Corner of Knox St. & Liverpool Rd. Ashfield
Corner of Knox St. & Liverpool Rd. Ashfield
We all understand the difference about knowing someone personally and simply knowing about them. Most of us know about famous figures in our own lifetimes but that certainly doesn’t equate to knowing them personally.
It was once Martin Luther who famously said that the essence of Christianity was to be discovered through its use of personal pronouns. Luther’s point, simply put, was that Christianity was essentially a relationship with a person, not a religious ritual.
One of the most significant areas in which modern life is out of step with God relates to the things that we value. In today’s world, people place enormous value upon wealth and education.
It is hardly surprising that, being made in the image of God, we yearn for firm relationships in which we feel loved and secure. Researchers in neuroscience have discovered that little children, who are rarely touched and starved of love whilst in institutional care, can actually die from emotional neglect.
One of the great cries of the human heart is to become a better person. Alfred Tennyson, the English poet laureate, expressed this desire once in the words, “Oh that a man would arise in me that the man I am may cease to be.”
“Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One. ‘Let us break their chains’, they say, ‘and throw off their fetters.’”
One of the great hopes that every Jew cherished for around a thousand years before Jesus was born was that God was going to establish a glorious kingdom for Israel that would exceed anything that had been achieved in David’s kingdom centuries before.
If we are ever asked the question, “What is the one, great motive of Christian ministry in all its forms?” the simple answer is “compassion”. The Gospel writers repeat over and over again that compassion is the crowning characteristic of Jesus’ life.
James, a first century apostle, says: ‘Confess your sins to one another’, while Freud, a twentieth century psychiatrist says: ‘Blame it on your parents!’ No one, it seems, denies the reality of personal guilt.
For many in the church today the law serves no useful purpose at all. They reason that since we are saved through faith, there is no place for the law.