Category: Casual observations

On Spurgeon

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I’m reading a couple of devotional alongside my Bible reading this year.

Ages ago I had a crack at Charles Spurgeon’s “Morning & Evening,” and thought I’d give it another go.

My greatest problem so far is that I want to quote, or post every second devotion in full. I certainly appreciate why they called him “the prince of preachers.”

I’ll give you a little taste with today’s:

It is a curious fact, that there is such a thing as being proud of grace. A man says, “I have great faith, I shall not fall; poor little faith may, but I never shall.” “I have fervent love,” says another, “I can stand, there is no danger of my going astray.” He who boasts of grace has little grace to boast of. Some who do this imagine that their graces can keep them, knowing not that the stream must flow constantly from the fountain head, or else the brook will soon be dry. If a continuous stream of oil comes not to the lamp, though it burn brightly to-day, it will smoke to-morrow, and noxious will be its scent. Take heed that thou gloriest not in thy graces, but let all thy glorying and confidence be in Christ and His strength, for only so canst thou be kept from falling. Be much more in prayer. Spend longer time in holy adoration. Read the Scriptures more earnestly and constantly. Watch your lives more carefully. Live nearer to God. Take the best examples for your pattern. Let your conversation be redolent of heaven. Let your hearts be perfumed with affection for men’s souls. So live that men may take knowledge of you that you have been with Jesus, and have learned of Him; and when that happy day shall come, when He whom you love shall say, “Come up higher,” may it be your happiness to hear Him say, “Thou hast fought a good fight, thou hast finished thy course, and henceforth there is laid up for thee a crown of righteousness which fadeth not away.” On, Christian, with care and caution! On, with holy fear and trembling! On, with faith and confidence in Jesus alone, and let your constant petition be, “Uphold me according to Thy word.” He is able, and He alone, “To keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.”

The Zoo

My house is sometimes like a zoo. Lots of little kids running around like wild animals.

I realise how blessed I am that all four of my kids have been great when it comes to travel! No one wants a zoo in a small vehicle….

6 odd hours of travel to Dubbo. The twins were like little angels the whole way, and the only peep we had out of the big kids was when Playschool ran out on their little DVD player.

My parents were kind enough to travel up from the Hunter also, meaning Shona & I got to go out to dinner for the first time since the twins were born.

Two Doors Cafe got some great reviews online, still, I’ll be honest & say I wasn’t expecting too much. It was fantastic!

Two Doors Cafe is a tapas style place. I wish I had taken a picture of the entrance, literally two little doors, opening to a staircase taking you to a lovely paved yard behind a building. We sat down & ordered a bunch of dishes.
The Bread knots were passable & the summer chicken salad was nice without being something to write home again. The Chorizo cooked in cider, however, was the best Chorizo I have ever had! Likewise the pork belly would bring a tear to a glass eye, even with the pickled nectarine (I’ve never been a fruit with meat kinda guy). Salt & Pepper squid was a nice way to round off mains. Their salted caramel tart was the only letdown, but it was forgotten once we had the Churros.

It wasn’t the best night in terms of diet, but it was nice to let go just once!

The lovely night’s food gave us lots of energy for Western Plains Zoo the next day We hired a bike with a little two seat trailer for the big kids. The parents, Shona & the twinnies walked around the (almost 6km) circuit.

There are lots of things to love about the WPZ. I’ll let a couple of pictures tell the story though.

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Shona playing around with the bike set-up

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Ready to go!

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You feel like you could walk up & touch the animals at most exhibits!

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Great to see animals with heaps of room!

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We almost missed this dude. He was literally under us as we stared into his enclosure.

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It’s great to see the kids enjoying time with “Mama”

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We weren’t the only family at the zoo….

Next time, Coonamble & the wedding!

Cookie Commercials and an imperfect Church…

I’m almost certain that this little piece of viral entertainment was commissioned by Oreo.

It doesn’t matter, it’s fun anyway.

I think we all like the idea of people & their passions; that someone would spend so much time creating a machine to do what a knife could do in about 5 seconds….. A passion for the pointless.

On first watch I just enjoyed it for the sheer oddness, but then something else got me thinking…

In this ad and many others, Oreo plays with this tension between the cookie fans and the cream fans. They’re creating the tension themselves, and in doing so they’re encouraging watchers to pick a team. In doing so, however, they’re also encouraging the viewer to be “anti” one half of their product.
They commission this guy to make an ad for them & in it he’s saying that he can’t stand half of what they sell!

Even more amazingly it works!

Why so?

My best guess is that, no matter which team you pick, the overall flavour of the sales pitch is that the element you do love is so good that it’s worth dealing with the inconvenience of the part you may not like.

If you like both cookie AND cream (actually I suspect it’s “creme.” I suspect the filling has a closer affinity with a factory than we a cow) then you are doubly blessed!

As in my tendency, such things always make me reflect on Christian truths.

I wonder whether the church struggles because we want to sell ourselves as being 100% good.

You should always love church: all the people are nice, friendly, engaging all the time: sermons are always easy to listen to: when you’re a part of the church family there will never be any struggles in your life.

But the truth is that sometimes the church is hard to love. There might be bits of family that we like & things that frustrate & annoy us!

BUT

To know the God who made us and loves us, to know who we truly are, why we were created & to have a blueprint for the life well lived, surely this is worthy enough that it makes those frustrations we might have from time to time worth the inconvenience.

I certainly pray that our community in Kincumber is one where people enjoy both the “cookie and the cream.” I work hard to make sure that we’re a warm, genuine, engaged community, but in the end it’s helpful to be reminded that we’re just a community of imperfect people, but we come together to worship God, and He, the “whole” is far greater than this little part.

Every little gadget

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I’ve always been a gadget fan.

I love anything that makes life easier or more convenient.

My favourite cafe, Loo Loo’s has joined a group called “NoQ.”

Basically it is an app that allows me to order and pay for my coffee from my phone.

The added benefit is I could order beans and have them posted to my house, but the primary reason I’d use it is so my coffee is ready when I arrive, or I can order another without getting out of my seat/sermon groove.

Is that awesome & convenient, or just lazy?

Broken

My computer was broken.

Now it’s not.

Well that’s not true. I bought a new Mac, it died after a month, then after waiting another couple of weeks, they gave up trying to fix & it & just replaced it.

The new beastie is working just fine (so far), and now that I have more than just an iPad at home, it’s time to get back on to blogging etc.

Stay tuned.

Hope for Change

This is from John Piper’s daily devotional app taht I’ve been using on my ipad.

Just wonderful.

“And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” (Luke 23:42)

One of the greatest hope-killers is that you have tried for so long to change and have not succeeded.

You look back and think: What’s the use? Even if I could experience a breakthrough, there would be so little time left to live in my new way that it wouldn’t make much difference compared to so many decades of failure.

The former robber (the thief on the cross next to Jesus) lived for another hour or so before he died. He was changed. He lived on the cross as a new man with new attitudes and actions (no more reviling). But 99.99% of his life was wasted. Did the last couple hours of newness matter?

They mattered infinitely. This former robber, like all of us, will stand before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account of his life. “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10). How will his life witness in that day to his new birth and his union with Christ?

The last hours will tell the story. This man was new. His faith was real. He is truly united to Christ. Christ’s righteousness is his. His sins are forgiven.

That is what the final hours will proclaim at the last judgment. His change mattered. It was, and it will be, a beautiful testimony to the power of God’s grace and the reality of his faith and his union with Christ.

Now back to our struggle with change. I am not saying that struggling believers are unsaved like the robber was. I am simply saying that the last years and the last hours of life matter.

If in the last 1% of our lives, we can get a victory over some longstanding sinful habit or hurtful defect in our personality, it will be a beautiful testimony now to the power of grace; and it will be an added witness (not the only one) at the last judgment of our faith in Christ and our union with him.

Take heart, struggler. Keep asking, seeking, knocking. Keep looking to Christ. If God gets glory by saving robbers in the 11th hour, he surely has his purposes why he has waited till now to give you the breakthrough you have sought for decades.

“It’s Never Too Late to Keep Asking”