-
Why Your Suffering Matters: What 1 Peter Teaches About Pain, Growth and Love
A return to Broken Hill after 35 years prompted a reflection on how quickly life passes. Drawing on 1 Peter 4, this article explores why suffering is not something to fear, but something God can use to shape us into people who love Him and others more deeply.
-
Two Kinds of Power: Why Love Is Stronger Than Control
We are living in a moment where power matters more than ever. But there are two kinds of power: the power to control and the power to love. Which one shapes your life?mili
-
Why the Lights of Christmas Change Everything
Christmas lights are more than decoration. They remind us that light comes into darkness, that sadness is sometimes sane, and that Christmas invites us into a different reality shaped by love.
-
What the church is meant to be…
The church was never meant to be a service to attend or a hierarchy to climb. Jesus calls us to be His witnesses: a body where every part matters, a family where every member belongs, and a temple where God dwells by His Spirit.
-
The Baby versus the King: A Christmas Revolution
Herod’s power faded, but Jesus’ name endures forever. The baby redefined power, justice, and love, showing true leadership lifts the weak and blesses the nations.
-
Two words we need to reclaim: Intimacy and Chastity
I think it’s a travesty that the word intimate has been adopted by our culture mainly to mean sexual. We all need intimate relationships. For Jesus, the central question is loving each other and there is no way to love someone without letting them into your heart. Coming and bouncing off people on a Sunday morning is not what Jesus has in mind. He is talking about the kind of relationships where people actually know the best of you and they know the worst of you. Consider these words: I don’t think our culture shapes us to do this. I don’t think we believe the church is a place where…
-
We need to rediscover the self-giving generosity that actually is love, and stop settling for cheap imitations.
We received our postal ballot in the mail today. For those overseas who might not be aware, Australians are being invited to express their opinion on the legalisation of same-sex marriage. While it is not really a referendum, the Government have declared that they will base their policy on the result of what is, in fact, a giant opinion poll. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the whole question and what it means to be a follower of Jesus in this moment in our countries history. More people have read that reflection than anything else I have written in the last seven years, which gives an idea how…
-
A message to those who Kill us: Thank You, We Love You and We are Praying for you
As the world struggles to come to terms with another senseless bombing, I thought I would post the remarkable words of Father Boules George, a Coptic priest, speaking the day after a bomb killed 49 worshippers in his church in Alexandria. I spoke on Sunday about the paradoxical heart of the Gospel, and the words of this man are the clearest example I have seen for a long time of what it means to be an agent of God’s love in the face of violence and brokenness. Fr. George demonstrates with remarkable clarity how the love of God defeats the power of violence and hate. A MESSAGE TO THOSE WHO KILL…
-
Good Friday is a reminder of a completely different approach to life… a life that actually produces life by being willing to die…
It’s Good Friday. Today we celebrate the execution of a young Jewish man who made some startling claims. Very few serious historians doubt the historicity of the death of Christ by crucifixion, and one of the peculiar things about this moment in history is that his followers came to claim that his execution was actually a victory, not only so but they also claimed that one of the most common things this young Jewish man said was that his followers were to follow his example and be ready to suffer in the same way he had. The gospels record the 33 year old carpenter as saying we must take up our…
-
Lets stop settling for desires far below what we were created for.
Recently I spoke about the fact that words like Peace, Love, Hope and Joy express deep longings we all have, but that we end up settling for “stuff” that promises to deliver these longings but never does. Over the last couple of nights I have been reading a book that has given me new language to understand just how profound that settling for less actually is. Regular readers of Faith Reflections will know how much the books of N.T. (Tom) Wright have had on my heart and mind. There has been a deep relief as I encountered his writing because I found him expressing the truth of the bible in a…
-
When I saw the Toyota commercial I had to write something. This Christmas, lets not settle for the imitation.
Many of the words that we use around Christmas time are actually placeholders, attempts to name experiences that no word can adequately capture. Words like hope, peace, love and joy that sound simple, are actually anything but. Our church has been journeying through the advent season and week by week looking at these words. This past weekend I was speaking about love and on Christmas eve I will be speaking about Joy. As I reflect on my own life, and as I talk to others, one of the constants is that all of us have different moments we can point out where we have experienced things we would call real hope, real peace, real love…
-
I am glimpsing both the kind of family and kind of church I want to be part of
I loved the week I spent with my two eldest children, driving 2,500 km from Edmonton to Vancouver and back in 5 days. My daughter Maddi needed to renew her passport, which must be done in person and at the consulate. 24 hours in a car gives a lot of time for incidental conversation. It also gives a lot of time to listen to music any anything else we happened to have on our phones. I felt old. We caught up with friends in Vancouver. Sam and Danni both worked with Fusion in Australia and are closer in age to Josh and Maddi than me. It was helpful for me…
-
Marriage isn’t easy, but true love is so much richer than the anaemic imitation that we see on the silver screen.
I love teaching about love and sexuality, both because it is such a huge issue that is largely avoided in the Christian church and also because l have spent the last 21 on a journey trying to learn what it means to be married. I have written before about how I love Leeanne. Loving someone though doesn’t mean that the relationship will be simple. I haven’t yet met a person married for more than 6 weeks who would say their relationship was simple. Marriage is complicated and marriage is a commitment. One of the big ideas I am always keen to communicate in a discussion about relationships is the difference between what…
You May Also Like
The moments when you decide your core values are actually the biggest turning points of your life.
There is no question that women have not been seen or valued by the church in the way that Jesus saw or valued them. #ThingsOnlyChristianWomenHear
We need to learn to live from grace, despite the dots.
-
One beautiful, colorful, challenging and confronting picture…..
I’m sitting in the Virgin Australia lounge at Melbourne airport watching planes come in and out and waiting for my turn to board one of them. I have seen again today how important it is to step out of your normal world and engage with others. Missiologist Ralph Winter identified two structures within the body of Christ, the mission group and the local church. Mission groups come in all shapes and sizes. In many ways a mums group is a mission group, and so is a business breakfast and so is an artists colony and so is an organisation like Fusion. Most of us find our way into a mission…
-
Family is a place of grace. The church is meant to be that too.
Its Christmas evening and we are relaxing in front of National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. it’s a very deep movie…. (not!) Today has been a special day. Last night we stayed up and watched the carols, and then did the obligatory late shift getting organised for the morning. There was the normal moment of disorientation for me as I heard excited voices from the lounge room at about 6:30 then I remembered what day it was. The kids loved their presents, although I’m noticing that each year the gifts decrease in physical size and increase in cost…. A highlight for me was being with four generations of my family. My grandmother…
