The Life of Peter 1
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- Written by: Rev John Altmann
Luke 5:1-11 The Calling of Peter audio (6MB)
When I was 12 my father brought a model of a Phantom 2 vintage Rolls Royce back from overseas. Now this was no ordinary model car. This was a completely perfect 1:10 scale model where all the moving parts actually moved. And in order to try and please my father I began to build this model. I am not the most practical of people and I've got little aptitude for making things. In fact I've got the mechanical aptitude of a gnat, but I am pretty stubborn and determined. So all summer holidays in my spare time I slogged away at this complicated model - I got it set up on an old table tennis table we used to have in the garage, and by the end of summer I'd succeeded in building the engine, the brake system and some of the chassis of this car, and I'd also succeeded in losing some of the crucial parts for what I needed to do next. This was the kind of model that had a 25 page instruction book full of drawings of parts numbered from 1 - about 5000! And at the end of the summer it all got bundled up into a very big box and put away at the back of the garage.
Discipleship 5 - The Inner Life
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- Written by: Garrett Edwards
Psalm 1 audio (3MB)
Luke 11:1-13
Introduce series/Ask people for what stood out to them...
Well today we come to the theme of Discipleship and the ‘Inner Life.’ What do we think that that means? Can anyone give me their thoughts on what the ‘Inner life’ could mean when we look at a topic like discipleship, keeping in mind the passages that were just read out to us?
Over the last few weeks we have looked at discipleship in
Walking with Jesus
Being Students of Christ,
being a People on a Mission, our responsibility of building the Kingdom
and now we come to the Inner life
On reflecting on prayer and the ‘inner life’ an unknown author wrote this quote
Discipleship 4 - Building the Kingdom
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
Speak the Gospel, Teach the Bible and Build Community that reflects God’s love. I hope those three phrases are familiar to you by now. Yes, that’s our Church Mission Statement. If you think about it, the first two have been the subject of our sermons for the last two weeks. Speaking the gospel - or being on a mission; and teaching the Bible - growing as students of Christ. And just by coincidence, today we’re talking about the 3rd statement - building community that reflects God’s love.
When Jesus called his disciples what do you think he had in mind? Was he just calling a group of men so he could teach them some useful doctrine? Was he choosing those 12 because he thought they deserved to be saved? No, he was choosing them so he could begin the work of finishing God’s eternal plan. What was that plan? If you’d been part of the confirmation preparation over the last few years you’d know the answer very well, I hope. God’s plan was to create a people for himself, who’d show the rest of the world how good it is to live under his rule and who’d therefore become a magnet to attract others into God’s kingdom.
Discipleship 3 - People on a Mission
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- Written by: Bill Stewart
Acts 1:1-11 audio (5MB)
Luke 10:1-24
Can I begin by asking you to cast your mind back? For some of us it will only be a short time for others it may be somewhat longer. Cast your mind back to the first time your Christian faith really came alive for you. When was it? Why was it?
When I was in primary school my parents sold the property we were living on and we moved to another town, to another school, and to another church. St Barnabas' Anglican Church was little wooden building like many in the country with a congregation of just five ladies, all of them over seventy years of age. When my mother and my younger sister and brother went we swelled the attendance by eighty percent. There was just one service a fortnight at 7.30 a.m.! The service was very formal and ritualistic. (I should say that those five ladies were women of great faith and I want to say a little more about them in a moment). But I am telling you this because there was no youth group, no CLAY, no STOMP, no beach missions, no Summer under the Son. As a child I didn't know such things existed. But miraculously when I enrolled at university I just "happened" to meet a couple of members of the Christian Fellowship group on campus. I didn't expect to become part of such a group because it never occurred to me that such groups existed. I had expected to go to the local church now once in a while but not to be part of a group of young Christians living out their faith on the university campus. And what first made my faith come alive was the way that group prayed for each other and for the fellow students and the way they talked to their friends about Jesus. And at our university in that part of Queensland many young people were living a long, long way from home for the first time, and the Christian Fellowship supported many who found that experience difficult. And they looked after the drunks! As with most universities alcohol abuse was a serious problem - probably worse there than most. And often it was the Christians who were there - sometimes at 2 or 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning to help frequently ungrateful drunks safely home. It completely changed my understanding of my Christian faith. When did your Christian faith first come alive for you? Why?
Discipleship 2 - Students of Christ
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
I sat the last exam for my engineering degree in January 1973. I had to sit it in January because I'd failed one of my final exams the previous June. That had nothing to do with the fact that I'd got married three months earlier nor that I'd just started reading Lord of the Rings a few weeks before the exams, nor that the 1972 Lords Ashes Test was being broadcast on the radio late at night just before my exam. All those things may have contributed to my poor performance, but the real reason was that I hadn't studied the subject well enough. When I sat for the post I made sure I studied very hard and as a result I did quite well. But I remember walking out of that exam thinking, "Aah, that's the last exam I'll ever have to do. I don't plan to do any more study ever again!" Well, those were famous last words weren't they? The day I began my job as an engineer, my boss handed me a bundle of manuals to study so I'd understand the way things were done in the Dept of Civil Aviation. Often when I was given something new to do I had to read up on the best ways to do it. In fact anyone who works in a professional field knows that you have to refresh your knowledge constantly if you're going to keep up.
