Marching Forth!

" And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honoured, all the members rejoice with it. 27  Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually ." 1 Corinthians 12:26-27 These are verses I have been thinking over lately.  It is amazing how we are adopted by God into His family by faith in Jesus Christ, and by God's grace we are collectively added to the Body of Christ, the church, as individual members.  The church has many individual members which comprise the whole, but there is only one Head of this body:  Jesus. Though the functions of the various parts of the body are varied and important, nothing is as critical as the head which has capacity to see, speak, hear, smell, taste, and feel.  Jesus is the One who sees all, spoke the world into existence, and hears all who cry out to Him in faith.  He created all the diverse scents and flavours, and His knowledge of us and depth of feeling for us is beyo...

When we go through hard times, we can feel swept off our feet and cast down without hope.  It's also tough when things are going well and depression unexpectedly hits.  Christians with genuine faith are no exception.  Sometimes we are not alright and we can feel something is very wrong, though we can't put a finger on it.  I can compare my experience after delivering a sermon to someone suffering from postnatal depression yet on a spiritual level.  I want to "hit it out of the park" at every opportunity God provides me to preach, yet I often kick myself for falling short.  Then I need to dust myself off and throw myself into the process of preparation again - despite feeling down and worthless.  There are fleeting times of encouragement and the euphoria of apparent usefulness or progress, but these glad feelings can instantly evaporate as I sink to great depths and wonder if it is time to hang up the boots. Apparently I am not alone in the struggle ...

Australian rugby union superstar Israel Folau made waves by a social media post which urged sinners of all kinds to repent with a list of verses from the Bible.  The Rugby Union Player's Association quickly denounced and distanced itself from the comments, and reports  say Folau will be sacked for his repeated transgressions.  According to reports it was his lumping in of homosexuality in a list of sins where the Player's Association has lost patience, as he has been warned about this in the past. Tracey Homes wrote an article on the ABC website and brought up points to consider should Folau be fired as a consequence of his social media posts:  " Are his posts inciting violence? Do they qualify as "hate speech"? If the answer is yes, then what does it say about the future of others in the game who hold the same views or religious beliefs? For too long those who identify as LGBTQI felt they had to be silent if they wanted to be accepted in sport — that is chang...

As a kid going to Sunday School, one of the activities we would occasionally do (and I found it fun, by the way) was called a "sword drill."  The Bible is referred to as the Sword of the Spirit in Ephesians 6 , and the drill consisted of a race:  who can find the scripture reference first?  Since I had the books of the Bible memorised I never needed tabs or to look in the Table of Contents.  This certainly provided an edge over my peers. Whilst it is of value to know the order of the books of the Bible for ease of reference, it is best to seek to order our lives according to what is written in them.  We are to go beyond racing to find a chapter and verse to learning to rightly divide the Word of truth.  The exhortation Paul gave to Timothy in  2 Timothy 2:15 we ought to take to heart and make our regular practice:  " Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth ....