A hurricane of love!

1st November--Thought 4 the Week :
Following on from last week’s challenge to spread God’s love around, both BURN & also Sunday morning’s message gave us the same realization. At BURN we were challenged to ask God for a compassionate heart for those who are hurting or lost. It is only when we feel compassion (not pity) for others that we will be compelled to do something about it. Then on Sunday morning we were challenged (if you missed it – ask me so you can borrow the DVD) to show we love God by loving others by being Jesus with flesh on. Not creating more programs & events but to be a hurricane or tsunami of God’s love to others with no thought of our own sacrifice. This is what an unbelieving world will marvel out, and for what we should be recognized for. Ask God this week to extend your borders, ask Him to give you an opportunity where you need to give of your time, money or stuff to someone less fortunate than you. I am looking forward to hearing your stories, of how you have been able to spread God’s love this week. (There’s a spot on the website where you can paste them!)
The people who had nothing because of the house fire were very thankful for what were able to take to them last week – I believe they saw God’s love in action as the community gave what they could to them. Let’s have some more stories like this to tell next week!

Simple but Hard

25th October--Thought 4 the Week :
This last weekend we made a trip up north for Jon’s great auntie’s funeral (she was 100) and his dad’s 60th bday. We traveled up with Jon’s brother and had some interesting discussions in the car. One of these discussions was about how the church has made Christianity complex, when really it is extremely simple. So simple that we came to the conclusion that it can be summed up in one word – LOVE! In fact Jesus used the same concept to sum it all up in Luke 10:27 when he tells us to love God & other people. It’s that simple, but also that hard!
The funny thing was that today the front page of the BOP Times caught my eye about a family that had nothing, & now there house has also been burnt down. My first reaction was not that of love, but I felt in my spirit a conviction that if I want to live an authentic life for Christ, I need to be spreading His love around. So I bought the paper to find out how I could help to show love to these people. I would like to give them some money and maybe some things as well. If you would like to be a part of this, and help to share God’s love around, then contact me before the end of the week, and we can make a contribution together. How will people know God cares, unless we care?

Courage

18th October -- Thought 4 the Week :
If we lived in a perfect world how God first intended, then one of the things we wouldn’t have to deal with would be fear. Fear is not from God, it is not what He intended for our lives, and if we live our life in fear of one thing or another then we are robbed of the abundant life that He has planned for us. Fear of other people’s thoughts, or actions toward us comes from our sinful nature and needs to be dealt with everyday.
While we were at camp in the holidays, we were challenged to be courageous, and step up to what God has called us to be and wants us to be. Courage is required to stand strong for God, to be different from the crowd, & to be the person He has called us to be.
There are 2 verses that come to mind when thinking about be courageous, the first is in Joshua, where God tells him to be courageous and the reason why he could be was because the Lord was with him. We can claim that promise too. The other verse is found in 2 Tim 1:7, and it tells us that God hasn't given us a spirit of fear, but instead power, love & discipline. You see being courageous goes 2 ways. Firstly God is with us and gives us the power, but we also have to be disciplined in our thoughts and actions, so God’s power can work in and through us.