Category: life

Last week was PF#001 (see here). This week is PF#002. Appreciate your prayers. Feel free to pass on any prayer points. It’s our soccer Grand Final tomorrow. You don’t have to pray that we’d win… but we’d love you to come and watch. 3pm at Fagan’s Park, Point Claire.

PRAISE:
>The stimulating time at the Theology of Youth Ministry conference (today is day 2)
>That Jesus came to serve and give his life as a ransom (Matthew 20:28)

PRAYER:
>For the Vinks in Tanzania (pictured) as they prepare for home assignment in Australia.
>That ccecyouth would be a ministry that equips teenagers to live counter-culturally

Around the web:
A fan of our podcast
Funny kid
Only place I go for fonts

Have a good weekend! HEY… BY THE WAY… THIS IS MY 100th POST!!! Feel free to congratulate me…

The following quote is from here

Mary J. Blige says she has found religion, but she makes no apologies for her earthly materialism. In fact, she says God has willed her to wear bling.

“My God is a God who wants me to have things,” the singer tells May’s Blender magazine. “He wants me to bling. He wants me to be the hottest thing on the block. I don’t know what kind of God the rest of y’all are serving, but the God I serve says, ‘Mary, you need to be the hottest thing this year, and I’m gonna make sure you’re doing that’.”

I don’t think Mary and I serve the same God. What do you think?

Today has been a great day in the two high schools I teach scripture and run Christian groups. In the first school we had a great time during year 9 scripture. There were about 10 students and they were all engaged in reading Luke 22-23 and the events leading up to the death of Jesus. To kick off I asked them what their last request would be if they knew they were going to be executed the following day. This was an interesting kick-off because you can imagine the answers that some year 9 boys are inclined to give! The rest of the lesson was simple. We read through the text, stopping to work out what words meant and summarising along the way. One of the key things that we reflected on was the way different people responded to Jesus. This all culminated in the different response from the second criminal who recongnises that he himself is guilty, that Jesus isn’t and then asks (in his last request) that Jesus would remember him as he comes into his kingdom. It was great to be able to talk to the students about how they will respond to Jesus and the how to be brought into paradise with Jesus.

The lunchtime Christian group was a bit crazy today at the first school… but the exciting thing is that a yr7 girl that has recently started coming to the group and to youth group keeps bringing different friends each week. If praying, pray that they would keep coming and that they would put their trust in Jesus’ death and resurrection.

At the second school we had an interesting time as we continued reading through the Gospel According to John. Half way during lunch time there was a student (who I have invited to come to the group every time I teach him in scripture) and 10 of his friends who showed up to the group. We were just about to start reading the Bible… as they walked in I thought that I needed to change the passage that we were about to read to make the most of the opporunity. Since they were a little bit rowdy… after meeting them all I said in a loud voice: “Today we are going to be looking at a part of the Bible where people tried to get Jesus stoned!” This certainly got their attention. It only took about 5 seconds for one of them to realise I was probably talking about rocks and not drugs! The kick-off question was what types of thing do you think people would have been stoned for 2000 years ago. We then proceeded to read the latter parts of John 8 and reflect on why the Jews wanted to throw rocks at Jesus. This was fun to work through as we talked about what it meant when Jesus said “I am” and we even had one of our visitors give a blow by blow history of Moses (based on his recent viewing of the Prince of Egypt!). We concluded with thinking about how we ought to respond to Jesus if he is God.

What do you think of my play on words to get the attention of the group? Clever? Or dishonouring to Jesus?

Praise God that many non-Christians heard the good news of Jesus today. Thanks for reading this far… I think it’s my longest post ever!

Steve Irwin was passionate. Steve Irwin was a nut. It could be said that Steve Irwin was a passionate nut! However, what ought to be most striking to the Christian about Steve Irwin was that he (most probably) didn’t have his trust in Jesus. Knowing this we ought to be even more saddened over his death and everyone else who dies without knowing Jesus. On this week’s episode of On the Poddy we talk about him and some reflections from the Bible.

Listening to Steve Irwin sound clips last night on the radio, I was reminded of his exuberance, enthusiasm and energy for that which he was passionate. It’s reported that his passion was genuine and that what you saw on camera was what you got.

There are many things that people are passionate about: animal rights, human rights, politcal views, favourite sporting team, holden or ford, pc or mac, food, other people, etc… Even Christians are passionate about a whole variety of things. What I struggle with is the lack of passion that I observe Christians have for Jesus and the gospel of His death and resurrection. I’m not pointing the finger at other people any more than I am pointing the finger at myself.

Why do you think we are often not as passionate about Jesus than we are about other stuff? How ought we express our passion?

This comes from a sermon by John Piper entitled Holy Ambition: To Preach Where Christ Has Not Been Named. The talk is from Romans 15:18-24. Piper turns his attention to the children during the talk. H/T to the boys from www.therebelution.com

You can read, listen or watch the entire talk here . By the way, the www.desiringgod.org website has been updated with even more sweet stuff.

What do you think? What’s your Holy Ambition?

18 months ago I sent out a prayer letter. Issue 2 has yet to come out!! Everytime that James & Anita post on their blog they have prayer points. Another friend Marty sends out a couple of brief prayer points every two weeks via email. These are both easy to maintain. Therefore…. let me introduce you to……. Prayer Point Friday. My aim is to have a couple of prayer points each Friday. That means if you are not interested in reading what I write from Monday–Thursday but would like to pray for us… you can easily do it here. Also if you want to leave any brief prayer points in the comments section… we’d love to pray for you…

PRAISE:
>Row’s health better since finding allergies (she’s 26 tomorrow!)
>The encouragement of our growth group

PRAYER:
>David’s sermon this Sunday night on Matt 22
>That we would boast in the cross (Gal 6:14)

Around the web:
An Emerging Church Primer by Justin Taylor
Post-everythings by Tim Keller
Youth ministry tip by David Miers
Brilliant tool by ESV

Guessing competition: where was the above photo taken?

Here is the headline from a story in SMH yesterday: Youth leader escapes jail for dead possum prank (h/t Michelle). The youth group leader had a bunch of youth group boys with him when they decided to drag a dead possum behind the car that he was driving. They didn’t hurt the possum… it was already dead… but the family of the possum were humiliated by the abnormal funeral service. Some observations:

• I can see the humour in this story
• I can imagine youth group leaders I know doing this type of prank***
• I think the Magistrate overreacts
• People are watching Christians (including youth group leaders) wanting them to slip up
• Why does this article about an Australian written in an Australian newspaper use the American spelling for gaol??
• Youth group leaders need to make sure that they don’t do stupid stuff ever… but particularly when they are with teenagers… it’s not their name at stake but God’s Holy Name.
• I used to have an imaginary friend named Possum. He was a Possum.

***Hey Dan remember when one of your old youth group leaders dragged you behind his car??? The only difference was you were on a skateboard, you weren’t a dead possum, and you had to go to hospital after falling off! (BTW – the leader wasn’t me!)

Have you ever been a youth group leader? What’s the stupidest thing you have done in that role?

The picture is me as a girl… quite ugly… thanks for drawing it Kelly… it’s now in the bin.