Quotes

Some cool quotes from our magical, 'manly', marvellous study leader Matt.

- Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and famous?" Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." - Nelson Mandela

- young people have the unique position of being the people of God today and the promise of God for tomorrow
- bad things happen when good people do nothing
- it is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what we are not
- seizing the day may well result in one's untimely death, but living sheepishly already has - Jason Merchey
- We often think that the church is here for us.... but we forget that we are the church and we are here for the world
-what you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say- Emerson
- Into the hands of every individual is given a marvellous power for good or evil- the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the constant radiation of what man really is, not what he pretends to be- William Jordan

Music Requests

A quick request-

does anyone have the music/ or sound recording for either 'Angie' by the Rolling Stones or 'don't play that song for me' by Aretha Franklin?

One of my piano kids wants to learn them and I need some help to arrange them at a suitable level for him to play and uni is not being very helpful at all!

Camp Post 2006

Woo hoo! I'm back from camp for another year and this years was deffinately the most full on for me personally. But here are some highlights

- fully kicked ass in 'Bang' -prob got a bit too into it for a 'responsible' leader but I now know my true calling should include a gun.
- Marks 'Jesus is my Bonahomie' T-shirt with a juggling Jesus.
- 1st night the girls in my cabin getting into tops 5 not only of campers but also a leaders version which got to the stage where I had to tell them to shut up. That was the only time I ever had to have a go at them though- other than 1 disscusing the 'advice' she was going to put in peoples warm fuzzies- and I had to say that I didn't think it was really warm fuzzy material!
- Great cabin of girls and small group- which was almost totally made up of kids from my small group last year- poor kids having to put up with me 2 years in a row!
- plenty of 'ya mum' jokes
-Kellys lamo knock knock jokes! :) - Kelly tries!
- Missing kids who'd been on camp the last 2 years but getting to see kids from last year and how much they'd grown and also meeting new kids
- Roll up Roll up the circus freaks are here
- Kids trying to find and accuse a non-existant mole and stealing turtels in our wide, or is it wiered or wild, games
- give something back day
- Having to take a kid to hospital over a little scratch cos their tetness was 2 months out of date.
- Trying to use reverse pshycology on the camp manager back fired!
- finally getting to experience my own mostash and beard- and beer gut and as attractive as I look with both I am more than happy the way I am.
-Muck up day! and the leader amo being spilt before we had a chance to use it :( but no issues washing stuff out of hair like last year!
- came down with a really heavy case of the flu on the wed afternoon which sucked and I'm still recovering from now.
- having the flu did mean that I couldn't smell the build up of boys farts in the leaders room or the musty bag smell in my cabin which was attacked with cheap girls deoderent- which apparently made the smell worse. and I smelt none of it!
- Spiro night was a tough one for me this year and I really struggled with some of the things that went on- to the point that at one stage felt like that was the last place on earth I wanted to be which was a horrible feeling that I'd never ever felt on camp before - luckely it didn't last long and I was back to loving camp.
- Last night went off! circus tent created a great atmosphere, every single person had a fantastic costume, the carnie games I thought might flop worked a treat and we had the best dance party of any camp I've ever been on!- to the point that Mark, dressed as a grey lion/ koala had to chase of a number of gate crashes who thought there was a massive party going on.

And once again sad to be leaving youth 1 for another year, with the added fact that it may have been the last time at halls.

Abounding in hope

Discipleship- chapter 12
Abounding in Hope

- F.R. Maltby used to say that Jesus promised his disciples three things: they would be absurdly happy, completely fearless and in constant trouble!
- Joy and woe were woven fine at Pentecost, and have been ever since when the Spirit has moved in refreshing and renewing power upon God’s people.
- Our lives, personally and corporately, are like the seasons of the year. It cannot always be harvest. All sunshine makes a desert is a wise Arabian proverb. We need the cold, hard winter’ we need the rain. Yet through those bleaker days we also need the hope of spring and summer: If winter comes can spring be far behind?
- In practical terms, it means dying to our respectability, dying to our rights and privileges, dying to our prejudices, dying to our ambitions, dying to our comforts, dying to our independence and self-sufficiency, dying to our self-preservation. Unless we die to ourselves in these and other ways, there will be no fruit, no harvest and no hope for this world.
- When we are not willing for the cost of discipleship and for the price of spiritual renewal, it reveals that we are holding on to our lives, clinging to our temporal privileges and insecure in the love of God. We are afraid that, if we let go, God may leave us with nothing but himself. What a terrible indictment about our faith, hope and love.
- The apostle Paul had one supreme ambition, that of knowing Christ more and more.
- If we know God only when the sun is shining, our knowledge will be superficial, but when we trust him in the storms, the relationship will mature.
- God is love, and such is the nature of God’s love that he gave his only Son for the sake of the world. God’s love always gives, it is never marked by sacrificial service. We must open our lives to the love of God, and open our hearts to one another. Such vulnerability will lead to pain, but also to a living hope and to the possibility of God’s love reaching those who are harassed and helpless.
- Paul mentioned the depressing spiritual blindness that kept so many from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. He referred also to the physical and mental exhaustion experienced by many dedicated Christian workers, and talked about being afflicted, perplexed, persecuted and struck down.
- Not only can we know God for ourselves, but God has called us to be ambassadors of Christ and to bring his love and mercy to others.
- Aim at Heaven and you will get earth thrown in: aim at earth and you will get neither.

fantastic, freaky, friday!

For placement this semester I'm at an aged care facility every friday, and every second friday I'm there by myself with out my supervisor- which is both a pro and a con all at the same time.

Anyway, yesterday I was there on my own and one guy I see each week who I don't think is too old but it's hard to tell as he is very diabled with scoliosis and parkinsonism and suffered from a stroke but such a nice guy! And I made him laugh out loud 3 times!!! thats huge and it's the first time I've heard him laugh out loud like that before and the amount of physical effort it must have taken him..... made my day cos' the other sessions were shambles- 1st guy was asleep, so I decided to leave him be. other lady was very figity, just wouldn't stop chattering about unrelated stuff that I had no idea what she was going on about- so I just had to start singing over the top of her sometimes and then she'd join in (still can't believe how well they remember words and melodies of songs so well when they can't remember much else!) and the last lady has a tendancy to be quite aggressive and she seemed very grumpy and didn't want anything to do with anyone so I decided not to push it and just went home!

Good day for sport 2!
After practically giving up on Melbourne's finals hopes after dropping from 4th to 7th in a weekend, I'm very happy to report that we are still around- if only just! And in soccer we drew, which is great for us. I got another goal!! but agian it didn't count- but I am determined to actually get a goal that counts and that is kicked from the correct area and not after the ref suddenly decides to blow the whistle!
I also performed a nice race after the ball and kick on the run but forgetting to stop which ended with me smashing into the wall- which turned out to be very amusing to our amazing cheer squad.

The values of the kingdom and life in society

Christians in the early centuries lived a lifestyle that was set free from the values and attitudes that bound many Romans, ‘fear of the occult, quest for status, quest for material security, and fear of foreigners’. Naturally decisions by rulers and others in authority related to those values! Some kingdom values may be identified in the sermon on the mount, the context which elaborates on ‘beautiful works’:

-Humility that comes from knowing our own weakness and failures with a joy that comes from being forgiven
-Concern for what is right and merciful and pure
-Active peace making, seeking for reconciliation (and not a passive ‘peace-loving’ quest for security)
-Goodness that is ‘beautiful’ (sadly some goodness can seem cold and unloving)
-Awareness of the pernicious results of anger and of the harbouring of grudges
-Respect of the personhood of the opposite sex and of the integrity of marriage: for men, women are not to be treated as objects.
-Importance of truth and integrity in public utterances
-Love of enemies (Mel Gibson’s film The Passion Christ highlighted this in Jesus’ words and actions: while the film was violent, it was the first film from Hollywood in which ‘bad’ violence was not defeated by ‘good’ violence)
-Doing good without wondering ‘what benefit or kudos will I get in return’ (how many political decisions and giving of aid relate to benefits in return?)
-Recognition of the seductive power of Mammon (why does Jesus say more about money and status than about prayer and sexuality?)
-Dependence on a generous Father, free from worry about security
-Hope that transcends appearances: the prayer ‘your kingdom come’ will be answered

What will these mean in political debate? Politics is how a polis (city state) works as a unit, with all the competing demands and interests of its citizens. Christians are to take part as citizens - as Christian citizens. We have responsibility to live and speak the values of the Kingdom. The way of Christ is:
-not the Constantinian model of imposition (which sadly the Church has used and some Christians still desire)
-not the model of withdrawal, since light is to shine in darkness and salt is to be spread around.
-but a pattern of incarnation, a model of participation, living different values with sacrificial service despite opposition, being like Christ.

The city of Jerusalem was to be a ‘light to the nations’, joyfully sharing blessings with open doors. Human ‘cities/states’ tend to be like Babel, building walls to safeguard prosperity and security of people ‘like us’. In contrast, Jesus speaks of ‘salt of the earth … light of the world’. As citizens we seek the well-being of the city – the nation as a whole – but in a way that actively shares blessings and prosperity with the world. We promote actions that share.

At times Christian action will be like salt, helping to preserve what is good in society or making life more pleasant and enjoyable. At other times it will be like light, exposing injustice and untruth and sectional interests, setting free from various forms of bondage and injustice, drawing attention to forgotten people, pointing to a better way, showing how it is possible to be peacemakers and to do justice and be concerned for the wider world for their benefit, pointing to new life in Christ.

Central is prayer – ‘Father in heaven, Your kingdom come’. Go through the items and tease out their relevance for praying for our nation. Pray for wisdom and strength to ‘do your will on earth as it is in heaven’. Living out the faith that Christ alone has all authority and that he intends his words to be followed is being ‘salt and light’, bringing glory to our Father in heaven. - John Olley

The cost of Discipleship

Discipleship- chapter 11
The Cost of Discipleship

-Jesus never promised an easy life to those who followed him. It is true he came to meet the deepest needs of every one of us. Only in him can we find forgiveness for the past, a new life for the present, and a glorious hope for the future.- p.231
- Jesus was so honest about the cost of discipleship that many of the enthusiastic crowds who flocked after him turned back and no longer went with him.
- In worldly terms it means a life of constant uncertainty and insecurity but in spiritual terms it means a life of continuous certainty in things not seen, and of total security in the love of God.
- With Jesus it is all or nothing. To be in the kingdom of God is to accept Jesus as King and if Jesus is King, his word has authority and must be obeyed. - p.232
-Those first Christians learnt obedience, whatever the cost in terms of personal sacrifice.
- Everything ultimately depends on God’s grace- his undeserved love as he takes the initiative in reaching out to us when we are lost and helpless. –p.234
- Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believe, it is a sign of deliberate or unconscious disobedience, only the devil has an answer for our moral difficulties, and he says, “Keep on posing problems and you will escape the necessity of obedience”. –p.235
- And the basis of the good works that James is talking about in his epistle is obedience to the word of God: ‘Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves’.
- Many Christian acts are valid and good. But they mean nothing, if Jesus is not obeyed in our private lives. –p.236
- You must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. –p.239
- But we often have to learn the hard way that God’s word is right his instructions are good. We are free to ignore them if we want to, but we are not free to ignore the consequences. –p.240
- In this new realm, our relationship with everyone and everything must therefore be ‘in Christ’ if it is to be good and right in the sight of God. –p.241
- Christian life in a non-Christian world is tension, tress and at times even agony.
- WE are called, as disciples of Christ to share our lives together, and, if need be, our possessions together. We are to open our hearts to one another, take off our masks, become real and honest. And when fellowships of Christians try seriously to do this in the power of the Holy Spirit, they will soon discover two things. 1st they will find deep and loving relationships as brothers and sisters in Christ and this can prove enormously enriching and fulfilling. But 2nd, they will also find pain, since we are still angular and sinful persons who, huddling together for warmth, hurt and jab one another. The temptation then will be to separate, to pull back to a safe and less painful distance, to erect little barriers, and to protect ourselves from those vulnerable deep relationships where we are likely to get hurt again and again. In so doing, we shall destroy or at least greatly weaken, the love and unity that Christ commanded, prayed for, died for and sent his Spirit to accomplish. –p.244
-God’s glory is to be seen today in the church. No one has ever seen God. Writes John ‘ if we love one another, God abides in us’-p.245
- Our own Christian brother will heap on us his sin- his anger, judgement, frustration, accusation, demands, fears. The challenge to us is not to return our own sin. If we want unity in the biblical sense, scriptural teaching is that it will cost us our lives in give ness to the Lord and to each other. That kind of fellowship is produced by gentleness, and the price of gentleness is brokenness of spirit.- p.246