Reflections on being ripped off!!!

So I recently have been trying to get charges off of my credit card that were for a free sample of a health product that I got off the internet. (not so free is it) I am realizing how stupid that is now that I have to pay 140 bucks because I didn’t read the fine print. It is really frustrating to have to deal with this but it is making me reflect on a few things.

So the reason that I tried to get this health product in the first place was because I was and am not satisfied with the current shape my body is in, like a billion other people in are. But really I am healthy, I don’t really have any fat on my body but I simply want to look more muscular. But why? really for no reason at all except the vain satisfaction of looking good. Its not like I don’t feel good. This leads me to rant a little on how our culture through the media tells us that we have to look a certain way or else we are not happy or were not good enough. We spend ridiculous amounts of money on trying to look the way our culture tells us we should. It seems as though we are never happy. Not with the money we make, not with the house we live in, not with the car we drive and not with the body we walk around in. We really need to open our eyes and see how much trash the media and our culture is feeding us.

We need to realize that all this silly things that we are searching for really don’t make us happy. No material possession and not big bulging biceps. So then how do we become happy? how do we become content? Not to say we should not be in shape or in good health because I am a big advocate for healthy living and being fit, but some of us are doing it just to look good or to be able to flaunt our six pact and pecs to the world. So how do we become happy? What will make you happy?

Wow…getting ripped off by some stupid internet bit has driven me to figure out why the world isn’t happy. Or maybe the question is why are we so selfish?

Surely all this must be rapped up in our identity and who we think we are and what we think we need. So what do we need? What is our identity?

I believe all our identities are wrapped up in the creator and sustainer of the world. That it has something to do with God. I think that we were created for relationship and that there is a relationship in God himself and he holds all things together. Like it says in Acts “In him we live and move and have our being”. So I think that our identity is as it says in the first chapter of Ephesians that we are all predestined to be adopted as sons and daughters of this God. This God that is a relationship within himself and with humanity (Father, Son and Spirit) and this is the relationship that gives life to all things. Thus we are created to be in relationship with the life giving God that holds all things together. In this relationship we get meaning, happiness, joy….fullness of life…nothing lacking.

to cut this short because its getting lengthy my point is that when we look over ourselves and our own identity and the things that make us happy or give us meaning we must always start and finish with our relationship with the Father, Son and Spirit. When we are centred there then we become content….we receive the love that we all need. Then we are able to dodge these silly selfish things that build up in ourselves.

So the answer to my own question perhaps is that I need to re-evaluate my own relationship with God and see where I am allowing lies like I need to have bulging muscles in order to be happy effect my life…then perhaps I will be more happy and have more money because I won’t waste money on scams off the internet. BRUTAL….

what aren’t you happy about?

Who’s Got the Power

Who had more power – Adam when he sinned and sin entered into the world and all have been corrupted by sin or Jesus when he took all our pain all our sin and took it to the grave and resurrected from the grave and as it says in ephesians he united all things to himself…!!!

I wonder who we give more power …Adam or Jesus

Freshy!!!

Its been a little while since i posted anything so here is some fresh statements from one of my favourites Dr. Baxter Kruegar

“First, the goal of the incarnation is not to appease an angry god, but to reach us with the very life that the Father’s Son experiences with his Father and the Holy Spirit. Adoption—being included, fellowship, the sharing of life, union, not legalities and accounting—is the point. Second, in the incarnation there is a two-way movement of ‘accustoming.’ In Jesus, due to his unbroken relationship with his Father and the Holy Spirit, the Father and the Holy Spirit are accustoming themselves to dwell with and in us, and in his life and death, Jesus is accustoming human nature to receive and share in nothing less than the life of the blessed Trinity. There is in Jesus a stunning stooping on the part of the Triune God, and an equally stunning transformation or conversion of our humanity to bear the life and glory of the Trinity. Jesus is and will forever be the mediator, the One in whom the life of the Trinity and the life of humanity are together in real fellowship and union. At the heart of the incarnate life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus lies this two-way movement of togetherness, which forever calls us to give ourselves to participate in Jesus. Third, and this is not a new point, but one that surely needs to be emphasized; it is the Father himself and the Holy Spirit himself who come to dwell in us in Jesus.”

It will challenge your thinking

Check out this interview with Pete Rollins…a really cool dude who will make you think a lot…

http://peterrollins.net/blog/?p=221

A Permenant Repentance….

I have been thinking about repentance a little lately as well as the whole greed and materialism of western culture. Repentance (gr. Metanoia) to change directions, or to change ones thinking. But this change in thinking and direction is to go in another direction another action or another way of thinking or even processing. So when we repent it is as though we begin to have a new grid for seeing things. Our thinking our priorities and the way we see life changes. It becomes more Christ like.

I personally think that repentance is a life long journey of continually changing our thinking and priorities and bringing them closer and closer to the thinking and heart of Christ. So we continually shine a light on ourselves and ask ourselves the question of; is my thinking in line with the thinking and values of the kingdom, and are my priorities in life aligning with the kingdom. This directly should affect us when we come to the topics of GREED and Materialism. This is something that does not come easy but in order to be part of God’s people on earth today we must continually look in the mirror and ask if that is what we are truly becoming. If we are going to be people who embrace the kingdom and are continually on a trajectory of repentance and reforming our lives to look like Christ we must continually come back to these questions of;

1. Is my thinking aligning with the thinking of Christ?
2. Are my priorities in line with that thinking?

Mat 6:33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

We first must become kingdom seekers…this is our priority…

If we can get here and continually ask these questions and continue on a path of repentance and righteousness then we just might be able to go beyond the greed and materialism of western culture

Greed

Greed…Something that is destroying the western world today. Companies spend millions of dollars to get us to buy into the things they are selling. Our 21st century western world is littered with advertisments of how without their products we won’t be happy… since when does a product of any sort really bring true happiness. Seems we live in an age where people are never satisfied and yet as they continue to buy and buy, satisfaction still does not come. But it feels so good to buy that new, next thing. It feels as though you have accomplished something. You even feel successful. Consumerism and materialism seem to be  just as much an addiction as drugs or smoking.

Contentment seems to be a strange and foriegn concept today. What will it take for us to be content??? A bigger home, better car, more money, a better job to make more money, a 56 inch plasma High Def TV…what will it take???

If you could have anything what would you take?? REALLY!!

Here is a few questions for you and I would love to know your thoughts…What will it take to turn a culture that isn’t satisfied to a culture that is content? What will it take for a culture so bent on self to a culture that desires to give rather then recieve?

Seems we have lost ourselves and can’t help but find ourselves in the very things we consume….

WHO’S HOUSE????

Hag 1:7 “Thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. Hag 1:8 Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the LORD. Hag 1:9 You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the LORD of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house. Hag 1:10 Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. Hag 1:11 And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors.”

I find this passage very interesting and convicting. We see hear that the Israelites had made it back to the promised land but failed at this point to build the house of the Lord (the temple). They became to occupied with building their own house’s. As a result of this they didn’t recieve the fullness of blessing that they had access to if they had of had their priorities in order.

When we swing this into our own context it makes me wonder. Many times i have heard people complain about how God isn’t blessing or doing great wonders and miracles in the world today. “Look at the poor, look at the suffering,” is what many say. They turn and blame the current status of things on God. But I wonder if the current status of things is that our priorities have come out of wack. Maybe in our western, individual, materialistic eyes we have lost sight of what our first priority is. Have we lost sight of God’s house and been too concerned with building our own. Having the right car, the right job, the right amount of money, the right amount of security. Seems that we might have lost sight of God’s house and focused on our own.

Perhaps we need to do as Paul calls us to do and renew our minds. Perhaps we need to get our priorities in check. Perhaps we need to ask ourselves who’s house are we building. Our own or God’s????

Easter Weekend

It is a wonderful time of the year for all the world. In this weekend not only did Jesus die but he also was resurrected and rose again, and what does it all mean???

Jesus became a man. He God become flesh and was fully a man and still fully God. Jesus humbled himself and came into our darkness our sinful world in order to rescue and continue the plan of God’s redemption for all creation. As a man Jesus never sinned and suffered humiliation, pain, temptation, rejection and even death. He suffered everything and more then what we as human beings suffer. He came into our fallen, dark, sinful world and lived a perfect life continuing in and as a part of the trinity in perfect holiness (perfect relationship) with the Father and the Holy Spirit. And by his death he was reconciling all things to himself (2 Cor. 5).

So yes our sins were forgiven once and for all and that sin was alienation from God. So through Jesus life and death and resurrection we are ALL reconciled to the Father, adopted as sons and daughters and in that we now can become a new creation thanks to Jesus (2 Cor. 5). We can experience eternal life which is our ability to have relationship with God now. Eternal life starts now and carries on to all eternity. Jesus started and showed us a new way of living (kingdom of God) and his death and resurrection was the central part of that kingdom. And through his life, death and resurrection we can now become a new creation and begin to live in God’s new life, in the kingdom of God. Thanks to Jesus life, death and resurrection God through Jesus began the process of reconciliation of all things. Because the bible says that Jesus came to bring us life and life to the full. His life shows us how we can have that life. By living a life in relationship with God, and through that relationship we experience healing, love, joy, grace, mercy FULLNESS OF LIFE. Thanks to Jesus becoming a man and living, dying and rising again we have an inheritance of fullness of life in Jesus FOR TODAY.

The resurrection is the central part of God’s plan in the redemption and reconciliation of all things. This is God’s plan from the beginning. When Adam and Eve sinned God made a promise. The finishing line of God’s plan is new heavens and new earth (Rev. 21, 2 Pet. 3). A fully redeemed world where sin and death do not exist and God dwells with his people just as he did in the Garden of Eden. The bible says that Jesus resurrection is the first fruits of what we are to become. We will all resurrect in the second coming and in that second coming is when God redeems all things and we have a new earth and a new heavens and we have new bodies and we dwell with God on earth.

Thus the resurrection is the very thing that we hold on to for hope. It is the proof that God will one day make the world right again. That he will redeem and make all things new. It is also the victory over the devil and sin and death and we stand in union with God in his great plan of redemption. We participate in what God is doing in the world which is redemption of all things and that’s where we stand. We stand knowing that in this world there is a lot of pain, suffering and darkness but our hope is that God’s plan is a fully redeemed world and OUR JOB is to partner with him in bringing heaven to earth, BECAUSE that is what is to come.

Thank you Jesus for being a God who is in and through all things and who holds all things together and a God that is so big as this would come into my world and save me and give me a purpose and family to exist in.

INDONESIA

Here is a picture of some of our students and teachers… we had such a great time in Indonesia. The students were so hungry for God’s Word. They did a great job learning the inductive method. We are mostly excited about the fact that a lot of the students were pastors and church planters and so they will be taking what they learned and spreading it to their churches and villages all over Indonesia.

Thanks for all your prayers and support …you have helped spread the kingdom and a biblical worldview to the Indonesian people.

The importance of the Environment

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Check out this website and watch the video it is very important