God’s song-book

Think about your favourite song for a moment.

What do the words say? What do they communicate?

They’re important, right? Usually, the lyrics are meaningful somehow. They tell you what the singer is thinking. They help you understand what they’re feeling.

That’s why we like listening to music – we have an emotional response to it.

And that’s why, this term, we’re looking at God’s songs. His song-book.

They’re called Psalms, and there’s a whole bunch of them in the middle of the Bible. Some of them are written by kings, some by professional musicians, and some… well, we don’t know who wrote some of them.

But they’re all about God in some way. And so we’re going to look at what’s important for these song-writers, and maybe compare what we find there to what we hear on the radio.

Sam.

Quote of the day

“We’re not bankrolling the Vatican, Stephen, we’re preaching the word of God.”

- Paul Fitz.

Power and Responsibility

There’s another line in the Spiderman movies that rings out again and again: “With great power comes great responsibility”.

This was another line that made me think.

One of the things about the gospel, the message of Jesus, is that it is a powerful message. But to anyone who has heard it, there is something of a responsibility placed on them as to how they then live their lives.

There’s a section in Luke that talks about the responsibility that comes with knowledge. Specifically, there’s a responsibility that comes with knowledge about God, about the judgement to come, about Jesus’ identity as Lord.

The phrase is “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded”. So if you’re reading this and you’ve heard the story of Jesus, you know all about what he did, you know what happened to him and why the Bible says what it does, and you’ve not really made any kind of commitment to do anything about it, this part of the Bible comes as a bit of a warning. Make sure you think it through, have a read of the Bible, work out if what it says about Jesus is trustworthy, and then work out how you’re living your life.

Because the word about Jesus is powerful. It’s God’s words. And with great power comes great responsibility.

-Sam.

Power and Weakness

We watched the first two spiderman movies last night. It was good fun, with (in my estimation) both movies capturing quite well the comic book graphic novel feel of the original.

There were, however, a couple of things that occurred to me as I watched. One was the way that the dorky, nerdy Peter Parker is transformed into a powerful superhero. As Peter, he is a bit of a hopeless case. As spiderman, he is everything that Parker is not – cool, calm, witty, strong, able to get the girl, in charge of the situation, everyone likes him.
His power, though super-human, is still a very human sort of power. He’s strong and fast in ways that people are, just very much more so.

There’s a real contrast to how real power is displayed, at least in terms of how the Bible presents it. Paul wrote a couple of letters to a church in a city called Corinth, recorded for us in the New Testament. He talks at one stage about the troubles he has had in his ministry, which have been pretty considerable. But the word from the Lord that is his comfort is “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

The way that God works seems weak. When we talk about Jesus, it seems like a stupid thing to do. It feels like it’s something that will never change anything… but God uses the message of Jesus’ death and resurrection to change lives. Even the message seems crazy – the Lord of all things captured, beaten up, tortured, and killed like a criminal – that’s supposed to be God’s power displayed? Absolutely. God’s power is displayed at the cross, for that’s the point where the most fundamental change happens – our relationship with God is restored. Talking about Jesus feels stupid and weak and insignificant, but it can be the most powerful thing that we can do. God’s power is displayed in our weakness.

some fwl history

As you may know, I spent last week down at St George North Anglican Church with a bunch of other people helping them run a mission. One of the things that kind of surprised me (in a this-feels-like-home kind of way) was that their youth group was called FUEL. Looks different, sounds the same.

I was chatting to one of the ministers there, by the name of Dave. Turns out that he spent some time at All Saints as a student minister, just like someone else that you know and love (that’s right, it’s me! Nice of you to notice). When he was here, he called the youth group FWL, since it makes perfect sense to do so. Fridays. West Lindfield. FWL. Obvious.

When he finished college and headed south to start working at St George North, he was involved with the youth church and the youth group… which he called FUEL. As you do. That’s what youth groups should be called, right?

Obviously he couldn’t do the funky spelling, as it wouldn’t make sense. But it’s a cool story.

FWL – the original, and the best.

-Sam.