Pastors Thoughts

Fred Titmus was an English cricketer who played for over 20 years from the mid-fifties to the mid-seventies. In the middle of his career he had a boating accident and lost 4 toes. He had to learn how to walk again let alone play cricket again!  The toes are incredibly important in learning to first stand and then walk. In the human body nothing is unimportant; God has made us the way that He wants to, with all of the parts of the body working together.

It is, of course, a brilliant metaphor for the “body of Christ” in the New Testament. In both 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4, Paul uses the metaphor to speak of diversity and unity within the church. We’ll make that our focus this week.

Blessings
Mark Wilkinson
Interim Pastor

A friend of mine wrote on his Facebook feed on Monday; “I am an unsuccessful member” alluding to him missing out on Grand Final tickets. He is an Adelaide Crows member and huge numbers of Richmond and Adelaide members missed out on tickets to yesterday’s game.

When I think about Jesus’ Church there are no such people! Every true ‘member’ gets an entry to the biggest game of all – surely heaven is the true Grand Final!

But more than just heaven, as members of Jesus’ Chruch we get to belong here on earth to the “chosen people, royal priesthood, holy nation, God’s special possession”. We’ll explore that today and in the next few weeks to come.

Blessings
Mark Wilkinson
Interim Pastor

I came across this story during the week – One of the jobs of a big city pastor was to travel to little country towns where they didn’t have churches and conduct funeral services. He would go with a funeral director and they would drive to the service in the director’s hearse.

One time, they were on their way back from a funeral and the pastor was feeling very tired, so he decided to take a nap. He thought, “Well, I’ll just lie down in the back of the hearse for a bit.”

The funeral director who was driving the hearse pulled into a service station, because he was running low on petrol. The service station attendant came out and started to fill up the car and nearly freaked out when he looked in the back and saw a body stretched out lying down.

While filling the car, the pastor woke up, opened his eyes, knocked on the window and waved at the attendant. The pastor never saw anybody run so fast in his whole life.

When people see life in the places they were expecting death, they can start running.

After Jesus was crucified he rose again on the third day. He appeared to his disciples and declared, “I’m alive.” When people saw Jesus they started running and telling the news to all who would listen.

As we prepare our hearts and minds for the weeks to come, may the “Good News” of the resurrection of Jesus set our feet to running to tell our friends, relatives, neighbors the story of God’s love and the “Good News” that Jesus is alive, no matter where we are.

Have a safe Easter everyone – Andrew

Dear Church Family,

August has been an action packed month.
Don’t forget the Faith Mission Offering.
Our total is Up to $1070

This Sunday we have the Kids Church and Rainbow Kids sharing in the service.
Joining them we have a special guest speaking, Brett Cardwell from Cardytoons.
Brett will be bringing the Bible to life through cartoons.

Invite someone to this great celebration service.

 

Over the coming weeks, maybe months, thousands of marriages around then world will be coming under immense pressure, and sadly many will break. The hacking of the Ashley Madison website has leaked the names and personal details of millions of men and women and the media has since broken down the numbers according to postcodes across Australia.

The postcode 3160, which is Belgrave, Belgrave Heights and Belgrave South has been identified with 425 Ashley Madison accounts according to the Sydney Morning Herald, which has mapped the data for Australia. The newspaper describes this as being 5.89% of the postcode.  For some of the neighbouring suburbs the numbers and percentage are higher.

I can only imagine that for many people who have been caught up in this, that you are experiencing a range of emotions and thoughts including shame, fear, anxiety, and guilt. If you are thinking about self-harm please call now, Lifeline on 131114. There are trained people at Lifeline to listen and help.

Adultery is not easily fixed, but repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation is possible.

How we can help:

Belgrave South Baptist Church is a safe place for hurting families and for couples who are wanting to reconcile their relationships. You are welcome to visit, 10am Sundays. You can also contact the Pastor at office@bsbc.org.au

Ultimately, we want to point you to Jesus Christ, because in Jesus we know that God’s mercy and love is greater than our mistakes.

People may expect Churches to simply criticise and condemn people who have signed up to Ashley Madison but the truth is our churches are made up of people who’ve realised that they are broken and not perfect. We simply serve a God who loves to restore people.

I believe that Jesus enriched our lives with his teaching and his example. And that, he died on a cross for our rebellious ways and rose again, conquering death to show us that we can choose to live in the way, life is meant to be lived.

There is Hope beyond the fallout of Ashley Madison and I invite you to discover the God that I know, his name is Jesus. – Pastor Andrew Fisher.

Dear Church Family,

August is an action packed month.
Don’t forget the Faith Mission Offering.

On Sunday after the service we are having a Church Membership Meeting with a lunch of soup and bread. Are you invited if you are not a member? Absolutely! The Leadership is presenting a vision for 2015 and beyond and we would love to have as many people there to hear about and contribute to this vision for the future of our church at Belgrave South.

We are also continuing our new series on Elisha.

Over the years I’ve come to know a lot of people who set out to live for God, they pray, make a commitment but they just get stuck. It’s like we make resolutions about stuff we need to start doing or stop doing, like praying or reading our Bibles more, but it just never happens. We start out with the best of intentions but it just never happens. Often it’s because we either don’t start small enough. We just don’t take those realistic steps of obedience that can actually make God’s vision for our lives come to pass. Isn’t that what faith is? Faith is more than just believing it’s putting into action as well. Peter saw Jesus walk on the water, he knew it could happen but he needed to take that first step, to see if he could.

On Sunday we are going to see how God used Elisha to show that faith is about acting in obedience first, before God’s blessings can flow. I pray we will be open to God stirring our hearts in obedience to what he will have us do for his glory.

Andrew