post mission apathy...

sorry for the wait... been finding it hard to get on and write on here... don't let the title of this post fool you, i've been having a really good time here with jonny in australia... we went to a place called margaret river for a long weekend and had a great time there seeing a bit more of australia... here is what we did:



on thursday when we arrived we braved the wind and rain and went down to the beach for a swim and jonny did a little bit of surfing, but the waves weren't the right type so he couldn't catch any



on friday we went on a bushtucker winery tour... we went to three different wineries and sampled their wines... we had lunch at one of them and tried some bushtucker... including a grub which i ate... after lunch we went to the cheese factory the chocolate company and a brewery... we managed to exercise some self control at the wineries and the brewery but i'm not sure if the same could be said for the cheese factory and chocolate company... all in all it was a really nice day



on saturday i hired a surf board and wetsuit and we went to the beach for the day... we both got pretty battered by the waves (you learn very quickly to have some respect for the ocean) but we also both had a few moments of success... i managed to catch quite a few waves and even stood up for a small number of them...



on sunday we hired some scooters/mopeds/motos... and drove about all over the area to see various different things... we stopped off at an aboriginal settlement to learn how to throw spears and boomerangs... we found ourselves once again at the chocolate company... we went to maragaret river town, to a couple of beaches and by the time we got to the famous caves there they were closed so we went for a little drive through the forest...



on monday morning jonny braved the stormy weather to do some more surfing and i stayed in the hostel and watched rambo with a guy from manchester called sam... we got the bus back and are now in perth once again...



now to the main point of my post: "post mission apathy"

since arriving in australia i've been finding it difficult to spend time with God, that is through reading the bible and prayer, praising and worshipping Him through listeningto/playing music or just by the way i live my life... so i've been finding this hard...

last night we went to hear Don Carson talk from Revelation 12 (click here) and also on the parable of the weeds - Matthew 13 v 24-30 (click here) it was a bit of a frightening talk - he talked about how, for the Christian, optimism is naive (that is the condition of the world - physical and political - isn't going to get any better) and pessimism is atheistic (there is no place for cynicism in the Christian mind) ... leaving us wondering what we should be thinking, the world is moving towards an end and we can be neither optimistic that it might no happen, nor pessimistic, feeling that there's no hope...

God is in control, He know's what is going on... Carson talked about how we need to be aware of the spiritual battle going on... that Satan and his angels have been defeated and kicked out of heaven, and whilst he knows his time is short, satan is displaying his fury against the Christians on the earth... doing this in obvious ways (the persecuted church in china and the middle east) and subtle, deceptive ways (false teachings and post modernism in the west) the 20th century was the bloodiest ever witnessed and there's no reason at the moment to believe that the 21st won't be worse... he brought our attention to the parable of the weeds... God lets both the weeds and the good crop GROW, ready to be sorted when it comes to the harvest... when taking a serious look at it its not hard to see that the world we live in reflects the world that is predicted by the bible about 2000 years ago...

What are we to do then in this seemingly dire situation? 1. we overcome satan by the basis of the blood of the lamb. 2. we overcome him by bearing good witness to who Jesus is again and again and again and finally 3. we overcome him the simple willingness to die for Jesus, as Carson said, what can the devil do to the Chtistian who's not afraid of death? Kill him?!

Anyway, all this hepled me realise why i had been feeling so apathetic, I had such a purpose in Malaysia, I knew why I was there, what i was meant to be doing (loosely) and everyday counted... since arriving in australia I had been kidding myself that I no longer had this purpose... but I'm fairly sure that when Jesus gives us the great commission (click here) He's not only talking about when we're on short term mission trips to a far off land... life is our mission trip, please pray for continued devotion to Jesus, and passion for evangelism even though my time in malaysia is over... in four days my mission trip is headin back to England...