Blog

We want you to interact with us. You will find opinions here from our Ministry Team and others. Often the blog will relate to the Messages you can listen to from this site. Sometimes they may be experiences, stories or poetry that people from our community want to share.

Enjoy reading our contributions and make a comment. We would love to hear from you.

Extraordinary Courage!

Extraordinary Courage to go the whole way! Graeme Somebody once wrote that ‘it wasn’t the bits of the Bible they didn’t understand that troubled Him; it was the bits he did understand.’ Many Christians want to follow Christ because they really believe his teachings bring a life worth living. We want to follow Jesus all the way. But then we come up against that teaching which is just to...Read more »

Luke: The Greatest Invitation

Living the Faith in Luke: The Greatest Invitation of All Time! I read live accounts of evangelism on Melbourne’s streets in the late nineteenth century. I was shocked at how bullying and aggressive it was. No doubt the street evangelists were convinced that in the Christian society of the time where it was assumed that all good citizens were Christian that it was only the most hard hearted of...Read more »

Are We Bent Too?

Today we are looking at the story of a woman who is suffering from a condition which caused her to be bent over. In a surprising kind of way, Jesus sees her and calls out, "Woman, you are free from your illness!" It is only then that he goes across and lays his hand on her, and she suddenly straightens up. There is no request from her for healing and Jesus intervention is a surprise. She must ...Read more »

Christians aren’t called to be ‘nice’!

Christians aren't called to be ‘nice’! In my early years as a Christian I was teased by my friends about my faith. Some parts of it were easily dismissed like, “Christianity is just a crutch for the weak”. I readily acknowledged the weaknesses within as I saw Jesus not as a crutch but as a healer. But one criticism used to get to me. Sometimes people would describe Jesus as “the be...Read more »

What is an All Age Service?

Have you ever noticed how everywhere you look society separates the age groups? We even ‘box different ages with labels like “Generation X”, “Baby Boomers” and “Gen Y”. Everywhere we are told that we all have such different attitudes, opinions, likes and dislikes that we can’t really get on. At best we can just tolerate our differences. But Jesus brought people together- all dif...Read more »

Luke: What are you building?

I am amazed at the number of “get rich quick” schemes there are and the number of people who risk everything they have to follow them. By far the most common one of late is where you buy an investment property. Then you wait till its value is greater than the mortgage you have taken out. You then use this extra value to borrow more money to buy another investment property. Then you repeat t...Read more »

The Lord’s Prayer in Luke

The first thing you will notice about the Lord's Prayer in Luke 11 is that he has left out many of the words. Well, that is if you compare it to the version we generally recite in Church. That version comes from Matthew's Gospel. Even Matthew doesn't have the last couple of lines we recite, someone added those later. Looking at the two Biblical versions, Luke seems to state the prayer in the m...Read more »

Mary’s ‘one essential thing’

Living the Faith in Luke: What is Mary’s ‘one essential thing’? When I finished my training for Ministry in 1986 I thought with wonder, “So that’s it, the end of my formal education!” It felt like I was finally leaving all that behind. I yearned to begin as a minister and as a parent (both started within weeks of each other!). Well the years ticked past in a mad rush of parenting an...Read more »

Luke: Who is my neighbour?

Living the Faith in Luke: Who is my neighbour? “Who is my neighbour?” This is a question I hear Christians agonising over all the time! We don’t say so in so many words but it is the meaning behind the sigh when we hear of yet another group in need or in trouble and we feel the obligation to do something but feel stretched too thin. It is easy to be critical of the Pharisee who tries ...Read more »

Risk brought great Gain!

Living Faith Church celebrates 4 years! Risk brought great gain. Four years since two communities of Christians left behind what they knew and what was safe and entered new territory. What a risk! What gain! What loss! Yes, loss, because there is no such thing as gain without loss. Those two separate communities will never exist again. In their place is a single community that is still f...Read more »

Luke: The Cost of Following

Today we are beginning a new series focussing on the Gospel of Luke. In the Common Lectionary, 2010 is a year when readings from Luke are central. Our series will include Lectionary readings, but not necessarily in the set order. Today we are looking at Luke 9: 51-62. This is the end of a very eventful chapter. Just the last half has Jesus asking the disciples who they think he is, and Pe...Read more »

What is Church? Social Justice

What is Church? Social Justice - is that really in the Bible?! I’ve noticed over the years how people seem to have a love/hate relationship with Social Justice. This happens for several reasons... Firstly, you do not find the term in the Bible; it is a contemporary term. What you do find in the Old Testament is the word “righteousness” which the Roman Catholic Jerusalem Bible consisten...Read more »

Church: Growing & Maturing

What is the Church - Growing and Maturing Over recent years when people around churches talk about growing, what it generally meant is that we want more “bums on seats”. For people who remember the 1950s when church attendances were high and Sunday Schools were in their hundreds, the question of growth means that we want to know how to return to that success. So we have been through waves...Read more »

Church: Encouragement

Applying to the church to become a Minister is a scary thing! In the Uniting Church you have to go through a year’s ‘Period of Discernment’ in which a supervisor helps you reflect on whether being a Minister of the Word is what God is calling you to, or whether it is some other form of service to God. You are given opportunities to study and to try out ‘Minister type things’. If you ...Read more »

Church: The Holy Spirit

What is the Church? Nothing without the Holy Spirit The great Theologian John Macquarrie, using the language of “being” describes God (the Father) as Primordial Being, Jesus as Expressive Being and the Holy Spirit as Unitive Being. On the Day of Pentecost we think of the beginning of the Church by the power of the Holy Spirit. It was a day when the disciples were gathered in one place, w...Read more »

What is Church? Unity

What is Church? Unity. Or “Become what you are!” What would make you embrace a stranger from another country that you had never met before and offer to let them share all your resources. And yet it happens! I was watching the ads on TV for long lost family members being reunited. Several years ago there were twins who had been separated at several months old and given to different adopti...Read more »

Church – Loving Community

The Beatles sang, “All you need is love”, and humans have always known that it is love which builds bridges between people who are similar, but also with people who are different. Jesus said it is a reasonably easy thing to love your friends, but he called us to love our enemies as well. If love is able to do that, then we need to understand love in a particular way. I have shared with yo...Read more »

Church – Led by the Holy Spirit

“Does prayer work?” asked a young mother doing an introductory course to Christian faith called Alpha. (5 years ago) “Yes!” said one Christian enthusiastically. “Ye-e-e-s” said another in a way that meant there were conditions. “No” said another. “It’s just a way of connecting to God and sorting out your priorities. It’s not as if God intervenes in life and does things!”...Read more »

What was the Church?

What was the Church? What does Dorcus Say? We have begun a new series of reflections on the theme, "What is the Church?" This week we are thinking about the Church as community and outreach and we are given the story of Dorcus in Acts 9: 36-43 to help us think about it. It seems to me that Dorcus was a very ordinary member of the Church at Joppa and yet she was extra ordinary. The Church c...Read more »

What is Church? Freedom

What is Church? Freedom and Openness Billy Joel released an extraordinary song in the late 70’s. While most other songs were about love and sex he released a song yearning for a quality that he could not find in day to day relationships: honesty. “Honesty is such a lonely word. Everyone is so untrue. Honesty is hardly ever heard, And mostly what I need from you.” Most people j...Read more »

Doubt and Truth

Today we are reflecting on the story of Thomas the doubter. Thomas was not there when Jesus appeared after his resurrection and in a very modern, scientific way he refused to believe it happened without seeing, touching and hearing for himself. So Jesus appeared specifically for him and invited him to do his own observations and believe. The point of the story is that the disciples were being...Read more »

Will You Let God Reassure You?

I’m going to be with Jesus when I die. No ‘ifs or buts’. Guaranteed! Am I arrogant beyond measure, deluded, or suffering from a bout of wishful thinking? No, none of these. I simply take God at his word. He wants me to be assured and relaxed; so I am. The events of Easter are God’s reassurance. We often don’t gain enough reassurance from Jesus’ death and resurrection becaus...Read more »

Enter at your own Risk

ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK If Jesus entered our town With pomp and ceremony, Would it be a lonely donkey ride Or would you be walking at his side Shouting praises to his majesty? If Jesus entered our church What difference would he make? What tables would he overturn? What lessons would we have to learn? What cleansing would we have to take? If Jesus entered our hearts To reign in th...Read more »

Death for our sakes

Jesus knew he was going to die. He stated it explicitly three times before his death and gave his disciples a special meal that would interpret his death the day before he was nailed to the cross. Not only that but several parables involve the death of the ‘son’ of the master/king. And to make sure we didn’t miss it he enshrines it in a key teaching about discipleship “If anyone wants t...Read more »

The Lost Son

160 years is a very long time. Today we celebrate the fact that the Christian community of which we are a continuing part, began in Greensborough that long ago. That was a Wesleyan Methodist Church, but that Church has a direct line of decent to what we now call Living Faith Church. Before the beginning of the Uniting Church in Australia, that Methodist Church combined with the Presbyterian Chu...Read more »

Focus

In our reading from Luke 13 this week the Pharisees, of all people, come to warn Jesus about Herod's plot to kill him. They are not Jesus' friends! They are trying to scare him off! Last week we talked about temptations, well here is another one. If you don't stop doing what you are doing you're going to die. Certainly Herod had form. He had killed John the Baptist and it is reasonable...Read more »

Tempted Away from our Purpose

Temptation has been reduced in our society to being all about ice cream, breaking diets and sexual sin. But Jesus’ encounter with temptation is fought for high stakes. Temptation threatens not only his sense of identity but also the whole mission God has given him. The temptations happen at the start of his ministry because he needs to know that he is straight in his own mind about his purpos...Read more »

Chameleon Christians

In our reading from 1 Corinthians 9 this week, Paul says, ”I am a free man, nobody's slave; but I make myself everybody's slave in order to win as many people as possible.” He goes on to tell us how he adapts to be able to communicate with different cultural groups in his time. Like us, he lived in a multicultural society. There were Jews and gentiles but they represented a wid...Read more »

Jesus calls…you

This is a great story - the one about where Jesus tells the fisherman to go fish after they caught nothing all night. We as ‘flies on the wall’ anticipate the moment when the Peter, Andrew, James and John are shown how to fish by the rabbi from Nazareth! What delight when the penny drops for Peter that the fish are actually obeying their maker (who is the only one who can command fish!) and...Read more »

Called by God for a Purpose

This week we are reading the call of Jeremiah to his prophetic ministry. The difference between his time and ours is that God called specific individuals then, but since Jesus time God calls us all. That is what the day of Pentecost is all about. From that time on the Spirit of God would be poured out on all flesh. Not just on the few, but on the many. God's purpose is for the his messa...Read more »

Jesus’ purpose to his ministry

Many people imagine Jesus wandering around aimlessly for 3 years. We all know that he intended to end up in Jerusalem at the cross, but most people think of him using the time before that to just ‘go on tour’ and see who he encountered on the way. Our passage today says differently. In Luke 4 Jesus begins his entire ministry by choosing a passage from Isaiah during a worship service and in ...Read more »

Signs of something?

Signs can be so helpful. When I first came to Living Faith Church I couldn’t find where the church was in Grimshaw Street. The church and the sign were too far back from the road. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before an excellent well lit sign was placed nearer the footpath and I could more easily find my way here. If you don’t know where you are then signs are worth their weight in gold! T...Read more »

The Boy Jesus In The Temple

Last week in my sermon I talked about the foundational beliefs that create the character, the DNA of the church. I based this on the story of Jesus being presented in the Temple as a baby. Today I want to reflect on the next time Jesus goes to the Temple in Luke's Gospel, when he is twelve years old. He is preparing for adulthood and he stays in the Temple talking with the scholars about the...Read more »

Jesus Is Presented

A week after Jesus' birth, he is circumcised and named and later taken to the temple in Jerusalem to be presented there, to fulfil the requirements of their religious tradition. This fact is less important than what happened in the temple when he arrived. It is enough to know that Jesus' parents were obedient to their faith. Luke's concern is to show us through the telling of Jesus birth, God's pu...Read more »

Why Were The Wise Men Wise?

We know very little about the Wise Men who travelled to Bethlehem to see the baby Jesus. We know they came from the East, probably gentiles. We know that they interpreted the stars. They believed they were prophetic in some way. They went across their world seeking the newborn King of the Jews. It was Herod and the scholar in Jerusalem who interpreted their request as pointing to the pro...Read more »

Has Mary gone mad?

Mary was a young woman of extraordinary faith. She had to be. She came endorsed from the most reputable of referees: God himself! Even though she was a virgin, and having a baby while engaged would make her appear as upright as Tiger Woods in the eyes of the community, she simply trusted that God would take care of it. What faith! She went off to consult with her aged Aunty Elizabeth who als...Read more »

Prepare the way…

Prepare the way…. For a change of heart! John the Baptist and Jesus share a history and family connection. Right from the start of Luke’s gospel we hear about John’s miraculous birth to his aged mother Elizabeth, and then we hear about Jesus’ birth. There are a number of other parallels between the characters too if you look for them! The writer of Luke is trying to make an important po...Read more »

Prepare for Christ(mas)

God has waited a long time to be with you... The love story that is revealed in the scriptures shows how much preparation has gone into being reunited with you, his child, and billions of our fellow human beings. It begins with the calling of Abraham and his response of trust/faith. God builds a nation that learns through the Law that life is meant to be lived in love for God and neighbour, ...Read more »

Inclusion of All

Inclusion of All in Church Community: Mental Illness and Disability Our Youth and Young Adults were keen to discuss this issue and how it affects us in practical ways. Including people with mental health issues or mental disability is almost a “motherhood statement” in the church. Who could possibly say ‘no’?! But there is a world of difference between what we want to do and whether ...Read more »

Core Values: The Bible

This is the last in our current series on the core values of our church. This one is about the Bible. It says, ”As a Christian community we see the Bible as central to our life.” From the very beginning of Christianity this has been a core value of the faithful. We were often referred to as the people of “The Book.” The word 'bible' simply means 'book'. It is a collection of writ...Read more »

Core Values: Taking Risks

One of the Core Values of our church says this, “We want to step out in faith and take risks in following Jesus.” I am impressed that we said, “We want...”. This is the only Core Value that does that. The others begin with “We welcome...” and “We seek...”. The deliberate intention of the phrase, “We want...”, makes this a real goal of our church life. In other wo...Read more »

Core Values: Relevant Worship

LFC Core Values: Passionate, Relevant Authentic Worship Would it surprise you to know that there are almost no references in the New Testament about how to conduct a worship service? Almost nothing is said about how to run one, what to include in it, whether to sing or chant or be silent, whether to have a sermon or a Bible reading, or whether Communion is central or happens before or after, o...Read more »

Core Values: Sharing Faith

This week I want to reflect on the Core Value of our Church which says, “We seek to share our faith and to encourage relationships with Jesus.” This value is about birth and nurture. Faith often has a long gestation period and when born always require lifelong nurture. Many Christians fear the word evangelism, because they think it requires them being able to “preach” to their frie...Read more »

Core Values: We welcome…

If Jesus could be said to have had an office then it would have to have been the humble kitchen table. It’s where he did a major part of the business of the Kingdom. He was never far from someone’s table. So much so that his detractors said of him “Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of sinners and tax collectors.” Mt 11:19 The table and the meal represent in most cultures the...Read more »

Core Values: Love & Compassion

We have now finished our “Deeper Gospel” series. Our new series will be reflections on six of our Core Values. When Living Faith Church began we held a retreat to develop a set of core values which would both describe who we are and set an agenda for who we wanted to be. I want to begin with the core value that says, “We seek to reach out with love and compassion to those who are in...Read more »

Deeper Gospel 6: Kingdom Prayer

Jesus invites us to a very different sort of prayer. It’s been right under our noses all this time, hidden in plain sight. It’s found in the Lord’s prayer and recited by a billion people every week ... “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Mt 6:10 Most of the prayers we pray for others are a reaction to something that has gone wrong that we want made r...Read more »

A Deeper Gospel 5: Power

Largely the purpose of Salvation is to rescue us from ourselves. The Human animal that we are is constantly driven by inner needs and drives, fears and insecurities, into attitudes and behaviour that are effectively self and relationship destroying. Jesus changes the focus of lives from our drives, to what we believe, and then fills that space with positive beliefs, perfect example and a creativ...Read more »

Deeper Gospel 4: Jesus’ mission

Most people aren’t sure what to do with Jesus’ resurrection. For many it is merely the happy ending to a story of a wonderful ministry that climaxed in the self-sacrificing death on the cross. The cross saved us from our sins and opened the way to heaven for countless billions of people. The resurrection on the other hand …? In our series that goes deeper into the Gospel we’ve been disc...Read more »

A Deeper Gospel 3 The Church

If God's purpose is to bring Salvation to the world, then Jesus and the Church are his method. Jesus came to save people from their own messes. Because of our mistakes and irresponsibility, we are broken people, with broken relationships, who live in a broken world, even in a broken environment. I have heard many people say that you don't need to go to church to be a Christian. Maybe that's...Read more »

A Deeper Gospel 1. Saved From Sin?

On September 11 2001 groups of Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked 4 planes in the USA. Three planes were crashed into significant buildings but the fourth was different. The fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville in rural Pennsylvania, after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane, which the hijackers had redirected toward Washington, D.C. All the peop...Read more »

WARNING: Sexually Explicit Language

WOW!! Can you believe this language is in the Bible? I have been reading the Song of Songs in the Old Testament for this Sunday's Worship Service and the language is very sexually explicit. Some of the poetic metaphors sound quaint to our modern, western ears, but there is no doubt about what is being said. And I can't find one mention of God. What is this doing in the Bible? This is a question...Read more »

The Vine and The Branches

John’s Gospel is very different from the other three. It would have to be seeing the others were well known for over 20 years by the time John wrote his. So why write another Gospel? It was because John wanted to draw out another aspect of Jesus’ life and ministry that needed greater emphasis; that a personal relationship with Jesus is at the heart of this new abundant life. As my faded bumper...Read more »

A Bit Hard To Swallow

Today I am looking at John 6: 51-60 and clearly both ordinary listeners and even Jesus' disciples find what he is saying a bit hard to swallow. Jesus is continuing his theme, which he has been developing throughout the chapter, that he is the bread of life which comes down from heaven. He is clearly using a common metaphor which is familiar to his listeners and to the early church, who are listeni...Read more »

Healthy Bread

I am not very comfortable shopping at the supermarket. Even when I stand at the bread display there are so many loaves with packaging, making so many claims about how good they are for my health. Which one should I choose? My solution is to pull out my mobile phone and ring Maureen and ask her, and because she has done the research and compared the products, she easily tells me what to buy. In Joh...Read more »

The Problem With Light

I once had an office with a window in the end of the room which looked out on the unit next door. If I pulled up the blind I could see directly into Joy and Bert's laundry. It was decided for the sake of privacy that we should remove that window and put in a skylight above my head. Now I had another problem. Could I cope with such a bright light shining straight down where I work, reflecting off...Read more »

The Risk of Prayer

Recently I heard a Muslim questioning the sincerity of Christians because we seem to pray so little. It doesn't surprise me at all. Praying has become one of the most risky things a Christian can do. To pray means to put one's faith on the line. We ask for things to happen and if they do everything is OK, but if they don't we face a faith crisis. How are we to explain the fact that our pray w...Read more »

Living Simply

It was Friday morning and Joan was in the Church Office so I asked her, "What would you say about Living Simply as a practice of Christian faith. She said in her very concise and perceptive way, "Get your priorities in the right order." That's about right, isn't it? But what are the right priorities? That week an insurance company had released a report on well-being or happiness around Australi...Read more »

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