
The people of Jesus day were like that. When Jesus visited his home town of Nazareth, they were quite impressed with him at first, they were amazed at how well this son of a carpenter spoke. And there’s the problem. When they looked at Jesus all they saw was the son of Joseph the carpenter. To them, Jesus was just the proverbial local boy made good. You can imagine them turning to one another and asking “Isn’t this the little boy we watched growing up as he played with our children?” But of course, the answer to their question is actually “No! not even close”. You see, familiarity often has a way of blinding us to the obvious. So no, this isn’t just Jesus the carpenter’s son. This isn’t even Jesus the great teacher, the wise speaker of parables and wise sayings. And it certainly isn’t “Gentle Jesus, meek & mild”. This is Jesus Christ, the son of God. Even Satan acknowledged that. And the things that he’s come to do go far beyond the small-town vision of these small-town people.
So who do you see when you look at Jesus? A good man, a fine teacher, a faith healer of some kind? Or do you see the living embodiment of all that is God? How are you going to respond to him when he calls?
Sunday 2nd January 2022
Thomas Merton, a man of many talents, once wrote that: “The ox and the ass understood more of the first Christmas than the high priests in Jerusalem. And it is the same today.” He was right. There are plenty of people around today who know the stories about the baby Jesus, but never really commit themselves to doing anything about following Jesus as their Lord and King. Merton rightly points out that the religious leaders in Jesus’ day knew all the prophecies about the Messiah, but when he appeared among them and began to teach what it meant to be a true child of God, they didn’t want to know. The sort of things Jesus taught threatened their position in the community, and undermined their own sense of self-importance. Jesus even had the nerve to suggested that people could have a direct relationship with God, without needing to go through a priestly intermediary. In the words of a particular climate activist, had she been around, “How dare you!”
Many people today, maybe even most, want to run their lives the way they see fit, and not have to worry about what someone else thinks. They certainly don’t want Jesus coming along and upsetting their equilibrium with demands for godly living, let alone giving up their Sunday mornings to go and worship him! Sadly, many of them are also well versed in how to sidestep the issue, who know how to pay lip-service to God, how to play along saying the right words, and express the right sentiments. But it’s not enough to know the Christmas story, knowing the story doesn’t help if it doesn’t lead us to worship and follow the one it’s telling us about. My prayer for this year, for all of us, is that we take seriously the claim that Jesus Christ is Lord of all, and live our lives accordingly.
Christmas Day 25 December 2021
What do you enjoy the most about Christmas? Maybe it’s the big Christmas lunch or dinner with your family? How about Christmas presents? Do you mind what you get? After all, it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it? Have you ever gone and bought the thing you really want just to make sure you get it? Or would you rather be surprised? Usually I’m not into surprises, but even I have to admit it is nice when you open a gift and discover something unexpected that you really like.
The Christmas Story is full of surprises too, we often miss them because we’re so familiar with it, but they are there. Here’s three that you may not have thought about: The choice of Mary and Joseph to be the parents of God’s only Son, two young people with little or no prospects in life from a backwater village in the middle of nowhere. The timing of his birth – a time when Israel was at its lowest point since the exile. The place where he was born – not a palace fit for the king of kings but a lowly stable. And God’s choice of witness to this great event – a few uneducated dirty shepherds. As we unwrap these particular gifts at our service on Christmas Day, we’ll find that God is indeed a God of surprises, one who acts unexpectedly in our world, and if we’re not really looking, his actions are easy to miss. Merry Christmas everyone.
Sunday 19 December 2021
Thinking about our response to this pandemic, what can we probably all say right now? We’re over it! We want a return to normality, or at least as normal as it can be after what we’ve all been through. Life hasn’t been easy, and it’s fair to say it’s taken a toll on our emotional, and for some financial, wellbeing. There’s a lot of hurt and possibly even anger out there about the way all this has been handled by governments around the world, not just our own. So… how should we, as Christians, respond?
What we ought not to do is put our heads in the sand while those around us are hurting. It’s tempting, but we can’t, as Pontius Pilate did, simply wash our hands and say it’s nothing to do with me. If nothing else, for the sake of our own wellbeing, we ought to at least think about what we’ve all gone through, and talk about it with each other, as a minimum we should at least acknowledge one another’s feelings.
An important question for us right now is what drives our response, is it our rights under the law, or love for our neighbour? Being concerned for our neighbour will motivate us differently than if we’re more self-orientated. We must be careful, and consider if our response is actually Christian, even if we are right in the eyes of the law. Let’s not be so driven by our concerns and fears that we give up meeting with others at church worried we’ll catch the virus (even though we’re vaccinated). Be other-person-centred, take the time to understand what drives others responses. Show care and concern for those who’ve lost their jobs over their choices around government policies. Don’t exclude others, be a people of hope to whom others can turn when they’re in need.
Sunday 12 December 2021
We’re living in strange, unsettling times, aren’t we? So where might we expect to see God at work in our covid world? Well, judging from our reactions to this pandemic, I wouldn’t be surprised if some might say that we don’t really see God much at all. They would say that the world is in a dreadful mess and God appears to be absent. Well, I’m not so sure about that because, in my experience, our disappointment often comes because we’ve been looking for God in the wrong places. The fact that God doesn’t fulfil all our expectations is a reflection on us, not God! Jesus knew all about this, his life shows us that God acts unexpectedly: he was born in a stable, not a nice religious palace, he spends his life with the ordinary, lowly people, not with the rich and powerful, he preached about God’s forgiveness and compassion, not punishment, and rather than killing wrongdoers, he dies on a cross for them instead. It was all very unexpected indeed.
Yet Jesus is God, and this is how God works. God, you see, is at work all round us through his people, the church, if only we have eyes to see and ears to hear. God cares for those who’ve lost their jobs because of vaccine mandates, He cares for those who’ll spend Christmas alone because their family don’t want to be around the unvaccinated. Do we? Will we? Where else might God be unexpectedly at work? What unexpected events or circumstances might God be bringing our way, opportunities to tell people, to demonstrate God’s love grace and mercy in Jesus Christ.
Sunday 5 December 2021
Christmas carols, they’re pretty much unavoidable at this time of year, you hear them in the malls and supermarkets when you’re shopping, although these days they’re often the more secular ones. And I guess we all have our favourites; Mary’s Boy Child, We Three Kings, Away in a Manger, Once in Royal David’s City to name but four. And the most famous of them all? How about Silent Night? It’s got a great story attached to it too, the stuff of legend. But like a lot of famous stories, it’s not entirely true. It is true that Joseph Mohr and Franz Gruber wrote “Silent Night” in 1818, but sadly, the story of a broken church organ which meant it was composed for a guitar is more than likely not true.
Distinguishing fact or fiction is important, and Advent, the season before Christmas, is the perfect time to think about these things. It’s not only a time when we look forward to when Jesus comes again, it’s also an opportunity to reflect on our own expectations, and consider our attitudes to the people around us. This Sunday, the second Sunday in Advent, we’re reminded of John the Baptist, something of an uncomfortable figure, even today. He came like a thunderbolt from the sky, dispelling some of the myths about the role of the Messiah and the ‘worthiness’ of the ‘people of God’ – the Jews. The Messiah that came was not what they were expecting, and for some of them, not what they wanted either! His is still a message that shakes us out of our complacency, calls us to respond with discernible actions, and challenges to check our attitudes and expectations. An uncomfortable message yes, but I think one worth thinking about.
Sunday 28 November 2021
You know, at our weekly Sunday service we affirm the essential elements of our Christian faith as we recite the Apostle’s Creed. One of the things we affirm is that Jesus will: “…come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” We say it, but do we really believe it? I ask because all too often, despite our best intentions, we tend to live our lives without much too thought as to what Jesus would like to find us doing if he suddenly returned today. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least that he’d catch us off guard and unprepared. I guess that shouldn’t surprise us though, because we tend to fill our lives with all kinds of obligations and responsibilities other than our relationship with God.
Our busyness crowds out time with God to the point that we treat it as if it’s optional, especially, and rather ironically, at this time of year! ‘After all,’ we think to ourselves, ‘I have to go to work, babysit the grandchildren, do my chores, and think about the bills and financial responsibilities I have.’ It’s tempting to think that, maybe, after the rush of Christmas, there’ll be more time to concentrate on reading the bible, praying, going to a homegroup or bible study, and going to church. Sorry, but no, there won’t, we’ll have no more time than we’ve got now. So maybe we should take a look at our priorities instead, and think about what we’d want to be found doing if Jesus really did suddenly appear, because whatever it is, it’s probably what we should be doing anyway.
Sunday 21 November 2021
What is truth? That was a question made famous by the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, at the trial of Jesus, although he wasn’t so much asking a question as making a statement, that the truth is whatever he decided it was. He’d fit right in today wouldn’t he. Isn’t that how many people think now? That truth is relative, what’s true for you may not be true for me? Well, at some stage, everyone finds out that truth isn’t always so accommodating to our preferences. Truth has no feelings, it is what it is, whether we like it or not. The times when we most want to know the truth are those times when we feel insecure or threatened by some outside force, like a medical pandemic of some sort. We want to know the truth, to know what to do to be safe. But when truth is relative… we all become a bit like Pontius Pilate, and decide what’s true for ourselves depending on what website or social media post we’ve read that day. Oh dear… look how that sort of thinking turned out for Pilate. He missed the truth, even though it was standing right in front of him, because he was focused on the wrong things.
The world today is focused on the, not insignificant, problems caused by a deadly virus, replete with government mandates about this and that, disrupting our lives. While we watch and wait for answers to our problems, listening to the powerful competing for the limelight, people are still missing the truth about Jesus Christ. What has the Church to say about this? It is time to remind Christian people everywhere that our true allegiance must always be to Jesus Christ, the hope of humanity, and not to any worldly rulers. The one truth we can all rely on is that Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Not believing that, doesn’t make it any less true.
Sunday 14 November 2021
We live in strange times don’t we. I come across all sorts of reactions to the current pandemic, but the most common is anxiety, that and fear, fear of the virus, fear of the vaccine, fear of losing our job. So what might Jesus have to say to us about all this? I think it might be something like this: Be aware of what’s going on, but don’t be alarmed, or in the words of the meme, ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’. Be alert, be watchful, and put your trust in God. Now more than ever people need to hear the good news of Jesus, and find communities of faith where they are welcome, vaccinated or otherwise.
We might be tempted to be afraid, afraid of the virus, afraid of others, afraid of the vaccine, but Jesus tells his followers that there’s no need to be fearful, because he will be with us. We will encounter strife in our lives, we always have, but at such times, Jesus calls us to trust him and stand firm, to be messengers of hope to our fearful world. Jesus calls us to endure any hardship we may face, and to trust that he abides with us. When times of testing come, as indeed they have, Jesus promises to give us the strength we need to remain in him. This isn’t a case of enduring through thick and thin, pushing ourselves along to the bitter end, this is a reminder that we are never alone. God is with us.
Sunday 07 November 2021
Christian Aid, a UK a mission agency, has this slogan: ‘We believe in life before death’. It’s a great slogan, one that I think represents part of what Jesus was about when he was with us. Those who met Jesus had a life-giving encounter, one which transformed those who believed in him. He brought forgiveness, he brought healing. But most of all, he brought them hope. I think that’s an amazing gift, but it is also a challenge. It challenges all of us who say we follow Jesus, because we too should be agents of hope, hope in our relationships, in our witness, and in our mission. Both as individuals and as a church.
Jesus said “I am the resurrection and the life.” He is the one who brings transformation to the darkest situations. Jesus is the proof that the world can do its worst but will not have the final say. In a world seemingly dominated by fear of a deadly virus, we must remember that we live in the hope of a transformed life with God, one that cannot be destroyed by a deadly disease, one that will last beyond the grave, and it is one which begins now, today, we don’t have to wait for the life to come, if we believe in Jesus, we will never truly die. So be encouraged by the good news of Jesus, the resurrection and the life, that brings hope and life to dark places of our world.
Sunday 31 October 2021
I love history, it was one of my favourite subjects at school. I watch history documentaries on tv and subscribe to history channels on YouTube, I read books on history, and I’m a member of a couple of history groups on facebook. Safe to say then that history is important to me, because… how does that saying go? ‘Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it’. But that’s not quite accurate. What the Philosopher, George Santayana, actually said was: ‘Those that cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.’ Here’s the thing. Forgetting the past seems to be something we’re all quite good at, the church being no exception. Sometimes we even choose not to remember, perhaps because the past contains some painful or unpalatable truths about ourselves, or because the past doesn’t suit what we want to believe about ourselves now, or doesn’t suit what we want to do in the future.
The people of Israel also seemed to have great difficulty in remembering their past, frequently forgetting what God had done for them, turning instead to foreign gods and kings instead of looking to the LORD for their salvation. Oh yes, when times were good, they were quite happy to serve the LORD, but it never lasted more than a generation or so before they forgot and wandered off to serve other gods. But God expects his people to remain faithful to him, forsaking all other distractions and false gods of this world. Like a marriage, our love for God requires an unwavering commitment to fidelity, anything less than that will have us wandering off, distracted by the things of this world, which will only end heartache and pain. The question for today is, can we say the same words as Joshua? ‘As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD’.
Sunday 24th October
For a short time during the late 1980’s and early 90’s I was a police officer in the south of England. One of the things I learned during that time was that, left to our own devices, humanity can be incredibly selfish. Selfish to such an extent that without laws to guide and restrain our base instincts, society will inevitably descend into chaos and violence. As Christians, none of that should surprise us. We know that there is such a thing as evil, and contrary to what some believe, we are not born perfect. We are born with the desire for autonomy, and where we feel that autonomy is threatened our natural instinct is to rebel. It’s what we call ‘original sin’, the desire to be the master of our own fate, apart from any god ruling over us.
Our Judeo-Christian heritage, with its moral and ethical laws, has underpinned our legal system for over a thousand of years, do away with Christianity, and we also do away with our moral compass. Instead of looking out for the good of others, we’re more concerned with what we can get for ourselves, even if it means trampling over others to get it, hence the slide in to violence and chaos. Inevitably this leads to the need to impose more and more rules and laws to govern the people. A world devoid of Christianity would be a world of many, many laws, laws that require increasingly severe, even lethal deterrents to keep some semblance of order. Our Christian duty is to continue to preach the good news of Jesus Christ and uphold the moral and ethical law of God in the face of opposition, and invite others to find a place of refuge from the sin that engulfs the world in the arms of our loving saviour.
Sunday 17th October
Have you ever made a promise you didn’t keep? Now that’s something we’d all like to say ‘no’ to isn’t it. But you might be surprised how often we do it without even thinking about it. How many times have you said to someone ‘I’ll pray for you’ and then forgot all about it? It’s not intentional of course, but we’ve all done it. Or what about the parent who says to their child who wants something ‘we’ll see’ or ‘maybe’? It’s a promise to consider their request, isn’t it? But all along they know their answer is going to be no. Let me tell you from experience, that’s as good as a broken promise to a child.
Of all the promises we make, rash promises are the most troublesome. They’re the promises we make without really considering the consequences, or without seeking God’s guidance first. I mean, we’re intelligent people, and we’re quite capable of sorting things out for ourselves, aren’t we? Well, true, but what we mustn’t do is just assume God will endorse our decisions, because what we might assume is common sense can sometimes turn out to be anything but. Jesus actually underlined the importance of this to his disciples in his sermon on the mount: He warned them not to break their promises, better still, don’t make promises you can’t keep at all. But if you do, he said: ‘let your yes be yes and your no, be no.’ (Matt. 5:37). In other words, just do what you say you’ll do, even if turns out not to be to your advantage. If nothing else, that just serves to underline the importance of listening to what God has to say before rushing to make decisions, and might save us a whole lot of potential grief later on.
Sunday 10th October 2021]
What’s your happy place, where does your mind go when you want to get away from things? It’s interesting how some places take on a greater significance than others, isn’t it. For me, I’m a mountains and lakes kind of guy, it’s one of the reasons I like living in New Zealand, plenty of mountains and lakes to choose from. Other places take on significance because they mark certain events in our lives, perhaps the place where you grew up, where you went to school or university, your first date with your husband or wife, where you got married or where took your honeymoon. Places have meaning, not because there’s inherently something about the place itself, but because of what happened there. I’ve had the privilege of being able to visit some of the sites and places mentioned in the bible, Jerusalem, Bethany, Bethlehem, Capernaum, Jericho, and the Jordan river. I thought these sites would be over touristy, a bit cheesy and over the top, but actually, they’re worth going to. It was great to walk on streets where Jesus and his disciples walked, take a boat ride out on Lake Galilee where Simon, Andrew, James and John did their fishing, stand in the river where John baptised the crowds, and sit on the hill where Jesus gave his sermon on the mount. There’s no doubt that these are significant places. So let’s be mindful of our significant places, our heritage, our place of being, as it has shaped who we are, and continues to shape who we will be
if you do, he said: ‘let your yes be yes and your no, be no.’ (Matt. 5:37). In other words, just do what you say you’ll do, even if turns out not to be to your advantage. If nothing else, that just serves to underline the importance of listening to what God has to say before rushing to make decisions, and might save us a whole lot of potential grief later on.
Sunday 3rd October 2021
One of my pet hates is when people refer to the communion table as an altar, it isn’t. Now I realise that I might be coming across as a bit petty here, after all, what does it matter, we all know it’s a table. Well, theologically, it matters a lot! You see, the altar was where the temple priests made sacrifices on behalf of the people for the forgiveness of their sins. When Jesus made the final sacrifice on the cross for the sins of all humanity, for all time, the altar (and the priesthood) became redundant. Christians replaced the altar with a table, around which we gather to remember Jesus’ sacrificial death and resurrection for our sins in communion.
But altars do have meaning and relevance in the life of God’s people in the OT. Both Moses and Joshua made an altar of thanksgiving from undressed stones. They used undressed stones as a symbol that there’s nothing we can do to add to God’s grace, which needs no help or improvement from human hands. The idea here is that we can’t improve on what God has already provided for us. As soon as someone seeks to shape the altar to be more fitting as somewhere to offer sacrifices to God, they spoil it, because they can never make it perfect enough to reflect the nature of God, and because there’s nothing that they can offer that will help to overcome God’s judgement on their sin.
I’m not sure that’s a lesson we’ve learnt particularly well. We may not build fine alters of dressed stone in grand cathedrals any more, but we do tend to work on the basis that if we organise our worship in a particular way, if we do or say the right things, our lives will be more acceptable to God. But, in reality, we’re wasting our time. There’s nothing we can do to add to what God has already done for us to make ourselves more acceptable to him. We need no altars in our lives, just a table where we gather to remember and accept God’s mercy and grace.
Sunday 24th September 2021
Do you ever get the feeling that you’re being watched? Well, you are. The simple act of being a Christian who takes their faith seriously means that others have got their eyes on you, watching how you behave, what you say, listening to how you talk about others. You see, there’s a belief out there that Christians are hypocrites, that we don’t practice what we preach, that we’re really no better than anyone else. And you can’t blame people for thinking like that can you, we hear stories all the time about Christians who do terrible things, stories of sexual abuse and allegations of inappropriate behaviour are, sadly, all too common. So we’re being watched, not all the time, but they do want to see what we do when things go wrong.
The odd thing is though, as the royal commission on abuse in care shows, it’s actually not our sin or short-comings that they’re most critical of as many non-Christians are just as guilty… it’s how we deal with it. How we resolve conflicts, deal with breakdowns in relationships, and respond to tragedy is really important. Because, when the rubber hits the road, where our faith really counts is what we do when things go wrong. How we respond in times of trouble shows people who we really are, and what we really believe. How we behave in times of trouble or tragedy is what sets Christians apart from those around them. So how do you measure up?
Sunday 19th September 2021
There is, in all of us, a deep desire to know where we come from isn’t there. Children adopted at birth often long to know who their birth parents are, sometimes they get the opportunity to find, not always with the answers they were hoping for. And there’s the popularity of genealogy websites and DNA tracing in an attempt to find out who we truly are. But the thing is, however we might like to think of ourselves as self-determining, that we’re our own person, at the same time we seem unconsciously aware that our identity is never entirely up to us, that we are shaped by what has gone before, both genetically and culturally.
Jewish people know this very well, as did Jesus Christ, they understood that the generations are connected, that blessings and curses can flow from one generation to another, just as the sin of Adam has been passed on to each and every one of us. That’s why at a Passover meal with his disciples Jesus commanded them to remember him, giving them a way to symbolise his sacrifice for them with the breaking of bread and the drinking of wine. It’s important that we continue to remember this, and teach it to our children.
The takeaway for this week is that we should never forget who we are as a Christian family, or what God has done for us… and long before us, for our ancestors, both spiritual and physical. So remember the stories that went before you, and teach them to others, so that you and your children, and your children’s children may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, and that he is to be worshipped and adored. Amen.
Sunday 12th September 2021
One of the central beliefs of Christianity is that we are saved by grace, through faith in Christ alone. In fact, that’s what the apostle Paul said in his letter to the church in Ephesus: For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Eph. 2:8-9). In fact, in the history of salvation, from the rescue of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, to the conversion of the apostle Paul, and even our own salvation, it is faith in God’s mercy and grace, that that has seen seemingly undeserving people come under his protection and blessing. We can see this played out in a story from the book of Joshua, the story of the spies’ encounter with Rahab the prostitute in the city of Jericho. Rahab, an underserving sinner just like us, trusts that the God of the Israelites is able to save her when all hope seems lost.
I find that incredibly comforting, that salvation, my salvation, my place in heaven, is not reliant on anything I have done or can do, it’s entirely down to God’s grace, mercy and love. All we have to do is believe, and have faith in what Jesus Christ has done for us through his death and resurrection. That’s not too much to ask, is it?
Sunday 5th September 2021
One of the things God expects of Christians is that we show loyalty to those whom God has placed over us; that we’ll accept and obey their leadership, as long as they don’t contravene God’s laws. We don’t have to agree with them, but we are called to be obedient. That doesn’t always happen in governments and businesses, as we often hear about staff undermining their bosses for personal advancement, managers who exploit their workers for their own glory, and governments who take away their citizens freedoms in order to control them. Within the church, though, loyalty to our leaders is an important part of our life together, as long as they continue to preach the truth of God’s word and act accordingly.
Perhaps then, when it comes to our leaders, be they your boss at work, or your church leaders, you might ask yourself ‘Am I playing my part?’ Maybe you’re one of those whom God has called to be a leader at your work, or in the church. If you are, then remember that if you remain faithful to him, God has promised to be with you. If that’s the case then you need to lead with courage; you need to remain devoted to God; you need to be a student of his word, do what it says, and point people to Jesus.
Or maybe you’re someone whose task it is to work under such a leader. The success of our mission hangs or falls on people who follow godly leaders; who show courage in going where the leader points them; who remain loyal when the going is tough, and provide encouragement to keep on going. God is still calling people, leaders and followers, to be courageous encouragers in his church, a people devoted to God and to his word, a people willing to tell others about the Kingdom of God. Amen!
Sunday 29 August 2021
As a New Testament people, Christians are no longer under the Jewish ritual laws, but enjoy the freedom of God’s grace bestowed upon us through Jesus Christ. Jesus was, and continues to be, the fulfilment of the law, and his teachings give us the guiding principles for our salvation and our lives together as the people of God, they are the very food of life. It’s unfortunate then that some apply God’s grace in ways which dilute Jesus’ teaching in order to make our faith easier and more palatable, both to ourselves and to those around us, adding their own interpretations and imposing their own rules and regulations, so that instead of bringing liberation our faith becomes more legalistic and programmed, which is the very opposite of grace!
The liberation of faith which grace brings us comes from an ever-closer walk with Christ and a love of his ways. It comes about when we obediently follow his teachings and commands, living out our lives for the glory of God and not for ourselves. It is only by having his name engraved in our hearts that we can find true freedom in our lives. Unlike the Jewish traditions of old, Jesus doesn’t ask us to follow a set of ritualistic laws, he instead invites us to follow his ways, ways which become increasingly embodied in our lives as we grow closer to Him. And as we grow in our faith, our lives become increasingly and inextricably linked with his.
Sunday 22 August 2021
Once upon a time the places where we would go if we wanted to find out what was going on in the world were the newspapers and the TV news. Today it’s a little different… we now have the internet, that place of pure, uncensored little bits of information that may, or may not, be true, where that hour you spent on google trumps someone’s hard earned PhD on any given subject! So… When it comes to the news, how are we supposed to know if what’s being said is true or not?
I used to like watching the TV news, these days though I find myself increasingly thinking I’d be better off not bothering, I find myself arguing with the TV, much to the annoyance those around me. I’m sure I’m not alone in that though am I. Why does it wind me up so much? Because most of what we get isn’t news at all, it’s just opinion and commentary, we’re not told any alternate views on the subject, and we don’t have all the facts to hand to make up our own minds. And there are all sorts of conspiracy theories out there, especially now, about covid-19 and vaccines. People have become fearful that they’re not being told the truth, they believe that we’re all being experimented on, that someone somewhere is lying to us in order to control us all. Maybe you think that, and who can blame you, because how do we know what’s true and what’s not? Personally, all I know is that I’ve been taking vaccines for all sorts of things for years, and I’ve never had any problems with them, I know that some have, but that’s the same for every medicine we take. So, the question I asked myself was ‘why would I suddenly be worried about taking this one? I trusted those who make them before, so why not now?’ But that’s just me, my life is in the Lord’s hands, after all.
Sunday 15th August 2021
Earlier this year we had our driveway and garage rebuilt. The trouble with such work is that it often leaves a bit of a mess to clear up afterwards to make the lawns and garden presentable once more, I’m still working on it but we’re getting there. Most of what I have to do is move some soil around to fill in the gaps to get it all level again, unfortunately, along with a lot of moss and weeds that have grown up over time, our once fertile soil has now full of stones and bits of concrete and is in quite poor condition making the task that much harder.
Our lives can be a bit like that too, once fertile ground for gospel growth has become hard and resistant to any move of the Spirit. But it needn’t be that way. Think of the parable of the sower with its good and bad soils, we often quite rightly associate it with evangelism and Christian witness, but it has another application for Christians. You see, bad soil can be renewed and made good again. When properly tended it can once again produce spiritual fruit. But like my lawns it’ll take a bit effort to get into shape. First, we have to break up the hard soils and clear away all the rubble and loose stones, like our inclination to selfishness and unwillingness to serve and be a blessing to others. Then the weeds and thorns have to be removed less they contaminate the soil again; the pleasures and temptations of this world that get in the way and distract us from our mission. Finally, we’re ready for the Holy Spirit to sow the word of God back into our lives and produce good works for the Lord once more.
My point is, infertile Christian lives, like bad soil, can be made fertile once again, it just takes a bit of willingness to let God do the necessary work in our hearts to make it happen.
Sunday 8th August 2021
As a Christian, I believe that God truly loves all people, and it is his desire that everyone would accept his free offer of eternal life through faith in the death and resurrection of his only son, Jesus Christ, as a sacrifice made on our behalf to pay for our sins. But of course, such an offer requires a response; first a level of humility and acceptance that what the bible says about Jesus is true, that he suffered death and separation from God the Father so that we wouldn’t have to; and second that we actually need his forgiveness, indeed, we’re lost without it, which is a tricky thing to accept when you’re used to calling all the shots for yourself.
But suppose we do that, what then? Well, we still need God’s help and guidance to help us draw near to him, and point us in the right direction to be able to live godly and holy lives. Not all people manage this though, and some fall away, distracted by the attractions and temptations of this world rather than focusing on the next. Those who do follow through on their response to God’s love and allow his Spirit to work in their hearts and minds, will live their lives in grateful thanks for what Jesus has done for us, sharing God’s love with those around them, put aside their natural inclinations to selfishness and criticism, and always seek the good in other people.
The common thread in all this, is that we can do none of that on our own, right from our first response to God’s call, to faithfully living our lives proclaiming the Kingdom of God, is the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and minds. We cannot do it without him. Amen, come Holy Spirit.
Sunday 1st August 2021
God, it seems, has a job for us to do, and that Job is to carry on the mission that Jesus left us. Here’s the thing though… although the church has been at it for nearly 2000 years, there’s still plenty left for us to do. Let me enlighten you with a few facts:
According to the 2018 census, 37% of New Zealanders identified themselves as ‘Christian’. Now that doesn’t sound too bad, does it. But don’t get too excited, because actual church attendance is closer to 15%. Yes, just 15% of the population, at best, go to church, what the other 22% of people who claim to be Christian do on a Sunday is anyone’s guess. They are, I suspect, ‘cultural Christians’, those people who like the idea of heaven and of a God who loves them, but aren’t actually prepared to do anything about it. So what about everyone else? Well, 48% of New Zealanders say they have no religious belief at all, or at least none that can be readily defined. Again, I suspect it’s not that they don’t believe in some form of spirituality, in fact I bet they do, it’s just that for some reason or other, they’ve chosen to reject traditional forms of faith.
So here’s a question… Why is that? Why would people choose to reject Christianity as a viable faith option? Where has the church gone wrong? Actually I think there are several answers to those questions, and none of them particularly comfortable. One we can answer though is: What are we doing about it? Well, Jesus has given us a command, hasn’t he? “Go into all the world and make disciples, baptising them in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit…” AND… and this is the bit everyone forgets… “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:16-20a). Are you up for it?
Sunday 25th July 2021
When you think of a prophet, what image comes to mind? A number of years ago at the church we went to in the UK there was one particular guy who was remarkably gifted in this area. He spoke and ministered at conferences and churches all over the UK, and then later extended his ministry to the USA where he now lives. He’s also a well published author on the subject, and yet, to me, he’s just this guy I used to do a few jobs for and have a beer down the pub with. He’s an ordinary person whom God chose to work through in this particular way. What he wasn’t, was perfect, like all of us he’s still a flawed human being.
One of the things I learnt from him was that prophets are not necessarily people who can foretell the future, in fact they might not be able to do that at all. What they are, more often than not, are ‘truth tellers’, speaking to us the words of God. They tell us things about God and about ourselves, sometimes things which we don’t want to hear, so that we can approach God in repentance and renewed faith, they call us back to faithfulness to God and his word, and encourage God’s people to keep the faith, do what he commands, and live life accordingly. My point is that, despite what we might imagine or want prophets to be; 1) God can use ordinary people to do extraordinary things, 2) it’s rarely about foretelling future events, and 3) more often than not, it’s about offering words of encouragement and prayer to call us back to loving God.
Sunday 18th July 2021
There’s an old joke that goes ‘There are only two certainties in life: death and taxes.’ Now I don’t have to convince you of the reality of death, everyone knows about it; we even make jokes about it to hide our fears. It’s a coping mechanism to avoid its inevitability and implications for our lives. But joking about it isn’t the only thing we do. As we try to wrestle and reconcile death with life, we often do one of three things: Some choose to deny death by pretending that it doesn’t exist, that we all continue on in some spiritual disembodied state; Some choose to defy death by chasing the next miracle drug or diet; Still others choose to idolise death, suggesting euthanasia as a better option instead of suffering. Christianity will have none of that. We accept that death is real, and we cannot overcome it on our own. But we also recognise that death is an enemy. Whilst the world sees death as natural, and just the way things are, Christianity says, ‘no’, we are made for life, eternal life no less.
Think about the story of creation and the Garden of Eden, we often get fixated on one special tree, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but there were actually two important trees in that garden; there was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat, and the tree of life, which they could freely eat from, and which presumably would sustain them forever. That was the way it was meant to be, and through Jesus Christ it can be once again. To find out more about this life that Christians so boldly proclaim, come along this Sunday and find out for yourself.
Sunday 11th July 2021
Forgiveness, it’s a tricky thing isn’t it. Now I’m sure that most people believe that forgiveness is a good thing. Or at least, they like the idea of forgiveness, just not necessarily some of the implications it might have for the way they live their lives. Because, on the face of it, it’s much easier to receive forgiveness than it is to offer it, but even then, some people struggle with accepting forgiveness for what they’ve done. Some people even say that you can forgive yourself, but I’m not sure that’s real forgiveness, it may be therapeutic, because guilt and shame can sap energy, distort relationships, and poison our lives, but is it forgiveness as Christians understand it?
So what is forgiveness? Is it, as some people think, just not dwelling on our past mistakes, pushing negative thoughts to the back of our minds in the hope that we’ll forget? Some view forgiveness as a blank check to do whatever they feel like. They say that God is all about love, so If I do something wrong, I’ll just say I’m sorry and he’ll forgive me, so I’m OK, I can do whatever I like. And then there are those who believe in the idea of forgiveness, but they’re overwhelmed by guilt and shame for what they’ve done, the slate isn’t really clean, so they can never really escape their failure and sin.
What about the forgiveness that God offers, how does this apply to the way we live our lives? Well, we’re talking specifically about God’s forgiveness of our sins. God’s forgiveness is all about making people whole. God’s forgiveness doesn’t leave a bitter aftertaste or sense of remorse. God’s forgiveness addresses the truth, is wholly right and just, and when applied to our lives, is wholly transformational. That sounds pretty good to me!
Sunday 4th July 2021
Being the church is more than just being a collection of individuals who gather together once a week to sing a few songs, listen to a sermon, and drink cups of tea or coffee while discussing the latest football results. It runs much deeper than that. It doesn’t much matter what Christian denomination you belong to either, the fact that I worship in an Anglican Church is neither here nor there, I’m a Christian before I’m an Anglican. You see, there is one faith, and one Spirit, who unifies us as his people, the church. All believers who trust in Jesus as Lord and Saviour and live according to his will, regardless of denomination, are one, and part of the same church.
But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t issues that divide us, there are. What it means is that we ought to measure and respond to the significance of those issues based on how they relate to Jesus Christ. If one group people stop believing that Jesus Christ is the only way to God, then yes, we are separated from them because it’s only in Christ that we’re joined. But if another group believes in the same Lord as we do, but just worship him in a different way, then we are still one church. More than that, we are joined together, not just in or own particular church or denomination, but with a body of believers that spans the centuries. That’s what God has done, and is continuing to do in the power of the Holy Spirit, joining his people together into one spiritual fellowship. Yes, there are times when we have to separate, but for the most part we can say together ‘Amen, come Lord Jesus!’
Sunday 27th June 2021
The book of Revelation tells us that on the last day (judgement day) Jesus will judge the world, all people, the living and the dead, will be judged according to their deeds. Now often, we think that our deeds include all the nice things we have done, and we hope our good deeds will outweigh our bad. But the bad news is that, if we were judged according to our deeds, our bad deeds would far outweigh the good. You see, the Bible teaches that no one is righteous in the presence of a Holy and perfect God, so God is totally justified in judging us. And if our entry into heaven were based on our living a ‘good’ life, only one person would make the cut: Jesus Christ.
But here’s the good news: incredible as it may seem, there is only one ‘deed’ that God will actually judge us on… and Jesus tells us what it is in John’s gospel, chapter 6, where the crowds ask Jesus: “What must we do to do the works [or deeds] God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:28-29). What unbelievably wonderful, liberating news that is. To know that though true faith in Jesus, we can be forgiven for all our sins. The only sin that God will not forgive, is the refusal to believe in his Son. Food for thought perhaps.
Sunday 20th June 2021
We’ve been looking at the Apostles Creed over the last few weeks, and this week we come to the part which boldly proclaims that we ‘believe in Jesus Christ, who… suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead.’ it’s actually astounding, considering its length, the degree of emphasis that it places on Jesus’ death. In a Creed that’s so economic with its words, the writers are keen to remind us that Jesus suffered, was crucified, he died, was buried, and he descended to the dead. These statements help explain his death and are essential to our understand of Christianity. We might think that a simple ‘Jesus was crucified and died’ would’ve sufficiently summed it up, but the Creed says no, Jesus’ death is so fundamental to our faith, we need to understand it in its fullest scope.
In the bible, the Gospels actually give a significant amount of space to Jesus’ suffering and death, including the events leading up to it. And the cross itself, though intended as a symbol of torture, execution, and power, has become the very symbol of a world-wide religion for the last two thousand years. The creed focuses in on Jesus’ death, because having a right view of these events will lead to a right view of Christianity, because unless you understand the cross, you will never understand what God has done through Jesus Christ. Join us this Sunday as we explore what all this means for us today.
Sunday 13th June 2021
When you look at Christianity from the outside, the claims make about Jesus are pretty outrageous because, by any human reasoning, they’re utterly impossible. Unsurprisingly, the two most objected to claims are Jesus’ virgin birth and his resurrection from the dead. Over the centuries these claims have evoked all sorts of reactions, with mockery and distain probably the most common, and for many today they seem a bit quaint to our ears, naïve even, something for Christians to be a bit embarrassed about, because science tells us it’s impossible. Maybe you’ve even thought that yourself. Well, if you have, you wouldn’t be alone. Belief in the virgin birth has been surrounded by scepticism and mockery for a long time, it really is remarkable that people believed the virgin birth at all, after all, it’s wasn’t as if anyone was expecting it.
The thing with such outrageous claims is that there’s no in between position is there, you either believe it or you think it’s nonsense, Jesus either entered the world by supernatural power, or it’s all a lie. But, if God is truly God, why would we be surprised if it were true? If we believe that God is Almighty, that he is the creator of heaven and earth; and if he is the one who created humanity in the beginning, then surely it is possible for God to continue to act in creative ways. If you believe in God, even in the possibility of God, then of course, you’ll believe that this is possible. That’s why Christians confidently believe it today
Sunday 6th June 2021
Who do you think Jesus Christ is? Christians claim that he’s the saviour of the world, the only Son of God, and Lord of their lives. We could brush them off as wishful thinkers, but what if it’s true? Here’s the thing. If you’re facing that question for the first time, you need to decide whether or not you’re going to accept the claims about Jesus; that he really is the Son of God, that he became human, and that he suffered and died for your sin. You can accept the offer of God’s love and forgiveness in Jesus by believing, that through his death and resurrection for you he has provided a way for you to be made right with God. And by turning from your sin and becoming a follower of Jesus your life is now safe in his hands.
For those of us who already acknowledge Jesus as our Saviour, it mustn’t stop there, because if he truly is our Saviour, then he must also be Lord over our lives, which has massive implications for the way we live. Saying Jesus is our Lord is meaningless unless we put it into action, living as his servants in our world. You see, Christianity isn’t merely an accessory lifestyle decision, it’s way of living that involves complete submission to the will of God in our lives.
If Jesus Christ is our Saviour, then we are freed from slavery to sin, not so that we can go on our merry way and do what we want, but so that we can live for Jesus as our Lord. It means we can no longer do the things that were part of our old sinful lifestyle, giving up all those things in our life that are opposed to Christ and his goodness, truth and love. If Jesus is truly Lord of your life, you will gladly do this for him.
Sunday 30th May 2021
What do you believe, I mean, really believe? C. S. Lewis once said: ‘You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death.’ That’s never more true than when it comes to what we believe about God. You really don’t want to go through life thinking you’ve got it all sorted, only to hear Jesus say ‘I never knew you’ on judgement day do you. What we believe, especially what we believe about God, really is a matter of life and death.
What Christians believe has been written down in the bible, and summarised in the creeds of the Church, the three most often quoted being the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. These creeds are important because they boil down the Christian faith to the bare essentials, giving us a brief summary of what Christians are supposed to believe. They’re not intended to replace the bible, but point to the truths found within it. When we say the Creeds, we’re not just reciting something meaningless. We’re declaring that we stand for something. We’re declaring that we belong to someone. We’re declaring what is true. We’re trusting in the facts. We’re seeking to obey. We’re responding to the incredible news of who God is, what he’s done, and what is yet to come. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. Do you?
Sunday 23rd May 2021 – Pentecost
I’ve been a Christian for 39 years and in that time, I’ve been a member of 9 different churches. Each one had its own culture and its own way of doing things, with varying results I might say; some were successful, others less so. In that respect, churches can be a bit like a vegetable garden in that they produced different results depending on who’s calling the shots. Some are like potatoes, quietly working away, unseen by anyone. On the surface not much is happening, but when harvest time comes, they produce a nice crop. Others are a bit like the carrots I tied to grow in my garden one year. They had all the razzle dazzle, and on the surface it was all go, I was amazed at what appeared to be happening. But when harvest time came all was revealed, nothing of any substance was found.
For the church, when it comes to producing the type of results that are pleasing to God, really good churches are open to being led by the Holy Spirit. They seek God’s guidance through prayer, asking what he wants them to do rather than just ploughing on with their own ideas. In fact, without the Holy Spirit working in our lives, guiding and shaping all that we do, even the good things that we do will wither away, because God isn’t in it. So take some time this week to stop for a minute and ask God: “How might I serve you today?” Leave it to God to decide what you need in order to accomplish that task, rather than trying to do everything in your own strength. You never know what God might do in and through you today.
Sunday 16th May 2021
What do you think about the bible, is it just a collection of manmade stories passed on down through the ages, or is it something more? What you decide actually depends on what you think about Jesus Christ. Do you believe, as the bible teaches, that he is the only begotten Son of God? Or do you think that he was just a good man, a good teacher, but that’s about all? You see, there are many people who think that you don’t have to believe what the Bible says, and that you don’t have to believe everything that is written about Jesus, you can just believe some of it. Maybe you think that not all of it is true, so you’ve decided that there are some bits you can ignore. A lot of people do exactly that. But if I understand Christianity correctly, there is no middle ground. You either believe that the bible is the infallible Word of God, or you don’t believe that it is the Word of God at all. You either believe that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God or you don’t believe that He is a Son of God at all. You see, if you believe that the Bible is the revealed Word of God, and if you believe that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, then you’ll believe that the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are real historical events that were seen and witnessed by many hundreds of people. The early Christians thought so. They were the ones who say they saw Jesus raised from the dead and ascend bodily into heaven 40 days later, so why would they die for that belief if it wasn’t true?
Sunday 9th May 2021
One of the best-known teachings of Jesus Christ is “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13). But I do wonder if we really understand what that means for us. You see, this is another one of those frequently misapplied bible verses. We unconsciously limit our understanding of this verse to the following: ‘Jesus Christ demonstrated and exercised his love for us by laying down his life. He went to the Cross to purchase our freedom, and it cost him his life. So we too should be prepared to die for those we love.’
Now of course, there’s nothing wrong with reading this verse that way, but is that how the disciples would have understood it? Look at it this way… it wasn’t just on the cross that Jesus lay down his life. From his descent from the glory of heaven to the humble setting of the manger, through the ordinariness of boyhood in Nazareth, and the years of his itinerant ministry around Galilee and Judea, to the ultimate rejection in Jerusalem. In these and many other ways, Jesus lay down his life in loving service for us. It is true that to give one’s life for someone else is the ultimate sacrifice. However, what Jesus is calling all of us to do is to give up our claim on our own lives, to sacrifice, if you like, our own wants and desires, which are often selfish anyway, and to commit our lives to the service of others, showing God’s love for others as his Holy Spirit works in and through our lives. Is it difficult? Yes. But impossible? No. Not if we truly desire to follow the example of Jesus.
Sunday 2nd May 2021
The bible is full of imagery which helps us to understand how God sees the world. One such image equates God’s people to vines in a vineyard. The thing about vines is that, if they’re going to produce useful grapes, they need pruning from time to time. Thinking about ourselves as vines in God’s vineyard, our fruitfulness also involves us being pruned, and, sometimes, that can be quite painful. I can certainly think of things in my life that God has had to remove in order to get my focus back on him. And just like a grapevine, the things God prunes away aren’t necessarily bad. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with a leafy branch on an ornamental grapevine, but if you’re hoping for big juicy grapes, that leafy branch will need to be cut back so that the grapes grow even healthier. There will be times in our lives that God comes along with his pruning shears and take away some otherwise perfectly fine thing that just happens to be distracting us from doing his will.
There’s a warning there isn’t there. Be careful with that favourite toy of yours, or that hobby or sport, those friends, or even that spiritual gift you think you’ve got. Use them by all means as a means of recreation or refreshment when you need to get the stress of life out of your system, but be careful that they don’t take over, or distract you from God’s work in your life, because that’s when God just might come along with his pruning shears and remove them completely.
Sunday 25th April 2021
ANZAC Day has become something of an important, almost religious, occasion in our national life in recent years. It’s become one of the few occasions where young and old stand together to remember the sacrifice of those who fought for the freedoms we hold so dear. I can’t imagine how it must have felt to go off to war, to do the hard thing and put your life into the hands of others. These were brave men who, though likely full of fear and anxiety, did their duty. Those who had faith in God put their trust in the one who is able to bring them safely home, for some of them, though, that ‘home’ would be heaven itself.
We will remember them.
Like many people my age, I’ve had quite a variety of different careers over the years, with many different experiences that have taught me a thing or two about human nature. The one overriding thing that I’ve learnt, despite what we might think about ourselves, is that people are generally quite selfish. An attitude typified by an old boss of mine who lived by the motto ‘He who dies with the most toys wins.’ Presumably his goal in life was to amass as large a fortune for himself as he could, and blow everyone else!
Before we mock such an attitude, there’s a little bit of that in all of us isn’t there. It’s a completely natural inclination to act in our own interests. Celebrities are a prime example. All those good causes that they promote… why do they do it, what’s their motivation? I’d love to know how much is genuine care and concern for others, and how much is about creating just the right image to appear good and boost their approval ratings while they rake in the cash from sponsorship deals. Maybe that’s being a bit cynical, but it does raise an interesting question: How much do we genuinely care about others? Are we concerned about the lost and the lonely? Or are we a bit selfish, only really concerned about ourselves and making ourselves look good? What would it take for us to be less selfish and put aside our own comfort for the sake of others?
Sunday 18th April 2021
Shame is the new guilt; did you know that? When I was at school in the 1960’s & 70’s I was taught that there was such a thing as right and wrong, if we did something wrong, we felt guilty about it. But society doesn’t work like that anymore, we’ve moved from a guilt-based society, which bases civil life on knowing right from wrong and living by established rules and regulations, to a shame-based society where truth is all relative and can’t be defined to one set of rules for all.
You see, when society loses its moral compass, ideas of defined right and wrong no longer apply, truth and reason become individualised, people just do what they want and if it turns out to be wrong, they just hope they get away with it. In fact, it seems that something is only wrong if you get caught. And when they do get caught, it’s not guilt that they feel, it’s shame, as they worry what their peers will think of them.
The good news is that, because of what Jesus did for us that first Easter, in dying for our sins and being resurrected, our sins, whatever they might be, can be forgiven. No matter how big or how small, and even though we might feel guilt, or shame and embarrassment, for what we’ve done, in Jesus there is forgiveness, which in turn leads to restoration of relationship with Jesus Christ, and through him, our heavenly Father as well. Just as it did for the disciples that first Easter. Shame, then forgiveness, then restoration… all through the grace of God. Marvellous!
Sunday 11th April 2021
When you hear the name Thomas, what do you associate with it? Most Christians would probably say ‘doubt’. Thomas, one of Jesus twelve disciples, has made such an impression on us that we even refer to him as ‘Doubting Thomas.’ This was not meant as a compliment. Thomas has always had a bit of a bad rap, he’s seen as the one who doubted, the naughty disciple. Doubt is like one of those taboo subjects, and we often feel that we shouldn’t doubt, we worry that people will think less of us, that we’ll look stupid if we do. But doubt isn’t an unusual or particularly unhealthy thing. You see doubt is not unbelief, unbelief is intentional, an act of will rather than a difficulty with understanding, whereas doubt is often a step on the road to belief.
Many people come to faith with doubts, we don’t have to understand everything; indeed, it would be highly unusual if we did. In fact, this is what most relationships are like, we don’t know even half of what there is to know about someone before we get involved with them, how could we! In that respect, every relationship has an element of risk to it. Doubts are a reminder that our relationship with God needs further development and growth, a spiritual reminder that we can’t know it all. We may long for absolute certainty and proof, but we should remind ourselves that we are human and our capacity to understand is limited compared to God’s. Trusting in what God has done for us enables us to have faith in the midst of uncertainty. Remember, we haven’t let God down if we have doubts, our faithfulness is proved when we persevere through our doubts and uncertainties and on to belief in the seemingly impossible, just like Thomas.
Good Friday & Easter 2nd-4th April 2021
Graveyards are not, generally speaking, happy places, they might be places for contemplation, some even possess a certain natural beauty, but they are by their nature a place of tears. The women who had gone to the grave where Jesus’s body had been placed on that first Easter morning were full of sorrow, grief and anguish. Their grief was perhaps more intense because of the events surrounding Jesus’ death. They’d witnessed his pain and suffering, all that violence done to the one they loved, betrayed by one of his own and officially murdered. But the events which followed turned their sorrow into a quite different experience. When they went to the grave that morning they encountered not a dead hero, there had been too many of those already, but an angel giving news of the living Lord, that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead. The graveyard that day was transformed from a place of sorrow into a garden of joy in which dreams had come true. It is the greatest story ever told.
Sunday 28th March 2021
Having been born and raised in England I do love a bit of pomp and ceremony, especially those grand military parades like Trooping the Colour to celebrate the Queen’s official birthday, or the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. We love our ceremonies in the church too, all that fancy dress and so on, and for large public occasions like royal weddings we get to combine the two, replete with hundreds of thousands of cheering crowds lining the streets all shouting their praise at those passing by.
As the crowds who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem on the day we call Palm Sunday found, there’s a certain buzz being in a crowd, a certain excitement in numbers. And at large church gatherings we too can experience great times of worship and learning. It’s easy to be a Christian there. It’s easy to applaud Jesus when you’re in a large crowd all doing the same thing. In a frenzy of celebration, we gladly focus on Jesus, and we can shout praises loudly enough to make any Pharisee complain. It’s between the celebrations, when we go home, that we don’t do so well. Come to think of it, when you leave Church on Sunday, will you give any further thought to Jesus Christ the rest of the week? Or will you be like the disciples who made promises by day and then fled by night, or one of the crowd who praises him one day and then loses interest in Him the next?
My point is, we can’t gauge our commitment to Jesus Christ based solely on the applause we give him. Being a Christian is more than just giving him public praise, it’s about developing a right relationship with God. And the easiest way we can do that is simply to spend time reading his word, in prayer, and with fellow Christians who support and encourage one another to live godly lives. Going deeper with Jesus will sustain us in this life and into the next. Isn’t that what you want? I know I do!
Sunday 21st March 2021
Money, or the lack of it, seems to be a bone of contention for many people. It’s become something of a political football where the rich are lambasted just for being wealthy, and the poor are held up as victims of a capitalist system that doesn’t care. But when it comes to wealth, the answer to the needs of the poor isn’t to jump to some ascetic ideal and force the rich to give it all away. What matters is the attitude of the wealthy to what God has blessed them with and how they use it. The reality for all of us is that all we have is a gift from God and, on a global scale, all of us kiwis are amongst the richest people on earth. Might not seem like it, but that’s only because we’re used to having so much.
Bearing that in mind, there’s nothing wrong with being wealthy… but there are conditions! We cannot be selfish or self-indulgent with what God has given us, perusing our own pleasers or building up our housing portfolio while those around us are suffering. The church is one of the few places where the wealthy company director might stand alongside a poor pensioner or an unemployed young man, or a single mother struggling to pay her rent. It is therefore also a place where the seeds of discontent and jealousy might prosper if we don’t do our Christian duty. So, what’s the answer? Well it is the duty of all Christians to be ready to use what God has blessed us with to do good, to be generous not just in finances but also in good works. When we do that we will lay up a treasure that will last. The best place to invest our money then is not in another rental property, but in heaven!
Sunday 14th March 2021
Respect for our elders is, I think, something we’ve largely lost in our culture, older peoples’ views are often not listened to or disregarded as being not relevant or old fashioned. You can see this blatantly played out on TV. Have you noticed how all the older, more mature news reporters have been replaced by much younger ones in their twenties and thirties, all the older ones have gone! I wonder why.
I think the same is true for those in authority, there’s less and less respect for those who put themselves out to serve others, people like the police, ambulance officers, firefighters, all once respected by the community at large are frequently attacked while trying to do their job. Church leaders were also once respected and sought out for their wise counsel, not so these days, they’re just ignored as a relic of the past best forgotten. But it’s hardly surprising is it, we’ve heard too many stories of leaders abusing their power, taking advantage of the vulnerable, and it rightly offends us.
But the reality is none of us are immune from the temptation to use a position of authority for our own benefit, it can happen to anyone, at any level of leadership. The apostle Paul wrote to his young protégé Timothy warning him of the dangers and temptations he’s going to face in Ephesus, his advice is as relevant now as ever; be respectful, keep your motives pure, don’t take advantage of others, and importantly, discipline the disobedient and those who teach falsely. Wise counsel from an ‘old’ man… funny that.
Sunday 7th March 2021
One of my favourite things to watch on TV is rugby, it’s not just the game itself that I enjoy, it’s the knowledgeable discussion and banter between the commentators. It’s great to see former players passing on what they know about the game to us mere mortals. But you know how they say you shouldn’t meet your idols, well it’s all very well seeing these once great athletes on TV, only now, instead of being sleek and fit, they’ve developed a bit of a belly, look a little chubby in the cheeks, they’re stars of the past who aren’t what they once were. It just goes to show that, apart from how age catches up with all of us, if we stop training we quickly lose our fitness and skills. But who am I to pass judgement!
The apostle Paul wrote to his young protégé, Timothy, along similar lines, only he wasn’t concerned about physical training, but training in godliness. In the Old Testament God commanded the Israelite to Be holy for I am holy. (Leviticus 19:2). So godliness is about displaying God’s character in our own lives, we know them as the Fruits of the Spirit; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Gal 5:22-23). When it comes to godliness, these are the characteristics that we should focus on. It takes time of course, and more than a bit of effort and commitment, but it will be of great benefit to us as it not only prepares us to live our lives for the glory of God today, but also for the time when we stand before the throne of God in the age to come.
Sunday 28th February 2021
Every three years we get to do a very important thing, we get to vote for who’s going to lead our country. Now regardless of what we might think about our party leaders and their policies, voting is a privilege that we should cherish, one which brings with it great responsibility. You see, leadership, whether that’s at a local or national level, is no small thing, and it’s not to be entered into lightly, and the higher responsibility the higher the standard we’re held to. But despite the disrepute that the others might have brought to the role over the years, desiring to be a leader is to desire a noble task. It is a good work, and a great honour. But just having a desire to lead isn’t enough. So, what should we be looking for in our leaders?
From a Christian perspective, above our natural skills and abilities to do the jobs required of a leader, is what kind of person the leader is. Being kind, being a good communicator, is all very useful, but more importantly, we should be asking ‘Are they honest and trustworthy, do they put the community’s interests above their own, even when it’s of no benefit for them to do so. Are they hard working, clear minded public servants, or in it for their own ego?’ And what about their private life? There’s no such thing for a leader, for their whole life will come under the scrutiny of the media. Are they thought well of by those closest to them, how do they treat those around them when they disagree, and are they honest in all their dealings? These are the questions that reveal what type of leader they are and how well they will govern. Raw talent, on its own, is not enough. Character is the measure that reveals who we really are, especially when no-one else is looking.
Sunday 21st February 2021
If you’re a regular reader of the bible I’m sure there will have been times when you’ve read something that jars against your expectations of how things should be, or at least how you’d like them to be. And that’s entirely understandable, we live in a different age, the world has changed over the last 4000 years of bible history.
For us westernised Christians, it’s the letters of the apostles in the New Testament that seem to cause the most trouble, they clash against our cultural understanding and expectations of what’s right, fair, or wrong. It’s the task of those who teach the bible to get to the nub of what’s being said, and interpret the bible without losing any of its intended meaning for us today. Most of the time that’s no problem, but it isn’t always that easy especially when what we read challenges our cultural expectations.
When that happens it’s really important that we bear in mind two things: One is the cultural setting in which the letters were written… it’s very different from our own, and whether we realise it or not, we’re influenced by our own culture too, and not always for the better. The second thing is that when we come across bible verses that we find challenging, try and remember not to read them in isolation from the rest of the bible, because the wider application of what’s being taught may well be clarified elsewhere. We need to approach the difficult parts of the bible with a sense of humility, accept that we don’t know everything, and consider that our own culture may well have got a few things wrong! If we can do that, we may well be able to see things a bit more clearly.
Sunday 14th February 2021
Before the days of GPS satellite positioning everyone navigated via a compass, it was the most important instrument on any ship, it’s how sailors knew where they were and worked out where they should go. If the compass was broken or lost, they were in deep trouble. They could easily drift onto rocks or run into a reef and be shipwrecked. The compass, if I can call it that, for the Christian is the gospel handed down to us by the apostles, and the word of God that we have in our bible. Christian leaders have a duty to preach that gospel message, and no other, to teach the true and authentic word of God. We must not be swayed by the false teaching around us, but cling to the gospel.
But that’s only part of the good fight. Our lives must be consistent with the gospel too. Our deeds have to match our words. We’re to stand firm in our faith and have a good conscience, which can only come when we live faithfully to the gospel! The danger is that if we lose one, we lose the other. If we abandon sound teaching, it will soon show up in how we live. And if we don’t try to live as God desires, if we abandon our conscience and lose our moral compass, then our faith will end up shipwrecked, just as happened to sailors who lose their compass. So watch out! The only way we can stay on course, is to fight the good fight. To cling to the gospel with everything we have so that we don’t become lost, or shipwrecked.
Sunday 7th February 2021
Every now and then Hillary and I go through our kitchen cupboards for a bit of a clear out. Inevitably we come across odd tin of food that has gone past its expiry date, well past sometimes. Realising that we’ve been using some ingredient that expired a couple of years ago isn’t exactly the best feeling! Well, we haven’t died yet so it can’t have been that bad.
The other day I was bit surprised to find an expiry date on a packet of sea salt, you’d think wouldn’t you that, being salt, it will never go off. Seems like a bit of marketing mischief to me. But there are ways that salt can lose its saltiness. It can be diluted, by adding water to it, and the more you add, the less salty it tastes. Add too much and it’ll have no value as salt at all. Salt can be polluted too, by mixing other things into it, mix in too much and it’s really no longer salt, it might still look like it, but it’s now something else. Where am I going with this. Well, as followers of Jesus, we’re supposed to be the “salt of the earth” (Matt. 5:13), but our saltiness can be lost the same way as the salt in my cupboard. Our Christian lifestyle can be so watered down that we lose our distinctiveness. It happens when we stop going to church regularly, or when we stop reading our bible or praying. People look at us and can’t see that we’re any different to them. Or perhaps we slipped into believing things we’ve heard that are contrary to what the bible teaches, and our distinctive Christian identity has been lost due to pollution. The remedy of course is to stay salty – it’s what Jesus wants, so don’t let things into your life that will dilute or pollute your Christian faith.
Sunday 31st January 2021
Jesus often equated God’s relationship with us as being like sheep with their Shepherd. Apparently, one characteristic of sheep is that they don’t think about where they are going, they must be led. One the one hand this is a good thing as sheep have complete trust that their shepherd will never lead them into danger. However, that being the case, they could also be easily misled. Jesus said his sheep would know his voice and follow Him. But we can only do that if we actually listen to what that voice is saying instead of tuning it out and listening to the voices of others, ourselves, or for that matter the devil.
So how do we do that? Well, it is when we become familiar with God’s Word preserved for us in the bible that we’re able to clearly hear his voice. We learn to recognise the truth and apply it to our lives. If we don’t, if we fail to pay attention to what God is saying, to what he’s done and said, it will be all too easy to get caught up in the cultural influences and values around us and find ourselves conforming to a very different gospel than the one to which God called us and be led away from the Kingdom of God, not towards it.
Sunday 3rd January 2021
In 1995 one of the biggest songs of the year was “One of Us” by Joan Osborne. It’s a song of spiritual questioning, about conceiving God in a modern age, and it poses the question ’What if God was one of us?’ Now I’m not claiming that this song has any of the right answers, but it does ask an interesting question, kind of like the central question in all of history, and the answer to that question, if it were known, would do no less than change every conceivable aspect of life for people on planet earth.
The problem is most people today aren’t asking about the existence of God, at least not the God of the bible. But that’s not to say there’s not a lot of ‘belief’ around today, indeed there is, only it’s not necessarily belief in an all-powerful all-seeing God of the universe. Rather it’s a belief in ‘spirituality’, which may or may not involve a god of some sort. So, to answer Joan’s question… what if God was one of us, would we even recognise him? Well that’s another interesting question because, as Christians already know, God already has come among us and many then didn’t recognise him. What does that say about us? The fact is God came among us in Jesus Christ, and God is still willing to come among us, to take part in our human lives by his Holy Spirit. If, that is, we want him as part of our lives. What if God was one of us? Well it’s up to us whether he is or isn’t, isn’t it?
Sunday 27th December 2020
Well Christmas has come and gone, most of us gave and received gifts, and you may have even like some of them! Maybe you were also able to enjoy a family get-together, shared a meal, ate, drank, laughed and talked. I know we did, and it was all very nice. And for many people, that was all Christmas was, nothing more, nothing less. But all of that is really just the cultural side of Christmas. What did Christmas mean for you spiritually? Were you busy just entertaining and unwrapping gifts, or did you manage to consider for a moment what Christmas really means?
There are many people, you may have met one or two, who are quite satisfied with their lives, spiritual and otherwise, without the need for all that ‘religious’ stuff. Indeed some of them even soothe their consciences by volunteering once in a while at food bank or some other community project, or they help out at the annual city Mission Christmas Dinner. They may even say a prayer or two. So they think, maybe, just maybe, that will be enough to get them to heaven, or whatever form of after-life they believe in. After all, it’s better than what most of the other people they know do. Well I wouldn’t be so sure about that.
But I do know an easier way than trying to get there by doing good works and hoping for the best. It is simply to acknowledge what Jesus has done for you, and allow his Spirit to be born in your heart. To come to God in humble submission and allow his Holy Spirit to transform your life. The truth is, there’s no other way to get to heaven, salvation is only through the Messiah, Jesus Christ, the one who’s birthday the wold had just celebrated, even if they don’t really know him.
Christmas Day 2020
One of the things that Christians have become only too aware of in recent years is that for many people Jesus is no longer the focus of their Christmas. It’s all about the gifts we give each other, the food we eat, and spending time with the family. Jesus barely gets a mention, if at all. It seems that we’ve forgotten that Christmas is not primarily about us, our family, friends, church, or presents, but about Jesus. It’s easy, isn’t it, to get so wrapped up in the great present exchange and Christmas dinner, that we forget what it is we are supposed to be celebrating, the birth of the saviour of the world.
Christmas is being reinterpreted away from the idea of the birth of the Saviour of humanity, towards a time for the family, a time for sharing. There is a secularism which seems offended by our faith. Of course, they still like the idea of Christmas, just not what it means for our lives if we take it seriously. Christmas has become a celebration, not of Jesus, but of ourselves, one which is competing for the place in our hearts that should belong to the Son of God. But even without buying into the world’s ways, we can still forget what Christmas is all about by forgetting about Jesus, and the busier our lives are, the easier that is to do. Which is why we need to remind ourselves that Christmas means not only remembering the Saviour in the manger, but also the impact Jesus has had on our lives. We’re reminded that this baby grew up and went to the Cross to pay for our sins, that he rose again to give us a new life, and that he lives in our hearts today and brings us joy! Not only was Jesus born in Bethlehem, but by faith, and by his Spirit, he lives in every Christian’s heart. Now isn’t that a cause for celebration?
Sunday 20th December 2020 – Advent 4
Christmas is coming and we’ve been busy putting up our Christmas decorations at home. As well as the usual Christmas tree and so on, we have a nativity scene, it’s got all the usual characters, Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, wise men, and shepherds, oh and a couple of camels too – not sure why they’re there, maybe they belong to the wise men. The story of the Nativity shows us that God reached out to ordinary people, even unsavoury shepherds, so they and everyone else, wouldn’t miss out on the best present ever. God still reaches out to each one of us afresh at Christmas, people who are just like the shepherds, ordinary people with a less than perfect past. It didn’t matter to God that they weren’t perfect, and it doesn’t today. God is a God who reaches out to us time and time again. Each time offering us a new opportunity to know more of the real Jesus in our lives, to experience an ongoing and deepening relationship with the creator of the universe, the God who became incarnate in Jesus Christ. The profound mystery of our faith which we celebrate on Christmas Day.
You see, Christmas isn’t just about family, presents, and stuffing ourselves ‘til we’re full-to-bursting, in fact it’s not about that at all! Christmas is an invitation to meet with God, to experience the real thing, the living power of God in our lives. Whether that’s for the first time, or for the hundred and first time, we can all meet with him afresh. Now that’s the best gift anyone can receive, at Christmas, or any other time of the year.
Sunday 13th December 2020 – Advent 3
As we approach Christmas it’s easy to get caught up in the rush of consumerism, searching for that elusive gift that we hope will bring happiness to those we care about. Now I loved Christmas as a child, what kid doesn’t, and over the years my parents gave me many great gifts. But the greatest gift I ever received wasn’t from my parents, but form God. The greatest gift I received was in February 1982, when I admitted my need for Jesus and was adopted into God’s family. And that wasn’t an easy thing for me to do. I wasn’t even looking for God, I was far more interested in my Norton Commando. But God pursued me never-the-less. You see, God loves us so much that he even pursued a sinner like me. And when he’d got my attention he called me to a life of obedience and faith in Christ, and gave me a job to do… so here I am.
You see, the greatest Christmas present we can give people is to introduce them to Jesus. After all, isn’t that what Christmas is supposed to be about, a gift of salvation simply received from God? And what a Christmas present that would be, to know that we have become a child of God. Perhaps it’s time to look past our gifts, and past ourselves as the givers, and towards the greater gift, Jesus Christ.
Sunday 6th December 2020 – Advent 2
2020 seems to have been a year of waiting; waiting for this Covid virus to end, waiting for the lockdowns to end, and now waiting for a vaccine to end it all… if only. But amidst all our waiting there’s this thing called Christmas Day, the day when we celebrate another long waited for event, the birth of someone who was destined to change the world forever, the birth of Jesus Christ, the Messiah. His birth was long hoped for, but when he came not many recognised him, he was not what they expected. No wonder God sent a messenger ahead of him to prepare us for his arrival, and even then, not many understood what God was doing. That messenger was John the Baptist.
Isn’t it interesting that the good news of God’s intervention into our lives to redeem us from sin and death, always starts with a messenger. Whether it is an angel whispering in Mary’s ear, or shepherds beholding the heavens open to proclaim the birth of God’s Son, or a skinny prophet standing waist deep in the Jordan river calling us to repent, God always seems to begin with a promise, spoken by a messenger.
John proclaimed that someone was coming, someone so spectacular that it was not enough simply to hang around waiting for him to arrive. He called upon the people to be honest with themselves, to step back from their daily routines and prepare their hearts to receive the one whom God was sending, who would redeem them from their sin, and offer them new life. He challenged them to repent, and embrace the Son of God. That same message calls out across the ages, to all humanity, ‘Come, the waiting is over, prepare your hearts to receive the Saviour of the world!
Sunday 29th November 2020 – Advent 1
This Sunday marks the beginning of Advent, the four Sundays prior to Christmas Day, and it’s all about watching and waiting. But while we usually associate Advent with Christmas, it’s also the time when Christians are encouraged to look to the future, to the time when Jesus will return once again to take his rightful place as Lord and King. So, what are we supposed to do while we wait? Well, sorry to disappoint you, but it doesn’t mean that we can all stand around with our hands in our pockets, hoping that one day Jesus is going to appear on a cloud and take us all away with him without us having to do anything.
Actually, I find it kind of ironic that we associate Advent with warm fuzzies and chocolate calendars in anticipation of Christmas Day, because it all it starts with Jesus giving his disciples terrifying warnings of disastrous and disturbing events. A quick read of chapter thirteen of Mark’s Gospel ought to shake us out of our cosy, comfortable, commercialised Christmas ideals.
That’s because Advent is not Christmas. It’s the time we encourage one another keep watch, keep alert, and remain faithful God’s word, as we await the coming of Jesus, not on Christmas Day, but at his coming among us for the second time, the day when he will judge the world. The fact that Jesus has warned us about what’s going to happen should give us real hope for our future. You see, Jesus doesn’t want his return to be a painful experience for anybody. He wants it to be joyful, just as it was the first time, and of course, as we will be when we celebrate his birth on Christmas Day. But in the meantime, as we watch and wait, we should live each day ready to meet Jesus face to face.
Sunday 22nd November 2020
Sometimes, our lives can be like a bunch of flowers. Flowers are lovely, who doesn’t like flowers, they not only look beautiful, they also have a great aroma, well most do! Sometimes though we can be like a bunch of artificial flowers. Now personally I don’t mind artificial flowers, mainly because they don’t demand anything from me. I don’t have to water them, I don’t have to fertilise them, and they don’t give me hay fever. I can just stick them in a vase and their beauty will last forever. They do however have a few shortcomings. They can’t reproduce, and they have no life or aroma of their own. Because they’re fakes. They look good but that’s about all. Real flowers, on the other hand, are far superior, especially when it comes to the pleasure they can give to others.
I have a question about flowers. If a plant doesn’t have flowers on it, is it still a rose or a geranium or whatever? Of course, it is isn’t it. That’s because the flower is just the fruit of a plant, the plant itself is the root, stem, branches and leaves. Even if there were no visible flowers on the plant, it would still be a rose, or whatever. But if it never produced a flower, what then? It’d be pulled up, cast aside and another planted in its place.
My point is this: Good deeds are the fruit of a Christian’s salvation, they’re not the root of our salvation, but they are the flower of a Christian’s faith, a reflection of our love for God. But, and here’s the difficult bit, if we’re not doing good deeds, if our lives aren’t producing the fruit which God expects of us, watch out!
Sunday 15h November 2020
I am unsettled, a bit a bit discombobulated at what I see happening in society. It seems our world is increasingly at odds with itself, especially here in the west. Division and discord abound, one word said out of place or to the wrong person invites the sort of abuse and denunciation that we would never have dreamt possible just a few short years ago. It isn’t nice. Some think that we need to change the way the world works, be more inclusive, create a fairer, kinder society. Sounds nice doesn’t it, quite noble in fact. However, from what I’m seeing on the news it would be a society built on demonising those who disagree, labelling them as deniers, haters and wreckers. They say they want ‘peace and prosperity for all’, but only it seems for those that agree with them. They mis the point.
Here’s the thing, there are those who wish us to be one big global family all with the same values and ideals, but it is an unattainable fallacy. Without difference our world would be a dull and unimaginative place to live. Christians should be clear; real peace and genuine hope for the world can only come when the call of God to humanity is heeded. God invites us to participate in making this peace and hope known on the earth, to offer true hope to a world which seems increasingly in conflict and determined to shatter itself apart with civil disruption and unrest, just look at what has been happening in the USA or Europe.
There’s a better way; honour the past and celebrate our differences, but also continue to look to the future for the hope which God alone can offer. Politics, diplomacy, even armed forces can be an important supporting element for peace, but true peace can only come when God is at the centre of all our efforts.
Sunday 8th November 2020
Jesus warns his disciples that if we really do want to be a part of God’s kingdom then we need to be ready when the time comes for him to return. Over and over again we hear him say “So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him” (Matthew 24:44). That’s not too difficult to understand, is it? Seems clear enough to me. But what does ‘be ready’ actually mean for us? Well for one thing it means that we mustn’t be complacent about putting into practice in our daily lives what God has said in his word. You see there’s a danger that we can become so familiar with the gospel that we fail to take it seriously anymore, it becomes part of our cultural memory but has no real impact on the way we live.
One of my concerns, even within the church, is the great moral disconnect between personal faith, and our behaviour. Some Christians seem to have lost their moral conscience, or at least lost the will to respond to it. The whole message of Jesus’ warnings to be ready had to do with remaining faithful to his word. Being ready meant actively living in faithfulness to God. It is more than just calling yourself a Christian and attending your local church. It’s a commitment to live a lifestyle that is honouring to God. The problem is that there are many people today who wear a sign saying they are a Christian, but they fail to deliver the goods. And then there’s the even greater tragedy of far too many churches who do not deliver on what the sign out front says. They do not teach what the bible says. They are, as Jesus says in another parable, ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’, and will be left outside when the doors of God’s kingdom are closed. Sobering stuff!
Sunday 1st November 2020
What’s the one the one thing we all desire, regardless of our race, religion, where we live, or our social status? We all desire contentment, to be at peace with ourselves and the world around us. Everyone, the whole world in fact, longs for the time when we have no more worries or concerns about the future, either for ourselves or our loved ones. The only time I can remember feeling like that was when I was a small child. I hadn’t a worry in the world, I knew, had faith if you like, that my parents would always be there for me, that they would provide all that I needed to be happy, safe, and secure. And indeed, they were, and I was.
But as we grow up we become aware of the world around us, and eventually we realise that everything is not as it should be, or at least not as we’d like it to be. We find ourselves with a sense of lost innocence. That feeling we had of utter peace and contentment as a child is no longer there, whether we realise it or not, something is missing in our lives. And when the tough times come, as they inevitably do, making sense of it all, finding peace, is all the more difficult. Like Adam and Eve after the fall, our eyes have been opened to the harsh realities of a world which doesn’t know God. Attempts to recapture that sense of child-like contentment are elusive as we cannot return to being that small child, nor un-see what we have seen. However, those who choose to trust the one who created them know that God will see them through this life, no matter what it may throw at them. We may never be fully contented this side of heaven, but we need not be concerned or anxious about our future because we are safe in God’s hands.
Sunday 25th October 2020
We humans like to put each other into boxes, in our minds we sort people out into groups… those we like and those we don’t like, those like us and those not like us. We do it as much today as any other time in history. We’ve polarised society into factions of conservatives and liberals, right wing and left wing, rich and poor, victims and oppressors. And in our minds, we can justify all those boxes we put each other in. This is not the way of Jesus, though, not the way we’re supposed to be if we’re to call ourselves God’s children. Samuel Clements, better known as the writer Mark Twain, is supposed to have said something like this: “It’s not the bits of the bible that I don’t understand that bother me, but the bits I do understand” and Jesus’ command to love our neighbour as ourselves undoubtedly bothers some people!
You see, if we’re to take seriously the command to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, that sort of mindset simply isn’t open to us anymore. Jesus has shown us the way, he loved both those that came to him, and those that rejected him. Just because someone opposed him didn’t mean that Jesus wrote them off as a lost cause, redemption is always possible, even his own family initially thought he’d lost the plot but later came to worship him as Lord and Saviour, with one of them, James, even going on to lead the church in Jerusalem. Here’s the thing, we define ourselves by who and what we love, and our souls are enriched or diminished by the objects of our affection. As we learn more of what it is to love and be loved by God, the quality of the other relationships in our lives are inevitably be enriched and deepened as a result.
Sunday 18th October 2020
Politics and journalism, if there were ever two professions which deserve each other, I think it’s these two. You see, there’s a trend in modern journalism which I find quite disturbing, they seem to have taken a somewhat adversarial approach to their role. It’s almost as though they’ve set themselves up as judge, jury, and sometimes, executioner, seeing themselves as arbiters of the truth, as if they and they alone know what right and wrong and what’s good for us. And none more so than when they’re interviewing politicians. They like to set a trap for their unsuspecting guest to fall into, and when they do, they go for the jugular.
But there’s nothing new in this, it happened all the time to Jesus, people would try to trap him into saying something that they could use against him, especially the religious leaders, who saw him as a challenge to their authority and a threat to their way of life. And it’s in the way they lived their lives that Jesus had the most problems. Theirs was a life of rules and regulations rather than faith, head knowledge about rights and the wrongs, rather than enabling the people to come to know the heart of God. He was very clear that they repeatedly failed to acknowledge God in the way they lived their lives.
I wonder if we inadvertently do the same sort of thing. Come to think of it, we probably all have, dividing our lives into our God bit and our secular bit, worshipping God on Sundays without really paying God any attention the rest of the week. We
forget that God has a claim on us. In fact, each one of us is like a ‘coin of God’. He has stamped his divine image onto each of us, and that comes with responsibilities as we render our whole lives to God.
Sunday 11th October 2020
Have you ever told a lie to someone because you didn’t want to hurt them? I ask that because, sometimes, we say things, with the best of intentions, that aren’t actually truthful, or at least we don’t tell the whole truth, because we don’t want to lose a good friendship. Just think about it for a moment. Christians often talk about God’s love for all people, but at the same time we leave out the bits we think people might not like; the bits about sin, about repentance and the need to change our ways, and about the punishment that awaits those who reject Jesus. You see, the church is very eager to tell anyone who will listen that God loves them, which of course is true, but we also have a tendency to convey the impression that everything will be ok, that it doesn’t matter what you do because God loves everyone.
But that’s a half-truth, a lie in fact. Whilst it’s true to say that God does indeed love all people, it’s also true that God actually requires something in return for his love: our honesty about our own condition. Just imagine how painful it would be to be standing before God on the last day and suddenly realise that you’ve been lied to. Someone told you, a friend, perhaps even a family member, that you didn’t have to change, that you could come just as you are and it would be ok. But it wasn’t, and it isn’t. How would you feel if you were that person? You’d be angry, wouldn’t you? And how would you feel if someone you loved was condemned because of what you were too afraid to say? It’d be awful wouldn’t it? A life transformed by the gospel is special to God. So let’s allow ourselves to be transformed into his image as we tell others, not just about God’s love, but also about his power to change their lives for the better.
Sunday 4th October 2020
Promises, I expect we’ll be hearing a lot of those over the next few weeks. Politicians and electoral candidates will be making all sorts of promises, but as we’ve seen these last three years, promises, even worthy ones, are easier said than done. Of course, it happens at every election, but this time, something’s different, it just feels like we’re being asked not judge our politicians on their failure to deliver what they promised last time, but to judge them on their intentions. Well you know what they say don’t you: ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions.’ God save us from people who mean well!
But if we’re being honest here, there have also been times when we’ve made promises ourselves, and then, for reasons that seemed sensible to us at the time, failed to keep them. It starts with the simple things, perhaps you’ve even done something like this yourself, unintentionally of course. How many times have you said you’ll pray for someone, and then forgot to do it? Or what about this one: “If there’s anything you need, just give me a call…” That’s a kind of half-hearted offer, isn’t it? We say it because it sounds supportive, but doesn’t actually commit us to doing anything. None of us plan for this to happen, we just get tied up in the busyness of our own lives and, unintentionally, end up letting other’s down. The answer lies not in trying harder to keep our promises, but keeping our focus on the things that matter, which is our relationship with God through Jesus Christ, and our promise to be his disciples in the world.
Sunday 27th September 2020
Two thousand years ago, a handful of people turned the world upside down. How? Was it because they were especially smart? Well, there’s no evidence of that. Was it because they were powerful? No, because they were from the bottom rung of the social ladder. Was it because they were strategically placed? No, because they were Galileans, country bumpkins from the isolated far north of the country. They had such an impact on the world because they were totally dedicated to following Jesus. They’d given their lives to Jesus and he’d turned them into fishers of men. They’d made themselves vulnerable, let go of their traditions, and placed their lives in God’s hands.
Of course, it’s easier said than done isn’t it. It’s far easier to follow our familiar religious traditions than it is to trust God with our lives, and step out into the unknown. Don’t get me wrong, religious traditions are fine, but only when they serve the purposes of God. Perhaps we should remind ourselves that when we first came to Christ we did two things; We declared that Jesus is our Lord and Saviour, and we made a promise to be his people, to be his servants here on earth. But have we kept that promise? My guess is we probably all have times when we’ve said we’ll do something, but for some reason that seemed reasonable to us at the time, we failed to do it. We don’t like it when people fail to keep their promise to us, though do we. Well I don’t suppose that God appreciates it when we break our promise to him! I guess we can be thankful then that it’s never too late to do something about it.
Sunday 20th September 2020
For those of us who’ve been Christians for many years it’s tempting to see heaven as the place where those who have done well in this life are justly rewarded by a grateful God won over by our commitment and hard work for the gospel. Of course, in our more enlightened moments we know that not how the Kingdom of God works. Indeed, whether we’ve been a Christians all our lives or accepted Jesus on our death bed, we’re all shown the same Grace and Mercy from God, and when in heaven, we will all enjoy the promised feast that we haven’t earned.
You see, it’s human nature to want to think that we are in some way better than some other person or group, that God loves us more because we have earned it by serving him all our lives. We may even unconsciously have this expectation that some people will be treated better by God than others when they reach the pearly gates. However, God is not in the business of showing favouritism. God’s grace and mercy are freely given to all. We serve a generous and loving God, one who opens his arms of mercy to the least expected of people.
So let’s be careful not to be judgemental or envious of others. Should we one day in heaven meet those we once thought of as our enemies remember that what we too have received from God something that we did not deserve, or could ever have earned. Eternal life with God is given freely to anyone who turns to God in repentance and faith, no matter when they came to believe.
Sunday 13th September 2020
Forgiveness is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? After all, we all like it when someone forgives us don’t we! Actually, I think forgiveness is rather tricky. You see, it seems to me that everyone loves the idea forgiveness, until, that is, they need to forgive someone themselves. Then it’s not so easy, because forgiveness actually requires us to love one another, even our enemies, those who have wronged us, and that, we find, is hard to do.
The good news is that we ourselves have been forgiven, by God and probably by those around us as well! But, and here’s the tricky bit, it also includes the noisy neighbours next door, and the young man with his noisy car with the lowered suspension doing burnouts in your street late at night. I’m not so sure we like that idea though, do we, not when we think about how they have affected our lives. We can be very selective when it comes to forgiveness, can’t we. The thing about forgiveness is that it begins with God, and God works in us and through us as he enables us forgive others. But we have to be prepared to open that door and let him in for that to happen. I know it’s hard, there was a time when I felt deeply wounded by false accusations against me, and it took good a few years, more than I care to recall, to learn what forgiveness in that case looked like in practice. You see, forgiveness doesn’t erase accountability, it doesn’t just let someone off the hook for what they’ve done, it’s about understanding that we’re all inherently flawed, and that there’s always the possibility of transformation and redemption through Jesus. And that, I think, is something we can all be very grateful for.
Sunday 6th September 2020
God, it seems, has a funny way of catching us unawares. I’ve been in ministry, either training for it or ministering in various parishes, for twenty years, and I still find myself being surprised by God’s amazing faithfulness and love. When I first went to Bible College I thought I already knew a fair bit about the bible and about God’s will for his church, but the more I learnt, the more I realised how little I know. Even today I find that God is far more gracious and kind than I ever imagined.
The thing is, we like to think we have God all figured out, that we know how God wants us to live and act and trusts us to just get on with our lives and do the right thing. On one level that’s true, God does indeed leave us to make our own decisions in life, but not completely on our own. Our problem is that we think we know God so well we, in effect, put God in a box of our own understanding in the belief we’ve got it all figured out. And that’s a problem. God, of course, will have none of it, hence he can catch us unawares as he does something in our lives that causes us to stumble over our own presumption. In doing so God gently leads us back to himself, his Holy Spirit prompting and guiding us to the only place where we can learn the truth about ourselves, and find comfort and strength to live our lives in grateful thanks for what he’s done for us through his one and only Son, Jesus Christ.
So next time you think you’ve got God all figured out, just remind yourself that God is far greater than any of us could ever imagine, and no human, however great, can ever fully comprehend his awesome majesty.
Sunday 30th August 2020
Jesus once said ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.’ (Matthew 16:24-25). This is one of those often-misunderstood sayings of Jesus. We tend to think of denying ourselves and taking up our cross as either one of the following: Some people liken it to denying ourselves the good things in life, like some monk or spiritual hermit living in a cave somewhere, or at least keeping themselves separate, living in some remote community, very much apart from the world around them. While others liken taking up our cross as some physical or spiritual burden that they must bear, or some suffering they must go through to show their love for God. You’ll be pleased to know that both of those are wrong.
What Jesus means, and what he wants from his disciples, is for us to deny ourselves… by putting aside our own dreams and ambitions in life, so that we are free to ‘take up our cross and follow him’, that is, to live for Jesus and not ourselves, serving his purposes in our world, not our own, and allowing his Holy Spirit to minister to the world through us.
You see, the Christian life is a life of devoted service to the glory of God. When we live for God, we do so as people who still interact and enjoy the world around us, but also as people who have the knowledge of who Jesus is, and the love that God has for the world. Essentially, Jesus is saying if you want to live your life as you wish, you will lose it. But if put aside your life to focus on what God wants you to do, you will find what true life really is.
Sunday 23 August 2020
Odd as it may seem, the events which surrounded Jesus ministry occurred at a time that wasn’t much different from today. It was a time of many competing ideologies and religions, where any prospective believer had to think about what was important, make their minds up, and decide who this Jesus really was. So, I ask you, isn’t that the context in which we find ourselves, today? There are still many competing religious movements all vying for our attention, even within the church! We may have made our minds up, but the people whom we live and work alongside are faced with multitude religious choices. And some of them are earnestly searching for religious faith or meaning for their lives. So, there’s a decision that has to be made, amongst all the different religious voices we hear we still have to decide who is this Jesus.
This is the root of our identity as Christians, to know who Jesus is, is vital. It’s not enough to believe that he was very important, or to believe that he was like other religious leaders, or even to believe he was a great religious teacher. When the apostle Peter declared: “You are the Messiah”, he was saying what has to be said for us to be called Christian. To be Christian means believing, among other things, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, the Saviour of the world. Anything else, anything less, might seem religious, but it isn’t Christian.
Sunday 16th August 2020
I’ve been thinking about the way we live our lives and how what we do is seen by others. If we do good things people generally think well of us don’t they, and if you’re a Christian they might even say you’re ‘holy’. But what does that really mean, to be ‘holy’, and what constitutes ‘true holiness’? This is important because it affects who can be admitted to God’s kingdom. It would be a mistake to think of holiness as merely our efforts to stick to rules and regulations, doing good deeds, or dutifully turning up at church each Sunday, thinking that’s enough, that’s what the Pharisees did and look how it went for them… not well! No, God looks at our hearts, which can both betray what we really think about other people, and reveal our true devotion to God’s will for our lives.
The conclusion I’ve come to is this. Holiness isn’t strict observance of the law, or in our case church rituals, our holiness is revealed in how we walk about others and seen in what we pray for, much more than any good deeds we might do. If that’s the case then maybe we should all take a look at our own wants and desires and consider if they really match up with what God wants our lives.
Sunday 9th August 2020
Asking someone to come to church with us can be rather daunting, especially if we’re not in that habit of doing so. I’ve been giving this some thought this week and I was reminded of the phrase ‘If you want to walk on water you have to get out of the boat’. I guess we all know what that means… that we’ll never likely achieve anything unless leave the comfort and security of the familiar. Occasionally though great things are achieved when people are brave enough to do the seemingly impossible. Like in Matthew’s gospel where the apostle Peter walks on the water. Thank goodness we have Jesus to help us.
Just as Jesus called Peter to leave the safety of the boat and try something new, something he never imagined possible, he calls us to step out of the comfort and security of our church setting and become involved in the lives of those around us, walking with them through their trials and tribulations, offering our friendship, prayers and support, just as much as we would for our church family, and yes, inviting them to church with us. The waters may not be calm, indeed they may even feel like we’re in a storm, but we are not alone. We may not be able to physically walk on water, but if we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus we will be safe, even as we leave the security of the boat.
Sunday 2nd August 2020
There’s a bit of debate at the moment about whether NZ citizens returning home from abroad should pay for their government enforced quarantine. This has got me thinking because, as Christians, our actions will be judged against how God responds to those in need, and that is, with compassion. This raises a further question; how should Christians respond to those in need generally, especially those around us. We tend to want governments and institutions to deal with them. And we are right, governments should address the big issues of education, care for the sick, elderly, refugees, the homeless, and financially struggling families.
But we can do something too, and I’m not talking about just volunteering our time for a worthy cause. There’s something that everyone needs, even the powerful and wealthy of this world. And that is to know Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. It’s a need that we often overlook as we help others, because we don’t want to be accused of having ulterior motives. Sad but true. We also easily overlook that Jesus didn’t just have compassion for people because of their physical needs, which were many, his compassion was driven by their spiritual need to receive the bread of life from him. He is the bread of heaven that never runs out and which sustains us for all eternity. Christian compassion holds those two needs, the physical and the spiritual, together. Perhaps we should bear that in mind next time we’re feeling good about helping someone in need.
Sunday 26th July 2020
You know, most people in our world don’t recognise the treasure that is often right before their eyes, especially those of us who live in the west. I think it’s fair to say that, even though we’ve had the benefit of a Christian heritage, the vast majority of people have not got their priorities right. In fact, they’ve got all sorts of excuses as to why they don’t want to come to church. After all, how many times have you heard someone say that you don’t have to go to church to be a Christian. In part that may be true, but for most people it’s just an excuse, because I guarantee they’re not at home on a Sunday morning praying or reading their bible by themselves. And almost certainly they are not involved in serving God. No, what they’ve done is make a choice: They’ve decided that other things are more important than having a relationship with God and his people. They’re free to do that, of course, but when they do, they inevitably make that choice for their families too. Their choice has an effect which rebounds down the generations. You see, when parents stop going church their children stop going to church, then they in turn don’t take their children to church.
So that today we have a generation of people that have not had any contact with Christian teaching whatsoever, and that means no spiritual grounding in their lives, and no moral compass to guide them. That’s where we are as a country, with people largely adrift, with no spiritual anchor to inform their ethical, moral and life decisions. Is it any wonder our country is in such a mess?
Sunday 19th July 2020
One of the things about God that every human being that has ever lived can be eternally grateful for, is that God is full of grace, mercy, and abounding in love. He is also patient and kind, something that we are often not! There are times when we’re frustrated with the way things are, times when we want God to act more quickly to address the evil and suffering in the world or perhaps punish some person we have deemed to have wronged us in some way. There are certainly times when we want God to do things our way, to rescue us from our problems, or heal our loved ones. But here’s the thing, God is so committed to the world he created, that he’s given us all, even those we think are too far gone, time to accept his loving gift of salvation. And they can’t do that if we cut them off, ignore, or worse, persecute them. One look at the cross shows us the depth of God’s love and commitment for a people that spurned and rejected him time and time again. For a few short days it seemed that evil had triumphed over good, but the cross showed the world that God’s goodness triumphs over evil.
Our job is not to sit here in judgement of others, because if we did that none of us would be able stand. But to spend our time nourishing our spiritual lives, connecting with God through prayer and the reading of scripture, talking to those who wish to hear it about what God has done in our lives, and being encouraged by the good things which we see God doing in our world. It is there, we just have to choose to see it.
Sunday 12th July 2020
There’s a time and a season for everything isn’t there. No, I’m not talking about the weather, I’m talking about how our world changes around us, sometimes it’s for the better, sometimes for the worst, but change it does, and sometimes unexpectedly. The thing is, when change comes we have to think how we’re going to respond in the Christ like manner that God expects of us. For that we have to be prepared. But if we haven’t paid enough attention to feeding our spiritual lives, through the reading of God’s word, through developing a prayerful relationship with our heavenly father, and through regular fellowship with other Christians, what hope have we got of responding to whatever it is God might be calling us to do?
You see, as any decent gardener knows, like good soil, we need to feed and nurture our spiritual lives so that we’re ready to receive what God might plant in our hearts to do for the building up of his kingdom. We need to be prepared, because when God sows the seeds of change, we need to be ready to respond appropriately. So, are you ready for any changes that might come your way?
Sunday 5th July 2020
Kindness is a bit of a buzzword these days, and the kindest person you will ever meet is Jesus Christ, he said some of the kindest in the whole Bible. In fact, in the old 1662 service we call them the ‘comfortable words’. He said: Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30).
Now I’m guessing most of us carry a burden of some kind or other, because life can be hard at times. In that case, Jesus speaks these words to all of us. But if we choose to ignore him and live without God in our lives, seeking strength in all manner of other places, then we’ll be disappointed. Searching after fulfilment elsewhere, even in worthy causes like environmentalism or social justice, without Jesus to help and guide us, will only burden our hearts and souls even more.
Only Jesus promises to share our burdens. He offers his help, not so that we can live a life of ease, but so that we can further his kingdom in a life of service, by living life his way. If we decide to take him up on his offer then we will indeed, as the old service says, find it comfortable for our souls, we will find that walking with him will bring the peace and fulfilment that we yearn for deep down inside.
Sunday 28th June 2020
You know, the more I understand what Jesus came to do, the more I realise that our lives are truly not our own. And the more I realise what the bible means when it says we have ‘been bought with a price’, that we are indeed God’s servants, that he is our master… with all that that entails, the more I realise how woefully short of that mark we often come.
So let me ask you, how much of your life is Jesus really Lord of? Are you holding onto some small part of it to call your own? How about your bank account, what governs your spending there? And what about the good works that you do, are your motives pure, or are they done out of a desire to appear better than you really are? Is Jesus really Lord of your whole life?
The message of Christianity is not just that we can be ‘saved’, but that we can be transformed. We do not have to be a slave to our desires and weaknesses. Through the power of the Holy Spirit we can be made new. We are not just forgiven people, we are transformed people who are being made into the image of Christ. Neither are we perfect people, but we are growing in our ability to understand the kind of life God wants us to live and the ability to live it. And we can not only be transformed, we can be used by God for his purposes — and that’s exciting, isn’t it?
Sunday 21st June 2020
O to be wealthy. I’m sure there’s not a single one of us who hasn’t dreamt at some time or other of being rich. It’d solve a lot of things wouldn’t it. You’d be able to have all you want AND be able to be generous to others. Because that’s what we do, isn’t it? We think of ourselves before others, and give out of what we have left. So why would it be any different if you suddenly had a lot of money? Because I guarantee you this; it doesn’t matter how much you’ve got, you’ll inevitably convince yourself that you need more stuff in your life. Ok, that’s a bit provocative, but I think it holds true. You see, no matter how good our intentions are, we naturally default back to what we usually do, and that isn’t something that’s going to change overnight.
So, how should we manage our money, what’s the proper response to what God has blessed us with? Because, for Christians, wealth comes with a responsibility to manage our money in a godly way, learning to be content with what we already have. No one wants to be poor, but poor by whose standards? We in New Zealand certainly aren’t poor by world standards. What we can all do is learn what it means to demonstrate a generous heart, what it means to be a joyful giver. As God has given generously to us out of his abundance, we can give generously to others out of ours.
Sunday 14th June 2020
As I’ve come to understand it, the Christian life is about hearing and understanding the word of God, and then living out that reality in our lives. And just as Jesus sent out his disciples into the harvest fields, we too are challenged and encouraged to step into the world around us, so that we can put God’s words into action. I guess the question on all our minds right now is this: Where is my harvest field? And what might Jesus be asking me to do?
It’s at this point that Satan wants to deceive us with negative thoughts about our own abilities, he makes us fearful that God wants us to do something we think we could never do, and it’s a lie that’s continually whispered into our ears. But here’s the thing, the disciples couldn’t do what Jesus asked them to do either, it was the Holy Spirit working through them. They could only do what they did because they had a living relationship with Jesus. And that’s where it all starts for us.
So, the answer is actually easier than you might think. Depending on your gifts and abilities, or even your age, God might be calling you to do just one thing, like praying for others, or he might be calling you to help your neighbour in some practical way, and yes, God may even be calling you to talk to those you meet about Jesus. For all of us, though, it starts with having that close relationship with God through prayer and the reading of the scriptures, that we might know God, and ourselves, better. Then, on only then, can we productively look out for, encourage, and support one another, and go out into the harvest fields around us.
Sunday 7th June 2020
This week churches all over the world will be celebrating Trinity Sunday, the day when ministers will attempt to explain to their congregations one of the deepest mysteries of the nature of God, that there is only one God, made up of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Now if that sounds rather contradictory to you, don’t worry, you’re not alone, it is indeed a difficult thing for us mere mortals to understand.
It might seem strange then that our gospel reading for Trinity Sunday comes from the final words in Matthew’s gospel where, after giving the disciples the great commission to go and make disciples, Jesus declares: ‘And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’ But bear with me for a moment, this is an indication that God is indeed a Holy Trinity. You see, if Jesus is with us now, with us in our struggles and worries, amidst the confusion in our church and society, then he is with us in his Holy Spirit, that was the promise which Jesus made to us.
Trinity Sunday invites us think about God more deeply, that God the Father, and God the Son, have come to be with us in God the Holy Spirit, to strengthen and encourage us as we take up Jesus’ great commission. What an incredible thing that is. Now I don’t think we will ever fully understand the full extent of God nature as a Holy Trinity, but what I do know is that God loves us, and has called us to be his children, to do his will, making disciples as we go on our way, so that we may all know the one true God, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen
Sunday 31st May 2020
We’re finishing off a sermon series on the life of Moses at church this Sunday, and while writing my sermon I came across this quote from Robert Woodruff, a former head of Coca-Cola, it’s quite enlightening I think:
“There is no limit to what a person can do or how far they can go if they don’t mind who gets the credit.”
That kind of sums Moses up, doesn’t it? Moses never wanted to be a leader, he was quite happy minding his own business shepherding sheep in Midian, then God came knocking on his door.
What made Moses such a great leader was his willingness to serve, despite own desire for the quieter life of a shepherd and his awareness of his own shortcomings and failings. You see, God sees all of a person’s life, not just the edited highlights, not just our mistakes, but the whole sum of a person’s character. There’s also the fact that he was teachable. A willingness to serve & and a teachable spirit, that’s what God is looking for in all of us.
So, we might well ask ourselves ‘How teachable am I, really?’ You may well have your dreams and aspirations, you probably do! But are you willing to set aside what you desire, whether that’s to keep a low profile and aim for the easy life or be a leader in the church or your field of work, and instead serve God in whatever way He calls you to? Are you really willing to serve in a role not of your choosing? That’s what Moses did, and look what happened!
Sunday 24th May 2020
Tell me, who of us have never gotten angry at someone for what they’ve done? Answer… none of us! So, before we sit in judgment on anyone else, remember that we all have that same potential to get angry, the only difference is in the way we control it.
One of the things I love about the bible is the way it never tries to sugar coat the truth. The picture we get of biblical heroes is warts and all, not one of them was perfect… and neither are we. Even the great Moses was a man prone to losing his cool. In fact, it’s clear that he never did get his anger completely under control. And that should give us hope. If a man like Moses struggled with frustration and anger, then we don’t need to feel so bad if we struggle with it too.
On the other hand, when we see the consequences of Moses’ uncontrolled anger, it ought to warn us to keep working on controlling our issues. You see, although our acts of disobedience can be forgiven, there may still be a price to pay, just as God forgave Moses for his sin but didn’t remove its earthly consequences. In that single moment of anger at the rock of Meribah, Moses forfeited his right to lead Israel into the Promised Land. The sad fact is, we cannot go back and undo what we’ve done. None of us can. We cannot undo sinful deeds or unsay sinful words. We cannot reclaim those moments when we were in a fit rage, or lust, or indifference, or pride. Like Moses, we can be forgiven for those sins, but we may still have to live with their earthly consequences. Despite all that, consequences and all, I am still so grateful that my sins are indeed forgiven. It inspires me to desire to walk much closer with God, to keep short accounts with Him as I lean on the Holy Spirit to guard my heart. Aren’t you?
Sunday 17th May 2020
There’s a saying that we seem to love, it’s ‘Majority rules’. Whilst we love the fact that everyone can have their say, we also hold to the notion, even if just tacitly, that the majority must be right. That’s kind of how western democracies seem to work as well; we have an election, we cast our vote, and the one with the most vote wins, unless you have MMP as your form of government, in which case Winston Peters wins.
It’s a bit like that in the church too; we have AGM’s to elect parish councils or vestries, and synods reps, all of which in turn make decisions by voting. The majority rules, that’s how democracy works. But what happens the majority are wrong? Some people, despite all the evidence that says otherwise, think they know best just because the majority agrees with them.
Talking of people who think they know best, the Israelites never really seemed to learn from their mistakes did they. They survived enforced slavery and desert wanderings only to reject new opportunities in the Promised Land… because they listened to the voice of the majority.
When they heard the report of the twelve spies sent by Moses to go and explore the Promised Land, they wept, sulked and complained… again. But the majority were wrong. Only two of the twelve spies – Caleb and Joshua – stood firm on God’s promises and lived to enter the Promised Land.
Sometimes the right thing to do is to go against the grain and take the minority position, to withstand unhealthy and negative peer pressure, public opinion and powerful people. You see, in God’s economy, majority doesn’t rule, God does. What we need to do, just as the Israelites needed to do, but didn’t, is to trust God.
Sunday 10th May 2020
It’s easy to be an armchair critic isn’t it, especially of the government, and especially at times like these. But, to be fair, these are unprecedented times, and we’re not the ones having our every decision scrutinised in the media are we. So, it’s kind of predictable that they’ll make mistakes. It’s equally predictable that the keyboard warriors on social media will hammer them for it. Because you can’t please everybody can you.
The fact is, if you don’t want any criticism in life, all you’ve got to do is ‘say nothing, do nothing, and be nothing’. But you can’t do that if you want to serve God, can you. You see, there’s a consequence, a price to pay if you like, of stepping out in faith… and that is that you paint a big fat target on your back for Satan and his minions to take pot-shots at you, and he will use all and every means to discourage you, even those closest to you.
The apostle Paul actually warns us about this in one of his letters to Timothy,
he wrote: …everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted… (2 Timothy 3:12). The apostle Peter also warned us that: …the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.’ And he urges us to: Resist him and, stand firm in the faith. (1 Peter 5:8-9)
But, we don’t have to fight that battle on our own. If we remain faithful to God and his word, and not respond to our detractors in kind, then, in the end, we will be vindicated. The God of heaven will always come to our aid. Remember what Jesus said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.” (Luke 9:23-24)
So as you step out in faith remember this; no one ever said the godly life is easy, but it is eventful, and worth all the trouble and effort in the end!
Sunday 3rd May 2020
‘May you live in interesting times.’ Seems like it’s supposed to be a blessing doesn’t it, but it’s actually meant as a curse. It’s an ironic phrase. You see, life is supposed to be better in ‘uninteresting times’, because they’re the times of peace and prosperity. The ‘interesting times’ are those where trouble, fear, and pain seem to find us.
The Covid-19 virus has caused a great deal of fear and pain around the world hasn’t it. Our own government has introduced severe restrictions on our freedom of movement. Consequently, the economy has tanked and will likely take years to recover. Worse than that, people are beginning to lose their jobs and businesses. It might be well said then that we do indeed live in interesting times.
Of course, the government can do what they’ve done because they have the authority to do it. And most people will obey because they recognise the government’s authority to make the rules. They have both a respect for the rule of law, and fear the punishment that the government can impose on them. A healthy fear and respect for authority is especially true when it comes to God. While it’s common for us to emphasise God’s love and grace, how often do we talk about God’s holiness, justice and wrath? There’s a balance that needs to be struck between the two isn’t there. After all, God’s word says: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs – 1:7a). The trouble is, we can be far too casual in our approach to God.
Many contemporary ideas about who God is and what he’s like are too shallow. God is not some who merely loves us and comes running, ready to do our bidding when we need Him. Our God is holy, and is exalted above all things. He is the only wise God, the Creator, the sovereign Lord and Master. He tells us what to do, and we have no safe option but to obey. There is no alternative god, one made in our own image. We have but one directive, and that is to do His will. To be God’s people, then, means having a healthy dose of fear and respect for God and His Word, such that when we come to meet with God we do so with the right attitude and respect for the authority he holds over our lives.
Sunday 26th April 2020
How good are you when it comes to listening to advice or accepting help from others? Perhaps you’re a bit like me… I’m old enough to admit that sometimes I find it a bit of struggle. Of course, it works the other way too, some of us find it hard to ask for help in the first place.
Well I’ve been giving that a bit of thought this week, and I wonder if maybe it’s our pride that stops us, because no one wants to look like they don’t know what they’re are doing do they. Or is it that we don’t really trust the person offering to help us? That can be the case sometimes. Or maybe it’s that we don’t like the advice we’re being offered because we didn’t think of it ourselves… some people are like that.
The reality is that life can, and often is, complicated. And complicated lives need all the help they can get. For all of us, whatever we’re involved in, when someone we trust suggests that it is time to make a change we need to listen, and take it to God for confirmation. Solomon, the wise man of the Old Testament wrote: Listen to advice and accept instruction, and in the end you will be wise. (Proverbs 19:20). Regardless of our life or job situation, all of us can benefit from learning how to accept advice and share the load. May God bless us and help us as we try to learn these lessons and apply them to our lives.
Sunday 19th April 2020
“You know what… You’ve done nothing but complain ever since you got here?” If you’ve ever had that said about you then you’ll know how much a statement like that stings, nobody wants to be known as a complainer do they. Of course, there are always those who believe that their grumbling and complaining is completely justified, convinced as they are of their own moral or intellectual superiority. It’s human nature, isn’t it, to pass judgment on the actions of others. We’ve all done it, maybe you’re doing it right now, because we all think we know what’s best, well, best for ourselves anyway. After all, it’s not like any of us have made mistakes is it. Oh no, wait a minute, we have haven’t we.
So why do we do it? Why do we want to pull others down, or as we think, ‘put them in their place’? I think it all starts when we see a problem that either we think isn’t being dealt with quick enough, or it’s not being done the way we would do it, or its simply that we don’t trust the one making the decisions. Whatever our reasoning, we seem to manage to convince ourselves that any decision they make is bound to be the wrong one.
So, this week, let’s check our own attitude before we open our mouths about others – and ask ourselves; are we naturally inclined to grumble, or are we able to exercise a bit of humility? You see, the keys to facing our trials without grumbling and complaining lay in our being humble enough to admit that we don’t know all the answers, put our trust in God that He knows what He’s doing, and show our gratitude through our praise and thanksgiving when we come through it.
Sunday 12th April – Easter Sunday
Easter Sunday… What’s it all about? I ask that because, from my observation at least, Easter seems to have become just another public holiday to enjoy, a 4-day weekend of fun and no work, all chocolate bunnies and Easter eggs. As for the real meaning of Easter… well it’s just another story we don’t believe in or understand, if that is, we’ve even heard the story in the first place. It seems to me the world, at least the western world, has collective amnesia. In turning from an empty tomb to an Easter egg as our symbol of hope we have forgotten what a marvellous thing God has done for us. The symbol of the Cross and the empty tomb? That’s just been replaced by the Easter bunny. The real meaning of Easter seems to have escaped us.
I wonder, though, if it were possible to recapture it, to retell the story to a world which doesn’t seem to want to hear it, what would we say? How would you explain the meaning of Easter, the death of one man for the sins of the whole world, the resurrection of the dead, to a world where those are completely alien concepts. Might I suggest that that the first step is to understand Easter for ourselves.
For Christians, Easter Sunday announces the very real possibility of unimaginable joy of being right with God. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, alone in all the acts of God, holds the promise of life after death for those that put their faith in him! It brings the hope of a better life, the possibility of being able to know and enjoy a deep relationship with the creator of the universe. And who wouldn’t want that?
Today, millions of people around the world will be celebrating the fact that some 2000 years ago, on a cool Sunday morning in a small, politically turbulent country in the eastern Mediterranean, one man, Jesus of Nazareth, was raised from the dead. So, if Easter means anything, it means Jesus Christ really is Lord, he really is the Saviour of the world. He alone has authority over life, over death, and over salvation. And because of that, the word was changed forever.
Friday 10th April 2020 – Good Friday
Why on earth do we call Good Friday, ‘good’? It seems a bit daft to call something ‘good’ when to all apparent evidence it seems dreadfully bad. This was the day that saw Jesus betrayed and nailed to a cross, after all. What do you see when think of Good Friday, do you see a man, the Son of God, the Saviour simply dying on a cross for the sins of the world? Or do you see Jesus Christ dying on the cross for you — specifically for you – because he loves you? Dying for your sins, for your forgiveness, for your life.
The apostle Paul wrote: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8). ‘While we were still sinners…’ Even without obeying him, without us loving him, Jesus still gave up his life for us… because he cared about us; he valued us and showed us his love… while – we – were – still – sinners.
Good Friday is not supposed to be a day of celebration, but of mourning, not just over the death of Jesus, but for the sins of the world that his death represents. Yet, although it’s is a solemn time, it is not without its own joy. Because, while it is important to place the Resurrection against the darkness of Good Friday, the sombreness of Good Friday should always be seen with the hope of Resurrection on Easter Sunday. What we know as Good Friday was not a good day for Jesus, in purely human terms it was a manifestly bad one. It was a day of betrayal, beatings, violence, rejection, pain, loneliness, and death. Make no mistake, it was a bad day.
We all experience bad days and times of trouble at some point in life, and being a follower of Christ does not exempt us from those trials. We are called to take up our cross, meaning that we too will suffer. But on the cross, Jesus left us an example to follow that will help us deal with the bad days, because we too need to realise that we also need to be able to say: “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” (Luke 23:34)
Sunday 5th April 2020 – Palm Sunday
Easter is fast approaching. Everyone knows what Easter is all about, well most do… ok some do… those who go to church perhaps. Less people know about Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter. It tells the story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey for the Jewish Passover festival the week before he was crucified. The crowds who followed Jesus into the city were fed up with being oppressed by the Romans, they desperately wanted something to happen. They even looked for God to help them. Then along comes Jesus, their Messiah. Only he wasn’t what they were expecting, he didn’t do what they expected him to do, and they didn’t get the answer they wanted.
Given our current circumstances coping with a worldwide pandemic, I suspect that we too would like Jesus to ride into our world and sort things out. But usually it’s the more ordinary things in life that trouble us, like paying our bills, healing for our sick families and friends, or help with our physical or emotional pain. We want God to help us, and we usually want it all sorted by tomorrow!
The irony is that God does answer those prayers, just as He answered the prayers of the crowd when he provided them with a messiah. The people wanted a Messiah and a Messiah came, but they didn’t recognise Him. The people wanted to be rescued from evil powers that oppressed them, and Jesus did just that. But He didn’t do it in the way they expected.
This story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey wonderfully illustrates the mismatch between our human expectations and prayers… and God’s answers. The crowd were actually disappointed in Jesus, He wasn’t what they wanted, a fact proved so publicly on Good Friday when they all called for him to be crucified. But as the reality of Christ’s mission unfolded over the next few days, weeks, months and years, they would realise that their prayers had been answered, and that their praise on that first Palm Sunday was indeed justified, but not for the reasons they expected.
Sunday 29th March 2020
We really are living through some very strange times aren’t we. Maybe you’re feeling a bit cornered, up against the wall, caught between a rock and a hard place. Maybe your anxiety levels are rising and you’re feeling it’s all a bit too much. If that’s you, then do not despair, know that you are under God’s guidance and protection through this time. God has much to teach us; About community, about connecting to each other, and about what it means for us to surrender our lives into His care, as He leads us through our enforced isolation from one another.
Remember during the Exodus, when the Israelites found themselves boxed in and facing being run down by the Egyptian army? Well their journey to the Red Sea was just as much a part of God’s plan as crossing it. We must do what Moses commanded the Israelites: “Don’t be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today” (Ex. 14:13). And we must remember that God is bigger than the most desperate of situations. He can make a way where there seems to be no way. God is able, in fact more than able, to redeem us from any situation. Our job is to trust God – to keep our eyes on the Lord. So ‘Don’t be afraid. Stand still. Keep quiet. Watch the Lord work!’ To God be the glory!
Sunday 22nd March 2020
This week we received the news that due to the CoVid-19 virus Bishop Jay and the Standing committee of the diocese of CCA have had to make the decision to cease all public worship from Monday 23rd March, and to cease Holy Communion with immediate effect. This it something that all the denominations in NZ have agreed to do.
This decision obviously makes today the last time we can gather together until we are informed otherwise by the Diocese. But that doesn’t mean we stop meeting altogether. Parish council will work to ensure that some form of small gatherings can take place on Sundays, and an audio recording of the sermon will continue to be available on our website www.allsaintschch.org for those who want it. Homegroups will also continue as normal until we are instructed otherwise by the diocese. That’s a lot to take in isn’t it? I realise also that not everyone will agree with this decision, but that is out of our control. Some may also be anxious about the medical impact of the virus, or concerned about the financial impact of all this, that is very understandable… So in this time of anxiety and uncertainty, let’s not forget one another, especially those who live alone. Keep in contact, pray with and for each other, in person or over the phone. And let’s not forget to whom we belong, God will be with us through this difficult time.
Sunday 15th March 2020
God has told us that He is a jealous God, and as such, will not tolerate us putting other gods before Him. We are called to serve the LORD, first and foremost, and to not allow anyone or anything to become a rival in our lives. Looking back at the history of God’s people and it’s easy to see that God didn’t tolerate the idolatry of Egypt or any of the other nations surrounding Israel indefinitely, nor did He tolerate the idolatry of Israel, and He definitely won’t tolerate it in us either. So, ask yourself this question: ‘Do I have an idol in my life right now? Is there anything that I place on a pedestal that I give higher priority to than Jesus Christ? Is there anything more important to me than my service to him?’
The thing is, if we are not careful, we can be serving the god of recreation and entertainment, or the god of family, putting the wishes of parents, mates, or children ahead of God. If we are not careful, we can be serving the god of finances and worldly possessions, or the god of pleasure… If we’re not careful.
We live in a very tempting and seductive world, one where there are many gods we can be serving, but only one God we should be serving. So know this… God does not take pleasure in correcting his children any more than you or I do when we have to discipline our own children. But God loves us too much to allow us to remain in sin and He will bring judgment whenever necessary to bring us back into obedience to His will… while there is still time to repent.
Sunday 8th March 2020
Have you ever had one of those days that went from bad to worse? I’m sure we all have at some time or other. They’re the sort of day when nothing seems to go right. You wake up late for work one morning, rush to the bathroom, have a shave and cut yourself. You put on your shoes and the shoelace snaps. You miss breakfast, rush out to the car and it won’t start, so you make a dash for the bus just in time to see it go sailing past you stop.
You know the kind of day I’m talking about don’t you. We all have days like that, maybe not all those things at once, but days when nothing goes our way. It’s how we deal with them that shows whether we’ve learnt from our past experiences.
But we’re not alone in having bad days. In one sense, Jesus last day was a bad day, the apostle Paul had them, Jonah, certainly had them, and so did Moses. So, when our days go from bad to worse, as they sometimes do, we must turn to God and trust Him. Our dependence on God in the midst of our ‘bad day’ will lead to patience, which will lead to wisdom and maturity. We all want to grow up, but we want to do so without experiencing any growing pains, but that is not possible. So, fasten your seat belts, the ride is often turbulent, but the destination is worth it.
Sunday 1st March 2020
When someone asks you to do something, what’s your first reaction? Is it, ‘Oh yes, I’d love to help’, or does your mind immediately default to the many excuses why you can’t help? Some of them may even be valid, but sometimes doing the right thing is being prepared to be inconvenienced.
Let’s be honest, we’re all quite good at making excuses, we have excuses for just about everything; why we missed school or work, why we’re late, why we didn’t pay our bills on time, why we went off our diet or new exercise plan, and for why we haven’t been in touch with friends. We also have excuses regarding spiritual matters too. We have excuses for why we’ve been missing church, we don’t give more of our time or money to the work of the gospel, or why don’t pray or read our bibles at home. Most of our excuses though aren’t very good ones.
The thing is, God doesn’t want to hear excuses, He’d rather hear our confessions and resolutions. God wants to see genuine repentance and faithfulness in our lives, a willingness to serve Him and His purposes. He’s not without compassion though, he doesn’t write us off at our first failure, in fact he gives us time to come around to his point of view. The reality is that all of us are called by God; into a saving relationship with him, to become godly servants. What he calls us to do will be different for each one of us, based upon our different experiences. But we are all called to serve in one way or another. So let’s allow God to help us overcome our reluctance and our excuses so that we can become God’s faithful followers and servants in the church.
All Saints Anglican Church Christchurch 