Keith's Journal

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Today's Photos

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A warm day today but a really nice cooling breeze. Perfect walking weather!

Here are a couple of shots catching the nice tall grasses growing along the road.



Reflection on 2 Kings 2:1-12

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Scripture
Elisha said, “My father! My father! I see the chariots and charioteers of Israel!”

Observation
Elijah is about to be taken up to heaven. He leads Elisha on a tour of some key prophetic schools in Israel- Gilgal, Bethel, Jericho, Jordan River.

At each place Elijah tells Elisha to stay and Elisha pledges to never leave him. At each please, prophets come and ask Elisha if he knows that Elijah is about to be taken away.

Finally Elijah asks Elisha what he can give him. Elisha replies that he wants the double portion of the Holy Spirit ie inheritance of the ministry. Elijah replies that if Elisha sees him leave then he will receive the inheritance.

Elijah is taken up to heaven.

Application
Ministry is relational. It is clear from this passage that Elisha loved Elijah as his spiritual father. Elisha refused to stay in any of these places where he could probably have made a name for himself as the top prophet. He was determined to walk with Elijah to the end.

Elisha's request for the “double portion” is about inheritance not power. He wanted to continue the ministry of Elijah and not simply start his own ministry.

Real ministry is always relational. We need spiritual fathers to raise us up and equip us- not mere attachment to institutions and programmes. We also need to be looking for those whom we can nurture in the faith and pass on an inheritance to,

Prayer
Lord you call us to live and grow in faith communities. Help me to expand my relationships so that I can both receive and give to those around me. Amen.

Today's Photo

Today's photo is not pretty- but when you commit to a photo a day you have to work with what you've got.

We were given a rather small cot by Vinnies today. It doesn't meet current standards so it cannot be sold as a human cot. But perhaps some animal lover will redeem it to another purpose.

So perhaps this photo is a depiction of God's grace.

Today's Sermon

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The sermon for February 12th 2012 is now available on the New Life web-site.

In this sermon, which is based on John 14:15-31, Grant Mison talks about loving and obeying God.

Click here to listen or download.

Click here to see a list of all our sermons.

Two Moments

“All of history marches toward two moments. The first is the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross of Calvary. The price of sin had to be paid, so God sent his Son to be the final sacrificial Lamb to bear our punishment and to purchase our acceptance, our righteousness, and our deliverance. The second event is the final defeat of sin and the welcome of all who believe into their eternal home free of sin, sorrow, suffering, and death.”
— Paul David Tripp
Forever: Why You Can't Live Without It
(Grand Rapids, Mi.: Zondervan, 2011), 174-175

Some Photos

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Here are some photos from around the traps this afternoon.

Cricket is often played on the fields behind our house.



Here is a billabong created by the overflowing creek and lake system.



Always the Same

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“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever. — Hebrews 13:8


Always the same! It is this which gives such value to the Gospels in which our Lord’s history is told. We are not reading there the life and sayings of one fickle and changeable like ourselves—but the life and sayings of a Redeemer who is now what He was then. We tell you confidently that all that love and gentleness and compassion and long-suffering and tenderheartedness which you may there see in your Lord and Savior’s character, are placed before you that you may understand the character of Him from whom alone we receive forgiveness and to whom alone your prayer must be made, and we say this because we know He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.


Always the same! It is this which makes the gospel so excellent and precious. We do not bid you depend on anything less than the tried corner-stone, the fountain whose water shall never fail—the city of refuge whose walls shall never be broken down—the sure Rock of Ages. Churches may decay and perish; riches may make themselves wings and fly away—but he who builds his happiness on Christ crucified and union with Him by faith, that man is standing on a foundation which shall never be moved, and will know something of true peace.”


— J. C. Ryle
"The Unchanging Christ"

Reflection on 1 Corinthians 9:24-27

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Scripture
All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away but we do it for an eternal prize.

Observation

Paul uses a sports analogy to drive home the point about living whole-heartedly for Christ.

The Christian walk is like a race. Everyone competes for a prize but only one person wins the prize.

Athlete give it all- training, discipline, commitment, work- all for a trophy. We are running for an eternal prize.

Therefore we must disciple ourselves in order to run the race and not be disqualified.

Application
In the verse before this, Paul says, “I do everything to spread the Good News and share in its blessings.”

Faith is not a game. The walk with Christ is not a show or entertainment piece, like shadow boxing as Paul calls it.

No we are in full-time, grand-final match play. This is the real event.

Just as professional athletes are either training or competing at any given time, we need to have that full-on attitude.

Does this activity draw me toward or away from Christ?

Does that job opportunity help me or hinder me in my work for Jesus?

Everything we do must be seen in the light of the eternal prize.

Prayer
Father, please help me draw near to you very day. Help me to orient my whole life around your plan for me. Amen.

My Church or the Kingdom

Ray Ortlund writes:

“My passion isn’t to build up my church. My passion is for God’s Kingdom.”
Ever heard someone say that? I have. It sounds noble, but it’s unbiblical and wrong. It can even be destructive.
Suppose I said, “My passion isn’t to build up my marriage. My passion is for Marriage. I want the institution of Marriage to be revered again. I’ll work for that. I’ll pray for that. I’ll sacrifice for that. But don’t expect me to hunker down in the humble daily realities of building a great marriage with my wife Jani. I’m aiming at something grander.”
If I said that, would you think, “Wow, Ray is so committed”? Or would you wonder if I had lost my mind?
If you care about the Kingdom, good. Now be the kind of person who can be counted on in your own church. Join your church, pray for your church, tithe to your church, throw yourself into the life of your church with wholehearted passion.
We build great churches the same way we build great marriages — real commitment that makes a positive difference in practical ways. And thus we build the Kingdom.
My church or the Kingdom?

Reflection on 2 Kings 5:1-14

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Scripture
Naaman said, “Now I know there is no god in all the earth except in Israel.”

Observation
Naaman, a high ranking officer in the army of Syria, has leprosy. His Israelite slave girl tells him that Elisha can heal him.

Naaman goes to Elisha's house were a servant greets him and tells him to bath seven times in the Jordan River.

At first Naaman is incensed by both Elisha's lack of respect for him and also the seemingly trivial nature of the command. His men talk him down and so he goes down to the Jordan River where he is healed.

Application
God's grace is beyond human comprehension.

He heals the sick, even whose whom we might consider enemies of the faith. God's grace is not constrained or limited by human behaviour.

God heals the sick without fanfare or feats of endurance. When God heals it is free of fuss and, apart from faith little is required on our part.

God saves people. Naaman moves on a journey into faith in the one true God. His past, his country of origin, his position in the enemy army- all of these are swept aside as Naaman comes to faith in the God of Israel.

Prayer
Thank you Lord that you heal the sick and save sinners. There is no limit to your grace. Amen.

High Tech!

I think I'll try this one...

Social Networks Are Addictive

This is why I'm disengaging from social networks in Lent.

From Phandroid.com 

 

A recent Chicago University study is proving that people are more likely to resist their desire to consume alcohol, coffee and tobacco, than to resist their desire to check social media.

Not only that, but according to the study, people are more likely to give in to social media urges than to sexual and sleeping urges, as well as spending and sports. Basically, the only one that was harder to resist was the urge to work.

The results to this study have a good explanation, though. Social networks/media are not expensive, are very accessible and available, and do not harm your health (most of the time). As Wilhelm Hofmann (study leader) mentions, there is no direct downside to social media use. Smokers and drinkers has reasons to want to stop – both health-wise and financial. But most of the time, there is no direct downside to checking Twitter, Facebook or your e-mail. And it only takes a minute.

I have to say, though, the fact that some of the other urges can be more controlled than social networks is surprising. Urges like sleeping and sex are part of our biology. Not only a habit, but inscribed into our very core and DNA. The study states that while these urges were much stronger, people were much more able to control them.

If you want to learn more about the study, you should wait for the full research paper to be published soon. It will be featured in Psychological Science.

 

Today's Photos

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Last night we had some friends around for dinner to celebrate Philip's visit.

You might notice some key people missing from the photos. doh I'm not sure how that happened!













I loved the bright colours on the trains parked non the siding this afternoon.

Flood and Fire

You've got to love this country!

Today we have record floods in Queensland and northern New South Wales and grassfires in Victoria.

Lent Is Coming

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Lent starts on February 22nd, two and a half weeks away. Traditionally it is a time for giving up minor luxuries, although the true purpose of Lent is to examine our lives and drop off the things which hinder our relationship with Jesus.

I liken Lent to rebooting your computer or other electronic devices- starting over to get rid of the clutter and to gain a renewed sense of purpose.

This morning as I was praying, the Lord showed me that social networks such as Facebook and Google Plus take up productive time in my life. These things, which I originally engaged in to help my ministry by making contact with people in less formal ways, now prevent me from doing more useful things while taking up my attention with an endless stream of trivia. One of the ironies of modern life is that we have more tools for communicating with one another than any previous age, yet we use them as a means of keeping people at a safe distance rather than to stay close.

For Lent I am going to try to disengage from social networking sites.

I will continue to blog and I will occasionally post on the Facebook pages of the church and our bookshop.

I am going to use the next couple of weeks to work out the practicalities of this. For example I already use the instant messaging application pidgin for chat on various networks. Some people prefer Facebook messages to email- so can I accommodate them easily?

That's my plan for Lent.

I want to encourage everyone over the next couple of weeks to ask God about the areas of your life which need pruning. Then plan to take action in Lent to re-orient your life around God's purposes.

Today's Sermon

Today's sermon was awesome!

Unfortunately we forgot to record it. sad

WE are deeply sorry.doh

Today's Photos

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The excessive rain of the recent days has been doing interesting things around the place- flowers and fungi are springing up everywhere.







Spiders have been busy also, spinning webs across anything that does not move. These webs stretch for tens of metres across the ground, forming a fine fabric on the ground.




Floods Going Down

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The rain eased today and the river started going down.

I tried uploading some photos but the my.opera server is not being very co-operative. Here are the ones that got through.



My.opera does not play well with portrait mode photos. sad





There goes another warming scare...

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One of the minor scares in the Great Warming Alarm was that jellyfish were overtaking the oceans and soon they would kill off all other life forms by eating the plankton that directly or indirectly feed all animal life in the oceans. This of course was linked to climate change.

And like all the other scares, this one is now being shown to be false by real scientists who work on real world data and not just ocmputer models.

From the ABC:

 

Survey finds jellyfish takeover exaggerated

Friday, 3 February 2012
Genelle Weule
ABC

Jellyfish might be able to shut down a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but they are not taking over the world's oceans and turning them into slime, say scientists.

In the last decade, gelatinous blobs have reportedly clogged up water treatment and power plants, overrun fish farms, and hampered fishermen around the world. They even forced the nuclear-powered USS Ronald Reagan out of the Port of Brisbane in 2006.

But claims they will dominate our oceans are not supported by data, says Winthrop Professor Carlos Duarte director of the Oceans Institute at the University of Western Australia.

"There's no support as yet to make any assertion that jellyfish are rising globally," says Duarte.

Duarte is one of the co-founders of a group of international scientists involved in a three-year research project, known as the Jellyfish Data Initiative (JEDI), to examine claims that jellyfish numbers around the world are increasing.

An overview of their project is published in the latest issue of BioScience.

The group have assembled more than 500,000 records of published and unpublished data, some of which goes back to the 1790s, to examine the long-term patterns of jellyfish blooms.

While analysis of the data continues, so far it suggests that jellyfish blooms rise and fall in 20-year boom and bust cycles, says Duarte.

"The past period of rise was in the mid-90s to about 2005, and that's when all the papers claiming there was a global rise came out," he says.

"So in fact there was a little bit of support for that because there was more a general rise than the previous decade, but this is not unprecedented."

"If we looked at these with a longer time perspective we see that similar events have happened in the past."

According to Durant, one of the reasons why these boom and bust cycles have gone unnoticed until recently is because of "too few people looking into the biology and ecology of these organisms."

He says of the 42 locations in the world for which they have long-term data, coastal Japan is the only place to experience an unprecedented rise in jellyfish numbers. In this case, the culprit is the giant Nomura jellyfish (Nemopilema nomurai).

"These things have the weight of a sumo wrestler, are very difficult to study and create a lot of problems by breaking the nets of fisherman in Japan. It really doesn't go unnoticed … [so] we have records of when this organism has bloomed in the past for the last 120 years."

 

 

 

Of droughts and flooding rains...

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Given the flooding that's happening at the moment, I thought it a good time to look back at Dorothea McKellar's wonderful poem.


My Country
by Dorothea Mackellar
(1885 - 1968)



The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die-
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold-
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land-
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand-
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Dorothea Mackellar