Category Archives: Uncategorized

God’s gifts in suffering (8) Suffering teaches us to number our days

Life, Sola Panel, Sola Panel

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You can read the previous posts in this series here: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6 and part 7.

flickr: Robert Couse-Baker

All our days pass away under your wrath;
we bring our years to an end like a sigh.
The years of our life are seventy,
or even by reason of strength eighty;
yet their span is but toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away…
So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom. (Ps 90:9-10, 12)

When you’re young, life seems long and full of promise. A young woman told me she hopes Jesus doesn’t come back till she’s experienced career, marriage, children. I remember thinking the same when I was eighteen. Life stretched ahead, and I wanted to see and do it all. Can you recall it? Standing at the brink, ready to plunge in? (more…)

Reviewing Hope Beyond Cure

Review, Sola Panel

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Cancer has become the leading cause of death in Australia and almost every other country, according to a major international World Health Organization (WHO) study (link to report). Everyone knows someone who is impacted. Sadly too many! And—to state the obvious—not everyone gets better from a cancer diagnosis. (more…)

Editorial: The main thing

Editorial

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Forgive me, for I’m going to talk briefly about The Hobbit. I watched the second movie just the other day—let’s just say I enjoyed it more than the first one. For someone who loved both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (I read them approximately once a year growing up) I thought the mood and the setting of Middle Earth was captured wonderfully. It is, however, considerably different from the book. (more…)

Growing through Christian history

Pastoral Ministry, Thought, Sola Panel

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One of the quotes that stayed with me from last year said this about historians:

“Without them, our civic life would be a wasteland of forgetfulness, a cultural desert.” [Source]

I think the same is true of our church life. As Christians we need to know something of our history. The basic deposit of our faith is the gospel of Jesus, in the whole inspired counsel of God in the Scriptures. (more…)

Don’t teach the Bible

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A simple test of a good teacher is to ask what they teach. If their answer is Maths, English, Science, History or Geography, they probably don’t understand their role. If they say students, pupils, young people, or adults, there is a possibility that they know their trade. Of course, such a simple test is simplistic; word games are not reality. The answers would be different if the question was who they teach. Yet there is a truth in this little test; teaching is a relational activity.

Certainly teaching involves subject material; there is content to be conveyed. But the aim of the exercise involves conveying information from one person to another. The best teachers do more than convey information; they whet the appetite for learning, they develop the student’s capacity to understand, analyse, explore and discover other information. The well-taught student is not limited to the information their teacher has imparted to them. Good education is not really a curriculum matter but a teaching skill that relies heavily on the relationship the teacher can develop with the student. (more…)

Editorial: Multi-tasking by drawing

Editorial

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One of the neat tools I’ve got in my Bible-study-leader’s kit bag is getting people to represent a passage visually on a big blank sheet of paper. It’s a particularly useful tool for the epistles, where there is often a tight chain of logic we need to tease out if we’re to read and understand the passage properly. (more…)

God’s gifts in suffering (6) God gives us strength to endure, not escape

Life, Sola Panel

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You can read the previous posts in this series here: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5.

9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor 12:9-10)

flickr: Nouhailler

I know what I want. I told God so today. I’d like a guarantee that things are going to get better. We’ve reached the end of this particular time of suffering. Happiness is on the other side of the door, knocking. But the days go by, and, yes, things do get better – my son learns to manage his condition, my sorrow and bewilderment retreat – but life is still draining and difficult. Tears are never far away. We’re not yet in the land where leaves heal sorrow (Rev 22:1-4).

Maybe I’ll find the guarantee I want in the Bible. (more…)

→ Just do what I told you

Link

Steve Leston has a great post in the GoThereFor.com Ideas section on what God has asked us to do:

When he asked me that question, I did not realize at the time how important that simple question is in all areas of life. It is amazing how often we as humans fail to do what people ask us to do. In school, marriage, work… we can often get side-tracked doing all the things we were not asked to do, while missing the very essence of what we aresupposed to do.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the ministry. Jesus is so clear with what he asks of ministers in his church, yet we can get so caught up in the things he said not to worry about. What did Jesus ask his disciples to do? Jesus made it pretty clear that they were sent out to do something very specific…

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A quick note on discussion

Editorial

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One of the things I really value about online publishing is the way that useful and edifying discussion can take place quickly, while the original thoughts are still fresh. Very often the comment threads at The Briefing are like this, and we don’t have any intention of shutting that down.
(Of course, online discussion can be toxic—see YouTube comments as a prime example—but discussion here has very rarely descended to that level, and those who have done so are the extreme minority.) (more…)

Meet Angelo, GoThereFor.com’s First Subscriber

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Last week Matthias Media launched GoThereFor.com, an online world of resources, ideas and encouragement for disciple making. We were keen to get to know some of our subscribers a little better and find out how they planned on using the resources now available to them on GoThereFor.com. We caught up with GoThereFor.com’s first subscriber, Angelo Porcu. (more…)

Disciple-making discipleship in your church DNA

Resource Talk

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In this 11 minute video, Tony Payne (Publishing Director) and Marty Sweeney (North American Ministry Director) talk about the practicalities of growing a culture of disciple-making in your church. In other words, answering the question: “I’ve read ‘The Trellis and the Vine’. What do I do now?” (more…)