God Speaks To Me In The Movies (Part 1 - 300)

I am never ceased to be amazed at just how much Jesus speaks to me in the movies (and afterwards about the movie).
300 was a great epic, (although there were some dodgy scenes in the beginning)... I was so pleased I saw it on the big screen... it just wouldn't have been the same on my 22' tv at home!



There was heaps and heaps of lessons that I drew out of 300... but I'll stick with one for today:

I was amazed at a character called Ephialtes in the movie. In the film he is a hideously deformed, hunchbacked dwarf.
Ephialtes approaches King Leonidas, desperate to serve with him as the 300 Spartans face the hordes from Persia. He has alot of keenness to face those hordes... it has been his dream for so long.
The problem was however that Ephialtes could not raise his shield... and therefore he could not protect the man next to him. The Spartans were such great warriors because of this very fact... they worked together as a single unit (creating the Spartan phalanx)... each man responsible for the other... each man had the others back (theres a lesson right there!)
Because of this Ling Leonidas refused Ephialtes a position among the fighting men... although offering him a position to help removing the dead men off the battle field (a very important job - by the way - although not quite so glorious).
[Its like in church... host teams etc. aren't as glorious and glamorous as upfront ministry... but vitally important... in the Bible would say it is worthy of greater honour!
1Co 12:23-25 ESV (23) and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, (24) which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, (25) that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.]

Ephialtes who had declared his allegiance to the King, to Sparta and to Greece was so angry at this denial... his heart became so hardened and grieved... that he betrayed all!
We look at him with disgust and self righteous indignation. We feel nothing but contempt. We are disgusted.

But how do we respond when corrected, rebuked, or re-positioned?
How many people I have seen leave the church because they felt slighted... when they didn't like their positioning in the church... when they didn't like the changes they were told to make in their lives.
Their hearts hardened...
They spoke against their leadership and their church...
They pulled down Christ's church...
They left the church...
They never grew...
Some left the faith... some went to another church... only to go through it all again.
Heb 3:12-13 MSG (12) So watch your step, friends. Make sure there's no evil unbelief lying around that will trip you up and throw you off course, diverting you from the living God. (13) For as long as it's still God's Today, keep each other on your toes so sin doesn't slow down your reflexes. Pro 13:1 ESV (1) A wise son hears his father's instruction, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke.



Hows your heart?
Are you happy serving in the position that you are in?
How do you react when you hear 'what you don't want to hear'?
How can we keep from becoming like Ephialtes... with a deformed heart?

I look forward to your comments : )

Nothing But God!

Tonight I thought I'd just leave you with a simple... yet powerful thought:

In the beginning there was nothing but God.

Then God created a world - for it to perceive that there is nothing but God.

I'd love to hear your comments!

God Speaks To Me In The Movies (Part 1 - The Prestige)

I have just finished watching The Prestige tonight for the second time. I definitely felt that it was my best movie of 06! It was simply... DELICIOUS!

In the film we see a character for only about 2-3 mins... his name is Chung Ling Soo. Chung Lung Soo is an illusionist... and commits his entire life to living out his 'act'. Below is a short description taken from Wikipedia:

Den Shewman of Creative Screenwriting says the film asks how far one would go to devote oneself to an art. The character of Chung Ling Soo, according to Shewman, is a metaphor for this theme.^[7] Film critic Alex Manugian refers to this theme as the "meaning of commitment."^[24] For example, Soo's pretense of being slow and feeble misdirects his audience from noticing the physical strength required to perform the goldfish bowl trick, but the cost of maintaining this illusion is the sacrifice of individuality: Soo's true appearance and freedom to act naturally are consciously suppressed in his ceaseless dedication to the art of magic.

Soo in the movie is depicted as a crippled old man... which is all an act which enables him to carry the bowl between his legs. The incredible thing though is that even when the show is done Soo continues on his act, walking around with a crippled demeanor. His entire life, every waking moment was committed to this cause... to pulling off this great illusion so that he could hear the applause of the crowd... so he could please them.

I was amazed at how far this man was willing to go to accomplish his purpose...
I suppose the entire movie is questioning 'how far we are willing to go'.

It kinda made me think... how far am I willing to go for my Cause?
What sacrifice, what amount of discipline am I willing to go to for my audience of one... Jesus Christ?
How far am I willing to go to please Him?
I am so challenged...

What parts of the movie spoke to you?
What comments do you have from this Blog?
I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

The Banality of Evil (by James Macpherson)

The Banality of Evil

The Nazi death camp at Auschwitz was not at all as I had envisaged it. For a start, it was bathed in sunshine.

I had expected Auschwitz, the concentration camp in which more than a million people were ruthlessly exterminated, to be covered in dark clouds, drenched in rain and buffeted by a bitterly cold wind.

But no. The weather was near perfect.

I had expected Auschwitz to be grotesque and ugly. In reality, it was almost pretty. The death camp's streets were lined with lovely trees, the grass was green and I'd have thought the buildings, had I been ignorant of their evil use, to be rather quiant.

As I walked the streets in which so many were slaughtered, I was reminded of the phrase Hannah Arendt used to describe Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann. She coined the phrase "the banality of evil" to describe his averageness.

She was shocked, when confronted by the Nazi war criminal, that he had neither horns protruding from his head nor a tail from his rear or pitch fork in his hand. Eichmann was a monster to be sure, but a very ordinary one. He was very much like any other man.

And this was the most confronting thing about Auschwitz. This place, where such evil was done, was not the edge of hell. Infact, it was just a short drive from the beautiful city of Krakow. I was standing where some of the worst deeds in human history were perpetrated, and yet I could very well have been standing anywhere. The dirt, the stones, the grass, the trees, the sun overhead ... they were all shockingly familar.

Sure enough, there was horror to be seen. The nearly 2 tonnes of human hair that had been collected from those marked for death; the mountains of shoes, bags, brushes and personal affects that had been taken from people who were told they were to be showered only to be gassed; The rows and rows of 'mug shots' - men and women, all of them with heads shaved - hanging along the corridors of the buildings. Someone's mother, father, daughter, son ... their fearful eyes, surely knowing death was imminent, following you as you walked the hallways.

But it wasn't the horror that shocked me; it was the ordinariness of it all.

Better if Auschwitz was on the edge of hell, then we could climb into our cars and tour buses (there were a lot of them) and drive far, far away. We could dismiss Auschwitz as a blip, something that happens on the edge of hades, but thankfully not in the real world.

And so I cursed the sun that shone where it ought not, making my day a pleasant one. And I cursed the leafy trees that made me admire them, even when everything within me wanted to despise everything around me.

What happened at Auschwitz was horrible, but I can't say Auschwitz was a horrible place. It wasn't some 'Bermuda Triangle' of evil that we could just determine to avoid from now on.

Alexander Solzenitsyn wrote in his classic work Gulag Archipelago: "Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor even political parties - but right through every human heart and through all human hearts."

Pogo put it more succinctly - "We have just met the enemy, and he is us."

The ordinariness of Auschwitz is what makes it a reminder, not just of what did happen, but more frighteningly, of what can happen.

Ordinary evil is indeed the most frightening evil of all.

This was taken from Pastor James Macpherson's blog site. It was just too good not to pass on!

There is a lot to ponder on this article... I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

The Romance With Status Quo

Have you ever noticed how quickly we 'settle in'... become comfortable... and are easily flirted by status quo?
I don't know about you... but too often I am aroused only to find myself in status quo's arms.
Too easily will I accept that certain things are just beyond me.

But doesn't Scripture say:

Romans 8:37 (New International Version)37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

So why is it that we feel so easily defeated, so very willing to embrace status quo, so very accepting that there are certain things that we just can not do.

How many adults are there without any education... who just believe that they could never do a higher education course? ... and so they don't.
How many parents are there that just never had the opportunity to read... and still believe that they can never read? ... and so they suffer shame everday.
How many Christians believe that God could never use them in XYZ... and so they never step out? ... and you guessed it, God never does anything through them!

I was watching 20/20 the other night and saw a piece on Mikes Maths. This guy is a maths genius who goes into schools and volunteers... showing kids how to work these systems that he has come up with that enables them to compute in their heads crazy maths problems like 56 x 56. After learning Mike's system, in about 10 seconds you could work out that multiplication problem (the answer by the way is 3136!).

I can hear you already... 'but thats impossible'... 'you must have used a calculator'... etc.
I can still remember the night I saw the show... I was excitedly tackling all sorts of crazy digited maths numbers... and was cranking out these wild answers that were actually correct. I was excited!
Now to put this in context... I flunked maths at high school... I was severly disinterested and was not a fan of my maths teacher. I had formed a mental block with maths. I went from achieving high 70's to failing miserably! I began to believe that maths was beyond me.
I accepted the fact that I just plain sucked at maths... until I watched the show...

I decided to give it a go as I witnessed these young kids solving these crazy sums. With intrepidation I worked out my first sum...
How freeing to cast off that old restriction... that misbelief about myself! I can still feel that excitment now!

What false beliefs do you need to challenge?
What is there waiting for you to break out of your old confined thinking?
What miracles lay before you?

Find one thing... and commit to spending this week breaking out of those confines... to walking on water... to see the miraclous in your life!


As always I look forward to your comments!

Where Is Your Faith?

Kia Ora from Melbourne...
We've had 2 evening meetings and a full day of meetings. As always when you put yourself in this kind of enviroment... it is very challenging!

I wanted to say a very big thank-you to everyone who has been reading this Blog and espesially to you legends who are leaving comments.
May we sharpen one another!

I wanted to share on a passing comment that Danny Googs made about the 7 Stages of Faith that we as Christians move through:

1. Comfort
2. Connected
3. Cause
4. Committed
5. Crisis
6. Character
7. Continue

Basically the idea is that when we come to church we are comforted and then connected into the church family. We then begin to pick up the Cause of Christ which leads to us being commited to Christ's cause. Then crisis comes which when navigated well leads to us developing character. Once we establish character we form the grit to continue on in the faith.

Danny suggested that too many people in the church get stuck at the first 2 levels... and this is why the church is the way it is.

What are your your thoughts on these 7 levels of Faith and where do you see yourself fitting in on the levels of faith?

Here's another question... what does it mean to pick-up the cause of Christ?

As always I look forward to your comments!!!

What's Your Tomorrow Like?

The world's most famous set of awards are the Nobel Prizes. Presented for outstanding achievement in literature, peace, economics, medicine and the sciences, they were created a century ago by Alfred B. Nobel (1833-1896), a man who amassed his fortune by producing explosives; among other things, Nobel invented dynamite.

What motivated this Swedish munitions manufacturer to dedicate his fortune to honoring and rewarding those who benefited humanity?
The creation of the Nobel Prizes came about through a chance event. When Nobel's brother died, a newspaper ran a long obituary of Alfred Nobel, believing that it was he who had passed away. Thus, Nobel had an opportunity granted few people: to read his obituary while alive. What he read horrified him: The newspaper described him as a man who had made it possible to kill more people more quickly than anyone else who had ever lived.

At that moment, Nobel realized two things: that this was how he was going to be remembered, and that this was not how he wanted to be remembered. Shortly thereafter, he established the awards. Today, because of his doing so, everyone is familiar with the Nobel Prize, while relatively few people know how Nobel made his fortune.

While most of us will not be afforded the opportunity that Nobel expericed, we certainly can reflect, and evaluate our lives... where they are headed... and where we would like them to go.

There is no truer saying than:

"What we do today prophecies our tomorrow."

What do you need to change about your today so that you can live out the tomorrow of your destiny?