Back to Blog

Advent Four - Love

This week we saw both hate and love displayed. The hate came in the form of two men who used their hate to gun down innocent children, women and men. It was a despicable act for which there is no justification. The love was shown by a shopkeeper, Ahmed al Ahmed, who tackled one of the gunmen and stopped him from firing at great risk to his own life. He was shot multiple times. People are calling him a hero. Jesus once saidThis is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. ...

Advent 3 - Joy

Not too long to go now for all those who find the ‘waiting’ for Christmas so hard.  I know my grandkids are keen for the big day to arrive. For them there is the excitement of presents, both the giving and receiving they are looking forward to. Even with the best of intention the story about a baby, fades to the background. And I wonder about us as adults. How easily do we get sidetracked with all the glitter and excitement and the story of the baby born to save the world, gets lost fro...

Carols

Come and join us as we celebrate the Christmas story with carols, fun and laughter.  All welcome.Sunday 14 December from 4pm...

Advent two - Peace

Almost 2000 years ago some shepherds heard angels singing and proclaiming, ‘good news’. The Messiah was born and this Prince of Peace, as the prophets called, had come to gift peace to all. Peace with ourselves, peace with others and peace with God. I wonder what it might mean for us to lay down our arms, our battles, our enmity and instead allow the peace of Christ to bring us together. This Christmas may you be the one who offers peace to those who desperately need to hear it.Got questions...

Advent One - Hope

This coming Sunday marks the beginning of the church year. Advent is about waiting and watching, something most of us are not very good at. For hundreds of years the people of God had waited, hoping for the birth of the promised Messiah. It was a long wait and over time some people began to wonder if it as ever going to happen.  Maybe God had given up on them, maybe it was just a pipedream. Until one night a messenger from God appears to a young woman and said the time had finally come – ...

Christ the King Sunday

For those who follow the church year, this coming Sunday is the last Sunday in the church year before we begin another cycle with the beginning of Advent. And the last Sunday of the church year points us to the significance of the story of Jesus – the baby child born at Christmas is not just anybody or a nobody but rather the King of everything.  It’s true not everyone sees it that way, for many people Jesus is just a bloke who talked about loving others or just a myth told by the churc...

For the sake of others

Today is Armistice day, where on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month an armistice was signed between opposing forces in WW1 in 1918. And we remember that day to remind ourselves of the ultimate sacrifice of the men and women who fought and died. We are also reminded of the futility of war. Back then it was hoped that that Great War would be the last war humanity would fight, so brutal and bloody it had been. Over 100 years on we know that such a thought was really just a pipedream an...

A Promise Kept

It is easy for politicians to make a Promise – If we get elected, we will do this…… The hard thing is keeping those promises and a failure to do so has resulted in many politicians finding themselves without a job. The public it seems has a low tolerance for those who promise much and then fail to deliver. In fact, I suspect most of us have a low tolerance for anyone who makes a promise and then fails to keep it. How often have your children said, “But you promised!”Genesis 21 is the s...

Just deserts

You may be familiar with the expression ‘just deserts’, as in I hope he/she gets their ‘just deserts.’ Many of you have heard of it, but for those who haven’t although it is pronounced like dessert (2 s’s) it has nothing to do with the food we eat, which some may know of as pudding. To get your just deserts means to get a “deserved reward or punishment” (usually used in plural), “the quality or fact of meriting reward or punishment,” or “excellence, worth.” One of th...

Too good to be true

One of the great banes of modern life especially regarding online finances is the emergence of scammers. People who offer us all sorts of amazing almost unbelievable deals. Give us your money and we will double it! We have a deal that can’t be beaten. But it’s not just the online scammers, we are surrounded by advertisements and people offering us the best deal of our life. And what is tragic is that people do believe and they give away access to their assets.But what happens when the promis...

Faith

Faith is something most of us exercise every day. We have faith that our cars will start, that planes will fly, that trains hopefully will be on time. We plan our days assuming that ordinary everyday things will happen because they happened yesterday. But what if they didn’t? What would life be like if on any given day, things just didn’t work the way we expect. If our cars only worked intermittently or only under certain conditions. How much faith could we then place in them? Hebrews 11 is ...

Waiting

Waiting is hardly ever easy. Waiting for a baby to be born, waiting for that friend to arrive, even waiting to die. Sometimes waiting is a test of our faith – will the person do what they promised they will do? Or will they let us down? And when that someone is God – feeling let down can be pretty hard to take. God made some pretty big promises to Abraham, promises which took years to happen and which Abraham wondered would ever take place. Over years, decades, he waited for God to fulfil a ...

Hero's

When I was growing up the heroes of our time were Batman and Superman and they were 1950’s characters, pure of heart and actions. And then along came Christopher Nolan and he recreated Batman – The Dark Knight. Here was a character who has flaws, who struggles with his past, who carries within a darkness that threatens to destroy him or make him like the baddies he fights. It’s a great reminder that most of us are less than perfect, however others may portray us. Abram, the great man of fa...

Bread of Life

The current cost of living has highlighted that many people are struggling to make ends meet. While some are doing extremely well, others are finding it hard to put bread on the table. It is also a time for us to consider how we can help those who are struggling often through no fault of their own. Jesus reminded us that we have a responsibility to help those in need. Matthew records these words from Jesus."Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; ta...

Come to me and drink

These words by Jesus were announced during the Jewish festival of Tabernacles, as they remembered how God had sustained them in the desert after leaving Egypt. Each day the priests would bring water from the poll of Siloam and pour it on the ground around the altar in the temple. And it is while this procession is going on that Jesus points to himself as the source of life. "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will...

Season of Creation

This week not only marks the beginning of Spring for gardeners but in the church calendar it is now the Season of Creation, a period of one month when the Church universal remembers our responsibility to cherish and celebrate creation. The Bible in Genesis says that after God had created everything in the world, God looked at it all and said, ‘It is good’. And God isn’t just saying it looked good, but that creation is something of value and worth. All of us from humans to tiny little bugs ...

Who are you, who, who?

The words from a famous song ask an existential question? Who are you? Not just your name but you yourself. Who are YOU? Sometimes we think we know people really well and then they do something that highlights how little you really knew them. Last week while in hospital, I got to overhear the conversation in the bed next to mine. And it occurred to me that I knew nothing about them or the culture they came from. They were New Zealanders, but not like me, and our worlds are completely different. ...

Working together

It can be easy to think that our organisation or our political party or ‘us’ have the answer to all the issues we face. If everyone just did what we suggested, then life would be great. The reality is though, that none of us have all the answers or the solutions to the issues we face as a society. And often our solutions may make things better for us but much worse for others. What we need is to work together, to seek solutions from others, to hear from those we often exclude from our delibe...

Listening to God

It’s easy to be sceptical when someone says, ‘God told me’. Too often those words are used to suppress opposition or questioning of their decisions or actions. It becomes the ultimate permission giver. Afterall who can argue with God. And yet, history would suggest that God does in fact talk to us and lead us in ways we might not expect. Sometimes it is in the words of Jesus as revealed through Scripture, sometimes in the words of friends, sometimes a small inner voice that invites us to b...

God is love

It’s a bold claim to say that God is love. Not that God is loving but that God is love - the very nature of God is love. For those of us who have mostly or only heard God spoken of as judge, jury and executioner, this is a radical idea. What might it mean to encounter a loving God? And how might we experience that love in our own lives? 1 John, a letter in the Bible, makes this audacious claim and goes on to say that to know God and love God means we must also be people of love. Now to be clea...

The hidden pain

I read the headlines today about the ‘Middle East’ where Israel and Iran are firing missiles at each other. But this is no game of battleships, each of those missiles carries with it death and destruction for those in its path. On the ground, the death toll continues to climb and the number of injured and maimed fills the hospitals. There is no easy answer as to who is right and who is wrong and how we might justify those answers. What is clear, is that 50 years of animosity, passed from gen...

Pentecost

This coming Sunday is a big day in the church year – Pentecost – 50 days after Easter. it’s the day when the church remembers God pouring out his Spirit on the first disciples and what is perhaps the birthday of the Church. That’s the day when the story of Jesus and what God is doing in our world really goes public. This small ragtag bunch of believers empowered by God took their story to the world. It’s a mixed story at times, stories of great hope and transformation but also of failu...

At the very centre

Sometimes it can seem as though Christianity is very complicated. Lots of different churches, lots of different emphasise on different parts of the Bible. For the non-church goer it can all seem a bit confusing – why so many different ones? Why can’t there just be one? Is there anything you agree on?That last question is the big one because at the centre of Christianity, in all its different flavours and cultural expressions, is the person of Jesus the Christ. Everything we do and believe is...

What do I believe in this crazy world?

Every day it seems, we are bombarded with new ideas and statements about how we should live our lives. Advertising says we need to buy product X if we are to be truly happy and politicians are constantly telling us that they know the way forward and how to solve all of societies complex problems. And somehow, we must try and decide just what is and isn’t true.The early church faced a similar problem, a growing number of people who thought they had the latest word on just who Jesus was? And som...

Together

This week, one of the members of our church will become the new senior pastor at Waikanae Baptist on the other side of the river. Andy and Chris have been part of our church for a couple of years while Andy worked as our Baptist Youth Coach for the lower half of the North Island. That role has now come to an end and Andy is about to begin his new role. As a church we are excited about what the future will hold for them and look forward to deepening the relationship between our Baptist Churches h...