Life

Posted on by
Reply


Today I have heard the great news of a baby being born healthy, when just a few weeks ago she was not expected to live outside her mothers womb. The doctors are stunned and my friends, who have been praying around the clock, are rejoicing!


Within half an hour of hearing this news I also heard of a 19 year old boy who died in a car accident this morning.

Romans 12 tells us to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. As a celebrate with some and comfort others I realise I haven’t yet figured out how to do these at the same time.

How do we make sense of this world??

For creation eagerly waits with anticipation for God’s sons to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to futility – not willingly, but because of him who subjected it – in the hope that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage of corruption  into the glorious freedom of God’s children. Romans 8:19-21

Amen! Come Lord Jesus!

A new look at Jonah

Posted on by
2


One of the great things about choosing not to study Hebrew this year (apart from not having to learn Hebrew) is the subject us non-hebrew student do instead called Biblical Exegesis and Exposition. Its a long name for a great subject. This term Bill Salier has been taking us through the great Old Testament book of Jonah.

I have been loving looking in detail at a story that I thought was familiar – turns out while I knew some of the content I had little appreciation for the amazing way this narrative shows so clearly the compassion of God for his people.
God’s compassion then stands next to the un-compassion (is that a word??) of Jonah. When God showed compassion on Jonah he praises God and declares ‘salvation comes from the Lord’! But he does not want Nineveh to share in this salvation. When he sees God’s compassion for the Ninevites he says he is angry enough to die!
The book ends with the unanswered question from God – ‘should I not care about the great city of Nineveh??’
This amazing book poses 2 questions to us – Am I like Jonah?? and Who are my Ninevites??

The Resurrection Body

Posted on by
Reply


‘I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that the flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed – in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, in the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself will the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, the the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death is your victory? Where, O death is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, ans the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.’
1 Corinthians 15:50 – 58

The Screwtape Letters

Posted on by
2


I have recently started reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S Lewis. If you have not read it, I definitely recommend it. It is a series of letters written from the devil Screwtape to his newphew Wormwood, in which Screwtape is coaching his nephew in how to successfully lure his ‘patients’ (mankind) away from the Enemy (God).


I am about half way through and came across a paragraph which, in a strange way, is a beautiful description of God’s love for us and our true selves in him.

‘Of course I know that the Enemy also wants to detach men from themselves, but in a different way. Remember always, that he really likes the little vermin, and sets an absurd value on the distinctness of every one of them. When he talks of their losing their selves, he only means abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, he really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly his they will be more themselves than ever.’

Amen

My Story

Posted on by
Reply


The most important thing I could tell you about who I am is that I am a Christian. And this is why.


I grew up in a Christian family. My immediate family are Christian as well as most of my extended family. My grandparents plus some of my aunties and uncles are ministers for the Salvation Army. I grew up at church and I was taught about Jesus and his death on the cross for me and I was involved in lots of different groups in church from a young age.
When I was about 18 I meet someone I liked and even though I knew there were many reasons not too, we started dating. This person wasn’t a Christian and was someone who I knew a Christian girl shouldn’t date but I decided that I didn’t care. And the more we saw of each other the more I became a person who lived only for what felt good at that moment. I made a very clear and very conscience choice to turn my back on God and everything I knew about him. I remember my sister saying to me that God had made me to live a different life that the one I was living and my reply was something along the lines of ‘this is what I’m doing and God will have to deal with it’. So I lived my life just how the world told me to – doing what I wanted, when I wanted, focused only on what felt good for ME. I completely ignored God even though I knew that he had given his son’s life for me. In return I lived a very selfish and godless life. Nothing in my life pleased God. But then again – I didn’t care.
This was my life for almost 5 years. And then my relationship ended and all of a sudden I was alone. Even though I moved back home with my family I felt completely alone all the time. And while I knew that my family loved me, I felt like they were looking at me thinking ‘I told you so’. A few weeks after I had moved home, I went to church with them one morning and while I was there I realised that God would never say I told you so. He was the only one I could depend on no matter what had happened and when my life had fallen apart, he was the only thing that didn’t change and would never change. But I was scared about saying sorry to God. I knew that there would be people who couldn’t forgive some of the things I had done and I thought that meant that God couldn’t forgive me either. But even though I had rejected him, when I came to him and said I was sorry and asked his forgiveness he didn’t reject me. No matter what my sin was, and no matter what the world thought about my sin, Jesus had taken the punishment for me by dying on a cross. Thee was nothing I could have done that it didn’t cover. That knowledge continues to comfort me today.
So I started living my life for God instead of for myself. Instead of me being the centre, God is now the centre. Now when I look back on my time apart from God I realise I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t the ‘good person’ I thought I was and I was angry all the time. I have a friend that I have known for about 9 years and after I became a Christian she told me that I had changed so much that she felt like she had just met me. It was nice to know that people could notice the difference Jesus made in my life.
Knowing God and understanding my salvation has made a huge impact on my purpose in life. My focus is no longer on pleasing myself, instead its on pleasing God and making sure others know God too. This lead to me changing jobs so I would be available to lead youth group and various bible studies at church and then the bigger decision to quit my job and study Theology full time.
I’m not claiming that I’m perfect or that my life is perfect, or even easy and I know that this life will never be those things. What I also know is that even though I continue to do the wrong thing, through his son Jesus, God has given me more than I would ever deserve. He has given me his unconditional love and forgiveness and has promised me eternal perfection with him in heaven.
So why is being a Christian the most important thing I could tell you about myself?? It’s because Jesus told his disciples ‘I am the way, the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me’. Through Jesus I have a personal relationship with the God who created the world, and one day i’ll walk side by side with him. And what could possibly be more important that that??

Community Living

Posted on by
2


Well here I am bursting into the world of blogging – mostly thanks to an afternoon of Greek study and my overwhelming talent of procrastination.


So what does a first year theology student blog about. I have no idea! Tonight I find myself with nothing much to say but here are some thoughts I had a few weeks ago about community living.

Today my first year group (a group of 8 first years who are amazing and get to sit and chat once a week) got me thinking about life in community, and specifically Moore Theological College as community.
It seems this is an issue that is very intense for some people, while others ask ‘what’s the big deal’?
And what is the big deal for me?? Community has amazing benefits – take for example the community I have with the 7 others in my first year group. We are a group made up of 2 single girls, 1 single guy, 3 married guys whose wives do not study and 1 married couple who both study. Among us are people from Queensland, South Australia, various places in NSW and across Sydney and some haven’t moved at all. Some have come from MTS, some have come from secular work. Some have been Christians all their lives and some only a few years. Some have even come from outside the Anglican Church (shocking i know ;)). Our experiences of life, college and community are all different and yet we are able to sit in a room and share ideas and thoughts and, more importantly, our own hurts and joys. Regardless of our different opinions we do this without judgment because we are unified in Christ and are all seeking to love and care for each other. We can sit and be honest with each other knowing that we are safe inside our community. This is an amazing privilege and hopefully an insight into the benefit of Christian community (albeit a small one). And as the community grows so does the scale of the benefits and joys.
But…. the same is true of the downfalls. The bigger community gets the more obvious its disadvantages are. Sometimes at college I feel as though the solution to my problems would be to get away from community – and as a college resident this can be hard to do. Not only do you study, eat and live in community, but walking the streets of Newtown you so frequently see other college students and faculty it seems that the whole suburb in an extension of the community.
And this big brother-ish feel is but one of the many facets of college community life. This didn’t even rate a mention in our discussion today and in fact was not even what I had intended to write about. What we did talk about was the expectations we had of college before we came, the reality of those expectations and relationships between married students and single students.
So the question I really want to ask is this – if community is intended to bring about unity, how can we stop segregation within a group of people who are so obviously different when the basic principle that like attracts like is true even here???