iTunes 7.0.1

Apple has released a new version of iTunes 7. This was seriously necessary as the original version was full of bugs.

So far I have managed to find almost all of the same bugs in the new version (7.0.1). Some have been fixed but the issues around podcasts and full screen mode remain.

All this said, it is a pretty neat piece of software. But it really is disappointing that Apple, a company known for its fantastic quality would let a bug ridden piece of software be released.

Bill Clinton interview

I was delighted to see Bill Clinton's interview on Fox the other day. It shows a real class operator.

In it he was asked basically whether he had done enough on terrorism. The Fox network is notorious for being pro-Bush and Clinton felt that this was a set up. He got quite angry and answered the question but in the process destroyed the interviewer. He painted Fox and the interviewer (as they seem to be) as playing political games.

I am fascinated by this interview for three reasons:

1. Fox have made it difficult to find the interview in its entirely. They have required it to be removed from YOUTUBE and they have split it up into multiple segments on their own site. For the last few days it has been buried in amongst other 'commentary' on the interview (today I note it has finally been given a place of notice).
2. Fox has seen fit to put a lot of commentary about the interview, even interviewing the interviewer. They are extremely defensive about it.
3. It is wonderful to see someone deal with a biased media genuinely and skilfully. I contrast this to Helen Clark's lame as attack on John Campbell which was personal rather than dealing with the issues. By contrast, Clinton demolished the issue and then called it how it is (namely that Fox seems to have a pro-Bush slant). Oh, to have some real classy politians like that.

So, if you get a chance, have a look at the video.

The Call of Jesus - Sermon from OCC

As we get into the Bible this morning I would like you to turn to the Letter to the Ephesians.

This letter to the church at Ephesus is an amazing part of scripture. In it Paul really does grasp, at a high level, the very essence of what Jesus calls us to. Unfortunately Paul is not the clearest communicator. Sometimes when I read his writing my head hurts. Even the Apostle Peter found this so. So what we are going to do today is follow Paul’s high-level structure which essentially answers a series of logical questions.

But first up I want to talk about Jesus.

Firstly, because Paul does. Chapters one and two basically set out what God did and who Jesus is.

Secondly, because I am utterly convinced that the whole Bible is about Jesus. This means every time we open the Bible we want to be talking about Jesus or thinking about how it relates to Jesus. In fact everything we do and say should be pointing to Jesus.

And thirdly, when we don’t talk about Jesus I believe we get into all kinds of trouble theologically and practically.

So let’s talk about Jesus and what we believe according to the teaching of the Bible.

1. There is one God who made this earth and us.
2. He gave us this earth to steward and enjoy.
3. But we disobeyed God. We sinned.
4. The result of sin is separation from God and ultimately death.
5. So God, in His great compassion, came into human history as the person of Jesus.
6. Jesus was born of a virgin, which fulfilled prophecy .
7. He was fully man but at the same time He was fully God.
8. He lived a perfect life. He was without sin.
9. Jesus, being sinless, was the perfect sacrifice for our sins. He fulfilled the Old Testament sacrificial requirements .
10. He was executed on a cross like a common criminal. Again this was in fulfilment of prophecy .
11. He died thereby:
i. paying the price for our sins
ii. reconciling us with God for all time
iii. and cleansing us from the stain of sin.
12. After 3 days He rose, proving He had conquered sin and death.
13. He appeared for 40 days to tons of people, in one case to over 500 at one time, and then ascended back to heaven.
14. He sent us the Holy Spirit, who makes us Christians, giving us hearts that love Jesus, minds that understand Jesus and wills that are obedient to Jesus. In short the Holy Spirit turns our lives upside-down.

If this is you… if you know this to be true… if Jesus has called you… if you know Jesus… then that is awesome… absolutely awesome! Over the next 3 hours (because it is a nice biblical number) we are going to talk about what next.

If you don’t know Jesus, then you need to.

I was looking back the other day and thought about the things what happened in my life just before I committed my life to Jesus. I think…

• If you have friends who are Christians… or
• If, for some strange reason, you find yourself seeking the truth… or
• If you realise that all the things that our modern culture says will give you satisfaction are a sham… or
• If you recognise that you have to be a complete wingnut to believe that nothing plus nobody made everything (popularly known as the theory of evolution)…

…then there is a distinct possibility that Jesus is calling out to you. Just from personal experience.

If this is your situation, then now is a good time to answer that call. Not a few weeks down the track. Not tomorrow. Now! The reality is that hell is not a nice place and you don’t want to be going there. Not when you are being given the opportunity to know Jesus.

So please… if you feel Jesus’ call on your life, respond!!! We are going to have communion during this service. During this time we remember what Jesus did for us… each one of us. We particularly focus on what he did by dying on the cross. And we thank and worship Him in response to that. This is a really good time to respond to His call.

So we know Jesus and the Holy Spirit has taken up residence in our lives. This raises some big questions.

The first big question is:

Why am I still here?
I mean, why does God leave us here to be tempted by sin, to endure suffering, to get sick and to go through death? Why not take us to heaven the moment we call out to Him. Could it be some very funny joke that we don’t get?

Well… arh… no!

Jesus has a plan and a purpose for us and has called us into action. In Chapter 3 of Ephesians Paul waxes lyrically about our purpose. However I think the best, most succinct construct of why we remain here is actually found in the book of Luke 10:25-28.

One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: "Teacher, what must I do to receive eternal life?"
Jesus replied, "What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?"
The man answered, " `You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.' And, `Love your neighbor as yourself.' "*
"Right!" Jesus told him. "Do this and you will live!"

Simple ha???

Love God. Love those around you.

Ok… So how do we love God? I mean isn’t He all-powerful… He doesn’t need anything from us, does He? How on earth are sinful people like us going to love God?

It mightn’t surprise you that I have been thinking a bit about the parent – child relationship recently. Funny that!

Anyway, I was thinking that a baby is completely dependent on you as a parent. For everything! They can’t really offer you anything. But when they smile at you – show affection – it is apparently something very cool. Well at least Nigel tells me so.

Likewise as the child gets older, I am told that when you teach them something – let’s say something manly like hammering a nail into a 4 by 2 with 3 blows or less – and they follow what you have shown them – this is very cool as well.

Parents – is this right????

Well this is analogist to our relationship with God. When we recognise our dependence on our Heavenly Father – when we respond to His gracious love – when He teaches us and we learn and follow his ways… we bring glory to Him. And He loves it.

And that is what Paul was getting at in Chapter 3 of Ephesians.

So what are these “ways” that God is trying to teach us? Well interestingly they all revolve around the other half of the great commandment. What Jesus wants us to learn is to love others.

Paul spends basically the rest of this letter to the Ephesians telling us some things to focus on. And there is a really consistent theme that comes out of this teaching.


• He says to live by the power given to us by the Holy Spirit. Rely on Him. The Holy Spirit will train us in taking the focus off ourselves and put it onto others.

• He talks about being unified. We do this by being humble and gentle with one another. Making allowances for other’s faults. Not exerting our own ‘rights’.

• He talks about using the gifts Jesus has given us to build up and serve the church. Not build up ourselves – rather build up the church.

• He talks about growing in maturity. This doesn’t mean age or bible knowledge as such. It means growing in our love for Jesus, our love for others and reducing the focus on ourselves.

• He talks about turning away from sin. Sometimes you hear this referred to as repenting of your sins. This is difficult. When you look at the sin Paul mentions they fall into two groups… one which is against others and one that is against God. Paul is straight up… he says “stop it”. This stuff is not from Jesus.

• He then talks about various relationships… husbands and wives… parents and kids… workers and bosses… and he gives us guidance on how to take the focus off ourselves and to put it onto others in these situations.

I guess the theme that leaps out to me is… we are all servants.


But we have a choice…

Are we a servant for Jesus to others?

Or are we a servant to sin… focusing on ourselves and not what God wants?

This is our challenge as we live life!


Being cool with the fact that we are servants is tough in this world. It is not particularly popular because the vast majority of the world expends a lot of energy denying the fact that one way or another… we all are servants. People who are quite happy being servants are put down… viewed as inferior… because of this. It is a real battle.

Paul gives us some final words of advice in this battle. He uses the analogy of armour.

He says we should know the truth and rely of God’s righteousness or justice. I cannot emphasise just how important this is.

We should be peaceful (not pacifists but more meaning content in our own place in life) because we already know the good news of Jesus. In essence, because we are assured about who has won the war and we know we’re on the winning team, we are freed to give up everything.

We have faith, salvation and the Bible as weapons and defensive gear. Our faith protects us from attacks from the devil. Our salvation helps to protect our mind when worldly knowledge attempts to pollute us. And the Bible is the message we bring to the table as we engage with the world.

So why are we still here on earth?

To love God and love others!

Why does God want us to love others?

Some of Jesus’ last words before He ascended to heaven provide an answer to this question. Luke 24:47-48

With my authority, take this message of repentance to all the nations, beginning in Jerusalem: `There is forgiveness of sins for all who turn to me.' You are witnesses of all these things.

What Jesus was saying was that the absolute best way we can love others… be a servant to them… is to tell them about Him. Starting at home. Then our friends. Then our community. Then our nation. Then all the way to Siberia…

That was a shameless plug for anyone who is interested in coming to Siberia next year!!! Come have a chat.

Seriously though… are we comfortable with our family, our friends, our community, our nation, the world going to hell? For eternity? I hope not! We need to love them enough to tell them about Jesus. I mean, how on earth are they going to know about Jesus unless we tell them?!

It doesn’t matter how we tell them. E-mail. Blogs. Letters. Buying bibles. Supporting missionaries. Becoming a missionary. Running Christianity Explored courses. Being friends. Skywriting. Holding verses up at rugby games. Inviting them to church. Inviting them to dinner. Helping them when they are stuck or sick. Listening to them when they have no hope. Celebrating with them when beautiful things happen.

Maybe even asking the simple question… “do you know Jesus?” Whatever it takes! Just don’t let them slide into hell through ignorance.

Jesus has called us to be His hands and His feet in sharing the amazingly good news that there is forgiveness of sin for all who repent and turn to Him. And He has called us to share this good news in action and in words. This is an amazing privilege and responsibility to serve others in this way. It is life changing, death-conquering love we have to share.

So… my final question…

How are you doing?

The History of Christian Thought

This is a fantasic book. It is well written and actually funny. I found it a compelling read.

For me it raised a really interesting question. If we look at what some of our church forefathers thought, we would be tempted to think that they were teaching heresy. For instance it was common for people (as in top theologians) to think that Jesus was created by God. Only later did the idea of begotten and the oneness of the Trinity develop.

We take the concept of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as being one and equal (but different in the way they relate to humanity) as being just commonly accepted doctrine and what anyone reading the Bible would come up with.

Well put simply... THIS IS NOT THE CASE.

Whether we like it or not, we base a lot of what we view as core doctrine on the work of our church forefathers. In fact the Bible itself (our translations) are quite impacted by work of these theologians. Particularly the choice of what words are chosen to represent the original Greek and Hebrew words when the translation is done.

Anyway... this raises some interesting questions about what we defend as core issues of Christian faith. In some ways this prompts us towards a reductionist view of these core issues. But that may be a bit of a copout and maybe we should dive into the complexity but bear in mind that we may be off track.

The Pope's recent mind explosion

The Pope recently had a mind explosion and called a spade a spade. He basically said that Islam as a religion is causing violence to many innocent people. He did neglect to mention that this is very similar to what the Catholic Church did in the crusades (but that is an aside).

There was then an uproar in the Muslim world and now the Pope has returned to what seems to be the core Catholic Church view.

[Taken from a CNN article]
"I hope that in several occasions during the visit ... my deep respect for great religions, in particular for Muslims -- who worship the one God and with whom we are engaged in defending and promoting together social justice, moral values, peace and freedom for all men -- has emerged clearly," Benedict said during his weekly audience at the Vatican.

Yip... you read correctly... the Pope reckons Muslims worship "...the one God...". This is stating that he believes that that Muslim's worship the same god as he does.

I would imagine that this will be deeply disturbing to many 'Catholics' who actually worship Jesus and are rightly convinced that Islam has as much to do with worshipping Jesus as bacon has to do with a Jewish breakfast (yes... I know Jesus is in the Koran but you know what I mean...).

One thing I should point out about this statement by the Pope. I think he is probably right. It appears to be that he does worship the same god as Muslims. Unfortunately for them, that god is going to lead them straight through the wide open gates to hell and eternal damnation. This is not a popular or PC way of saying things but sadly it is true.

God, who came into human history as the person of Jesus, is quite different!

Mark Driscoll Sermon

I watched an interesting sermon last night along with seeing Hawkes Bay win (pitty Northland won as well).

Anyway, the sermon is on the Mars Hill (Seattle) podcast on iTunes (by the way, despite the bugs, iTunes 7 rocks).

In the sermon Mark talks about the cross. He suggests that various church traditions have got it wrong by reducing the meaning of the cross to one thing rather than appreciating that it was a number of things. He used the analogy of a gem (like a diamond). A gem is a gem. However a gem has multiple sides, all of which need to be looked at for it to be truely appreciated.

The suggestion is that the cross is the gem of Christianity. It was victory over death. BUT... BUT... it was also substitutionary atonement. Jesus took the wrath of God in my place. He also cleansed me. He is also our example. The list can go on.

The suggestion is that it is important to grasp all of these aspects to really grasp the cross. However too often we are lazy and focus on just one of these aspects in our theology. What is worse is that we critique people who haven't got the same side of the gem as we have. I am pretty guilty of this.

What we should be critiquing is the one sided mono-dimensional approach to the cross. We should be encouraging people to understand that there can be many sides to the same thing.

This applies to many aspects of Christianity, in particular the relationship we are blessed to have with Jesus. Don't worry... I am not turning all relativist on you. There are some aspects that are one way. Jesus is the only (ONLY) way to be reconciled to God.

What I am suggesting is maybe we should be considering that when people are taking a different approach to the way we are, that perhaps it is a gem-like situation and that it could be that we are looking at only one side and they are looking at another side. And perhaps it is more important to look at the whole gem!!!

The Irresistible Revolution: living as an ordinary radical

The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne was recommended by my American friend Kristin. It was a riveting read. I actually finished a little while ago but I have had to take some time to think it through.

The thinkign through process has been very difficult principally because of reading MacArthur's book before hand. The two books are very different.

The Irresistible Revolution seems to be the story of Shane's life. However it is not autobiographical. Rather he uses his life (and others around him) to illustrate the his message. And I should point out that this book is very much a message. It is basically a really long sermon for us, as Christians, to live out our lives in action as he sees Jesus doing.

And this is where it gets difficult.

Shane has a big focus on poverty, the poor and the marginalised. Now do not get me wrong. So did Jesus. This is what is so compelling about the book. This dude is actually living out many aspects of how I can imagine Jesus would live in today's society. And in his own way he is calling all of us to look at ourselves and ask some questions about how we are living.

However he does get a bit "tree huggie - weed smoking - hippie-like" on occassions. And this is where the MacArthur book kicks in. With MacArthur there is all the theology and rules and what's more, for the most part, MacArthur is right. So we get a bit of a conflict. MacArthur goes "this is what God says". God is righteous and just and should be feared (in the trembling sense of the word). Shane goes "this is what Jesus does". We should follow Him because He loves us so much. This is how/why we live with compassion and love for the poor and the oppressed.

Interestingly... both are right!

MacArthur would worry about whether Shane is saved. Shane wouldn't respond because he would be living like Jesus and taking it on the chin. He would however be saddened by some fo the rather American-centric teaching that comes out of MacArthur orientated churches. And he would say so.

This brings me back to my recent thinking about balance in Christian theology and thought. Somehow, I guess in the power of the Holy Spirit, as Christians we have to try to walk this very fine line that Jesus did. This line includes being a pacifist while also being an activist. It involves being compassionate, while also being righteously angry. It involves meeting peoples physical needs while at the smae time dealing with their spiritual needs. The list goes on.

In many ways Christianity is a paradox. In fact almost every aspect, to our human thinking, is a paradox. It is only through the revelation of the Holy Spirit do we see resolution to these paradoxes.

In my own life I am faced with a number of competing issues at the moment that are perplexing and somewhat paradoxical:

...I have a great love and commitment to my local church (OCC) BUT I want to commit my life to the people we love is Siberia

...We are starting a family BUT we need the flexibility to carry out the ministry God has us involved in

...We are involved in many things BUT God seems to be pointing me into full time work

...We are wise to invest some money in renovating our house BUT we are being challenged to give money away

This can go on. Somehow, from experience, I know that God will bring these together in a synthesis that is so much greater than I can imagine. But at the moment they seem almost contradictory.

Cool pic

This is a very cool way of remembering the twin towers. Must use a ton of juice but very cool.

Hmmmm... interesting question...

Hard to Believe: The high cost and infinite value of following Jesus

I have just finished reading John MacArthur's book Hard to Believe. It is one of the books given to us at the Impact Bible Conference 2006 in Hastings.

It has been a challenging book to read. MacArthur is an extremely good expositor of the bible. Therefore he argues with a lot of authority. The book is also written in a style that is like his thoughts being laid out. You can see why he thinks things.

I have to say however that while MacArthur is sound in pretty much everything he asserts, he misses the compassionate side of Jesus. He rightly talks about the wrath, judgement and righteousness of God. We should not (and we do to often) ignore this side of God's character. But ot focus on it at the expense of the compassionate side is just as wrong as focusing entirely on the compassionate side.

Let me explain this a bit more. Christianity seems to be dividing between the:

You got to believe the bible and then get your act together (these are generally termed fundamentalists of which MacArthur is a leading advocate)

and the:

God is in the wind and the trees and He is all love so if we love Jesus then it is all cool, man! [said with a stoned out voice] (these are referred to as the liberals)

Well neither of these are a balanced biblical view of Jesus and what the cross means to humanity. You can proof text (ie find scripture that supports your argument) either position BUT (I repeat BUT) you have to ignore the other sides proof texts.


Jesus Himself walked this amazing line between having unlimited compassion for the lost, the broken and at the same time righteous anger for the hypocritical religious legalists. He somehow was completely seeker-sensitive while at the same time hard-core bible thumper.

Jesus is our example of how we are meant to live out God's plan for us while we remain here on earth. Therefore we need to try to find this same line. I don't think we will be able to nail this line all the time. We sin and part of our sin is not listening to the Holy Spirit who guides us to walk this line. But I think we should try to stay close to the line rather than wandering off to the comfort of what are essentially ideological (NOT biblical) positions.

Back to MacArthur... I really admire his exposition. I can critique some of it but it is some of the most solid interpretation around (that comes out with an answer). It makes me sad how it is used/abused.

Cool Evangelical Web Site

A friend found this web site. Worth a look if you have broadband.

http://www.notreligion.com/