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Jesus Life Culture Design #4

This post comes to you live from Rooty Hill! Had an awesome time with NFC Youth last night – the youth and their parents really got behind the bring a friend night – the numbers doubled… and a number of young guys prayed to become Christian and a whole bunch recommitted their lives to following Jesus!! Matt, Tash and their team are doing an incredible job in reaching Western Sydney teenagers with the goodnews of Jesus. Praise God.

Latest del.icio.us bookmarks. You can subscribe to them via RSS or just keep an eye out on the left sidebar. Here are the latest 10:

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Responding to Child Porn

Big news broke last night with the arrest of 70 people in a child porn bust. I’m glad when things like this happen. I’m not glad that they have committed terrible crimes, but I’m glad when justice seems to be done. I don’t delight in people being busted – Isaiah suggests that not even a perfect and holy God delights in judgement.

I need to be careful that I don’t look down on them as if I’m better than them, but see that but for the grace of God, I’m capable of terrible evil. Praise God that the blood of Jesus can cleanse even the vilest of sinners! At the cross, Jesus becomes sin for us, so that in him we become the righteousness of God. What a great Saviour!

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Self-harm and the Cross

ABC News has reported that Youth self-harm is up 43pc in the last decade: “In the most recent statistical year, more than 7,000 young people were taken to hospital because of self-harm. The two main causes were poisoning and cutting.” (UPDATE: expanded article)

Self-harm isn’t new, even Job was a cutter! How should Christians and Youth Pastors respond to self-harm? I don’t think there’s an easy answer, but I think that the cross of Jesus helps us to think it through.

Mark Driscoll made a great comment on teenage girls and self-harm in a recent sermon on the Cross of Jesus:

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Does God love me?

Fitting in. It’s one of the greatest desires of every teenager. That’s why teenagers form into sub-cultural groupings (emo, surfer, skater, computer nerds, rugby boys, war hammer club, North Shore Princess, mountain goats, wannabe gangsters, etc…) so that they can fit in. Teenagers will sometimes do stupid things so that they can be liked. All people just want to be accepted and ultimately to be loved.

How do you know someone loves you? And the most important question any person can ask – HOW DO I KNOW GOD LOVES ME? The Bible says with certainty that God loves us. God doesn’t just say it, but he shows it:

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Favourite Sermons

Christians should have favourite sermons. We have favourite movies. Favourite books. Favourite songs. Favourite Bible passages. We play our favourite songs again and again on our music playing devices (inclusive language to include the record and cassette generations!), why shouldn’t we also replay our favourite sermons?

I heard a sermon recently that was helpful in thinking through our motivations when we listen to sermons from celebrity preachers on our iPods. So we ought not have favourite sermons because they have been delivered by the latest celebrity preacher, but rather our favourite sermons are the ones (whether they are delivered by the celeb or your local pastor) that help us to see Jesus more clearly, proclaim Jesus more boldly, love Jesus more deeply and cling to Jesus more tightly.

I can think of at least one sermon 10 years ago that I played again and again. Have you got any favourite sermons?