This December 20th is gearing up to be a GREAT night at Hunter Bible Church.
Not only are we inviting everyone to come and join in singing some great ol’ Christmas Carols, there’ll be heaps of things on for the kiddies, including some kids plays, songs, face painting and more.
So invite your friends and we’ll see you there! (Lambton High School front-yard, Young Rd, Lambton)
This came from Ross & Lyndal Webb, who we support in their work with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Vanuatu, in thanks for our financial, and other, support…
Dear Guiliana and friends at HBC,
We see your faithful gifts on our finance statement each month and we don’t write to you every month but we are very thankful every month for the money the congregations send our way.
It certainly doesn’t go unnoticed and certainly not unused.
Please pass on our thanks for your on-going support and partnership in the work we are doing here in Vanuatu. We are so thankful for you joining us in it.
Sincerely,
Lyndal and Ross
Praise God for the privilege we have as a church of being able to partner with them in this ministry!
Around this time of year, many of you will be ‘heading home’ over the summer break, or just changing your routine over the summer uni break. I’ve asked our own Matty Varcoe to give you some tips to make sure you don’t waste your summer:
I could write page after page trying to convince you to be praying and reading your Bible more. But I don’t think I need to because I know that you already believe these are good things. I am assuming that you want to read God’s word, pray and grow in your relationship with him. I am also assuming that over the holidays you want to get stuck into doing this with more free time. So as someone who has had this attitude every holiday and has experienced failing many times, can a humbly suggest some practical ways to start. Like with most things, ’starting’ is the hardest part.
- Set yourself a time each day. A time that you can keep and a time in which you can focus without distractions. For me this is the morning. (It is also a great way to start the day.) But I do know that for some the evening is much better for them. You know how you function and what works best for you.
Get a friend to keep you accountable everyday with a text message or a phone call and do the same for them.- Start by praying for God to help you focus and that His Spirit will be revealing his word to you.
- Choose a book in the bible to read through a bit each day. (Maybe even just a few verses.) If you are not sure of what to read, one of the Gospels is a good place to start. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly…” Colossians 3:16.
You could ask yourself;
- What does the passage say about God/Jesus?
- What does it say about others/me?
- How do I need to change to be more like Jesus in my actions and the way I think about his world?
- Pray about what you have read. Thank God for his mercy and grace to you. Pray for yourself that your heart and mind would grow in a deeper affection for Christ Jesus. Pray about the things you need to change. Pray for family and friends that God’s Spirit will be working in their lives to regenerate them through the Spirit. “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful”. Colossians 4:2
At first it will take discipline to do this every day and may even be a chore. But over time this will become something you long to do and even something that you get rid of other distractions so that you have more time to spend with your Heavenly Father. I love the way that King David talks about his relationship with God in Psalm 42:1-2.
“As the deer pants for the water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?”
David longs for the times when he can be in close communion with God. He needs them like a deer who is panting for water. My prayer is that we to will have this same longing and deep affection for our God and be asking, “when can I go and meet with God?”
To find out what Katie’s been up to, including her recent visitors from HBC, as well as some challenges with work, download her October newsletter below.
As we introduce our friends to Jesus, there are loads of steps we want them to take. We need to tell them that we’re Christian, find the opportunity to explain the gospel, pray for them, tell them more about Jesus and finally invite them to become a Christian.
But it strikes me that there’s one key moment…
Is it when we first explain the gospel? After all, they need to hear about Jesus to follow him, right? Don’t we spend hours, even months praying for the right opportunity to explain Jesus?
Yes, that’s true. But the key moment is really when they discover that we (and God) want them to become a Christian.
You see, in our relativistic culture, most people think religion is an individual, personal thing. It’s your own spiritual journey. Its pretty rare nowadays to invite someone to change religions. So our non Christian friends don’t realise that we think Christianity’s for them too!
How many of your friends realise that you want them to become a Christian?
I reckon 95% of my friends know I’m a Christian.
I’ve probably explained Jesus to 25% of those people.
But very few of my friends have realised that I want them to become Christians. They still think Christianity’s MY thing.
We need to pray for that moment where we can say to our friend…
“You know, Jesus is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Why not think about following Jesus yourself?”
It is risky. The relationship will change because you’re asking them to change. But it’s the key moment (humanly speaking) in seeing someone saved. It’s the moment where the decision becomes real for them.
Mike, Katie, Harry, Miriam and Samuel Taylor are having their commissioning service this weekend. It’s at 2pm at Ashfield Presbyterian Church (cnr of Liverpool and Knox Streets) on Saturday November 28. If you’re not going to be at the Gingerbread House events (or minding kids while your wife goes along in the afternoon) it would be great to have some HBC people there as they are commissioned to serve God in Tanzania.
Last night at unichurch we sang the old hymn “How Great Thou Art.” As Pete Munday and the band cranked out some great music to go along with these timeless words I was struck by these words:
And when I think, that God, His Son not sparing;
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!
How great is our God who would not spare his own son so that we might live. What a great God we have! What a great saviour he is! What a great message we have to preach!
You can listen to Marshill’s version here…
Life can be a mess. Things don’t work out as they should, relationships are a strain and life seems unfair. A word the Bible uses to cover all this is ‘evil’. The prophet Habakkuk puts the question to God: ‘Why do you put up with evil?’. God’s answer deals with Habakkuk’s questions and points the way forward to the way he ultimately deals with evil- the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We’ll see that God promises the death of evil. If you want to hear what God says, read Habakkuk this week and come and listen to Sunday’s talk.
A few weeks back, I wrote a letter to all the members of Hunter Bible Church. If for some reason you didn’t get it, you can read it here… (downloadable PDF version here)
A Lifeboat for Drowning Souls…
Dear Friend and member of Hunter Bible Church,
Its great to be back! Emma, James, Sophia and I have spent the last six months in Melbourne. From April to June we were on Long Service Leave. We explored Victoria, from the fairy penguins of Philip Island to the snow on Mount Buller and the laneways of the inner city. What a holiday!
I then spent July to September reading, praying, thinking, meeting with church leaders, visiting churches and doing evangelism. And all the while I’ve been thinking about how to summarise what I’ve learned and been most convicted by.
And I reckon a story by William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army pretty much sums it up…
“On one of my recent journeys, as I gazed from the coach window, I was led to think about the multitudes around me. They were living carelessly in open and shameless rebellion against God, without a thought for their eternal welfare. While my mind was thus engaged, I had a vision…
My kids have just finished doing a slide show (!) of our holidays. What struck me is what the kids enjoyed most. They didn’t choose photos of expensive outings. They picked photos of themselves in the park having fun, or going on bushwalks, or playing together; inexpensive, cheap activities. These were the things they enjoyed most, because they did these things together.
God wants us to take time off, to have rest days and holidays. Its a chance to be refreshed and renew energy levels. More than this, its a foretaste of our heavenly rest, when we will enjoy praising our good heavenly Father with each other through Christ (Hebrews 4:8-11; 12:22-24). God gives us breaks now so we can thank him for his goodness by enjoying Him and His world, especially with others (Romans 14:5-8; 1 Timothy 4:1-5).
If you like, God commands us to have fun in and with his world. We should not feel guilty when we take time off from work. Married couples should not feel guilty when they take time off to enjoy each other. Its good for married couples to have a ‘date night’, a weekly time when they spend time just with each other. God wants us to do these things.
This can be hard when we have children, or no money (like some of our married uni students), or live by ourselves. I’d like us to share our wisdom with each other. What are some of the things you do to enjoy God’s world with others? to enjoy his world with your spouse? And what are some good cheap date ideas?
Here’s one to get started. You can ask friends and family to give you gift certificates for presents. Instead of getting the latest DVD or a Wii, you ask for restaurant or bowling or video vouchers. Then you put them in a folder to use during the year.