ACTS 4 Lesson...

Peter and John healed a beggar in Acts chapter 3. Then they were brought before the sandhedrin. They started questioning Peter. To which he said,

ACTS 4:8Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: "Rulers and elders of the people! 9If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple and are asked how he was healed, 10then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. 11He is
" 'the stone you builders rejected,
which has become the capstone.
12Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved."

Heres a few points from this short account.

1) Peter and John acted in kindness. (v9) Do you find that amazing that they filled with the Holy Spirit were living in love! When they saw the poor beggar they had compassion and healed him because it was the kind thing to do. Note, it was not to show people their message was this or that, it was not to make a show, it was for compassion! Healing ministry is a ministry of kindness!

2) Peter and John were harassed by the religious people. This is the age old story. Whenever there is a work of God religios people get all uptight and go all legalistic! From Old Testament times, New Testament times, Wesley times, to now! Don't get caught up in the wicked religios spirit!

3) Healing is in the name of Jesus! Healing in the name of Jesus is an amazing thought. The name of Jesus is so powerful, so full of love and compassion that when commanded in the name of Jesus something starts changing in the Earth! In this case it was the mans health! Hallelujah! Remember how powerful the name of Jesus is!

4) The healing led to the gospel being preached. Peter and John healed a man which led to the gospel being preached. There is no correct order for healing and preaching because they are both preaching! They are preaching with words and actions. Lets never be so ignorant to think that the gospel must be spoken first, it doesn't matter as it is all preaching, word and deed!

5) Salvation only comes through Jesus Christ. There is no other way to heaven, eternal life. It is only through faith in Jesus Christ. Those who do not believe Him will perish. That means Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, as lovely as some may be will not inherit eternal life unless they put their faith in Jesus Christ. Think of your family and friends, you neighborhood, see the millions drifting into hell. GO and fetch them! They need saving, and only the MIGHTY name of Jesus will do!

Spiritual Gifts

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. 8To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, 9to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, 10to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. 11All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines. 1 Corinthians 12

Which of these gifts are you operating in? Not operating in any of them then I have two suggestions.

1) Get baptised in the Holy Spirit by repenting of all sin, dedicating your whole life to God, asking the God to baptise you with the Holy Spirit, then believe He is doing/has done it, then walk in and by faith.

Or

2) Step out in faith in a way that will force God to give you one of these gifts so that His will may be done, for example pray for the sick, or ask God for a word of knowledge to help in leading the lost to Christ, building up the church etc...

God determines which ones He gives, and from my experience I can see that God gives as we step out in faith and meet the challenges ahead. He chooses to give gifts to help accomplish the mission He has given us. (The Great Commission)

Step out in faith and see what happens!

5 SALVATIONS!

Last night we had the discipleship group for Plenty and Macleod and it was great! It was the last one for the term and last one as me and Sarah as not married so we gave them the choice of what they wanted to do. Option 1 was to muck around, play card games and talk, Option 2 was to pray and talk and Option 3 was to pray then do outreach. It was 50/50 between outreach and prayer so it worked well.

In the prayer time one of the youth who we have been travelling along with decided they wanted to committ their life to Christ. Hallelujah! God started speaking to her and told her to do the outreach too. So we had over half wanting to preach the gospel and heal the sick/pray for whoever they could.

We split into teams and my team started talking to a bunch of boys 15-17 years old, we preached the gospel, they were convicted and told us they wanted to be saved. We all prayed and spoke about repentance and following God, we got their phone numbers and have invited them to hang out with us. They now know they are sinners deserving hell, that God doesnt want that which is why Jesus died, and if we turn from sin and follow God we will be raised as Jesus was to eternal life! We also prayed for the infilling of the Holy Spirit and 2 of the 4 said they felt something going on in their hearts. (remember wesleys heart was strangely warmed...)

So pray for those boys and the girl! Remember that Jesus saves! Remember the gospel is the power of God to save! Lets preach it as much as we can! The more we preach it and give people the opportunity to be saved the more people will get saved! Go do likewise today!

Thers a dieing world to save!

A question...

"You seem very certain in your beliefs. What convinces you that Christianity is the one true religion?" Clint

Thanks for your comment Clint! There are lots of ways to answer this question so I hope the following question suffices, if it does not please let me know and I will try again!

God is holy and God is just. We know that there can be no darkness in light. For example, when you turn on the light you never stand there wondering if the dark will overcome the light, the light always prevails. Thats what God is like. He is light and there is no darkness in Him at all...

On the other hand we humans do have darkness in us. We all sin (fall short, miss the mark etc see the side of the blog for some definitions...) and this for one makes us guilty of breaking Gods law, and leaves a stain of sin on us.

This makes it impossible for us to be with God, because there is no darkness in light. This means we are separated from God and destined for the place where we are dealt the punishment for our sin. Hell.

But God loves us. He is desperate for us to be with Him. To have relationship with Him. He wants to give us life in its fullness and definitely not hell. So God sent Jesus to die on the cross, to take our sin, our punishment for us. So that we can be purified and be with God. When Jesus, who is blameless and without sin, died on the cross He took our sin, and as He rises we too can rise with Him.

That is why Jesus is the only way. He is the only one that has, or can take away our sin leading us to a relationship with God. God is holy. God is just. And only by His grace can we be saved.

Once again, there are many reasons... Let me know what you think.

What to do

I remember when there were discussions around about if we should just evangelise, or evangelise and serve or just serve. There were two very distinctive groups, and I remember being stuck in the middle.

One group was that we shouldn’t waste our time on serving people. It’s better just to get them saved, that’s more important. The other was don’t preach it, rather just love them and they will find God. And I was in the middle saying can’t we do both? Why do they need to be separated?

The answer is they don’t need to be separated. Serving people is showing people Gods love. It’s a response from our heart to love God and love others. It’s about sharing the grace of God, whether that’s through a meal and a shelter, or an evangelistic sermon, or a talk over the coffee table.

These days there are people who try to write off the ministry of signs and wonders. They say we should just preach it, or preach it and act out of love. Then there are the people on the other side who say we should only preach with signs and wonders. (I haven’t met anyone from this side yet though…)

Again I am in the middle. I believe we are to preach the gospel, and serve humanity through our own strength and by allowing God to work His saving power in their lives. There is no reason why there needs to be division again. Lets do all three and we will see that they all interact with each other.

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This was in a table but I couldn't get it to fit...

Signs no preaching

Signs and preaching

Signs and preaching and serving

Only preaching

Serving and preaching and signs

Serving and preaching

Serving no preaching

DELIVERANCE - SALVATION - BAPTISM

Last night was amazing! We had our usual group at the hall after school yesterday and we had a few new people come. One guy came early because he wanted to get right with God. I was able to speak to him about the foolish man building his house upon the sand and the wise man building upon the rocks. This worked beautifully and he immediately wanted to pray and repent.
We spent some time in prayer then as I was leaving the room he kept saying how hes going to try to be good but he still has demons in him. I wasn't 100% if they were demons but I wanted to at least pray for him. So I simply accepted the authority Jesus has given us over the demonic (luke10:19) and started quietly praying if there was anything not of God in him that it would leave. I started getting names of unclean spirits so I simply told them to leave. He started shaking and falling backwards even though I had rested my hand on his shoulder. Wanting him to know that I wasn't pushing I decided not to touch him and I kept praying. Again, as I quietly commanded the demonic to leave he kept falling backwards. Then all of a sudden he was at peace and had a great smile!

Then a couple of girls came in as we finished up. They were swearing so I simply said no swearing in church. Then we started talking about church, to which I asked, "Do you believe in God?" They said yes, but when I asked if they were heading for heaven they didn't know. So I did the good test so they could find out of they were 'good enough' to go to heaven. Of course we found out that they both were headed for hell and they didn't like that thought. So I was able to tell them about the grace of God dieing and rising again to forgive us and to wipe away it all from us. To recieive this you had to say sorry to God and choose to follow Him from now on. They agreed so we wrote down on paper all the sins we could think of. Then we lit fire as we thanked God for Jesus and for forgiveness. They then committed to following Jesus.

We then mucked around with all the other guys but then we decided everyone needed to know how to listen to God speak. So we spent time listening to God and had some very prophetic stuff coming out for each other. I was particularly impressed with one prophetic word from one girl to the other saying she could see the girl walking away from a fight and walking towards Jesus. It was a great moment!

After this we spoke of the need to follow Jesus in more detail and how it can be hard but God has sent the Holy Spirit to help us to follow Him. I then asked if they wanted to receive the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands. They all indicated they wanted to so we started praying for each other. The Holy Spirit showed up and touched our hearts, and as a sign of Him touching the inside He also touched the outside causing us all to fall to the ground. We explained that the falling to the ground was an outward sign of them letting go and letting God take over, giving God full control so that He can touch our hearts. A great peace filled the room!

We had a great time. We all had fun and encountered the living God. We gave them our new Christian show bags that have devotionals, bibles, stress balls that say Jesus loves you, and a bunch of other stuff, and we also organised a new small group to be held every week so we can learn to follow Jesus better!

Praise God because He saves!

Door to door

Candidates weekend was great! There were 75 potential candidates/cadets there and there are some very good officers that will emerge in the next few years! The weekend was lots of fun meeting up with people from all over Australia! The Turners did a great job and the commissioners came down and spoke and they were both great!

But my favorite part of the weekend was going house to house door knocking. The idea was to promote the local corps. Heres a few thoughts on it...

Its terrible how many people did it and came back saying they had never done that before without asking for money. How crazy is that? Where do people live? In their homes. So where should we be trying to get them saved? It seems obvious to me that we should go to homes, thats where sinners live. It may be a surprise to some people but sinners dont go to church! (well some do...lol) So how are they going to get saved unless we go to them?

It made me angry, disappointed and filled me with a passion for souls because out of the 75+ doing the door knocking there was only a handful preaching the gospel. Others were just trying to get people to a program or a meeting. I had the privilege of leading a young man to Christ so it can be done because it happened. Praise God for his salvation!

BUT what sort of Salvation Army are we when our candidates, future leading officers don't preach the gospel? Heres a line from a Major, (it went along a bit like this...) "You can say you preach with your life, but be like Jesus! Even Jesus spoke! Use your words!"

Heres a great positive though. The experience made people think and challenged them to do more of this sort of stuff. Heaps of people came back really excited that people accepted them, welcomed them and opened up in conversation with them. So, although the gospel wasn't preached as much as it could have been, their were shadows of the gospel as people shared stories, had compassion, loved people and prayed with them. If only we could see that Jesus is the answer to their problems!

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This morning I read some more of a book by Catherine Booth and it just so happens it was on a chapter called, "Compel them to come in." The whole chapter is about door to door evangelism.

"Dear reader, here is a sphere for you! You have long wished to do something for your 'blessed , blessed master.' Here is work, boundless in extent, and momentous beyond an angels power to conceive. For it, you need no human ordination, no long and tedious preparation, no high flown language, no towering eloquence, all you want is the full baptism in the Holy Spirit on your heart, the Bible in your hand, and humility and simplicity of manner. Thus equipped you will be mighty through God to pulling down strongholds. You will find your way to many a heart long since abandoned by hope and given up in despair, and in the great day of account you shall have many a sheaf as the result of your labor, and the the reward of your self denial."

Can you help me? I'm trying to get an exciting new project off the ground called "The Go for Souls Experiment." I cant say too much about it just yet but you will want to be in on it. If you are in Melbourne I need you. I'm looking at doing something involving evangelizing every day (including street preaching, good test, healing, prophetic evangelism etc) and need some people to help out. If you can help out one day a week, or an afternoon or morning once a week let me know... (reelbigjimmy@hotmail.com)
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Don't forget to poll your answer on whether you believe Jesus raises the dead or not. So far the people of faith are winning 14-4...
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What holds you back from evangelism? Ive heard lots of reasons from fear of what people might think to "I would but I have no idea what to say." Well heres my response for today. Give your whole life to God, He will make you holy if you do, then because you are controlled by love it will drive fear away. (Perfect love drives out all fear 1 John 4:18) All your selfishness will disappear and because that experience is so good you will want to tell people about it. Don't forget that we in The Salvation Army believe that if you believe you have the witness in yourself and listen to what Peter has to say, "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have."

First up, INSANE is going to be insane! Its a bug youth get together at the beginning of next year! Its going to be huge. If you want to donate money or help out somehow talk to 2love at THQ. But what we all should do is start praying for it! We want to see heaps of youth get saved! PRAY IT UP!




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Read this in my devotions today... It made me think because I am sure there have been times I have fallen into a couple of these categories, and it confirms my thoughts that we as the church should be a bit stricter and not so afraid of expelling the immoral brothers...

"I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world.

But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat. What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. Expel the wicked man from among you." 1 Cor 5

I've been in corps where the people in charge know there is dodgy stuff going on but they turn a blind eye because its 'none of their business...' I wonder what my life and the lives of others would look like if we were expelled for being consistently immoral... I wonder how many Officers, pastors, leaders etc have been obedient to this passage in recent times.

Also, its wise to read Matthew 18:15-17, 2 cor 2:5-8, 2 Thess 3:14-15, Titus 3:10

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About the so called art that is really porn. I just heard a politician on the news saying that he doesn't think that police should be raiding art galleries. My response is this, "Artists shouldn't be taking photos of nude 12-13 yr old girls."

STAY OR GO?

Imagine this, You've been working for years and years. Your body has been damaged, your relationships have suffered, you haven't made much money, your life has been about working. But then all of a sudden you see the end of the tunnel, you see that by a mans gift to you, you can live like a King in a mansion. Every tear will be wiped away, you can live in peace, not having to worry about anything. You can be in paradise! And then you say, no thanks, not yet, the work I am doing is more important for this time...

What would you do? If you were taken to Paradise right now would you want to come back? If you could escape all your fears, worries, concerns, struggles, pain, enemies etc would you choose to stay here or go on? Why?

Paul gives us this testimony, "I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body."

Paul saw something that we only say we believe. He saw that if people did not have Jesus then they were destined to spend eternity in the lake of fire. He was consumed with this compassion for the lost, he didn't want anyone to go to hell. So his life reflected that longing. He decided that staying in the body was important for other peoples salvation.

I know for myself that I know alot of the stuff about salvation, grace, faith, heaven and hell. Its easy, most Christians know that you need Jesus to be saved. But how many of us are filled with enough compassion to do something about it? How many of us structure our lives on trying to lead people into a saving relationship with Jesus?

Are you waiting for heaven or are you ready to fight for the Salvation of the world?

Christian Malpractice

What is more loving? To not tell people about sin hell and judgment and to have a nice chat to them, eventually building a relationship with them, then after a while begin to talk about how Jesus saves? OR to tell people, to warn people of their choices and to encourage them to accept Gods grace?

Watch this video, its in response to the nooma video Bullhorn...



What do you think?

Community Evangelism

As a youth worker I am always thinking about how to reach as many youth as possible to win them for Christ. There are a few different ways that different youth groups go about reaching the lost and I am not satisified with them!

1) Entertainment - This is the type of youth group I was brought up in. We would gather as a group to have fun, to be entertained. There would be little to no mention of Jesus, the gospel or an opportunity for people to be saved. The aim is to have fun and invite them to the next program that is more gospel friendly. This form of youth group is very common especially amongst small youth groups. Community is forged through fun and with relationships one day someone might talk to them about the gospel.

2) Worship - This type of youth group revolves around a worship meeting where you simply go to a meeting to worship God and hear someone preach. You are to bring your friends to worship and the aim is that the power of God would touch them during an often emotional appeal. The gospel is preached and opportunity is given to be saved. In this method people are asked to come into a new community then stay in that community then leave it to bring more friends back. The focus of these is to get an individual saved. This method is quite common in larger groups.

The problem I have with these is that they both focus on getting the individual saved. They focus on a one person at a time theory. They both work to some extent but they have hurdles of having to change communty to be a Christian. They are both focussed on getting people into new community.

I hate that. I see in the gospels and in Acts, in the early church, early salvos, and Chineese church, not just one or two people getting saved but communities. I hate that we rip people out of one community and try to make a new community. I only understand that if we are dealing with people with absolutely no community at all. But for the majority people are in some form of community. I would much rather get communities saved than just one person at a time.

So, Im looking for ways of reaching communities and not just individuals. What do you guys reckon?

Long time no blog! Since the last blog I started up a new boys group that is awesome! We had such a good time and I can see how we will be able to preach the gospel to them in a relative way. Prayers would be greatly appreciated!
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I was listening to an old sermon last night and he was asking are you a Christian or a disciple of Jesus? Interesting question that I think we all need to ask ourselves. Are we doing the Christian thing, church, Bible, a bit of prayer, good morals etc, or are we pressing into Christ? Are we a disciple? Someone who follows Jesus, listens to Him, watches Him, and obeys Him? A disciple is someone who is turning into their master. A disciple of Jesus is radical. They are different to the world. They are revolutionaries set on changing the world... Interesting thought. Which one are you?
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Pentecost Sunday yesterday on Mothers day. Did your corps celebrate both or just mothers day or just Pentecost? We did Mothers Day, we mentioned Pentecost but are going to do it more thoroughly on another day. We had a good, clear gospel presentation. There were definitely people moved by it but I didn't see any visible signs of commitment. I do pray that the seed planted would grow though... I didn't mind doing the mothers day thing as we were doing what Pentecost was all about, preaching the good news. So I guess we did have a Pentecost meeting by preaching Jesus raised from the dead...

There seems to be some places around Salvo circles that hold youth meetings and other meetings and count all the people that are coming, they get happy with the numbers, then one day they realise that alot of the people are 1) already saved and 2) just popping in from other corps. This suggests that there is a serious lack of 1) care for the unsaved and 2) outreach to get people saved.

Our meetings have become too Christian, they have become too apatheitc, mediocre, lukewarm, selfish. My understanding of a Salvation Army meeting was to get people saved and sanctified. Today we go to sing and to 'worship.' Don't get me wrong, those things are fine. But how about this.

Instead of counting how many people are in your meeting, try counting how many people there are outside your meeting in your 1) your sphere of influence (school, work, friends, family...) and 2) your community. (town, city, suburb...) that are going to hell because no one bothered to tell them that Jesus saves, sets free, brings wholeness, forgives, accepts, heals, delivers etc

We have a good message to share, why don't you share it today. Call someone up, email, myspace, facebook, street preach.

Theres a dieing world to save

JESUS IS LORD OVER EVERYTHING

Some really cool stories here... Try read them all, they're all pretty cool, supernatural, and God glorifying! Warning: if you're not a Holy Spirit lover you may take offense...
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I'm back from camp! And yes I did get the gastro bug which a few of us are pretty certain was food poisoning... For those of you who dont know I went to a Salvo camp in Adelaide and they had to finish a day early because over 20 youth and leaders got sick! They even had to quarantine the sick (lepers) from the rest of us on the edge of camp. It reminded me how in Bible times, and some places today, that the lepers were on the outskirts of town and people would ignore them etc... So, instead of ignoring them we decided to tease them to cheer them up... One guy preached to them and a couple got saved! Hallelujah! The week was great hearing RC, SC and AW and others preach! The last night was awesome, the leaders had a powerful prayer time beforehand where we sung Awesome God followed by an outbreak of shouting praises to our king! The night ended with demons getting booted out of every hole we could find! God is our deliverer! Hallelujah!
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Last nights Macca youth meeting was great! Not heaps of people there but heard some great testimonies! Worship was great with a leader seeing angels whispering into peoples ears! Then I had a short preach and a guy got saved! Hallelujah! To cement it all in, I got him to exercise his new God given power and authority over sickness and he layed hands on a guy with a bad neck and he was healed! Hallelujah! He hadn't been saved 20minutes and he'd obeyed Jesus command to heal the sick! Glory to God for He alone is worthy of all praise and honor!
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While I was sick and in bed I saw something evil in the spirit outside my window, as I prayed I saw a vision of a lion roar and scare it away! The lion kept roaring throughout the night as I was praying for healing...
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I heard great stories of Holy Spirit stuff while I was hanging with some guys at easter camp. One guy was prayed for by a friend of mine, he had a glory fit and woke up underneath the salvo flag, a symbol of being dead to sin alive in Christ!

Friend also prays for people but shoots them with a bow and arrow that we cant see. People have watched this holy prayer warrior at work and has been reported that he will walk behind people in worship un-noticed and shoot someone and they will be affected somehow, some even jerking forwards... Other times shot in knees to work for healing... Apparently this guys brother uses a spear...

These guys also prayed for another friend of mine that angels would tickle him (there is more context to this story... dont freak out too quick with questions of "why") and the guys said it was unbearable! He was getting tickled all over!
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Theres some stories of my last week for you to chew over and think about. How can you use the same techniques in your ministry today and this week?

I heard a great story the other day from a guy who works at a Salvo Store. A guy stumbled in drunk, then the salvo guy had a brief chat followed by a prayer. The guy left completely sober! God is good!
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A friend of mine was working at a cleaning place. She was earning chicken feed and wasn't too happy until she found out that the Indian guys she was working with were illegal immigrants and they were getting paid under $4 per hour. She reported it and the guys who owned the business got shut down. Lets be on the look out for Asylum seekers, listen to their story and look after them where we can.
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Every place has a DNA. Its what makes it up, so in the church setting beliefs, structures, principles, values etc make up the DNA. One of the key DNA bits of the early church and of the Chinese church is that they multiply. The early Salvation Army had this too, with people of all ages opening fire in different countries, towns and cities.

Has The Salvation Army lost this part of who we are? When was the last outpost your corps started up? When was the last time your corps started a new meeting for different people? When was the last time you multiplied yourself and led someone to the Lord? When was the last time you even thought about doing it?

We need to imprint this multiplying DNA on us again. We need to be telling new converts that they are church planters. We need to plant more churches, corps and outposts ourselves! We shouldn't have to wait for DHQ or THQ. Just do it. Its who we are.

Start dreaming! Where do you think needs a light in the darkness? How can you make it happen? Stop putting it off, just do it. Theres a dieing world to save!

discipled...

"You are designed to achieve what you're already achieving."
Alan Hirsch

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. The results which we are getting, we are getting because that is how we have designed it to be. If we want different results we need to do things differently. Or we can do the same thing over and over again, but expect a different result. We can be insane.

One of the popular theories that has been around is that we will do things the same way but better, and we will get different results. True, but they will only be marginal.

The solution has been asked, "Is it to be a revolution or an evolution?" That is, is it to be a big complete change in a blink of an eye, or are we to gradually get there? Alan Hirsch suggests that it is neither. Rather, we need to start telling a different story. We need to follow the story of Jesus, not of the church. We need to get back to the simple gospel message. Jesus is Lord.

Jesus is Lord is easy to understand and hard to follow. But if we get back to this simple message, I believe everything will work out. The problem is, we are not being discipled by Jesus, or by His story anymore. Thats why people who dare to report signs and wonders and miracles are called extreme or laughed at, or suspect of deceit. Instead, we are being discipled by our culture.

We are being discipled by two cultures. One is the secular culture, the other is the culture of the church. They tell us how things should be done, and to a large degree we follow along without even thinking. We accept the ways things are done. We settle in the mediocre, the apathetic in luke warm. We accept the status quo unaware that the gospel of Jesus is urgent.

Our lack of end times theology and beliefs has led to a lack of urgency in the gospel. There is hell and heaven. People are going to hell. The doctrines are true and tested. And if we want people to go to heaven we need to change. There is a problem in the western church, and the problem is us. So far our story is saying we are dieing. But will we change our story to the story of Jesus?

So, who are you being discipled by? Jesus and His story, or the culture and the tradition of the church?

Praise God! A guy from the breakfast club got saved today! He devoted His life to living for Jesus. We prayed that He would be filled with the Holy Spirit and He had a glory fit and fell on the ground! Hallelujah! As he lay on the floor you could see he was clearly deep in prayer. One cool thing was that he was doing the palms up prayer and he said they got too heavy to hold up! The Holy Spirit was filling and overflowing him! Please pray that his commitment will not weaken but will grow stronger every day as he ministers in his school!
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We've got a new group. Not sure what to call it yet. Probably C.A.T.S Community Action Teams. 4 groups that the followers of Jesus in Plenty Valley Youth are expected to be involved in, Power Evangelism, Fair Trade, Servanthood and Fund raising. So far its going really well and we have opened it up to any youth to join, so we are building some great teams that will serve the community and give us opportunities to lead people to Christ!
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Just saw OASIS on ABC. It really really touched me. Not really sure what to say, but I will reflect on that over the next few days.
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I spoke early in the week of prophetic boundaries/rules. Heres the basic run down...

When giving the word you must test the word
is it encouraging, building up and or edifying?
is it line with the word of God?
is it line with the fruit of the Spirit?
is it true?
we also need to test the source: is it of God? Is it of us? Is it of the enemy?
is the voice/vision/person speaking etc in line with the fruit of the Spirit?

When receiving the word
dont accept it all as from God straight away
test the word against scripture, the church, the Spirit
is it true?
does it make sense?
if it doesn't make sense "put it on the shelf" leave it there until it is confirmed

The Divine Order

"Here is the divine order, first, conviction, second, repentance, third, forgiveness, and woe be to the man who transposes this order!" - Catherine Booth (Practical Religion)

Catherine Booth, founder of The Salvation Army, amazing prophetess is speaking of preaching the gospel. She says that there is an order which the sinner must go through before they are saved. In our preaching we need to aim for the sinner to be convicted of their sin firstly. That is they need to know of their sin, they need to know it is wrong and an offense to God. Secondly, we are to aim for the sinner to repent, that is turn around from one way to another, some scholars call it a complete change of mind. Then thirdly we are to preach forgiveness.

Bonhoffer spoke of cheap grace. He spoke that if we do not really know what we are saved from we will have this amazing grace but wont understand it, and therefore wont value it.

If a man sped through a red light and was to recive a fine. He did not realise that he had done this. Then another man came and paid the fine and told the man, the driver would be thankful for a moment. But because they did not know they had even got the ticket would quickly forget this random act of kindness.

However, if the man knew he had a fine to pay. One he could not afford, if it was to cause this person grief, and kept him up at night worrying about what to do next. Then a man came and paid it for him, how much more greatful would he be? Would he not accept that fine with thanksgiving, even calling this kind person a saviour? I can see the man saying, "I owe you big time!"

The same is with Salvation. If we do not know that we are sinners bound for hell because of our own sinfulness; If we do not know that the wages of sin is death, then we are given the great information that God has paid it for us, we will have a cheap grace. A grace that we do not understand and therefore value.

Catherine Booth understood this. She recognised the importance of conviction, repentance then forgiveness. It bears better disciples, disciples that will last. On the other hand if we preach these things out of order, if we jump the gun, then we will ultimately, even though we dont mean to, risk the salvation of those we are preaching to. Be wise with how you lead people to Christ, I have been convicted of this in the past, and since turning to this order, the conviction has come from God and true repentance has come! Lets preach the gospel!

Aeroplane story

I went to Perth for a holiday not too long ago. I flew there. And as all good evangelists do, they always tell a plane story... Heres my one...

I sat down and said hello to the guy sitting next to me. After a little while I asked him where he was from. He was from India which gave me a great opportunity to talk about the cricket and the holidays Ive had in India. I then asked him if he was religious to which he replied he was hindu but sometimes went to church. I asked him if he thought he would go to heaven. He said he doesnt know, its up to God to decide.

So I asked him if I could ask a few questions to see if he would go to heaven. "Have you ever told a lie?" He said yes. "What does that make you?" He said a liar. "Have you ever stolen?" He said yes. What does that make you? A thief he replied. I continued, "Jesus said if we look lustfuly at a woman we have already committed adultry in our heart. Have you ever done that?" Of course he replied.

So I said, "By your own admission you told me you are a lying adulterous thief at heart. You have broken Gods law. Those are just 3 of the 10 commandments. When judgment day comes how will God find you? Guilty or not guilty?" He said, "guilty." "And where do you think guilty people go?" Hell he sighed.

I was then able to tell him the way of Salvation! Hallelujah! I will talk more about that in the next post. He still has some things to work out but he promised me he would speak about them to his christian friend. Please pray for him and his salvation.

What have I learnt from that? I have learnt that by listening, taking an interest in someone, and then asking simple questions they will often admit they are guilty and destined for hell. This is great as we get to tell them the good news of Jesus Christ!

Go for souls!