The PASSION Blog

One of the things I am progressively noticing is the freedom I have in Christ. I no longer feel like a slave to many of the things that used to have a hold on me. I feel like these days I am living a lot freer and living lighter as I go about my daily life.

Three things in particular have helped me to experience this freedom.

1. Studying the Bible - John 8:31-32 tells us that if we hold on to Jesus’ teaching, we will be His disciples, that we will know the truth and this truth will set us free. I have found this to be true in my own life. The more I have read and studied the Bible, the more it has transformed and changed me. This change has brought a freedom and trust in God. I know my future will be ok, because the Bible tells me that God is control of the future.

2. Having Jesus in my life - John 8:36 says that if the Son sets you free, you shall be really free. Knowing Jesus and having Him in my life has given me freedom in so many areas. I no longer carry much of the guilt I had for the wrong things I have done. I no longer feel like I have to impress people by being the best at everything. I no longer wonder if I am good enough to go to heaven when I die. I know I have been forgiven, God accepts me as I am and I trust Jesus for my salvation. These things give me tremendous freedom.

3. Having the Holy Spirit in my life - The Bible tells us that when we come to Christ the Holy Spirit comes to be our helper and comforter (John 14:26, 15:26). Knowing the Holy Spirit has been my ever present helper and comforter has given me a lot of freedom. At any time of the day or night, I can just pray and ask for help, guidance, strength, wisdom or assurance and the Holy Spirit will answer.

For me, living free is about knowing Jesus personally, relying on the Holy Spirit and studying to Bible and allowing it to transform my heart and mind.

If you would like to know and experience this freedom, why not put your faith and trust in Jesus today? You can visit my “Peace with God” page to do this right now.

One book I had to read this semester for my studies is Bruce Longenecker’s “The Lost Letters of Pergamum“. It is a fictional book based on research of the time period. As the title suggests it is written in letter format and  records letters between Luke (author of Luke and Acts) and Antipas who is mentioned in Revelation 2:13.

The book is designed to give you an insight into life in the first century AD. It looks at the social, cultural and political themes of the Greco-Roman empire in the course of the letters and gives you a glimpse of what life would have been like for the early Christians.

One thing that really struck me in the book is how generous and committed to the poor and disadvantaged some of the first century Christians were. After each meeting where they read and discussed the Scriptures, they worshiped God and prayed, they then did an inventory of the needs of the group and their social connections.

Once they recorded the needs down they then assigned the task of caring for the needs of others or distributing food or goods. It didn’t matter if the person was a Christian or not, they were committed to helping them with their need and sharing their resources to bring help or relief to the situation.

Now I know this is a fictional book, but a reading of the Book of Acts shows that the early Christians did in fact share their belongings to make sure none of the group was in need (Acts 2:42-47). Other historical readings from Josephus and other writers also confirm this practice.

This has got me thinking. When was the last time after church we all sat down and assessed openly the needs of the group and assigned someone to help or give resources to meet that need? In my 19 years as a Christian and hundreds of meetings, I would have to say never.

I found this sad that in the early stages of Christianity they really understood Jesus’ words to care for the poor and disadvantaged in their midst. And somehow it has been lost for us today. Yes we do make our efforts and there are some generous Christians out there, but nothing like taking an inventory and assigning tasks. It makes you wonder…

One of the things I have always struggled with is being paid for ministry. For me personally something has just not felt right is receiving money for being a blessing or an encouragement to people.

My biggest struggle was when I did a short stint as a Pastor of a small country church. Each week the offering would come in and then I would be paid from it. This is how is works in most churches.

The thing I struggled with is that sometimes 80-90% of the offering went to pay me - one person. That left 10-20% left over to pay church bills, buy materials for discipleship and to be a blessing for the community that we lived amongst and wanted to serve.

Being an evangelist at heart I just could not do it. For me 80% (at least) of the money that comes in should go towards blessing the community and reaching out to people with the love and salvation Jesus offers.

Now hear my heart here. I am not saying that we shouldn’t be paid to be in ministry. The Apostle Paul talks about living by the Gospel and being supported by it. I am talking about in situations where money is short and there might be other ways of doing it.

One way that I like is the Chinese House Church idea. They only pay their Pastors if they are in charge of a number of churches (which may number up to 4000 in each house church!) or they move away as a missionary to another part of China. In the case of a missionary, once they are settled in the town they then work to support themselves and reach out the local people.

Another idea I like is that of bi-vocational Pastors (which I have shared before) who work in a place part time to support their families and then minister amongst the people they are called to serve. The church then might pay them a small amount to compensate them for any expenses that were incurred while doing their role.

So I guess that begs the question. How is PASSION funded? At PASSION all of our ministry has been funded by those who work as volunteers with our ministry. We all work in a variety of jobs to pay for all the outreach we do. As each one feels led they offer money to pay for various outreaches we are involved with.

One of the things I have never been interested in doing is buying an investment property. By this I mean having your house that you and your family live in and then getting a bank loan to buy another property to rent it out to build net wealth.

I know it makes sense in some ways to buy the extra house and rent it out. The rent then pays the loan and if the rent doesn’t cover all the expenses of the property you can negative gear it and get tax advantages. You then make money as both houses rise in value and your net worth increases. Despite all this I have never been interested or perhaps I am not called to do this.

I guess in many ways I am financially conservative and want to live a simple life. I have always been about saving money and then using it wisely and conservatively. I have never been one to splash out on the biggest and best cars, buy a big two story house and live a lavish lifestyle. It is just not in me.

For me being financially conservative and not wanting investment properties goes back to two things - being content with what you have and trusting God for the future.

I am content to own our three bedroom, one bathroom house with one living room. It is a nice and comfortable and on a nice sized block with a nice simple outdoor area to watch the kids play. As a family it is just what we need and it is much more than 90% of the worlds population can ever hope to own! Yes we are very blessed.

I also trust God for the future. Yes it makes sense to use your money wisely and save for the future, but for me personally I would rather use my extra money to build God’s Kingdom and store my treasures in heaven (Matthew 6:19-21). God knows what we need now and He knows what we will need in the future. I trust Him to supply our needs according to His riches (Philippians 4:19).

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not against buying investment properties full stop. If God has called you to build wealth by buying and investing in houses that is great. Go for it. But don’t just do it because your are worried about your future retirement, it is the latest money making trend, or because friends or an investment advisor has told you that you must do it. God knows what you need, and He WILL supply your needs.

One of the things I have tried to do in my Christian life is to resource people and ministries. I see this as a part of being a good steward that the Bible talks about.

I do my best to place resources in people’s hands that will help them come to Christ, be discipled or help them on their journey of faith.

I also try to support ministries who are doing this in another part of the world or ones that are trying to alleviate peoples poverty and/or suffering.

When deciding who or what I support I generally do three things.

1. Pray - I ask God which projects or ministries He wants me to support. He knows where money is most needed and the things that we as a family should be involved with. I trust He will let us know.

2. Read - I read about different organisations and see if they have any pressing needs. I do this as I want to sow money into groups or ministries that are producing good results.

3. Talk - I discuss it with my wife and we pray about it together. Before long we usually come to an agreement on which organisations we should support and how often and much we should give.

My heart is to do God’s work. If I can’t do it myself, I try to help others in the work they are doing. The key to this is to seek God’s will, learn about organisations and to sow into people that are producing good results.

Over the years I have a had a number of people pray for me and then bring a prophetic word afterwards. By prophetic word I mean something that God places on the persons heart to say to you. It is usually an encouragement or confirms something you have been praying about.

Some of these prophecies have been really encouraging, some I have put on the back burner and some I have just forgotten over the passage of time.

One prophetic word though has stuck me over the years. It was about ten years ago and came from a recognised prophet in the denomination that I was attending. He said that, “I have a heart for the fallen fruit. The fruit that falls off the tree and no-one else wants to pick up because it appears rotten”.

He went on to explain this was about befriending people who don’t seem to fit in to the crowd and perhaps are disabled or have other social problems. He said most people don’t see them or don’t know how to relate to them, but I do/would.

Over the years this prophecy is the one that touched me the most and it is one that still brings tears to my eyes. It confirmed something to me that just seemed to come naturally. It is something that God has hard wired it into me.

It has also acted as a sign post for the things I do. As I go about my daily business I am reminded every now and then about this and when someone comes across my path who some people might miss, God prompts me to talk to and get to know them.

How about you? What prophecies have you received over the years? Are there any memorable ones that have really confirmed something to you? Have any really shaped you ministry or life in general? I think that would be worth reflecting on today.

God Bless,

Dave

In yesterdays post I talked briefly about the process of renewing your mind from Romans 12:2. In today’s post I thought I would share some of the things we can do to transform our thinking patterns from worldly to God’s way of thinking.

1. Read your Bible regularly and reflectively

2. Pray and spend time alone with God regularly

3. Allow the Holy Spirit to work in your heart and life

4. Spend time with positive Christian friends discussing spiritual things

5. Listen to good quality sermons and take notes

6. Read positive Christian books

7. Read missionary magazines and articles that tell of reaching people for Christ

8. Read and interact with positive Christians online

9. Read a daily devotional like “our Daily Bread” or “Every Day with Jesus”

These are just some of the things that will help renew your mind and change your thinking patterns. Romans 12:2 says that if we renew our minds we “will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will”.

I have been reading and reflecting on Romans chapter 12 verses 1 and 2 the last few days. I have done this many times over the years as this passage was one of my first memory verses in the discipleship program I did.

For those not familiar with this passage it says…

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (NIV).

At the heart of this passage is offering our lives to God for His service in response to His mercy towards us. When I came to Christ back in 1989 this was the last thing on my mind. Yes I was a Christian, but I still wanted to live life on my terms and do what I wanted to do.

Over the years though, my mind has slowly (very slowly at times!) been renewed as verse two talks about. This has happened as I have prayed, read the Bible and allowed the Holy Spirit to move in my life. Now living my life for God just seems to be the natural option for me. It just makes sense and to be honest I couldn’t imagine not living this way.

Just as a matter of interest. The above text was taken from the New International Version of the Bible. The text below is from The Message version. I like the simple way it explains it…

“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you”.

As a dad I am trying to encourage my kids to have good positive attitudes. One that I am especially keen to pass on to my kids is being thankful for what we have.

Yesterday in our Sunday arvo family worship time we looked at the attitude of being thankful. After some worship I looked at a few verses from the Bible that talked about being thankful for what we have and to see them all as blessings from God.

After this I invited each of my family to share one thing that they were thankful to God for. I was happy to hear that they all struggled with just finding one thing to narrow it down to. We all seemed to find five or six things off the top of ours heads!

After that we finished with communion and the old song “Give thanks with a greatful heart”. It was a nice time of family worship and sharing.

Just in case you are wondering. I was thankful for my faith and salvation, my family, our new life in Merredin and that we can all meet and share our faith as a family.

Over the years I have learned a few things that have helped me in my Bible reading. Today I thought I would share a few of them.

1. Pray first - I always ask God to help me understand what I am reading and that He will speak to me through it. I also ask to help me put what I learn in to practice.

2. Read in context - I try to make sure I don’t just read one verse in isolation. I try to read a few verses either side to get the full picture. In some cases I read the whole chapter to understand the flow of it.

3. Discuss it with others - I try to talk with other people about passages I have read. Some times God can give you different perspectives on a text through other peoples eyes.

4. Write it in a journal - I try to write down anything that I get from a particular passage or verse. That was I can refer back to it and learn from it again. Some of the things I learn I write about on this blog too!

5. Try a different translation - Sometimes reading a passage in a different translation might give a new perspective on the text. Sometimes a paraphrase version might say it in a different way.

6. Use Bible tools - I have several Bible dictionaries and Bible commentaries that help me with difficult passages. These help me to call on the wisdom of Bible scholars who have studied the Bible in great depth.

7. Ask questions - Questions can help understand the text. What the writer was saying to the people at the time? Was there a problem or an issue? What was the solution? What does it mean to us today?

8. Don’t rush it - Sometimes I just don’t understand the passage first time I read it or I miss something. I read it through several times and then spend some time just thinking about it.

I hope these tips you you to be more effective in your Bible reading. Happy reading!

If you don’t have access to a Bible you can read one online at BibleGateway.com by clicking here.