holidays

First, let me apologise for the long silence. I'll try and get around to writing a newsletter about what the year's been like just so you know. It's been a good year, and my heart is filled with thankfulness when I look back and see just how much God has done in me.

Secondly, I just thought I'd let everyone know where I am these holidays. From today (Sunday 16 December) until the 10th of January I'll be back in Bowral. From 11-18 January I'll be up in Kempsey, but from 19 Jan until 09 Feb I'll be in Bowral again.

Thirdly, sixthly, and lastly, I head back to start a new year at BCV on the 9th of February. Next year (08) should be a good one. We start doing a lot more of the engineering, which I am looking forward to. Already checking out pretty looking tools on the internet.

And to conclude, I hope I can catch up with you if you are around these holidays. For everyone that doesn't live within catching-up distance (I think Kako takes the cake - Sweden is maybe a bit far), then I hope we can catch up some other way or time.

it's not about what you do for me, zander; it's all about what I did for you

What I do for God

I've been fasting since Tuesday, for various reasons; some good, some not so good. But in this, God, as in everything, has been moulding and shaping me, and teaching me through his word.

Andrew Murray once said, "Fasting helps to express, to deepen, and to confirm the resolution that we are willing to sacrifice anything, to sacrifice ourselves to attain what we seek for the Kingdom of God."

Fasting is a good thing to do. It reminds me that "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Dt 8:3; Mt 4:4). But I was thinking today, this being the third day of my four-day fast, that by tomorrow evening I will have accomplished my goal of showing God how much I love him - that he matters more to me than food. It struck me then that it really doesn't matter what I do for God. He will still be God, regardless of whether I fast for four days, forty days, or not at all. His love for me, His devotion to me, will not be diminished because of my paltry response to him.

Colossians 1:13-22

Reading Colossians 1:13-22, and reading Dick Lucas's exposition of it in the Bible Speaks Today series :

"This resolute refusal to divide God's work from Christ, or to divide Christ in respect of the various parts of his work, gives us a clue we need to recognise two forms in which 'fullness' teaching may have reached Colossae. It may have been by a claim that God had not finished his work of salvation for the Colossians in giving them Christ, so that he had still more to give them if his work was to be completed. But the false teaching may have been put in another way. The Colossians may have been told that to receive the benefits of Christ's saving work on the cross was one thing, but that to receive and enjoy the benefits of his reigning work at God's right hand was quite another. To be cleansed from sin was a blessed beginning; but to be delivered from sin's power they must now claim and appropriate the victory of the ascended Lord over the principalities and powers. To be fully saved the Colossians were urged to make the full Christ their own.
"Against both these forms of erroneous teaching Paul's testimony stands unshaken. He teaches first that what God has done in Christ exhausts all that God has to do for us. He teaches, secondly, that when a person is in Christ, he or she is the beneficiary of all that God has done in Christ."

What God did for me

While fasting and praying and reading the Bible and good works are all important parts of the Christian life, and while they can assist my spiritual growth, God's work in me is not based on what I do for him. Everything that he does in my life is because of what Christ did on the cross for me. All of who I am and will become is because of Christ. Nothing is based on my efforts.

Now there's a comforting thought.

keyboard

Well, thanks to God's provision and to Steph and Richard Rotgans's kindness, I now have a keyboard that works with my computer. Thank you to Steph and Richard and thanks especially to God. It has made things so much easier. Thank you also to everyone who offered help to me.

Goroka, PNG

It's been a week and a half since I got back to Australia, and already I miss PNG. It's a great place and I can see myself going there one day - but that's a long way off, and we'll see. It was great to see Mum and Dad and Caitlin, and to see first hand what they are doing.

my Dad has the coolest office

...and this is his desk. I went flying with Dad a couple of times while I was away. It's a whole different type of flying. Dad says he's never done so much praying about his flying in all his life. Mostly the type of flying he does is flying people in and out of Goroka, some doing church work or going on a Sunday school trip, or flying coffee out of the village to take it to the market to sell. MAF is a vital life-line for the people living in the PNG highlands - the country is so mountainous that any other form of access is almost impossible.

Mum

Mum has to make a lot of things from scratch - not least, bread. She has a bread maker, but even so she is making a loaf at least every two days. She buys most of the vegetables from the open-air market two or three times a week, then goes to the supermarket to get other things, then to the other supermarket because the first one didn't have everything she wanted, and then she ends up making do because no one has what she is looking for.

She's also involved in things during the week. Prison ministry is on every fortnight and she goes with some of the other ladies to that; it is taking a while for her to get to know the locals, but gradually she is making more and more contacts.

and much more...too much to tell

I could go on and on, but I have only so much space. Seeing it all has made such a big difference, and given me a much better idea of what it is that I will be doing should I go to PNG with MAF. I am very grateful for the opportunity - and hopefully next year I will be able to visit Mum and Dad in Telefomin, where they will be moving to (in the middle near the border - more remote, no roads, but really pretty, apparently). They are coming home this December/January for Joel and Carolyn's wedding.

grace

"No single word more accurately defines the essence of the Christian gospel than grace. The young church at Colossae had understood 'grace' in its true meaning and simplicity, without any of the false additions that so easily make grace no longer grace. This meant that, from the very beginning, they understood that man can make no claim on God, however sincere or faithful he may think himself to be; that the heart of the gospel concerns not our commitment to God but his free and merciful offer to commit himself to us in Christ; that our acceptance of the Saviour is meaningless unless God has already freely accepted us in him; that the very essence of the story is not that of men striving to make Christ their Lord, but of Christ in sheer goodness and pity, undertaking for his own sake to make us his servants, despite the fact that we never cease to be unprofitable and undeserving of such a privilege."

Dick Lucas, expounding Colossians 1:3-8 in
The Message of Colossians & Philemon
(Leicester, England : Inter-Varsity Press, 2000)

Will write more soon on my trip to PNG. Blurb : went to PNG from 15-30 Sep. '07 to see Mum, Dad and Caitlin. Fun. Good to see first hand what Mum and Dad do, and what I plan to be doing eventually, too.

futbal de salon

So life here isn't really so bad, but I think I'm going to have to learn to love AFL. Or at least tolerate it. Fortunately among the BCV students there are quite a few European and South American guys, which ensures that a proper emphasis on football (sorry, soccer) is maintained.

Speaking of which, I played futsal for the first time in a while last Friday night. Futsal is a Brazilian invention; its full name is 'futbal de salon' - basically 'football in a small room' - and is five a side soccer played on a basketball court with smaller goals and some modified rules. Also the ball is smaller and heavier so the emphasis is more on passing and small, quick moves because you can't blast the ball into the opposite goal on a goalkick. So. Futsal. Friday night. I played two games with my friends from BCV, playing two quite hard teams. And we won! Woot and all that. I think the scores were something like 9-6 and 8-7. And the highlight....well. Picture the goal, about the size of a field hockey goal. And then picture a whole lot of people around one side of it, trying to kick the ball. And then picture the ball popping out to the other side of the goal with no one to kick it. So what could I do? I just had to run forward and help it into the GOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAALL! I think that's my first goal in futsal. Really, it was just cleaning up. But a goal's a goal.

So I think that's the most fun I've had in a while. But coming up this Saturday morning, beginning at 0300, is the most fun I will probably have in a while. Although I'm not really sure it's fair to compare the two, seeing as the one is more than 160 times longer than the other. But hey. I'm going to PNG (God willing) this Saturday for two weeks. So all I am doing this Thursday and Friday is waiting for Saturday. And some other things I have to do also.

I got baptised today

"There are two reasons I'm standing in the pool today : the first is my parents. When I was eight, I was walking down the street, holding my Dad's hand, and he was explaining that I had to invite Jesus into my heart. 'Righto,' I thought, 'fair enough. Jesus, please come into my heart.' And that was the moment I became a Christian, even with such a small faith. So my walk began there.

"The second reason I'm here -- 2 Timothy 3:4-5 says, 'But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it' -- that's my parents -- 'and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.' So the second reason is the power of the Scriptures and God's work in my life. This salvation is based solely on Jesus' death and resurrection -- that is, he died for my sins, and was raised to life so I could be justified.

"Let me read to you -- well, let me tell you some verses from Romans 6 : 'Or don't you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus' -- that is, baptised with the Holy Spirit -- 'were baptised into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life...For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin -- because anyone who has died has been freed from sin...In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.' [Ro. 6:3-4, 6-7, 11]

"Now this baptism is symbolic of the change that has taken place in me. As David pushes me into the water, it symbolises me dying to sin, and as he pulls me back out, it symbolises my being raised to new life in Christ Jesus.

"So this baptism is a public declaration of the fact that I have died to sin, and am alive to God in Christ Jesus."

grandpa

Grandpa (Dad's dad) died last night, from cancer. I'd appreciate prayer, especially for Dad and Mum and the rest of the family.

home is where the heart is

Here's part of an email I sent to Caitlin the other day :

"I'm sitting a Kako's desk [Kako is a friend of mine], looking up towards the MCR [Main Common Room]. The late afternoon sun sprawls across the lawn, lighting up the sides of the two gum trees I can see out the window, making this clever little splotchy bit running up the middle of the trees that can't decide whether or not it's in light or in shadow. The door's open, and it's about twenty degrees. The birds call to each other every now and then. But it's going to take a while for this place to feel like home."

I went to Bowral in June for part of the holidays (just a couple of days), and although everything was familiar, it didn't feel like home, as I thought it would. I'm going to Goroka, PNG, from 15-30 September (woot!), but I don't think that I'll find home there either.

So where is home?

C. S. Lewis wrote : "If I find in my heart a desire no experience in this world can satisfy, I can only conclude that I was made for another world." (Mere Christianity, I think).

I don't think I will ever really feel at home anywhere in this world. Why?

"All these people [Enoch, Noah, Abraham etc.] were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country - a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, because he has prepared a city for them." Hebrews 11:13-16 (NIV)

no more mondays for a week

Hooray! Welcome Caitlin (because I know you'll be the first to see this). And welcome others. This is my new blog which I figured might be an easier way to keep everyone updated. There is not much here yet, but in time hopefully there will be.