Word of Salvation – Vol.47 No.41 – November 2002   How To Be Certain That God Lives In You   Sermon by Rev. John Westendorp on 1John4:13-16a Scripture Readings: Romans 8:1-17, 1John 4:1-16. Suggested Hymns: BoW: 46; 372; 426; 121a   Introd: Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ. The message of our text is that the grounds for Christian Assurance lie in the Spirit’s work in us and the objective reality of the gospel. [Sermon Theme]. But it’s a sad fact that many sincere children of God do not have certainty about their faith. In a worship service they heartily join...

Some of the sayings of Jesus recorded in the Bible don’t seem to make much sense when we first read them.  Take, for example, these words of Jesus from the ‘Sermon On The Mount’: “Blessed are the poor for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.” Blessed are the poor!  Think about that for a moment.  Doesn’t it seem as if Jesus is saying: “Congratulations, on your poverty”?  Doesn’t that strike you as a little odd?  “Happy are the poor!”  Happiness is having next to nothing and scrounging for one’s meals.  Happiness is living year after year on government handouts and even...

The sunset was absolutely spectacular.  The Lord God certainly paints beautiful colours in the sky.  Lots of other folk thought it was a glorious spectacle too.  How did I know that?  Well, on our usual evening walk along the breakwater of Coffs Harbour, every man and his dog was taking photos of the sunset.  Okay, I exaggerate.  The dogs were merely waiting patiently for their humans to get off their phone-cameras and back to the business of walking.  Later I noticed it wasn’t only here on the East Coast of Oz that we had a great sunset.  An acquaintance of mine...

Was it my imagination or was I reading the body language correctly?  The commentator from our national broadcaster was talking about some newly released results from last year’s national census.  Okay, maybe it was not being reported with smug delight... but it certainly didn’t come across as a sad lament either... that Aussies are apparently less religious now than they were at the previous census. The figure that triggered the comment was that Aussies who indicated that they had no religion had increased to 38.9 percent; up from the 30.1 percent in the 2016 census.  The Sydney Morning Herald crowed, “Australia...

There’s an interesting line at the end of the story of Jonah that illustrates the wonderful compassion of God.  Mind you, many folk dismiss the book of Jonah as a morality lesson that some clever writer put together.  Hey, can you really believe a story about a man being swallowed by a huge fish and then spat out on dry land?  A friend of mine once commented: I’d believe it even if it said that Jonah swallowed the whale, because it’s in the Bible and the Bible is God’s inspired Word. Well, right now it’s not my purpose to defend the...

Jesus once taught us that if we want to be admitted to His Kingdom we have to become like a little child.  Let me tell you why I had reason to reflect on that again recently.  A good friend of mine had lost his wife.  He asked me to conduct the funeral.  He particularly asked me to speak on that text in Matthew chapter 18 where Jesus says, “Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like little children you will never enter the Kingdom of heaven.”  That led me to do some thinking about why Jesus demands childlikeness...

I’ve sometimes met folk who are keen to move on from basic Christianity and from the fundamentals of the faith.  In some ways I can relate to that.  Babyhood is wonderful.  Staying there isn’t.  The whole aim of childhood is to grow to maturity.  No one likes an immature adult.  The apostle Paul once lamented the immaturity of some of his readers.  They were not ready for a diet of meat but were still on a diet of milk.  He too wanted to see people move on and mature.  We talk about this as ‘growth’ and, ideally, every Christian ought to...

Slogans abound... you find them everywhere.  They are the company tag-lines that have come to be identified with certain products or brands.  There’s Nike’s catchphrase: Just do it!  Or MasterCard’s famous line: There are some things that money can’t buy; for everything else there’s MasterCard.  Even the confectionary makers have got in on the act.  M&M’s slogan is: Melts in your mouth; not in your hands. Having just gone through another Federal election most Aussies are aware there are political slogans too.  There’s everything from the Australian Labour Party’s ‘A better Future’... to Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party with its ‘Save...

What does the Bible mean when it tells us that God is with us?  The Bible has many remarkable promises about God’s constant presence with His people.  In the Old Testament God often assured His people that He was with them.  Just before his death, when Moses spoke his final words to Israel on the doorstep of the Promised Land, that promise of God’s presence was reaffirmed: He will not leave you or abandon you.  In the New Testament the writer to the Hebrews quotes that promise when he warns his readers against greed and to be content with what they...

Normally the antics of Hollywood stars don’t rate highly on my radar.  In my opinion too many of them are self-absorbed with an unhealthy sense of entitlement.  However, the names of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard have been in the news so much lately that my curiosity got the better of me.  It seems that both these Hollywood actors walked away from their previous partners and married each other in 2015 but a year later Heard filed for divorce and applied for a restraining order.  In 2018 Heard wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post in which she mentioned speaking...

It’s a blessing to learn some difficult lessons early in life.  That can save you much grief and pain later on. I reflected on that when reading the rants of a friend on social media.  His issue was that for many years he had followed the teachings of a certain church leader.  I think it would be fair to say that he was a disciple of this particular church leader.  He devoured the writings of this man, listened to nearly every podcast from him, quoted him often and defended him against all criticism.  But this leader had been stood down after...

Miracles can be either an aid to faith or a stumbling block.  Our Bible Study group recently considered the story of Peter, James and John being called by Jesus to be His disciples.  The story begins with Jesus borrowing their fishing boat in order to more effectively teach the crowds that have gathered on the seashore.  He then tells these men to move into deep water and cast out their nets.  Peter tells Jesus that they’ve been fishing all night without success – hey, he’s the fisherman, Jesus is only a carpenter.  However, with a shrug he tells Jesus that they’re...

Human foibles and character faults are easy to detect.  The problem is that we see the shortcomings of others more readily than we do our own. Pick up a daily newspaper and there’s plenty of evidence that human character leaves a lot to be desired.  There are accusations of bullying and abuse.  There are revelations of extortion and corruption. But why bother with the newspapers if we want to see character faults?  Look around you!  There’s the strident voice in the office of the young man who always wants to be the centre of attention; or the critical young woman in...

The peasant farmer had yet another disappointing crop.  It looked like it was going to be another year of tightening the belt for him and for his family.  Talking to the village rector one Sunday morning after church, the man, who was known for being lazy, lamented that once again God had not seen fit to bless his crops this season.  The clergyman said to him, “Brother, the Lord doesn’t usually bless farmers who don’t make the effort to spread manure on their paddocks.” Bingo!  What a delightful response to a man who expected God’s blessing without any effort on his...

To say that the Bible is a very patriarchal book would be stating the obvious.  But if I tried to unravel that it could get me into serious trouble.  For example, if I said anything in defence of the Bible’s patriarchal slant I could get a lot of women offside.  I don’t want to do that.  Some of my best friends are women – in fact, I’m married to one of them.  On the other hand, in our culture there’s an extreme view that almost assumes that masculinity is toxic by definition.  So if I’m not careful in my critique of...

My daughter complained the other day about some difficulties with a person she had always considered a close friend.  I said to her, “You need to remember that relationships require effort and sometimes they’re simply hard work.”  Most of us are aware of that truth.  Some of us learnt that the hard way – we gave up on a relationship because it became too difficult.  Starve the lizards... how on earth can you expect a relationship to flourish if you don’t make the effort?  Okay... granted... some relationships are easier to maintain than others.  But the truth is that relationships shrivel...

Whenever I read the first two chapters of Genesis in the Bible, with its story of the creation of the first two human beings, I can’t help but think of the typical and persistent stereotypes of our first ancestors.  You know the kind of cartoon images I’m talking about: Adam, with a huge club over his shoulder, dragging Eve along by the hair, grunting out primitive sounds that hardly pass for language as he makes his way back to his cave. Why do people persist with that sort of caricature of our earliest ancestors?  If God made us good, if He...

In 1901 the Italian inventor and engineer, Marconi, broadcast the first transatlantic radio signal.  The first successful long-distance wireless telegraph was actually linking continents together.  Some twenty years later the question was asked whether this new invention might possibly listen in on signals from outer space – to see if we humans on planet earth are perhaps, after all, not alone in the universe. So it’s about a hundred years ago that SETI commenced.  SETI, of course, stands for Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence.  Marconi had stated his belief that radio could be used to send signals to Martians.  Indeed he...

Humans are basically good.  That myth is often trotted out to make us feel good about ourselves.  The newspapers lead me to question that.  A recent front-page article reported that our Deputy Prime Minister sent someone a text message claiming our Prime Minister is a hypocrite and a liar.  That message, apparently sent some years ago when the deputy PM had been consigned to the backbenches, was leaked to the media.  The deputy PM had to eat humble-pie and apologise.  Humans are basically good, we’re told... but even our society’s elite, those in national leadership roles, often trip up badly. In...

Normal? Last week in this blog I wrote about current attempts to provide some medical relief from problems such as depression and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome through treatments based on medication derived from psychedelic drugs.  The newspaper article that I then referred to pointed out how important this research is, in view of the fact that here in Oz, on average, one person in eight now struggles with some form of mental health issue. Well, I don’t know how reliable that figure is but in some respects it’s a rather staggering figure when you stop and think about it.  Just count...