It is a helpful to stop every so often and think about what God has been doing around us and for us. There is much to celebrate. Yet, I think I am often thankfully challenged! In other words, I often fail to be thankful for much.
Category Archives: Ken Noakes
Question: ‘What do you think is the biggest misconception unbelievers have about Jesus?’
How would you answer ?
Humbly, I am not sure I am the one to determine what the biggest misconception may be, but let me offer this thought. I wonder if a key misconception that unbelievers have about Jesus is that he is dead!
Standing on the safe side of Salvation!
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where some obstacle gets in your way? Where your desire to get from one place to another is blocked by factors you find too hard to overcome. Normally this is not too great an issue. Just give up, or slowly find another way around the issue.
Increase the temperature. Imagine a life and death situation. A situation where the obstacle just has to be overcome because if not, you lose your life! The urgency will force you to take risks that you would not normally take.
Friends, I wonder whether we need to increase the temperature.
Christian Marriage (Part 5)
To be a Christian is to be someone who recognizes, more sharply and clearly than our world, that the creation story is not the end.
As early as Genesis 4 we are introduced to Lamech who took more than one wife, even the great Abraham had more than one wife and also had concubines.The Old Testament accounts report polygamy but they never hold it up as an example to be imitated. By the end of Genesis we’ve seen adultery, incest, rape, homosexual rape, prostitution – quite a bit more than we really were bargaining on.
The fall has damaged all of our relationships, especially and profoundly the marriage relationship.
The Purpose of Marriage (Part 4) – To Relate Sexually
The purpose of marriage is more than God bringing a man and a woman together to rule – the purpose of marriage is to bring a man and a woman together to relate sexually.
Back to Genesis. Let’s look at the flesh! The women is taken from the flesh of the man (2:21), to become flesh of his flesh (2:23) and to then join together as one flesh (2:24), naked and not ashamed (2:25) – this is sexual and deeply relational.
The Purpose of Marriage (Part 3) – To Rule
We can dig deeper when thinking about the purpose of marriage.
Back to our verse in Genesis – It is not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him. (Gen 2:18)
The context in Genesis 1 reminds us that male and female are made in the image of God. Should we pause and consider what this means for marriage?
The Purpose of Marriage (Part 2) – Togetherness
What is the purpose of marriage? Why does it exist?
The Lord said, ‘It is not good for a man to be alone’; I will make a helper fit for him’ (Gen 2:18)
The common reading of this verse implies that it is not good for a man to be lonely. – as if the night life for Adam in the garden was not great and there was nothing good on Eden Cable TV! But is that all that going on here? Man needed some cheering up?
The Nature of Marriage (Part 1)
The nature of marriage has been under attack since the Fall – but particularly in the last 100 years as culture norms have challenged Biblical patterns for marriage.
Western society used to think biblical marriage was a good idea, and that divorce, adultery, pre-marital sex, cohabitation; serial monogamy and same sex marriage were bad ideas.
Testimony
Chris
How did the axe-murder of the lady across the road lead Chris to become a Christian?
‘I grew up in a comfortable part of Sydney where nothing ever went wrong. But then came the night when the man across the road axe-murdered his wife before running outside, only to die of a heart attack. Not long after that, my next door neighbours were kidnapped by thieves, and had such a terrifying experience that they sold their house and moved away. Soon after that, the lady down the street blew her brains out, leaving her husband and four kids behind. All this happened in a safe place where bad things weren’t meant to happen! My assumption about life—get a good education, so you can get a good job, so you can live in a place like ours where nothing ever went wrong—was totally blown apart. I began to seriously wonder what life was all about.
churchcentralonline.com 