Joshua's birthday celebration (19/8/16)

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Study 5. Luke 2:1-21

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  9. Why did God have His Son born in the circumstances described in 2:7, rather than in a royal or at least comfortable, household? (see Luke 6:20, 9:58, 22:27; 2 Cor 8:9)   The verses tell us that Jesus was poor and came to serve. He upended the world's idea of 'blessing' as being rich. This indeed is the pattern of all God's working in the Bible. He chooses the small and insignificant (Dt 7:7-8), like king David (1 Sa 16:11) and peasants in Galillee  to exalt and to accomplish His great and wise purposes. 10. What does 2:1-20 reveal about: Jesus' identity (2:11) 'Saviour' (cf. 1:47, Jn 4:42) 'Christ' - the Messiah, the Anointed One. (cf. Jn 1:41, 4:25) - empowered for ministry. 'The Lord ' (cf. Acts 2:36; 2 Cor. 4:5; Phil. 2:11) How people and angels reponded to his coming (2:8-20)  The angels were 'praising God' The shepherds were filled with great fear. They quickly went to look for the baby, told Mary and Joseph what the ang...
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Study 12 ("Reaching people where they are")

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We continue our studies of the Biblical perspectives on evangelism. Paul writes in 2 Cor 5:11-21 that evangelism is “the ministry of reconciliation”. This carries the presupposition that we are at enmity with God and that evangelism aims at restoration of a broken relationship. His motivations for evangelism (v. 11-15) are ·          the fear of the Lord (v. 11, c.f. 7:1) who will judge and reward us (v.10) for our deeds, including the deeds of sharing the gospel. This judgement is not to determine salvation or condemnation, but to establish how faithful as stewards we have been and how our rewards will be like (c.f. 1 Cor 3:12-15) ·          to establish the credibility of the true gospel in contrast to false teaching (v.12) ·          the controlling love of Christ (v.14) who died and was raised for our sakes. We now are free to no longer live for o...
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Paradigm 2: Mentoring the Orientation of Life (14/12/18)

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We started with Question 3 then moved to Question 2 before ending with personal sharing on Question 1. I asked the question: What is it (except for the last red/blue part characteristic) about the blue bar column that is distinctively Christian? Put another way, can a non-Christian be a 'blue-bar' person, or can only Christians be 'blue-bar' people? Our answer was that non-Christians can indeed have blue-bar characteristics, but never for the reasons and basis on spiritual truth that Christians have. For a disciple of Christ, every aspect of his or her life - both blue and red bars - is radically God-centered. All we do in both in our outer appearance to others and our inner lives is done before the face of God. We need both external accomplishments as well as inner substance. We did say that it was not helpful to be very spiritual but quite useless in a job! We also asked if this whole idea of red and blue bars was a Biblical idea at all? Certainly the Bible celebr...
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