It is such a confrontational book.

And I am really enjoying preaching through it at the moment.
Pastor Eliot bringing the message from chapter three this week.

The issue with confrontational preaching, is that you yourself get confronted with it!
But….when you get such a good response, as I did on Sunday, it is really encouraging.
People love to hear the truth, even if it confronts and challenges. As long as it is said with love and good humour….that is good.

Look at how Jesus presented the truth. He just gave it, but it was always with love and the peoples best interests….He is so challenging as a preacher.

Apologies to regular readers…
I have a spam bot atm trying to post comments on my blog linking to unhelpful sites…
just moderating a while so he gets the picture…
I will try to publish your comments as soon as I can.

Its not that hard fellas….
You just follow the recipe.

If you can install reticulation, retune a carby, cut code, research a sermon, chop firewood….

you can cook.

Got a lovely Beef Ragout in the slow cooker. Perfect food for winter…and lovely brownie points with the wife….

Taking one of these with me…..

It is great to have a pastoral team.
Support, prayer….but the primary reason?

So you don’t think you are mad.

Madness comes from…….

Loneliness

Isolation

Being misunderstood

Not understanding why people do what they do

Questioning yourself, your own motives…if in fact…you are mad!

Having others to journey with helps in all these ways…you may still have doubts, but doubts shared with others…really helps.

There are situations where if someone criticizes what you are doing, you know you are doing a good job.

You know their motives, you know what they are on about…and so when they criticize…you should actually take it as a compliment.

For instance, if someone is fundamentally opposed to what you believe in, then it would be expected that they would not like what you do.

Today I received some comments from someone like this….after reflecting on what they had said, it actually strengthened me. Far from being a discouragement, it actually encouraged me!

Jesus is God, Lord and King. He is fully God, and become fully man.

That is all!

The previous post has informed a little of what I am speaking about on Sunday as we kick off our new series on ‘Putting the rubber to the road’
Link

From what I am sharing on Sunday…
“We all know people dont we…who say one thing and do another…we call such people hypocrites…or perhaps we call them politicians… ha ha!
In fact some would say that Kevin Rudd was deposed from his position because he promised a lot, but did not do much. Now whether that is true of not is actually not the issue…the issue is that there was a perception of that.
And James makes it clear that for the Christian…what we say must match up with what we do. Faith in God demands action…belief in Jesus means we will not just be hearers of the word…but doers of the word..and James will touch on that later.
He says here that the bible is like a mirror. We hold up a mirror to our face to show what we are like. For some of us, at 6am in the morning that is a really scary experience! Imagine waking up seeing your face is dreadful…you know there is salivia dripping down your chin, the cat has left hair on your pillow…even the mirror is recoiling in horror…and doing nothing about that and walking out of your room and scarring the kids.”