LIFE'S TOUGHTEST QUESTIONS

How is your life going at the moment??

Are things great, good, mediocre, bad or terrible???

What sort of questions and issues are you struggling with right now??

Life can throw us lots of tricky questions, things that puzzle and perplex us and tie us up in knots. How do we find answers to these questions? Can we find answers to these questions?

This year, at Spring Celebration, our theme for the Saturday night Youth Event will be Life's Toughest Questions. Here, along with the opportunity for awesome worship with a great band and fun times with your friends as we play some games, you will also have the opportunity to ask a panel some the toughest questions you have thought of. There will be a box at Spring Celebration to drop questions into, there may even be opportunity to ask questions of the panel that night, but to be sure that you get a question in to be answered, respond to this post in the comments section. If we get a lot of questions, we may not be able to answer them all, but we will attempt to do our best. Questions can be about faith, relationships. the Bible, God, life circumstances, what ever you can think of. We may not have the answers yet, we may not have the answers later, but we will do our best to answer your questions.

So, what is the toughest question in your life at the moment??

It would be great to hear from you.

One Night Stands With Jesus

I tend to talk a lot of rubbish at times> Those who know me well would understand that at times I put my brain into neutral and just let whatever come into my head flow out my mouth.

I was almost having one of those moments yesterday. Although I was thinking about what I was saying, I was just going with the flow of the conversation when I may possibly have coined a new phrase. I was talking with a friend about evangelism and the different ways that people communicate the gospel to others. I was saying how important it is that we help people to be discipled and become disciples after they have made the initial choice to follow Jesus as their saviour.

As we talked about the pro's and con's of various evangelistic strategies, we started talking about how Christianity is meant to be a relationship with God and how the first commitment for some people in their relationship with God is about as far as things go. It was here I likened it to a one night stand.

I'm sure you know what a one night stand is, even if you have never had one, you may know someone who has or have at least seen it on T.V. One night stands are brief (usually lasting only one night - hence the name), are emotional but at the same time not exactly intimate, and rarely ever lead to a significant relationship. Like real life one night stands, after a one night stand with Jesus, there is the possibility that you may catch something that will change your life, but maybe you can see someone about that.

Our lives shouldn't just be a series of one night stands with Jesus, where we hook up with him at some big event when our emotions are running high, but then forget all about Him the next day. I think God wants to be closer to us than that. I think God desires to know us intimately ( Check out Psalm 139) and to spend quality time with us, even when we aren't in an emotionally hyped state, perhaps especially when we aren't in an emotionally hyped state. Have a look at Genesis 3, we can see here that God, is walking in the Garden of Eden, searching for Adam and Eve, wanting to spend time with them. God desires to be in relationship with us, not an emotional, yet un-intimate (possibly another new word) relationship, but the kind of relationship that grows closer and more intimate as you travel through life together, through the good times and the bad times.

What sort of relationship do you have with Jesus, is it emotional, physical, intimate, consistent or a combination of all of the above?

INTERESTING CONVERSATIONS

For those of you who have been following this blog over the last week or so, you would be aware that my last post, initially about bullying and the responsibility we have to care for others, not oppress them, sparked quite an interesting debate.

This debate, centred much around the divinity/deity of Jesus; as in, is Jesus God or was he just a human servant of God. I love a good discussion as much as the next bloke, so was happy to enter into the debate with this person for a while. As the debate went on though, it became apparent to me that neither of us were likely to change our minds, and so discussing it further would really prove to be of little value on this blog. I have since received an email from the blogger to which I will respond once I have some time.

This discussion got me thinking though. I thought of all of the places that I have had the opportunity to speak to people about matters of faith and God and religion. One I distinctly remember was while on holidays on the Gold Coast a couple of years ago. I was staying at a backpackers near the beach, and on my last night there a group of people that I had met while I was there had decided to go out to a night club and invited me. being a sociable sort of person and always up for a night out, I tagged along. At some stage during the night I found myself in a deep conversation about grace and God's forgiveness in the middle of the night club with one of the bloke I had met at the backpackers, it was an awesome privilege to be a part of that conversation!!

I have had long conversations with people in Pubs about what it means to talk with God and to hear His voice, and many other places you would not normally associate with talking about God. Although I have never had the conversation that nearly every pastor/minister/preacher seems to have had on a plane where they talk matters of God and faith, I hope that the conversations I have had with people have planted seeds in peoples lives that one day will bear fruit.

What Are You Hiding Behind???

Have you ever had one of those weeks where you wake up Monday morning and instantly wish that a) you were still asleep and b) it was Friday night?

I've had one of those weeks.

The problem is, even when the proverbial hits the fan and all you want to do is crawl back into bed, pull the covers over your head and pretend that the rest of the world doesn't exist, life continues to go on around you.

As a result of this many of us have to take a deep breath, pull ourselves together and move on. But how?

Many of us put on a mask, or veneer of normality on the outside when we are around others, while on the inside we are a mess, with so many thoughts and emotions rolling around just wanting to escape.

And so we feel exhausted at the end of the day when we finally get home and can take that mask off and be exactly how we are feeling.

Masks can be good. In Ice Hockey people wear masks to protect their face from serious injury/disfigurement. Superheroes wear masks to protect their identity and those they care about.

Sometimes masks are fun, they allow us to pretend we are someone or something different and we can let our hair down without fear of what people think of us.

But masks can be bad. Sometimes we wear a mask (figuratively speaking) so that people don't see who we really are or what we are really thinking.

This week, as i have struggled to deal with the stuff going on in my own life, i have found myself reaching for a mask to cover my inner feelings and maintain the character i usually portray to those around me, strong, confident, energetic, joyful.

The thing is, even though this is what i am trying to look like, there are some people that still noticed that things weren't right and asked me if i was ok; to which if i was honest, the answer was no!

As i was thinking about this stuff last night on the way home from a meeting in Melbourne, i began to wonder if this is what we sometimes do when it comes to God stuff.

We pretend that we are ok, we keep doing things on the outside, hoping that no one will notice that things are not ok inside.

But the thing is, that even though people may only see what is on the outside, God can see whats going on on the inside. God knows our deepest thoughts, dreams, hopes, desires, fears and failings. And He loves us anyway.

While i struggled to deal with all that has been going on over the last week, God has been there. When i've screamed out WHY? He was there. When all i wanted to do was get away from everyone around me and retreat to the safety of solitude, and couldn't, God gave me the strength i needed to push on.

Now, my problems, while hugely significant in my life, didn't rally rate on the scale of the world around me. This week countless people have died in wars and from famine, I heard this morning of over 100 babies in Kazakhstan that were infected with HIV because doctors, nurses, and hospital officials were negligent in their jobs. We have global warming, floods, droughts and countless other problems that occur around us every day. But it is so easy to get caught up in our own problems that the rest of the world seems to fade away.

Sometimes we need to take off our mask, admit that things are not ok (some people call this confession), make the necessary changes (sometimes this is called repentance) and walk towards our future, trusting God to go ahead of us and prepare the way, one step at a time.

As I overheard someone say yesterday; "Life sucks, and it's not funny."

Bad stuff happens, even to good people, but God is faithful. Even when we don't know why stuff happens, we need to trust that God will work all things for the good of those who love Him, and follow Him into our future!!

As my old high school motto says: "In Faith and Hope and Love."

I say: "Amen"