Often we equate hearing as being hearing what someone says and that is that. But I want to make the proposal that true hearing means more then just hearing what is said. Rather real hearing involves action. Within the framework of the Psalm, David says that he loves the Lord because God heard his voice. This means that God heard and acted on his behalf.

Within the Christian framework of existence, God didn’t just hear. He saw. He heard the cry of our hearts stained by sin. He saw our lives messed up by sin. And he acted on our behalf. Painful! Agonising! Tearful! Costly! Deathly action on our behalf. Action which brought us peace. Action that brought us hope. Action that brought about life.

In the same way, we also are called to be hearers of the word. This means to be doers of the word. Being a doer of the word means to be someone who hears what is going on around them. Do you hear what is going on around you. Because if you hear what is going on around you, you are called to action.

The call to action is a hard call. It requires us to die to self. It requires us to die to self and to serve others. Serve our King. Serve our Lord. Serve our God. But…the reality is – serving our God means we need to serve others. Serving others means to act on what we hear, Praying when we hear a need. Giving when we hear a need. Helping when we hear a need. Sharing when we hear a need. Providing shelter when we hear a need.

Jesus said, when you feed someone, you feed him. When you clothe someone, you clothe him. When you visit someone, you visit him. When you provide for someone, you provide for him. When you pray for someone, you pray for him. When you share with someone, you share with him.

When we do these things, we become true hearers of Jesus and we become true hearers of others. I ask you today to consider if you truly are a hearer of the word of God?

In saying this, there are times when we go through awful trials and tribulations. We can be the recipients of bad news.  It can seem that our lives are falling apart and that there is nothing we can do to prevent it. At times depression, sickness, fatigue, worry and anxiety can wear us down in the journey of life. At times it seems that God is far from us.

We often read in the Psalms, my God why have you forsaken me, hear me, listen to my prayers,  come near to me. Often we cry out, or our hearts cry out, God, Why? Or God where are you in this? Within this pain wracked cry for mercy and hope, God does answer us.

He says to us: I will never leave you or forsake you. Because I am for you, there is nothing in comparison to my eternal goodness that can come against you. And as we meditate on this love – hope builds up in our hearts, a cry of hope comes forth from our lips. And out of the peace this brings – we can despite our circumstances, praise our Lord for all he is and has done for us.

On a more positive note. Our potential home has been valued by the bank with flying colours. We are now waiting for the mortgage documents to sign. I will post up pictures of the house when the exchange has taken place and we can officially call it home.

On that note, I have recently made contact with a couple called Jon and Lisa Owen. They belong to a ministry called Urban Neighbours of Hope. The Sydney Morning Herald ran a couple of pages on their ministry of love which you can read here. Bidwell is a nearby suburb and their ministry is tapping into our own heart for the broken and lost. While we may not open our home to the extent they are for ministry purposes, we are wanting to use our future home for the glory of God in Tregear.

I’m preaching at Kingsford Church of Christ this Sunday morning. The theme will be – Imparting The Spiritual Gift of Mutual Encouragement and Empowerment. I would appreciate prayers to help me finalize putting the sermon together and that I will preach  well.

Congratulations to Ben. He has finished his Advanced Diploma of Ministry, and will graduate sometime early this year. He is also looking for an apprenticeship in the Electrical trade…so if you know of any Sydney based (Western Sydney possibly more preferable) electricians who are looking for an apprentice…or even willing to job share with another … let him know.

Please also pray for Nigeria. Alan and Helen have just returned to Nigeria this week, after spending some months of sabbatical and deputation. I wrote briefly about them in January 12th last year, in a blog post called Pastors of Significance.

  …. was replaced with Rev Alan Wood. He gave me my first preaching break. Under his ministry he coached me to preach and built up my confidence in regards public ministry and church administration; asking me to become a Church Warden and Synod Representative. He also introduced me to many of the other local pastors…and I was honoured to come to know them also

That’s it for now. Time to go and boil the jug, make the morning cup of tea and spend some time with Paul in Romans.

My prayer  this morning is: “May the God of all hope, fill you to overflowing with the knowledge of his love for you. May the presence of the Lord’s love wash through you, cover over you and well up within you and stir you to become his active agents of hope in a world that is in need of true hope. “

My wife is taking the day off work to finish of a few assignments due next week and so today is the day we are going to cook it. Because its summer here, and today is expected to be in the mid 30’s…. For my U.S readers, note I”m talking Centigrade and not Fahrenheit… it calls for something special. Therefore I’m getting out my camp oven to cook the roast in.

The first time I used the camp ovens here, I cooked some lamb shanks in red wine and they were just spot on. However, a neighbour also called the fire brigade. While I was tending the small fire and checking the pot, they pulled up out the front in their big truck, and poked their head over the fence asking what I was doing? Their reaction was…nice of them to tell you they had invited us over for dinner. They also told me that I was doing nothing wrong, and it was legal for me to light a fire in my back yard, when there was no local total fire ban in place and I was using it to cook with.

Here is a link to a roast I cooked last year in Feb. That time I used heat beads. Today I”m going to use wood to make the coals, as I have a number of branches to get rid of. You can expect some pictures to follow soon… Hmmmm Lamb….Yummmmmmmmmm

Truthfully I find much of Luke in the book of Hebrews, yet I also find much of Paul. So I am forced to reconsider my stance and modify it to being that Luke was the writer. He was the scribe. And it was Paul who was the author.

In many ways the book of Hebrews appears to be more of a sermon to a congregation then it is a letter to a church or a group. It lacks the standard salutation that the format of a letter normally has. Luke and Paul were long time travelling / ministry companions. I believe they would have had many long and deep discussions about God, Jesus, the cross and the church. There is no indication that they ever crossed words with each other and its likely that their individual theology and spiritual experiences where on the same par as each another.

Therefore in many ways Pauline theology is Luken and Luken theology is Pauline. We cannot and must not formulate a difference between them, for there is no real evidence to suggest they preached a different Gospel to each other. And therefore if Luke did write down a sermon that Paul preached, in many ways Luke has taken ownership of that sermon and written it down in his own style of writing and therefore the book of Hebrews becomes both Luken and Pauline in the essence of the one God, one spirit, one Christ, one saviour!

Just a few thoughts for now.

It took us three hours driving to get to Canberra and we went straight to the Australian War Memorial. There we saw reminders of the good, the bad and the ugly side of humanity. We saw vast displays of technology which again can be used for good, bad and again are just representative of the ugliness of humanity.

The museum contained tanks, submarines, planes, guns, trucks, cannons, uniforms and dioramas of a variety of battle scenes. In no way is war glorified there. While the full horror of war cannot be displayed in a museum, the museum does a good job of displaying the horrors and the heroics of our men and women who have been involved in war. 

We also experienced another side of the bad and ugly of humanity. For my oldest son caught a bug which empowered him to perform some of the most powerful vomits one could hear or see and laid him low in night. I wasn’t feeling the best myself and it could be linked to the food we ate from the MacDonald’s we stopped at on the way down. My other son was perfectly ok, and seeing as he had Subway instead of Macca’s, we feel justified in our thoughts about the food.

I have learnt a lot over the years about the father hood of God from my own experience of being a father. My experience of fathering has led me to changing many a messy nappy and cleaning up vomits, while speaking and acting kindly towards my children. There have been the occasions where I have put my children in the shower in the middle of night, while changing their bedding because of sudden bouts of sickness. Those times have seen me place a mattress on the floor beside our bed, where I could keep an eye on them during the night.  4 years or so ago, number two son, suddenly vomited powerfully over a table and on the floor at a pizza restaurant.

In many ways war is humanity vomiting over each other. Just as a person vomits because of a major bodily dysfunction and disagreement, war also is caused because of bodily dysfunction and disagreement. And the result is always a mess: One that stinks, causes heartache, and is unpleasant to clean up afterwards.

Sin in any way shape or form always causes spiritual vomit. It makes a mess of our lives, our communities, our nations and the world we live in. The grace of God is all about God cleaning up our vomit. The grace of Jesus is all about God forgiving us our sins, his blood washing away the stain and the mess of the vomit of sin from us. Cleansing us, renewing us, healing us, transforming us.

And as I washed the bathroom floor and cleaned the toilet of the hotel room and looked after my son on Friday night, I was once again clearly reminded of the grace of our heavenly father who in the same way cleansed and continues to cleanse us from our own vomit of sin.

You might ask me why is it that I am joining this protest when I live in Australia and blog from Australia and therefore the U.S laws have no direct bearing on me. The truth is that I believe those laws will affect me and others in Australia who use the internet. Blogging is a global phenomena, I have readers and commenters from all around the world, and I also read and engage with others blogs from around the world.

In recent times we have seen Egypt shut down their internet service preventing insiders access to the outside world. China is the same; residents do not have free access to Face Book, Google or other global internet providers, which provides informative access to global news. The result is that people can only believe their own governments propaganda.

In reality, I don’t think the laws will help protect copy write material as they propose. I actually believe its true intent is to stop what happened with the Wiki Leaks and Julian Assange. The internet has caused an immense ability to protest on a global scale corporate and government wrong doings. In more recent prehistoric times, the lack of technology enabled governments and corporations to crack down on any potential leaks before causing major harm. A quick court order could easily place a gag on a newspaper from running the article.

However, in the modern era in which we live, news can become an instant global event. Most people carry phones that have a camera / video capacity or voice recorder in which anything newsworthy can be instantly uploaded to the internet, U tube or other within minutes of it happening. Therefore, its impossible for any corporation or government to quickly prevent this publication via a gag order.

It’s for this reason I am joining in the Word Press blackout for a day. Better a 1/2 day of voluntary blackout, then laws being passed in effect which in turn other nations could follow with, that in effect will black out the global effectiveness of the information highway in which we live.