Happy New Year! Although it’s starting to sound a bit obsolete as we are already into the fourth week of the year. It doesn’t take long for the joy, expectation and atmosphere of “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year” to fade. I estimate it takes about one week of busyness back at work and the holiday season seems a long distant memory, disappearing behind us like dust on a country road. All too soon it’s settled and gone as if none of it ever really happened. I began to wonder, what does “Happy New Year” actually mean? I hope you are happy, every moment, of every day, throughout the year? Maybe that’s what we mean by saying it but it’s not very realistic, life is never a journey of happiness, all the time. If it is for you maybe we could swap lives for a short period of time???

Lets be real, life has its intensely happy moments and there are seasons of great joy. I’ve spent most of my holidays having a great time with constant laughs shared with family and friends but now the challenges and realities of life loom high on the horizon and there is no avoiding them. Not all of those challenges are the encouraging, uplifting kind. So do we grit our teeth and bear it until the next holiday break when we can relax again and forget about the troubles of the world? I think there might be a better way, as Christians we can see life as an ongoing journey of fellowship with God. He is with us, by our side, sharing our happy times and our sad times, encouraging us when we’re down and giving us hope for the future and a constant awareness of His indescribable peace and presence.

When we experience life in this way, our sense of happiness and well-being becomes less dependent on our circumstances and more dependent upon our walk with God. So perhaps my New Year’s greeting to you should be, “May God’s Peace Be With You In 2010.” It sounds a little pious but I think it’s a more realistic description of what the Christians ongoing experience is like.

May God’s peace be with you!

So this is Christmas - tinsel, presents, food, holidays but most of all, hopefully most of all, for Christians it’s about Jesus. God’s gift of a Saviour to a lost world. He is our hope, our forgiveness, our salvation. Imagine the world without Him, imagine your life without Him….

Jesus gives life, meaning and purpose, He brings us into a right relationship with a holy God, whose just and righteous wrath against sin must be satisfied. God’s call to each of us is to have faith in Jesus, to believe in Him that His substitutionary death on Calvary’s cross might make us right in God’s sight.

My prayer for you this Christmas season is that you might have personal experience of knowing God and be right with Him by believing in His Son, Jesus Christ. This, above all else, is the true meaning of life and God’s intended purpose at Christmas.

To all those holidaying and travelling we pray you will have a safe and restful holiday. We look forward to all that 2010 has for us as a church.  In January we will have a sermon series that focuses on God’s desire for relationship with each of us as His creation. No matter who we are or what we’ve done, God wants to restore us to relationship with Himself.

Our service times over the Christmas period are as follows:

• Christmas Eve 7pm
• Christmas Day 9am
• Sunday 27^th 10am (no evening service)
• January 10am & 6pm

May you enjoy God’s richest blessing at Christmas and may His plans for your life continue to be revealed throughout 2010.

Brian.

Our sermon series, “How To Sin & Get Away With It” has now concluded and this week we begin a much briefer but very important follow up series called, “How To Be Forgiven Because We Can’t Get Away With It.” (How’s that for a succinct series title?) The fact is, we can be deceived into thinking our “secret” or “respectable” sins are not so bad compared to the more “serious” sins of others. God is offended by all sin however, no matter whether we categorise some sins as being more serious than others. Hopefully our recent series has helped to highlight the reality and seriousness of all sin.

So when we recognise our sin what do we do? How can we be forgiven? Thankfully God doesn’t just point out our sin then leave us to wallow in self condemnation and guilt - not at all! He has graciously and mercifully provided us with a Saviour, whose long awaited arrival changed for all time the reality and permanence of God’s just forgiveness. Through Jesus Christ we can be forgiven and experience the freedom and joy of knowing and walking with God.

The provision of a Saviour, in Jesus Christ, is God’s grand plan of salvation for the human race. It is a plan that has taken millennia to unfold and be fully revealed. Amazingly we live in a time when we can look back on God’s purposes throughout history and His trail of raising up prophet after prophet who have spoken of and given clues to the identity of the coming Saviour. We have the privilege of being able to follow those clues, and recognise the Saviour’s final arrival in Bethlehem some 2,000 years ago.

A couple of things become very evident when we reflect upon God’s provision of a Saviour. One is that God loves us dearly, more than we can fully comprehend. The second observation we can make from God’s grand plan of salvation is that God is certainly not in a hurry. All is done according to His will and His timing - not ours. When you are eternal time has much less significance.

I encourage you to reflect in this Christmas season on the wonder of God’s plan of salvation and the provision of His Son our Saviour. The privileges we enjoy as Christians know no bounds and all because He loves us so much.

Forgiven in Jesus,

Brian

I’ve noticed there has been a rumour going around that I recently had a birthday. Some have congratulated me on turning 60 but I thought 40 was closer to the truth. I rang my mum just to clarify my age but being 95 she couldn’t quite recall? Some, acting on the rumour, were quite insensitive to my circumstance and sent me disturbing cards reminding me that I had entered a new phase of life called old age and becoming a senior. I am still in denial about the whole experience and can’t wait for Christmas to have something else to think about and celebrate because I see nothing celebratory, if it’s true, in being half a century old! Just as well I’m not a grandfather because then I’d really be having a crisis!

Hilery was however sensitive to my circumstance and secretly, at least to me, organised a surprise holiday for my ‘special’ birthday - a week in Bali. It was a great week away, very relaxing and refreshing. Bali is certainly a beautiful country with magnificent coastal scenery and friendly, relaxed people. It took us a while to unwind but when we did the only effort required was to ride our scooter to another restaurant on the beach for a $3 meal of fresh prawns or steamed fish in banana leaves followed by an hour massage or a sleep by the pool. Ah what a life, maybe getting old is not so bad if we get to do this more often!

There’s always a downside to a holiday however as the airline pilot implied as we touched down in Adelaide, “welcome back to reality.” Our reality here in Adelaide is very rewarding however so it is good to be back and I am looking forward to church on Sunday and the privilege to fully and freely worship our great God with our church family.

One thing that I did not enjoy on holiday was the predominance of idol worship with small offerings being made to various gods. The small offering parcels of food, in specially made flax baskets, were left everyday and everywhere; in doorways, on the footpath, on the road and on the beach. Our reality of believing in the One, true and living God is incomparable and a privilege worthy of our deepest devotion.

Considering early retirement,

Brian

Mark Twain is quoted as saying, “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t.” Other characters in our culture rephrase this as – never let truth get in the way of a good story.

Truth huh! Wouldn’t we love to know it when many of our politicians are embroiled in controversy; when our financial and petroleum institutions justify their pricing structures; when we are lured by subtle advertizing to buy, but the product doesn’t measure up?

Yes we’d love the truth to be evident before the consequences surface.

Each of us knows in our heart and conscience the truth will never let us down -sometimes we’ve just gotta trust it. It may take a bit for truth to surface, but like an air bubble in the ocean, it inevitably rises to the surface.

Jesus made the statement,”I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” This statement deserves our full consideration because if it has interacted with our heart and conscience, faith calls us to follow.  

This Sunday morning the senior EBKidz will be leading the morning service with support from the other Kids ministries. The theme coming through their year of Sunday school has been that statement – I Am the Way, the Truth and the Life. We look forward to seeing how they have interacted with Jesus’ words.

Please consider sitting upstairs if the church is looking full Sunday morning.

On Saturday while EBKidz are practicing, Gingerbread houses/men are being created over at Eddies. It’s not too late to join in on the pre-Christmas fun there.

Tuesday night we had our AGM and if you weren’t there or need clarification on something, please contact the office or speak with one of the pastors for more details. On Sunday evening we will continue in our series looking at: Confronting the things we often tolerate. Ps Joe will be speaking on the topic of Judgementalism.

Joe

Did you hear about what happened to the Kalwolski family? John has supposedly been involved in some fraudulent activity and the pastor has kicked him out of the church! John’s children still want to come to Sunday School but John is now angry with the pastor and won’t let them come so the Sunday School leaders are going to ask the pastor to let John stay in the church so that the kids can still come to Sunday School. Members of John’s Lifegroup heard about it and have also become involved because they are all close to John so they discussed it as a group. Most were angry with the pastor and they decided to talk to others and rally support for John because they want John to be able to stay in the church and also to maintain his role as a teacher in the Lifegroup.

When the pastor finally heard about what was happening and the discussions that were taking place amongst numerous individuals and groups in the church he was bewildered at what he was hearing. He went and spoke to John about what he had heard and learned that John’s colleague at work had been charged with fraud and had been dismissed by his employer. John had told his wife what had happened and that he was going to the pastor to ask for prayer for his colleague.  As further investigations unfolded John and his wife realised their eight year old daughter had overheard part of their discussion and had thought it was her dad who was in trouble and was going to be kicked out of the church by the pastor. This troubled the child who thought she could no longer attend Sunday school so the child shared her concerns with the Sunday School leaders.

Sadly this fictitious story can be all too true in churches as snippets of information are passed on from one to the other like a series of “Chinese whispers.” Sins of the tongue are a very real issue for us as Christians and is the topic of this Sundays messages as Tom Golding shares with us in the morning and Don Reddin in the evening. Gossip, slander, half-truths and criticism can cause hurt and damage the reputation of others and can easily create division in the church. It is a topic we all need to be aware of so come along and learn what God’s Word has to say about this area of our lives.

This Sunday morning I will be speaking at Oakden Baptist Church and will be away on leave for seven days from Monday the 23^rd.  Please remember to pray for Encounter Schoolies this weekend and don’t forget our AGM is on this coming Tuesday the 24^th at 7:30pm.

Remember ‘silence is golden’,

God bless,

Our God is a God of immeasurable grace and mercy, whom we humbly worship, giving thanks for His grace, compassion and patience towards us. Scripture tells us however, that His grace and mercy will at some point cease and instead He will exercise a fiery judgement upon the earth that will consume His enemies. All those who scoff and mock, those who refuse to believe and those who oppose Him and refuse to accept the gospel, will find themselves consumed in a time of fierce and overwhelming judgement.

It seems strange to pause and think about this, because we like to focus primarily on the attributes of God that remind us of His rich grace; but we must keep in mind that God is perfectly just, and is righteous as much as He is perfectly gracious. This means He will not diminish His justice, righteousness and holiness to accommodate grace and mercy. We can be sure of a perfect demonstration of His previously withheld justice and righteousness in coming days, with the proof of many passages of Scripture. For example Hebrews 10:26-30,

²⁶ For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, ²⁷ but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. ²⁸ Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. ²⁹ How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? ³⁰ For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” ³¹ It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (ESV)

“Vengeance is mine, I will repay”, “outraged the Spirit of grace”, “the Lord will judge His people”, “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” - these are not the kinds of statements we normally associate with our gracious God. Incredibly, they are directed at believers, or more perhaps, faltering believers, and remind us that the Lord will indeed judge His people if we reject the truth and go our own way. Not all of this is easy to understand or reconcile - especially for those of us, like myself, who believe in the eternal security of the believer - but it does alert me to the fact we can have a distorted understanding of grace and mercy which we commonly inflate at the expense of justice, righteousness and holiness. God is perfect, as are all His ways, so if judgement begins with God’s people, what kind of fearful judgement will remain for those who stubbornly refuse His gracious offer of forgiveness in Jesus?

As Scripture says elsewhere, what kind of people ought we to be in light of God’s impending judgement that will come upon this world?

This Sunday morning Pastor Edwin will share with us and in the evening Elliot Keane will speak, continuing the series: “How to sin and get away with it” with this week’s topic “Anger and Jealousy”. We wouldn’t get angry and jealous would we?

In awe of God,

The Melbourne Cup has come and gone for another year and no doubt there are some very excited owners, trainers and jockeys for those connected with winning the most prestigious horse race in Australia. The race is the focal point for horse owners, trainers and jockeys from around Australia and for many around the world. Years of preparation, hundreds of thousands of dollars and a huge amount of man power go into getting horses ready for this one race, a race that lasts for a matter of moments. The outcome for the owners can be worth millions of dollars, no wonder they are so excited and can’t stop jumping around and smiling as they enjoy the fruits of victory being both fame and fortune.

I was reminded of the analogy of being in a race being used to describe the Christian life. A race that we are constantly running, not just one day for a few moments once a year, instead our race is every moment of every day whether we feel like it or not. Unlike the Melbourne Cup there is no doubt we will not receive fame and fortune of the kind recipients of the Melbourne Cup enjoy but we will definitely enjoy a blessed result from a race well run for the glory of God.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians and encouraged them to run to win, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.” 1 Cor. 9:24 Running to win takes many qualities such as; determination, perseverance, commitment, discipline and passion. Most of all it requires a deep love for the Lord Jesus because this race is all about spreading the good news of the gospel and living in a way that pleases Him. Hebrews 12:1 continues the analogy of a race with these words, “Therefore since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

So how is your race going, are you continuing at a steady pace, making progress towards the goal? I’m glad that God doesn’t whip us like a jockey does a horse but with grace, love and sometimes discipline he encourages and motivates our participation in the race toward the goal of eternal life with Him. On the day we arrive we’ll be the ones jumping up and down for joy because of the prize of life that will far exceed any fame and fortune in this life.

This Sunday morning I will continue our series on sin with the topic of pride, Alan Millhouse will speak to us in the evening on the same topic from a different perspective. Please pray for our year 12 and Uni students at this time of year as they face significant exams.

See you in the race toward eternal life...

Apathy and anxiety are the ‘sins’ that I’ll be speaking about on Sunday night as part of our series, “How To Sin & Get Away With It.” These two sins are particularly common and subtle, allowing us to cultivate the idea that we are flying under the radar of God’s awareness of our attitudes. Perhaps their greatest deception is the fact that often we are the only ones aware of them lodging deep within our hearts and even then we rarely recognise their damaging effects on our relationship with God. Like a cancerous growth they entwine their tentacles deep into our soul robbing us of the joy of serving and trusting God in spite of any and every circumstance of life.  

 God wants to search our hearts and minds, to identify and free us of everything that hinders His work in our lives and quenches the work of His Spirit to bring us spiritual growth and fruitfulness. We may reflect at times on why our experience of God seems dull, lifeless or even boring, but did you know that sin creates that very experience of God.

Think about it - how is it possible that walking with God and experiencing a relationship with the God of the universe can be boring?! Sin and Satan create that impression, and produce that negative experience and impression of God. The God who created this world with its soaring mountains, massive canyons, raging rivers, mountainous seas, vast deserts, weird and wonderful animal life and frightening forces of nature, is anything but boring!

A dull Christian life develops when sin pervades our thinking, sapping spiritual vitality from us. It is a spiritual condition that needs both surgery and medication, surgery comes by confession and repentance, once the problem is diagnosed, and the medicating effects of reading God’s Word and praying in the Spirit heal and strengthen the wounds of sin. There is power in the blood of Jesus. Power to heal, cleanse and forgive, and through the Holy Spirit there is power to transform, power to revive and renew. May that be your experience and mine as we seek to identify and extract sin and its deceptiveness that may be residing in our hearts.

There is no question it is a problem, an overwhelming one at that and it permeates the whole of our society. It is insidious and completely destructive, worse than any plaque, parasite, virus, earthquake, or typhoon; its powers to invade and corrupt are almost unstoppable. Yet surprisingly governments don’t care. It is never addressed by any educational curriculum; the media never mentions it, and you will never hear your neighbours speak about it. Yet the fact remains not a single human being can escape its devastating effects. What am I talking about? A single syllable, three letter word that has brought humanity to the brink of total annihilation on more than one occasion – SIN!

Surprisingly even churches often only mention it in hushed tones. It doesn’t exactly inspire or encourage large attentive crowds wanting to hear of our miserable condition, and the truth of it is often hidden beneath layers of pretence and the veneer of respectability. Truth doesn’t always leave us feeling great about ourselves, but reality is what it is, and we must face it whether we want to or not if we are to be true to God and true to ourselves. The world is full of superficialities. God’s church must dare to be different, and come clean on what is really happening in our lives if we are to ever see the power of God break through - with a force and power equal to and beyond the destructive nature of sin.

Your attendance is therefore invited to our 4^th term series beginning this Sunday entitled, “How To Sin & Get Away With It.” Contrary to what the weather might be telling us, it is Spring - so it’s time for a little Spring cleaning! Where better to begin than with our own souls?

This Sunday morning I will begin the series with an introduction that Kieran Johnson will continue in the evening. Although we may become a little battered and bruised listening to truth, ultimately we have good news about the problem of sin, and this perspective will permeate all of the messages throughout the series.

Look forward to seeing you there,