Hello,
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I apologise for being quite bad in updating my blog this past few weeks. However, I'd like to share a few different, yet connecting things that I have been mulling over.
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Over the last month I have been thinking and praying more about home, Ireland - particularly Northern Ireland. For love, peace and truth, for mercy and for Christians that desire unity over division to rise up in the church. Also, it was great hear amazing speakers at the YS National Youth Workers Conference this weekend, but the Sunday night keynote and the Monday morning seminar struck me. Danielle Strickland is a Canadian Salvation Army church-planter/missional thinker/general genius who happens to be working in Australia currently as the Social Justice Director. She challenged the Pharisetical tendencies that we, in the church, are inclined to have. This is the 'inner Pharisee' that Toby Foster often talks about. Obviously, church-planting has been on my mind what with the 2 preview services on the first 2 weeks of November that we've had at Spring Hill, with Trinity Church. Also, the growth of the childrens and youth ministry, particularly over the next 2 years. What the ministry will look like, its values and its emphases.
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So, with all these thing are floating about in my head I can't help thinking - what would things look like with Christ reigning? If God's Kingdom were to come on earth here and how, how would its values look when the rubber-hits-the-road? What would the communities in which we work look like if we, as Christ's co-heirs, took the commission seriously? What if I were to model unity rather than division? Love rather than prejudice? Integration rather than segegation? Communion with Christ over human alliances? Humility over self-importance? Christ's righteousness over self-righteousness? Imagine what God's Kingdom would look like here on earth - we pray it often enough, but do we really belief it?
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We need to fight and defeat the inner-Pharisee. Jesus reserved the harshest and strictest words for these people, who should have known better. We are not to focus on rules and regulations, as if it is them that save. As, we know Christ came to fulfill them and supersede the law. We are to reach deeper, a Micah 6:8 people. We are born to be free and fight for those who aren't. We are to be ambassadors of holiness and bringers of peace.
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Basically, I have to do an awful lot more processing, but I'm refreshed and inspired and hope that God will continue to reveal himself to his people. That I will focus on the fact that all things are possible with God and he has got the future in his hands. My prayer is that God will lead me and counsel me along a journey that will oppose the world's values. Peacemaking does not mean the lack of opposition. We are called to oppose the reigning culture, our present day Babylon. But, it's only through God's help that we can have any impact at all.
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