Emmanuel: God With Us
Are you going through a rough time this Christmas? We may be feeling burdened or crushed by circumstances, or emotionally broken, or inescapably trapped in a situation that is harmful or painful to us, or overwhelmingly sad because someone we love has died. God can seem very distant from us when we do go through […]
Comforted
We live in a very shaky world. We feel fortunate to be living in Australia when we see the unthinkable trauma people are going through in the Middle East and Ukraine. Yet many of us also have our very real troubles, and we can be shaken to our core by them. Yet, when God’s people […]
Shaken
Does it ever feel like the sky is falling in?… That our lives and world are turned upside down?… Like everything that once seemed solid under our feet is disintegrating?… What if these events are not just blind, dumb fate?… What if in them God is drawing near?… Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the […]
‘Twas the Month Before Christmas….
Our Christmas tree isn’t up yet. There are few signs in our house that Christmas is just over four weeks away: just two token, tiny nativity sets and a 15cm wooden ‘tree’. This is not for lack of interest. I love Christmas! Yet the preparations can feel like another thing to add to an already […]
Israel of God
In the last month our emotions and thoughts have been in turmoil as we have watched TV broadcasts of the horrific war in the Middle East. We’ve seen lives and communities torn apart on all sides of the conflict. As Christians we must want to see peace come to all who suffer, as quickly as […]
Swim Free, Little Fish
Remember Nemo, the ocean-going Clown Fish? By misadventure, he found himself confined to an aquarium in the office of a Sydney dentist. He looked out fearfully at a big, scary world, wondering if he could ever muster the courage to try and break free to return to the limitless expanse of his native ocean. As […]
Mission Is-possible
We can think of mission as something that some other Christians do, in some other part of the world. We can then also think that if we send them some money and pray for them that we’ve “done our bit” for mission. Then we put it out of our mind until the next “mission speaker” […]
Fructive Family
We can have a love-hate relationship with our families; sometimes we adore them, at others we would like a divorce. It can be a bit that way within the church family too! But the family of God’s people should be the most attractive community in the world. In 1Corinthians chapter 12 and 13, Paul says […]
Get Connected!
Have you ever heard someone say, “He/she has friends in high places”? Or. perhaps, “It’s not what you know; it’s whom you know”? As a young man with a fledgling career, I’m certainly finding out these statements are true, to my consternation! My skills and qualifications matter less than I thought they might while I was learning […]
Mission: Gospel-Driven
What is the Gospel (the essential Christian message)?…. If we are Christian believers, we need to have an answer to that question – both for ourselves, and to tell any others who want to know. An answer needs to come from what the Bible teaches and could be put in a number of ways. Most […]