What type of love did Jesus show us? What type of love did Jesus talk about in the hours before his death?

Starting Sunday May 2nd, Greg Lee will be taking us through John’s account of Jesus’ last words with his disciples before he went to the cross. In these chapters we see Jesus being betrayed, Jesus lowering himself to wash his disciple’s feet, praying to the Father for his disciples, and teaching about what is to come.

Make sure you come along to any of our three Sunday meetings over May and June to hear about Jesus and love without boundaries.

At UniChurch over the past couple of weeks we’ve been looking at Philippians.

As we have God has challenged us about our priorities and motives. One of the examples I used that’s caused some stir is Uni marks. Getting good grades can be something we idolize.

Rob asked a really helpful question during Question Time last night and I don’t think I answered him well. So I’ve put my thoughts down here. I’d love you to comment and tell me what you think as well.

Rob asked “Is it wrong to get HD’s? Can’t you honour God by doing well at Uni?”

No it’s definately not outright wrong to get good marks. Yes you can honour God by working hard and doing well.

However for most of us honouring God is not why we work hard. For most of us good marks are about being successful or feeling good about ourselves. We use them to make ourselves feel superior and smug.

There’s nothing wrong with getting good marks at Uni or in being good at your job, but there are some questions that you really ought  to ask yourself:

Why am I doing this?  What’s my motivation?  What else could I do with this time? Who am I honouring?

And you have to consider them in light of scripture.

Php 1:27 Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.

Php 2:3-5 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

How do you prioritize your time? Why? What motivates you?

Big questions. Hard questions. But worth thinking about because they’re Questions God asks us through his word.

Please leave comments below, lets get the discussion rolling.

Starting on Sunday Feb 21st, Greg Lee will be helping you ‘get’ Jesus… who he is and what difference he makes to you. If you’ve never really understood what the big deal is about Jesus… then come along to HBC:Unichurch and we’ll help you to get Jesus by the scruff of the neck, check him out, and see who he really is.

These will be great nights to bring friends along, or come and check out UniChurch for the first time.

Christ the Centre of Everything

Here’s some questions to get you thinking for UniChurch on the 14th of Feb.

Phil 2:1-11

1. Who is Paul addressing?

2. What behavior is Paul urging?

Paul includes a hymn about Jesus to emphasize his point. (Phil 2:6-11)

3. How does Phil 2:6-8 emphasize the behavior Paul is urging?

4. How does Phil 2:9-11 emphasize it? Why does he include these verses?

Check out the preaching plan for 2010… here.

www.wordle.net

February sees the return of the Ministry Apprentices Philippians series to UniChurch. This is nice because it coincides with the return to the CT Theater!

On Feb 7 Steve will be speaking on Christ the Centre of Life from Philippians 1:18-30

Here’s a couple of questions to think about before then to get the mental juices flowing…

1. Paul seems convinced that death is beneficial (see Phil 1:21). How can death be gain?

2. What is the sign Phil 1:28 talks about?

3. What does it look like for someone to conduct themselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ? (Phil 1:27)

During 2010 six of our MTS apprentices will be preaching at UniChurch on Paul’s letter to the Philippians which speaks clearly on the centrality of Christ in every part of life.

This series will be spread out over the year, but make sure you get along and hear these young men opening the word of God. Also the second year apprentices (Ben, Geoff, Steve & James) will take questions from the floor after their talks.

So get along to UniChurch in 2010, it’s going to be a great year of opening God’s word and worshiping together.

By the way, if you’re wondering about the jumble of words in the graphic… It’s a word cloud made from the text of Philippians. The bigger the word the more times it occurs in the book. Pretty cool huh? Check out www.wordle.net if you’d like to mess around with this yourself.

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.

The short, simple phrases of “the Lord’s prayer” have been said, shouted, whispered, and chanted for nearly 2000 years by millions of people worldwide. And unfortunately all too often, they are said as nothing but empty words… words spoken, but with little if any meaning or yearning behind them.

Starting on the 11th October, Greg Lee will be taking us through the depths of the simple prayer Jesus taught his disciples to pray.

Make sure you’re there to see what God’s heart yearns for us to ask him for.

Hunter Men’s Convention was a great day of hearing from God’s Word about God’s world. Ben Pharlet spoke very fankly about sexuality in our culture, sexuality in our churches, and sex in our marriages. Here are two of the talks for you to listen to…

I need to warn you that there are parts of this that get pretty explicit, so this is really MA15+ material.

Talk 1:

(Talk 2 not recorded)

Talk 3: