Southern Cross Presbyterian Church

I often get asked for advice on good resources for growing stronger marriages. I also often find myself involved with husbands & wives who’ve been too embarrassed to ask for advice but should have! Anyway, if you fit into either of these categories, here are my top 5 current tips for useful resources:

1. The Bible – I’m not kidding. There is no better resource for your marriage than to read God’s word together as a husband & wife and then talk about what you’ve read and pray together.

2. Fireproof – for those who struggle to pick up a book, this is a really good Christian movie that deals with a lot of issues that challenge many marriages. As an added bonus for those in their 30s, the main character is played by Kirk Cameron – remember him from the 80s sitcom ‘Growing Pains’!?

3. The Love Dare – this is actually a book that features in the storyline of the movie ‘Fireproof’. Without ruining the movie for you, the book is a 40 day challenge intended for a husband or wife to secretly take on in order to grow their marriage. Each day includes a Bible verse/passage, reflection and application and space to journal your response.

4. The seven Principles for Making Marriage Work – This is a very good book even though it’s written from a non-Christian perspective. The author, John Gottman, is famous for his scientific approach to discovering what makes good marriage succeed and bad marriages fail. Ideal to be read and discussed as a couple.

5. The Marriage Course – a 7-week DVD-based course that we’ve run at Southern Cross for the last 3 years. While we’re taking a break this year, the Marriage Course will be run again in 2010 as we focus on the ‘Grow’ aspect of our mission statement. Stay tuned.

Many of you would be aware that I went to Presbyterian Youth’s winter camp. It was a great camp and we will be thinking about how it can tie in with what we have been doing up here on the north coast. But while I was at the camp I picked up the book ‘The Prodigal God’, which is written by Tim Keller (the guy who also wrote ‘The Reason for God: Belief in the Age of Scepticism’, which Steve has been plugging of late in his sermons). I’ve heard Steve and Pete Yock mention this book so when I saw that I could get it at a reduced rate (25% off), I did the only reasonable thing a man could do – steal it… nar, I bought it.
If ya the type ‘the prodigal God’ into the search engine ‘Google’ you will get some much better reviews than I can do, but I just wanted to say that as a person who would rather watch almost anything on TV than read a book (yes, even including Oprah and Ellen) I managed to finish this book in less than a week and I didn’t even need to read the book for an assignment or anything.
The Book digs into the ‘Parable of the lost son’ found in Luke chapter 15. The book pretty much destroys any teaching you might have heard about the parable before and sets the cultural setting very well. I won’t give it away but the book suggests that there is not one lost son but two. The older brother is just as lost as the younger brother, only it’s the older brother’s good works that are separating him from the father.
The book goes onto talk about how churches are full of older brothers – people who are trying to get right with God by their good works and not through trust in Jesus. I found the book very challenging as I quickly identified the older brother characteristics in my life.
Below is one of the more challenging paragraphs that I read.
‘Elder brothers may be disciplined in observing regular times of prayer, but their prayers are almost wholly taken up with a recitation of needs and petitions, not spontaneous, joyful praise. In fact, many elder brothers, for all their religiosity, do not have much of a private prayer life at all unless things are not going well in their lives. Then they may devote themselves to a great deal of it, until things get better again. This reveals that their main goal in prayer is to control their environment rather than to delve into an intimate relationship with a God who loves them’. Page 65.
I would recommend the book to anyone who wants to grow in their relationship with their heavenly father.

http://www.theprodigalgod.com/

Last weekend, Katharine, Ryan and myself ventured down to the cold of Stanwell Tops to attend the AFES (Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students) apprentice conference. Over the weekend, we looked into God’s character and how we can see through the bible his emotions and his affections towards the world. We looked at questions such as:

What aspects of God’s character do we see in the bible?
What are emotions and what are affections?
What emotions and affections does God show in the bible?
How can we have godly emotions and affections?

We learnt the difference between emotions and affections (emotions being a response to external circumstances and affections being the powerful inclinations that influences how we think and act) as well as looking at how these impact our ministry and relationships.

We see throughout the bible that God has shown people grace and mercy, even when their sin has grieved him. His “affection” was to show us such mercy by NOT ignoring our sin but giving an answer for our sin and that was Jesus. We learnt that the good news of Jesus influences how we think and act, not only towards God but to those around us. To express our emotions and affections in a good way, this would mean lining up our hearts with God’s.

This has been helpful for me thinking through how to do uni ministry. I’ve realised how important meeting one to one with students and discussing how they understand the gospel and whether it is transforming how they respond to things, particularly with regards to emotion. Also through hearing about God’s affections (i.e. that is for people to accept his mercy and be in relationship with him), it was a reminder that the vision for the bible talks (TBT) is to live for God’s affections. We serve at Southern Cross Uni to tell people about Jesus and encourage the TBT students to live as Jesus did, having compassion for those around them and sharing the good news of eternal life.

I picked up the wishing well this morning and there has already been some exciting/frustrating challenges. As you might be aware there has been a change to the normal route for the parade, due to the recent flood event.

The parade will now probably start at the Lismore Rowing Club and will finish at Jolly Playing Fields. It would be great if you come and support the youth of our church as they carry a wishing well, a pink elephant and handout balloon animals.

The youth who have got the courage to march will need to meet at the Rowing Club at about 5pm. The parade officially starts at 5:30pm and the fiery finale is at 6:45pm. If ya want to know more check out the Lantern Parade’s website http://www.lanternparade.com/stop-press.php

The youth will be given more details at youth next Friday and if ya want to know more please call the church office.

TBT mission week is on from 27 June—3 July and this will kick off semester 2 with a week of evangelism at SCU. Credo (the AFES group from UTS in Sydney) is sending a team of students to Lismore to help us out.

It is an exciting opportunity to reach out to the students at Southern Cross University to tell them about Jesus. If you’d like to know more about the mission week and how you can help, please speak to Jasmine Mathie at the church office.