Remembering God’s Faithfulness in Unfruitful Times Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places. Habakkuk 3:17-19, ESV How often have you wondered whether God is really faithful? Is He really in control? Can I really trust Him? Having doubts like this is not uncommon. When we are stuck in the rut, in times of hardship or sorrow, and

Reflections on Spiritual Disciplines  People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy. (2 Timothy 3:2)  Hi! My name is Josh, and I am one of the interns here at Oasis Church this year. In my time as an intern, my mentor, John Hoogenhout, and I have been reading an amazing book by Richard Foster called The Celebration of Discipline, and I wanted to talk about a particular part in the early chapters that speaks to our daily attitude toward resisting sin and living out our Christian walk.   I think we can all agree that it’s a common cycle for some of us, if not all of us, to go through a great season with God, where we are praying as much as we can, attending church every Sunday, and reading our Bibles every day. We feel the love of God in full force through blessings and life generally going well for us. While all this is well and good, and I think we should be practising these things regularly, we

Slow to remember and quick to forget  Do you have a good memory? How are you at remembering your wedding anniversary (that’s important)? Your mum’s birthday (that’s possibly even more important!)? Do you remember your first day of school? Or the first time you saw the ocean?   My husband has a ridiculously good memory. Well maybe I should rephrase that. He is very good at remembering lots of seemingly random bits of trivia, especially if it’s to do with sport, music, flags or planes. He’s not so good at remembering where his keys are.   I have a terrible memory. And I don’t just mean I forget dates, or grocery items (even when they’re written on the list right in front of me!) or who I was just about to message (with phone already in hand).   I am so forgetful when it comes to remembering God’s faithfulness and goodness to me. Oh, how quickly I

Our Children and the Lord’s Supper  Last Sunday, as part of our series through 1 Corinthians, we came to 1 Corinthians 11:17-34, which explores the Lord’s Supper in detail; what it is, why it matters and how we should participate. Towards the end of the sermon, I spoke directly to parents to address the question of our children and the Lord’s Supper. Specifically, how do they fit in and can they participate?  We believe that the children of believers are part of the covenant community and therefore, they should be active participants in the life of the church and its means of grace. One of the church’s means of grace is the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. In recent years, our denomination (the Christian Reformed Churches of Australia) made the decision to remove any age limit for participation in the Lord’s Supper.   The following guidelines are offered to parents to

Psalm 32: Prayer Reflection  In the past few weeks, as interns, we have been diving into the topic of prayer. We've looked at the different types of prayers and when to use them. We’ve also been learning how Scripture can help to inform our prayers. To help us put this into practice, we were all assigned a Psalm to turn into a congregational prayer. I was assigned Psalm 34, which I had read before but was not completely familiar with.   To start off, I read through the Psalm to become familiar with its content. I then filled out the P.R.A.Y model (praise, repent, ask, yield) and placed verses of the Psalm into each section. From there, I wrote each section as full sentences and shaped it into something that could be prayed aloud to a congregation.   I found it

Idolatry: Not Giving Up  In a recent conversation I had with one of our youths, they shared how the more time they spent around the things of God, the less they wanted to spend time in other things. They shared how their mind felt so much clearer after listening to worship music and how their outlook on life was more positive after spending time in God’s Word. This has drastically changed the way they live. Perhaps you’ve experienced this, too?  In my last blog post, I wrote on the issue of idolatry and how it is the turning of good things into god things. I pointed out how it is something we are all prone to do. Contemplating such things can be rather demoralising. How can we change? Especially when we know that we’ll only get dragged back into the idolatry

God’s Loving Wrath    If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably also struggled to reconcile God’s wrath with what you thought you knew to be true about Him. His wrath is confronting, especially throughout the Old Testament – He is merciful and gracious, yet he orders the killing of all male Midianite children in Numbers 31; He is slow to anger, yet He ordains the slaughter of “anything that breathes” in Deuteronomy 20; He is abounding in steadfast love, yet He instructs “men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys” to be put to the sword in Joshua 6. And those are just the first three examples I could find. So how can this be? How can our merciful, gracious and loving God also be a God of what seems like such cold justice and intense wrath?