LEARNING

This Christmas season has been one of making connections. The first year of an appointment is one of learning and understanding what the normal cyclic processes of a particular congregation are. Each congregation has it’s own way of normal operation through the calendar year and it’s own expectation of what the Officer is supposed to do and be. This is a big learning curve.

Throughout this time there are often things, and situation that arise, which indicate the history of people and previous situations.
One person has a problem with things not being done! When it appeared that something had not been done, their first response was to accuse the officer of not doing the particular thing. However, it had been done, and more importantly was done at the first opportunity, but sadly a third party could not recall the completed task until a fourth party reminded the third party of the situations completion.

You think that you are getting to know someone, then an unfounded accusation is thrown abusively into the mix, and you start to wonder if you know anything about the real person at all?

Sometimes the connections you make, are why something is not happening!


Luke 6:6-7 (Message)
On another Sabbath he went to the meeting place and taught. There was a man there with a crippled right hand. The religion scholars and Pharisees had their eye on Jesus to see if he would heal the man, hoping to catch him in a Sabbath infraction.

THINKING CONNECTIONS

Last Saturday I was in the centre of a Race Course where there were two cricket grounds. It was a warm day with a good breeze. My team was fielding first, which meant that where I was fielding, I had opportunity to talk to some of the members of the opposing team as the rotated their stint as umpires. We made some superficial connections, and it was pleasing after the game that they each remembered my name. More than that, there were a few opportunities to share that I was an Officer in The Salvation Army.
Although this game was not in my Corps area, it was good let them know who I was. The game was played in a good spirit, however my cricket team did not win.

I am simply more aware of making positive connections.

John 15:4
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.


Year 1 PC ~ Day 10.

DIRECTION

As we move forward in Mission and Ministry to this generation we are bound to face challenges along the way. It seems that with every step forward, another obstacle is placed in our way from the deceiver, and those in opposition to the Kingdom of God. Sadly, some of those involved in opposition are from within our own ranks.
Not only do we lead, we are also in the job of “Vision Casters”. Talking about the vision, sharing the vision, and inviting others to participate in the call of God to connect with this generation.

Let’s head in the same direction!!!


John 15:4
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.



Year 1 PC ~ Day 8.

WORD CONNECTION

Can we connect with the promises in God’s Word?

Psalm 103:1-8 (KJV)
Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies; Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's. The Lord executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed. He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.




Year 1 PC ~ Day 5.

CONNECTIONS

Have you got the connection?

James 5:13-20 (Message)
Are you hurting? Pray. Do you feel great? Sing. Are you sick? Call the church leaders together to pray and anoint you with oil in the name of the Master. Believing-prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet. And if you've sinned, you'll be forgiven—healed inside and out.
Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with. Elijah, for instance, human just like us, prayed hard that it wouldn't rain, and it didn't—not a drop for three and a half years. Then he prayed that it would rain, and it did. The showers came and everything started growing again.
My dear friends, if you know people who have wandered off from God's truth, don't write them off. Go after them. Get them back and you will have rescued precious lives from destruction and prevented an epidemic of wandering away from God.

Year 1 PC ~ Day 4.

POSSIBILITIES

Just think of the possibilities for our respective communities, if each Corps and Social Centre were healing centres. A place where the ministry of God the Holy Spirit has free reign to bring healing to burdened lives. Where the lives weighed down by the cares of the world can be unloaded. Where people receive emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual healing. The Apostle Peter calls for people to leave their burdens and cares with Jesus, who can meet their needs.
1 Peter 5:7 (KJV)
Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.

Some may question whether this is a possibility in this day, and age. Peter was following in the footsteps of Jesus, driven by the ministry of God the Holy Spirit in his life. He was also reflecting the promises within God’s Holy Word revealed in the second book of the Bible. Here God’s reflects who he is, and his ministry to the people.
Exodus 15:26 (KJV)
And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the Lord that healeth thee.

Can we be bold enough, to have healing connections available for the burdened in our communities?

1st Year: PC ~ Day 3.

1 PC

The Salvation Army Australian Southern Territory is now in the era of PC, and we need to measure our growth and responses in the PC mode. No, I’m not talking about computers. This is the era of mission as it relates to “Post Connections 07” we go forward with new vision and strategies to aggressively make meaningful connections in our communities in the name of JESUS.

Year 1 PC ~ Day 2.

John 15:4 (KJV)
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.

HOW SMART ARE WE?

Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?

This is an interesting question, so it follows that the TV Show has some appeal to people like me. I have seen the show a couple of times and have been impressed by the young people who represent the 5th graders. Their immediate responses to the question, the steely resolve when questioned by their opponent, the obvious joy in knowing that the older person opponent is struggling to find the answers, and their freedom.

In other places in our land, and in some other nations, this snapshot of life is far from reality. Where severe malnutrition, poverty, slavery, war, and human trafficking, steal the potentiality of life from young children. This is a situation that the world cannot ignore. In many cases, some people are getting very rich, without any regard to the human lives that are being destroyed.

Do we contribute to the destruction of other lives? How smart are we, really?


Micah 6:8 (KJV)
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

IRAQ

These photos are from Iraq, only a few months old. When it was mooted that Iraq was to be invaded, I was totally against this invasion. Mr Bush and others proceeded to influence the world to push ahead with the invasion idea, and strategy. I am deeply saddened that Mr. Howard has involved Australia in this crime.
In our land Australia it is a crime to injure people, to use force on another person, to carry weapons, to retaliate when attacked, to defend your property from an intruder. In fact you have to have your building set up so that if an intruder breaks in and something happens like fire, all the exits have to open from the inside with ease, because if they are injured you are at fault. So if this is the way Australians are to act, then why are we involved in the plundering of another nation and its people?
The evidence thus far is that the Iraq nation is in civil unrest, with the death toll climbing daily. The brutality of the opposition forces has been underestimated, and the initial invasion did nothing to produce a better way of reacting as a community. This war has brought shame on the Christian community as non-Christian communities flag this event by the Western World as a Christian backed enterprise of suffering.

How are we to say to these people in Iraq that a Christian does not operate this way?


Zech. 3:9-10
For behold the stone that I have laid before Joshua; upon one stone shall be seven eyes: behold, I will engrave the graving thereof, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day. In that day, saith the Lord of hosts, shall ye call every man his neighbour under the vine and under the fig tree. (KJV)

WHAT?

As you look around the community, what moves you?
Is it the community that is separated from God by their own rebellion to his will? Is it the amazing growth in the attitudes that result in aggression and violence? Is it humanity suffering in sickness, and deformity? Is it the emotionally scared, who have abandoned hope and abuse their bodies by any number of means? Or is it the seemingly inability of the people of God to meet needs that are presented in community?

An amazing thing is that often the people of God are unable to cope with the support of their brothers and sisters in the church. We are afraid to be vulnerable and confess our needs and errors. We tend to live our lives under our own authority, without appropriating the promises in God’s Word. We see the public prayer altar as a place of life failure, rather than a place of refreshment in spirit, soul, and body.

How can we reach out to those alienated from God, if we do not know what we have?



James 5:13-16
Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms. Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. (KJV)

Your CHOICE!

I have heard utterances from some who call themselves the people of God that a sermon should only be 6 minutes long. From these people the celebration of the Word of God seems to have little relevance.

How then would they cope with the Apostle Paul, who spoke all through the night to sun-up? How would they cope with William Booth, who spoke with such passion and fire, for an hour or more? In their thinking Paul, and William Booth, would have been a wasting their efforts! However history would hold the Champions of God with a much different view, and esteem.

It would seem that the problem is not so much with the speaker, but the hearer. On the surface it is simply a rejection of the speaker. With further analytical discernment, the evidence is a total rejection of the Word of God. Who then, in their right mind would openly go out in opposition to not only the Word of God, but also God himself, and his servants?


Joshua 24:14-15
Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the Lord. [15] And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. (KJV)

DARKNESS

What is it in the Scriptures that really grab your attention? Is it a passage, a book, a verse, a phrase, or even a single word?

It was dark from the 6th to the 9th hour!
I heard these words, and tears formed in my eyes, immediately. There was no mistake about the impact of these words. My heart was breaking, because of God’s amazing love. Hundreds of images flashed through my mind. There were images of people, and situations. More important, is the scenario associated with that particular darkness for three hours.
It is a period in time, specific to when Jesus was hung on a cross, for execution. Impaled was the Holy Son, of the living God. Condemned by a world filled with hate, greed, piety, selfishness, etc. Jesus surrenders his life and dies!!!

Darkness!! What does this represent?
- God the Father backing off from His creation.
- Three hours where the Devil had an unrestricted opportunity to reign.
- The sorrowful heart of God, expressed to the world.
- A world left to it’s own devices.
- The real burden that Jesus was carrying.
- The real state of the world with out God.

What does this darkness represent?

Luke 23:44
By now it was noon. The whole earth became dark, the darkness lasting three hours— (Message)

DRY GROUND

Isaiah 53:2
For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. (KJV)

A tender plant . . . out of dry ground.

Jesus the son of the living God, born of Mary, in a town called Bethlehem. How much more vulnerable can Deity become.

The world that Jesus entered was arid, in regard to personal man – God relationships. A real desert spiritually speaking, for the One and Only son of the living God, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Surely it was the abundance of love, grace, and truth, which was the sustaining influence that nurtured him to really on his Heavenly Father.

Lord, thank you for being a tender shoot in dry ground. Amen.

TENDER SHOOT

In the windows of the ‘Farming Studies’ classrooms that faced into a corridor there were specimen jars with seeds that had germinated, and were transforming into plants, in various stages of growth suspended in alcohol solution. As a teenage student at this Technical College the contents these windows and jars were always fascinating. Although not involved with farming studies, the different stages of growth on view stirred my interest when using that corridor.

To see the earth parting, and the green shoot of a germinated seed, pushing its way up to the sunlight is just an awesome sight. The tender, vulnerable shoots, pushing their way through the earth to the sun, with great strength.

I am reminded of another tender shoot, Jesus.



Isaiah 53:2
For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. (KJV)

Lord, thank you for being a tender shoot in dry ground. Amen.

AS BEFORE

Joel 2:23
Be glad, O people of Zion, rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given you the autumn rains in righteousness. He sends abundant showers, both autumn and spring rains, as before. (NIV)

AS BEFORE!!!

I have always sat enthralled, as the adventures of the previous generations have been recounted. Whether they are from the history of the local Corps, or from the experiences of Officers’ involved in ministry. As the stories are retold, the amazing thing is the sense of joy, excitement, and passion about the times being shared. More often than not, many of the occasions have been victories through some really tough events and times.

Perhaps if there are people that have influenced, encouraged, and inspired you, an honour roll could be shared. Lord God, we give you praise for the saints who have been influential in our lives, and who are in glory with you, like, Toppie Whiteley, Ted & Lillian Nowell.

Many young people are seeking to do ministry today with the same enthusiasm that was evident in the pioneers. The Youth, are also seeking to be pioneers into new mission areas. This is really exciting!!!

Is this the same ‘as before’, or ‘back to the future’?



Lord, you have been the all sufficiency of those who have gone before; now refresh your people in this day. Amen.

Be GLAD! REJOICE!

Joel 2:23
Be glad, O people of Zion, rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given you the autumn rains in righteousness. He sends abundant showers, both autumn and spring rains, as before. (NIV)

Be Glad!!! Rejoice in the Lord!!!

What is there to be glad and rejoice about? You may have many situations in your own life that are specific to you, that will cause you to be glad and rejoice. If that were the case then this inhabitants’ of this world would like to know your story. Shout it from the rooftops, - oooh, well, in the shopping centres, in the work place, on the sporting field, in the family, in worship, etc…

Together, let us be glad and rejoice for the young people in The Salvation Army. The teenagers and young adults who have a deep hunger for the Word of God, and desire to be all that God wants them to be. A Royal Priesthood, and a Holy Nation, a people belonging to God, to declare the Praises of Him who called them out of darkness into His wonderful light.

This is an age where the young people are receiving an abundant outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Showers of blessing, for ministry to a world, that needs to know how to have a personal relationship with their Creator, and Saviour, Jesus.


Lord, continue the autumn and spring rains of righteousness on the young people, so they may be continually refreshed by your Holy Spirit in their spirit, soul, and body. Amen.

REFRESHMENT

Joel 2:23
Be glad, O people of Zion, rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given you the autumn rains in righteousness. He sends abundant showers, both autumn and spring rains, as before. (NIV)

Our Nation is experiencing drought conditions, over a large area of the continent. Some talk about global warming, and the problems of greenhouse gas emissions, which will continue to inflict pain on the natural processes of nature, and continue to produce climate change with a negative effect.
There are areas that have coped with a lot over the last few months. Firstly the harshness of the drought next was savage bush fires, then floods. All in the same area

Thinking about the autumn rains, I am reminded that they are refreshing after the hot dry summer, and also the beginning of the restoration of our reservoir resources for the next hot dry period. This applies to the natural world, and also our spiritual life, where the surrounding elements can be harsh.

Lord, help us to receive the refreshment our spirit, soul, and body, require. Amen.

Let's protect the children!

"We haven't changed our policy in relation to land rights generally. But whatever is needed to be done in the process of establishing a safe society for indigenous children will be done. That is more important to me than anything else. It's more important than any doctrine or philosophy." (Prime Minister John Howard)

Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough likewise believes intervention of this kind only comes once in a generation. "Clearly, in domestic terms, it's the largest intervention I can recall ever in my lifetime," he says. "Can't think of anything else like it. It's the one opportunity to do what people have been crying out for - to repair the damage of years of failure."

I wonder about an unrighteous nation, trying to fix the unrighteous acts of their people.
We as a nation, stole their land, killed their people, raped their women, stole their children, disempowered their law, enslaved their freedom, ruined their culture, polluted their morals, and gave them addictions, etc.

Romans 8:3
For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:

Romans 3:23
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

Proverbs 14:34
Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.

1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

John 3:19
And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

John 3:16-17
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

WHERE

Joel 2:17
Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God? (KJV)

Where is their God? Here is a question that focuses on the very existence of the Lord God himself. The enquirer is not interested in ‘where’, as a particular place. In a sinister way, the emphasis is on the assertion, “He is not”
Sadly, when this question is raised today, ‘the Church’ (You and I), has to take responsibility for the lack of evidence of God’s working in, and around His people. Our failure to be a fruitful vine, whose harvest is a display of the Lord’s presence, has it’s own reward, both in, and around our lives.

Lord, forgive us for bringing dishonour to Your Kingdom. Amen.

WEEP

Joel 2:17
Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God? (KJV)

On many occasions, the Lord has led his leaders to a place where they could sit, and view their city. This may be from a mountain, or raised area, where the physical landscape is visible. The view could also be from the leader’s favourite place for prayer, as a result of understanding the patterns and mosaics of society that building a picture, or spiritual map.

Lord, lead us to the place where we can weep in your presence! Amen.

HELP LORD

Joel 2:17 Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God? (Message)

The Lord is requiring the leadership in The Church, to stand together before the Lord in common prayer for the people. This is the time for the whole Church to stand united, before the Lord. Seeking to follow the Lord with a unity of spirit, and purpose, dispelling all aspects of dysfunctional worldliness. Moving forward together, under the Holy leadership of the Lord of Lords, and the King of Kings.

The Nation is largely unaware of The Church, only seeing isolated pockets, in denominational frameworks and structures. These frameworks, are identified by the world, rather than the glory and the majesty of the Lord.

Who in their right mind would live in an house, where only the framework has been assembled? Suffering in the elements, without a roof, floor, and walls, to shelter and protect. The world is ruling God's people, rather than God's people leading, and influencing the world to stand in awe of the Lord.

Lord, forgive our isolationist disunity. Reveal your plan to your Church, and heal the disease of disunity. Lord let your Glory shine!! Amen.

Prophets

Numbers 11:29 And Moses said unto him, Enviest thou for my sake? would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them! (KJV)