Prayer: Receive the Word (1 Thess 1:1-10)

Heavenly Father,

It is so amazing that you give us your word, written down for us, so that we can turn to it at any time and hear from you. You have revealed yourself to us.  You show us your power, your holiness, and your love that you have revealed through history. You have revealed more to us about ourselves than even we know. You have shown us how we are made in your image, how we fall short, and how you seek to draw us back to you. You have revealed your will to us.  You have given us guidance and wisdom, steering us away from evil and beckoning us towards good.  You have revealed the mystery of your son, Jesus Christ, who came as a human to save humanity from sin. You have revealed that your Holy Spirit lives within us, and counsels us in truth.  You even give us glimpses into the future of heaven, into your great glory, where you call us to be with you forever. We thank you that you have opened our hearts to your message, and you have brought us into your family. Thank you for awakening in us a faith that produces work, that calls us into reliance on you at every step. Help us to constantly come back to you and to your word, and continually convict us of its truth, and our need to obey it.

Father, we thank you for revealing so much to us! We thank you for those who have worked so hard over generations to make sure that your word in the Bible comes to us in a language we can understand; who have sought to write and teach and preach to us about what it means; and who challenge us to read it, accept it, and live by it. We ask that you will bless Bible translators, that you will bless the lecturers and students at Moore College and other Bible colleges that uphold your word, and that you will bless Marty as he seeks to bring to us challenges from your word tonight. 

We pray also for the work of the Bible Society, and other missionary endeavours that seek to translate the Bible into the heart language of every human community, and to put your word into the hands of everyone who wants it. Please be with the thousands of translators, scholars, typesetters, computer programmers, financial controllers, printers, distributors and donors who make accessibility to the Bible a reality for so many people around the world.

And we pray for all of those in our own community and country who are starved of your good news message, not because it's inaccessible, but because they are blind and deaf to your words. Please continue to open people's eyes and ears, so that they might see and understand what you have to say to them. And open their hearts and minds, so that they might receive the truth of your words to them. We pray for the hard work of people involved in scripture classes - for those in our church, those from HADCEA, and those involved in university ministries like Karen Sowden and others with EU, AFES and IFES. We pray for school chaplains,  prison chaplains, sports chaplains, army chaplains, hospital chaplains - wherever someone is seeking to share your word with people in need, Lord, we pray that you will be there to pour out your blessings on them, and on those who hear and receive your word.

And we pray that we likewise might share your word with those around us - our families, our friends, our workmates, whoever we come into contact with. Place your word in our hearts, encourage us to read it as part of our daily lives, and fill our hearts and our minds with your wonderful message of salvation for the world. Never take your word of truth from our mouths, for we have put our hope in your promises.

And it is through Jesus Christ, who is the Word from the beginning,  that we pray. Amen.

Sermon: Church History in 15 minutes (youth)

Five ages, Five struggles, Five lessons (intro 206 +178 conclusion = 384)
The Early Church Fathers (70-312):  The Age of Heresy and Correction (246)
The Catholic Church (312-1517):  The Age of Power and Unity (289)
The Reformation (1517-1648):  The Age of Pluralism and Revitalisation (389)
The Enlightenment (1648-1914):  The Age of Reason and Mission (283)
Globalisation (1914-2015):  The Age of Persecution and ? (324)

I’ve been asked to come and speak tonight about church history, and I think that’s fantastic, because history is really important, for lots of reasons.  Tonight I’m just focusing on two.  Most importantly, history informs our identity.  Church history tells us who we are as the Church, the worldwide people of God.  So you’ll notice that throughout this talk, I will refer to ‘we’ and ‘us’ – meaning you, me, and the church of the past.  We share a common identity.

History also records our responses.  Church history keeps track of the problems we have faced in the past, how we responded to them, and what the results were.  Not only can we learn from our mistakes, but we can learn from our successes.

Now, church history is huge.  We’re looking at 1,900 years or so – more than both the Old and New Testaments together.  And we’re doing it in 15 minutes.  Of which I have about 12 minutes left.

So let’s get into it!  I’m dividing church history into five different periods, which highlight five different struggles the church has faced, and five different successes we accomplished.  This will help to highlight how the church’s history informs our identity, and how it records our responses.

The first period of church history is all about the early church fathers.  These are the people that learned directly from Jesus’ apostles and then taught others.  By this time, we as a church had realised that Jesus was not coming back straightaway, and so we had to figure out a few things.  One was how to survive – this was a time of great persecution, especially from the Roman government.  Christianity was made illegal and Christians were systematically persecuted if they made their views public.

But not only were we under attack physically, we were under attack mentally as well!  Intellectuals attacked Christianity as stupid. False teachers were trying to fit Christianity into their  beliefs or philosophies.  The big struggle of this age was heresy – false teaching.  Many foundational Christian truths come from the early church fathers, like the trinity, and the inspiration of the New Testament as scripture.  And they weren’t decided in quiet, considered reflections on God’s word, but whilst trying to combat heresies that were rising up against the church!  So the lesson we can learn from this age is correction.  We have a huge body of Christian teaching that stretches all the way back to this time period – like the Apostle’s Creed – that teaches us the true way of Jesus.  We need to stick to it, and speak against those who undermine it.

Then in 312, something amazing happened.  The emperor, Constantine was his name, was converted to Christianity.  Not only did he become a Christian, but he changed the whole Roman Empire to being Christian, made Christianity the state religion, and made Sunday a holy day.  This period I call the Catholic Church period, and it is the longest one – it goes for about 1,200 years!  The popes, the crusades, the monasteries, the cathedrals – all of that happened in this era.  The church grew and grew, and even when the Roman Empire fell, it became the religion of the whole of Europe.  We owned more land than any kingdom.  We had more gold than any emperor.  We controlled schools, universities, libraries, law courts and even armies.  Awesome, right?

Well, the old saying goes “power corrupts”.  And that’s the struggle in this period: power.  The more we got involved in running countries, the more we slowly got infected by corruption.  Instead of glorifying God, we wanted to keep hold of our power, and we changed our beliefs to do it.  The church got greedy.  We were trying to usher in God’s kingdom on earth – we should be trusting God to usher in a new heaven and a new earth.

But during this time, the church was in unity.  That’s what catholic means – universal.  It was the one church.  Early on in this period, we sat down as a church and worked out what the way forward was in this new era of church and state together.  And the reason we could accomplish so many enormous things – good and bad – was because we were a global, united church.  We should remember what we can achieve when we all work together for God’s glory.

Slowly but surely, as power began to corrupt the church, cracks started forming in its unity.  In 1054 the Pope excommunicated the Eastern Orthodox Church – the first major division of the church in our history.  But this was as much a division on political and cultural lines as it was religious lines, so it had little impact on either side’s churches.  So our next period starts in 1517, when a guy called Martin Luther nailed a list of 95 problems with the church up on a door in Germany.  That’s a lot of problems!  He wanted to see the church reform, so we call this the Reformation. Luther wasn’t the only person railing against the Catholic Church during this time.  Because they were all protesting against the Catholic Church, we call them Protestants.  They didn’t agree on everything, but they did all agree the Catholic Church had it wrong.

And so wars started.  The terrible Thirty Years’ War involved basically all of Europe.  I can’t tell you how many people died, but for example, Germany lost 50% of its male population during that time.  And it all started because Catholics and Protestants felt that there should only be one church, and they were it.  While the newly created America wasn’t involved in the European wars, they were having the same struggles with religious freedom.

The struggle we as a church faced during the period of reformation was that of pluralism – people had different views about God, how churches should run, parts of Scripture.  We thought that to be Christian, we must all be the same – we thought unity required uniformity.  The Thirty Years War ended with no winner.  All sides realised they couldn’t defeat the others, and so in the end they had to make peace.  They had to learn to live with each other, and in 1648 they signed the Peace of Westphalia.

Thankfully, this focus on the Bible and people’s personal faith started a period of great revitalisation in Christian spirituality.  This time of division actually caused both Catholics and Protestants to really think about what it means to be Christian, the importance of Jesus and salvation, and made people really come to grips with what they believed.  We too can put our focus on the Bible, and on the key elements of Jesus and salvation, and be revitalised in our faith, instead of distracted by petty divisions.

While the ink was still drying on the Peace of Westphalia, there was another revolution taking place – an intellectual revolution.  It is called the Enlightenment, and represents the movement of thinking away from God, faith and sinfulness, and towards reason, science and human goodness.  People were sick of religious wars and people being burned at the stake for witchcraft.  This is the era of Isaac Newton describing the world as a machine whose intricate workings we could understand by way of reason and experimentation.

When people realised that the physical world could be explained by use of reason, they assumed that the spiritual world – that of angels, demons, miracles and life after death – simply mustn’t exist, because it can’t be explained by reason, only by God’s revelation in the Bible.  The logic of that assumption is actually pretty weak, but it was, and still remains, hugely powerful!  This is the struggle of reason.  We as a church struggled with reason, because for over a thousand years everyone had simply done what we told them.  Now when we gave the answer, “The Bible tells us so,” it wasn’t good enough anymore.

But as the church began to really reflect on why God, Jesus, the resurrection and eternity are so important, we realised that God is not just important to us, but to the whole world.  And we regained our passion for world mission.  The 1700s and 1800s saw the rise of huge missionary endeavours, reaching from Africa to India to China and everywhere in between.  The stories of brave missionary families travelling to far‑flung places with their belongings packed in coffins, knowing they would probably die – they come from this period in our history.  Likewise, if we reflect on why God and Jesus and resurrection and eternity are so important, God will awaken in us the realisation of how important his gospel is to all people, not just to us.

Then came the Great War, the First World War in 1914, with machine guns, and tanks, and mustard gas, and aeroplanes.  Then came the Second World War, with submarines, and battleships, the Holocaust and the nuclear bomb.  The promises of Enlightenment were looking shaky.  Science, reason and human goodness were not delivering the universal happiness we had been promised.  That’s the period we now live in.  I call it the age of globalisation.  For the first time, we are realising that what happens in one part of the world can have global effects.  Pollution in America affects sea levels in Polynesia.  Ebola in West Africa could mean Ebola in Australia. ISIS in Iraq means the deaths of thousands in Nigeria.  This is true inside the church too – a prayer meeting in California in 1906 where people started speaking in tongues started the Pentecostal movement, which now has 280 million followers worldwide, and saw charismatic gifts awakened in people from both Catholic and Protestant churches.

What’s the struggle for our church in this period in which we live?  Living in Australia, you might think it is secularism, or decline in numbers, or struggling to remain relevant.  But actually, the struggle for us, for the church, in the age of globalisation is persecution.  The last 100 years has seen more of us suffer and die for our faith than in all the 1900 years previous.  A hundred years ago this year Turkey systematically killed 1.5 million Armenian Christians.  Communist Russia killed perhaps 20 million Christians by the 1970s.  Conservative estimates think about 8 to 10,000 of us have been killed for our faith every year since 2000.  And that’s just killings.  The numbers for rape, torture, arrests, fines, church and house burnings, confiscation of bibles, beatings and exclusions from family are uncountably huge.

What’s the lesson we can learn from our current time in church history?  I don’t know.  At the moment it’s hard to see the church’s response clearly.  But one thing I can guarantee:  in every period of our history, the big lesson to be learned has always revolved around coming to grips with what we really believe.  Every time, in every age, the church has turned to God, seeking his will in the face of their situation, and God has given guidance, and the church has moved forward.  Every single time.  There is no reason for us to believe that it will be any different, even in the face of violent persecution.

That is the big lesson church history teaches us.  We can look back and see what shapes us as Christians, and we can look back and see how God has guided us to where we are today.  And that should lead us to continue seeking God’s will to guide us in our struggles, whatever they are now, and whatever they might be in the future.

Prayer 14/06/15 Your Will Be Done

Heavenly Father,

We know that you have a plan.  You know what tomorrow holds, what this year holds, what this decade holds, what this century holds, and what eternity holds.  We can't know for certain what the weather will be like next week, but we know for sure that you have a plan for all time.  Thank you for being in control, and caring so much about the future of your world that you not only desire for it to be a certain way, but you have a plan to make it that way.

You don't keep your plan hidden from us either.  We thank you that we can open the Bible and read your words to us through the Prophets, through the Apostles, and through Christ himself, telling us and explaining to us your plan for the world.  You made this world, and you made us in it, and you called it very good.  Even when we broke away from you in sin, you promised Adam and Eve that you would bring their children back into your fold.  After the Flood, you promised Noah that you would never again destroy the whole world by flooding.  You promised Abraham that you would make his people numerous, and that his name would be a blessing to all people.  You promised your people Israel that you would be their God, and that you would love them, protect them, and discipline them.  You never failed them, even when they failed you.  You promised them a messiah who would come and bring with him your kingdom.

And Father, you keep to your plan.  You sent your son Jesus to seek and save the lost.  He died on a cross to bring us back into relationship with you, overcoming the power of sin.  You raised him from the dead to prove it.  You spread your good news throughout the world, so that billions could hear it, and respond to it, and become your children.  You promise to be with us, and you have given us your Spirit, who lives in us and transforms us.  
We can look around this world, and see so many things that bring us heartbreak and sadness.  Death and oppression at the hands of bloodthirsty militants and power-hungry dictators. Sickness and suffering from lack of healthcare, lack of food and clean water, lack of sanitation, and diseases we simply can't cure.  Misery and sadness from lives spent trying to grasp a phantom promise of success and fulfillment through wealth, hard work and security.  Our world is broken by sin, our society is broken by sin, our lives are broken by sin.  In these situations, it can be hard for us to think that your plan is unfolding.  When we see suffering, it can be hard for us to think that it might be part of your plan.  But give us faith, Father, to know your will, and to see it in the world that surrounds us.

Lord God, you have given us a part in your plan.  You give us good works to do. We thank you for opportunities like HAWK, the trivia night, and the newcomers lunch, where we can serve you and take part in your plan. You call us to feed the hungry, to stand up for the oppressed, to minister to the sick, to mourn with the mourning, and to preach your truth and your plan and point out the lies that the world tells us that separate people from you.  Give us big hearts, so we can care for this world and its people with the love that you give us. We pray for those who are sick, who are suffering, who are oppressed, who are mourning: for those in our congregation, for those in your global church, and for those outside your family. We ask that even in their suffering and difficulties, your plan will unfold. We pray that you will guide us to work to further your plan, by sharing what you give us - your love, your blessings, your wealth and your closeness - with those in need. 

Your plan is to bring us through the end of this world, and into your eternal kingdom, where we can be with you and Christ and the Spirit forever. We look forward to that day. We can't wait to see you face to face, to see your perfect plan complete, and to celebrate with you. We pray that in expectation of that great day. In Jesus' name and by his authority we pray, amen.

Prayer 31/05/15 - Hallowed be your name

Our father in heaven,

You are God on high, set above us in the heavens, Lord in power and in grace over all of your creation. You are infinite in strength and wisdom, in love and justice. You never sin, you never do wrong.  You are pure and perfect in every way. We honour you for being holy.

You do not hide away on your heavenly throne. You don't separate yourself from us, in fear of being contaminated by our sin. Instead, you come down to us, and you purify us. As Jesus Christ, you walked with us, taught us, mourned and laughed with us, and gave your life for us. You don't turn your back on us, but instead you sanctify us by taking the punishment of our crimes against you upon yourself, even though you are completely innocent of all wrong. Then you raised Christ from the dead, showing that you are not bound by death. We honour you for being holy.

You are close to us, dwelling within us by your Holy Spirit. You transform us into your likeness, so that each and every day we can be more like you. You uphold the humble, you exalt the lowly. You cleanse us of our sinful ways, and give us a new life. You call us your children, and bring us into your family. You heal the sick, you feed the hungry, you minister to the broken, you bring life to the dead. Nothing bad sticks to you; everything good comes from you. You have done everything well. We honour you for being holy.

You came to serve, and you want us to serve. You call us to stand up for the oppressed and the marginalised, to be there for the sick and the sorrowful, to call for justice against the greedy and the wicked, to show grace to the lost and the foolish, to love each other as family. And so we pray now for all of these people: we pray for Rohingya Muslim refugees, fleeing persecution, trapped on boats with nowhere to go, because no-one wants them. But you want them, Father. We pray that you will give them a home. We pray for those suffering from sicknesses that cannot be easily seen: depression, anxiety, attention deficit, post-traumatic stress. We ask you to give them hope and clarity, and give understanding, patience and acceptance to our society, as we seek to be there for them. We pray that you will bring justice to those around the world causing death and destruction; bring justice to those who oppress the poor and the weak, who accept bribes and make shady backroom deals in the name of financial gain. We ask you to please work in the hearts of those who are far from you, who deny you and work against you, so that they might admit their wrong, repent and turn from it, and come to you for forgiveness. And we pray for those who we call brother and sister in Jesus Christ who are sick, who are weak, who are tired, who are struggling, who need help. Please give them strength and comfort, and use us as your hands and feet to minister to their needs. We honour you for being holy. Help us to be holy, because you are holy.

By the authority and power of Jesus we pray these things, Amen

Prayer 3/05/15 1 Peter 3:8-22 "Suffering As Christians"

Heavenly Father,

You are of inestimable worth. How can we even begin to put a value on the one who creates and owns everything? How can we put a value on our own lives, and the lives of all people, who only live by the breath you have breathed into our lungs? What price can we put on our eternal future, that you have secured for us by the blood of your son, Jesus Christ? We are absolutely blown away by your infinite worth, and even though we can only begin to comprehend it, we understand enough to know that you are amazing.

Nothing else can stand as even remotely of the same worth as our lives, our salvation, and our relationship with you. And yet you give us so much more! We have amazing wealth, we live in a rich country, and we are blessed with a whole bunch of material stuff. We have rooves and cars and electronic gizmos, we have abundant food and money left over to spend on entertainment and charity. We have loving family relationships, strong friendships and a wonderful congregation of like-minded brothers and sisters in Christ. And we have a stable and safe country, far from danger, far from threats, and full of freedom, where we can worship you in public, learn about you at state funded Bible colleges, build churches that advertise your son's glory, and teach about you in schools. Help us to be thankful for all that you give us, because we have a lot of opportunity.

And you have commanded us that as we have opportunity, we should do good to everyone, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. And so we pray now for our brothers and sisters who live in places where these opportunities do not exist, and where instead they suffer from all sorts of persecution and injustice. We pray for our brothers and sisters in Iraq and Syria who have lost their homes, their families and their churches as their communities have been decimated by ISIS. We pray for our Christian family in Central Asia, where Christians are regularly imprisoned and fined huge amounts for handing out gospel tracts, having prayer meetings in their homes, or owning a Bible. We pray for your people across Africa who face death at the hands of Al-Qeda, Al-Shabbab and Boko Haram. We pay for Christians in Nepal,  whose churches and homes have been destroyed, and will be difficult to rebuild, and who may not receive aid from their government because they are Christian. We pray for Christians in North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, India and Myanmar who face tragically unjust punishments for bearing your name. Give all of your people courage and strength in the face of these trials. Assure them on the amazing value there is in sharing in the sufferings of Christ in such ways. Let them know our support, in prayer, in finance, and in public advocacy. And help us to be encouraged by their strong stance for you, and to receive the same courage when we face shame from family, friends and workmates who find our talking about Jesus embarrassing or uncomfortable.

And so we also pray for those closer to home who are suffering in your name. Despite the many blessings you have given us, there is still a lot of pain in our midst. We pray for those who face rejection from their families because of their stance of believing in God. Give them a strong sense of the many brothers and sisters you have given them in Christ. We pray for those whose suffering is silent, and invisible to us, who hide their pain. We pray for those who suffer doubt about you, or aren't sure about their relationship with you, or are plagued with regrets and worries about their lives, and for others. Give us caring hearts and gentle spirits, so that they might inherit the blessing of closeness and comfort from you. Please free us all from fear and apprehension when it comes to suffering for you - help us to be willing and generous in giving all that you have given us to those who you have provided to us to pass on to those who are in need.

For all these things, for opportunities provided and blessings given, we are truly thankful. In Jesus name, Amen.

Prayer 19/04/15 1 Peter 1:13-2:10 New Identity

Heavenly Father,

You are a holy God.  You created this world, but it is set apart from you. You are above and beyond the finite trappings of this reality. You allow your love to radiate into this world, overcoming evil, sin and badness, and we have all been touched by your love at some point in our lives. Thank you for being both powerful and loving, so that we have nothing to fear in you, but instead can find shelter in your strength, apart from all the worries and problems of this world.

We thank you that you have offered us a life beyond the few years we have on this earth, a life that is holy, like you are holy, and that lasts forever, just as you are eternal. What a blessing to share these characteristics with you, our great and glorious God! We were in spiritual poverty, and you saw our need and paid our debts - not in money, but in blood. We are humbly thankful for Jesus Christ - the immortal, who yet died for our sake - that you have raised him from the dead, to show to us that our lives do not end in death, but that we will be raised like him. What great hope we have  in that! 

And so we ask you, Father, that you will help us to keep our eyes fixed on what is really worthwhile - your son Jesus, his death, his resurrection, and his imminent return. Help us to be obedient to you, and to reflect the holy life you have given us, by separating ourselves from the lies and deceit that surround us, and threaten to distract us from you. You have saved us from that way of life that has been handed down to us by our ancestors - a life of greed and selfishness, of valuing money and power and family and health and comfort and security - an empty way of life that leads nowhere. But we don't have to live that way any more, thanks to you! Keep reminding us of that, so every day we can turn our backs on the seductive lies that our society tells us to live for.

But even as we turn from the evils of this world, please help us to keep our hearts full of your divine love for all the people of this world. There is so much suffering, so much sickness, so much poverty, so much distress and hurt. Please help us to overflow with your love for people, so that we can show them through our words and our ways that you are the God of peace, you are the God of healing, you are the God who provides, and you are the God of love. We think now of all those we know who are suffering from the brokenness of this world, and we pray that you will be close to them. Let them feel your love, and let them rely on you. And help us to be your hands and feet, to go and to help those we know who are struggling. Give us ears to listen to their troubles, and equip us to show your love in practical ways that reflect your redemption of us into eternal life.

And keep in us a longing for your son's return, when all of these problems will fade away, and we will be with you forever.

All this we pray, by the authority of your son Jesus, Amen

Being organised and managing your time

Being organised is an efficiency matter. It means you have more time. Time management is about understanding how much time you have, and what you are going to do with it. So time management comes first.

What is time?

Time is both quantitative and qualitative. It's really important to understand this, because you need to manage both how much time you have, and what the best times to do things are. Money is a subset of time. For us working stiffs, we have a hard limit on how much money we will ever get based on how much time we have to work in, and a soft limit based on how much time we use to make money.

There are several elements to managing your time.  You need to understand when your time exists, what your priorities are, and how long things take to do.

Priorities

Before you even look at your own priorities, you need to understand your involuntary time requirements and your duties to others that cannot be minimised.

Involuntary time is time taken to eat, use the bath room, sleep,  travel and all those other things you can't avoid. Sometimes you can try to minimise these things, but it's not a good idea because they will just come back with reinforcements and end up claiming more of your time.

Duties are those things you are relied on for by other people which, if you do not perform them, will lead to their harm. To differentiate, responsibilities are things you take on; duties are things thrust upon you. Responsibilities can turn into duties (when you become the only person capable of doing something), so watch out!

Because duties and involuntary time are the things you control least, they have to be accounted for first. Everything else fits in around them.

Now is a good time to write down a list of your involuntary times and duties. Hopefully there aren't too many of them!

Importance and Urgency

Once you understand what your involuntary time and duties are, you can start to think about all the other things you do. There are two ways to think about priorities in relation to time: their urgency and their importance. These both must be factored in when considering any priority. The key thing to remember is that while importance is subjective (you get to choose what's important) urgency is far more objective (it is a function of how long it takes plus how soon it needs to be done. The closer the time it takes gets to how much time is left to do it, the more urgent it becomes).

Everything you do needs to be evaluated for its importance and urgency. Only then can you adequately allot time to things. If you don't get this balance right, you will just end up stressed all the time. If you think of importance and urgency as a punnet square, you want to live your life in the important non-urgent square.  All the other squares are less ideal: important urgent is what we are using time management to prevent, but is sometimes necessary; non-important urgent is a trap that should be avoided; and non-important non-urgent is stuff you can do to just waste time for no real benefit, so is great for procrastination.

	Important	Non-Important
Urgent	2	4
Non-Urgent	1	3

Importance

Working out importance is absolutely vital to time management. Urgency is pretty much empirical: but importance is something you need to understand for yourself. Think about your spirituality, your family, your friendships, your study, your free time, and your work time. How would you rate them in terms of importance from first to last? This is vital to knowing not just how much time to give these things, but what kind of time to give them. Listing these broad high level titles of the things that claim your time gives you something to refer back to, to remind you of what's most important to you. It can be important to have something like this when non-important urgent things rear their head, because often it is easy for something urgent to look important when actually it's not.

The order of importance at the highest level is not about excluding things. It is about including everything in your life to make sure that it gets the time, both quantitative and qualitative, that it deserves. Sometimes there might be something in our lives that takes up a lot of time, even though it's not the most important thing (eg work). This makes it all the more important to ensure that we have enough quality time to spend doing the things that are even more important to us.

Now is a good time to list the things that broadly take up your time in order of their importance. This is just high level titles: religion, work, study, leisure, relationships etc. Remember that you decide where things go in this list, and there is no wrong answer. We've already taken care of involuntary time and duties, after all. Draw this list up from left to right next to your involuntary time and duties: these are titles after all, and this way we can put stuff under them. Once you've got them all down, you can move them around to put them in an order that you're happy with. You can always change it, but it is worth thinking about what order these big headings go in, because it helps shape your attitude towards those things.

The most important things need to be given the best time to do them. Thankfully the best time to do some things isn't the same for other things. Identifying when the best time is to do something isn't usually that difficult. Some things can only be done at certain times, which is the de facto best time to do them. Others are just best done at certain times, and can give you more wiggle room in when they're done.

Once you have a list of high level titles of what takes up your time, then you can start filling in underneath them all the things that take up your time under those titles. There will be lots of them. They don't need to be in any particular order, just write down whatever comes to mind.  Think through your days, weeks and months and about what you do. Put everything down, under whatever heading it best fits with. It is very helpful to break down your big time titles into individual activities, because you can then give them a more individual importance ranking, but also breaking things down into their component parts makes it easier to manage the time they take up and makes them easier to accomplish. So list them in order of their importance to you.

Best Times

Once you have all those individual activities listed down, we're going to make another list next to them. (If you prefer lists to be long rather than wide - like I do - then now is the time to take all your lists and paste them underneath each other, so you can use less columns overall.) This is a list of the best times (qualitatively) to do all of these things. It doesn't need to be a specific time period, just morning, afternoon, evening (or a specific day, or even "work hours" if that's the only time it can be done).

Adding the best qualitative times for these activities is important, because this is where your time management starts to really take form. One of the best ways of remembering when you need to do things and structuring your time is to give each activity and even high level title it's own specific part of a day, week or month (depending on its repetitiveness). Creating a logical structure that makes sense to you is the best way to ensure that the things important to you get done.

Free Time

It is at this point that you may start to realise you don't have as much time as you'd like. That's totally normal. The people who need time management most are the people who are highly committed to lots of different pursuits. While it's great to do your best to fit things in, one of the reasons we list things in order of importance is to see which of the things we do may have to be sacrificed, or given so little time so infrequently that they become more of a wish than an actual activity.  Time is precious, and sometimes you have to be firm and make hard decisions not to do things you'd like to do, because there are other things more important that you would like to do more.

Urgency

That list gives us a good idea of levels of importance of the things that take up our time,  and the kind of time we should give them. Now we need to determine the amount of time these things should be given. This is done by determining their urgency. Remember urgency is a function of two things: when something needs to be done by, and how long it will take to do.

Hard Deadlines

Determining when things must be done by is usually a mix of hard deadlines (when something objectively must be done by in order to retain its value in being done) and soft deadlines (when it would best suit you to do it). Hard deadlines are fairly easy to determine because they are usually set in stone for a reason external to you. While it's important to know these hard deadlines because they place suitable limits on planning, they are not great on their own. Simply planning to do something just before it is due is a great way to fail to do it because an unforeseen circumstance appears and blows out the expected time it would take. More complex activities are actually impossible to do simply with hard deadlines! For this reason it is much better (not to mention more efficient) to plan using your own soft deadlines. These allow you to complete an activity during the time that best suits you, before it becomes too urgent.

Now it's a good time to look at all the activities on your list and determine their hard deadlines. Always do that first: a soft deadline can never be after a hard deadline. What you should now have is your activities, when the best times are to do them, and their hard deadlines. Looking at their best times to do them should tell you when you should set your soft deadlines for each activity (assuming there is still enough of those best times left to do the activity!).  Of course, the definition of a best time is partly determined by what time you have left. And this brings us to working out how much time something takes to do.

Many activities repeat regularly, and so their deadline appears over and over. That's fine - you can just list it as "Wednesday 9pm (weekly)" or "10pm (daily)" or "30 May 11:59pm".

Estimation

Everything you do takes time. Although it is all measurable, we don't often take the time to do detailed time and motion studies of our lives. So what we're left with is estimating how long something is going to take. Sometimes that's easy and sometimes it's hard, and some people are better at it than others. Short of actually measuring how long something takes to do on average, the best way to estimate how long it will take is to sit down and give it some proper, considered, honest thought. Rushing estimation is great way to rob yourself of time to do something. The less capable you are of estimating how long something will take, the more generous you should be in giving it time. Finishing something faster than you planned is always better than running out of time.

The bigger an activity is, the harder it is to estimate how long it is going to take. Big essays and assignments are a classic for this. This is why it is such a good idea to break down big activities into several smaller activities, as it is often easier to estimate how long it is going to take to do all your research/reading, all your planning, and all your actual writing. Even then, working out a total amount of time can be difficult. Do your best, and be as generous as you think you need to be, especially with more important activities.

Now is the time to fill in the estimated time you think it will take to complete each activity. This can take a while. But it's worth doing, because it will really help you to protect the time that these things take, and gives you a target to aim for in terms of time to set aside for its completion. Some things take a long time, and can't be done in one sitting. That's fine, put the total amount of time for now if you can.

Soft Deadlines

Now that we have all this information, we can get to the meat of time management: setting soft deadlines for all these activities. Soft deadlines are where it's at in time management. In a perfect world, everything would be done to a soft deadline, because soft deadlines are made up of the time that is best to do an activity. With all the information we now have, we can see already the best time to do things in, we can see when it's due (hard deadline), we can see how long it's going to take to complete, and so it's just a matter of dividing the estimated time of completion between the number of best times we have for that activity between now and its due date. 

Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world, and the simple fact is that the best time to do a lot of things is similar - things that take mental effort, for instance, are best done at whenever you have your peak performance in the day. But lots of things compete for your peak performance. That's why we have ranked things in order of importance. But even then, you will find your peak performance hours are at a premium, and will fill up quickly. This is why procrastination is a real killer - it's doing things that aren't important or urgent, but in your peak performance times!

So now you need to work out the next best solutions for the activities that don't get to have their best times. When doing that, you have to realise that doing things outside of their best times makes them take longer. So make sure you give them enough extra time.

When that's done, you are pretty much at the end of your time management. The next thing to do would be to feed in your hard deadlines into a Google calendar with alarms set to remind you at various points that things are due, and start to fill in your time slots with the things you are meant to be doing. Then you have an easy reference to tell you when you should be doing things.

EMERGENCIES

Emergencies happen, and like involuntary time and duties, they are unavoidable. But unlike them, they are also unplannable.  The best thing about having a calendar that tells you exactly what you should be doing and when is that when a real emergency comes up (hospital visit etc) you can actually see what time you lost, and you will know what you need to make up. It allows you to reschedule things and shuffle stuff around with a real idea in mind of how much time you are going to need.

Being Organised

Organisation is really just a method of ensuring that you have more time to do the things you want to do. Here are a few quick things that help you to be organised.

Time management: by planning out your time, you actually end up being more efficient. Yay!

Doubling up: If you can work out how to do two things at the same time (eg memorizing in the shower) then you can make much better use of your time. There are some times that seem dead, like travel times. Try and fill them with things that you can do in those times (listen to lectures, building your relationships, free time reading).

Using money wisely: Money can sometimes be liquid time. Sometimes you can use it to free up time for things that are more valuable than the money you use to gain it (takeaway food is a great example).

Learn to say no: There is an old saying, "If you want something done, give it to a busy person". This is true, but it also makes busy people dead people. So you have to learn to say no sometimes. The best way to do this is by having a strong understanding of your priorities of importance.

Alarms: Having alarms is just so great. They remind you to do things. If you find one alarm isn't enough, set two, or three, or ten. I have three alarms to get up in the morning. If an alarm goes off and you don't need it, what's the harm?

Structure and repetition: Putting things where they belong, and doing things at the same time regularly, makes you less likely to forget them. You don't forget that MoG is on a Tuesday, or that church is on a Sunday, or that pants go on your legs. It's the same principle.

Distractions: Try and keep distractions to a minimum. They are like little urgent non-important things trying to grab your attention.

Listening to Jesus (Mark 9 Transfiguration) youth talk

(This talk is very much based on my Mark 9 transfiguration talk, but has been shortened to 15 minutes and changed a little for a teenage/young adult audience)

Who do you listen to?

I'm not talking about music, or podcasts or whatever.  I mean who do you trust when they tell you a fact?  Who do you help when they say they need help?  Who do you obey when they tell you to do something?  See, when you listen to someone, you don't just hear what they say. You actually sit up and pay attention.

Tonight I'm here to talk about listening to Jesus. In the gospel of Mark in chapter 9, Jesus is transfigured in glory on a mountain top. Jesus glows dazzling white, Elijah and Moses appear, and a cloud appears and God speaks out of the cloud and says about Jesus, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!"  Jesus is visibly showing he is God, and God is audibly saying to listen to Jesus.  The transfiguration is the number 1 time in Jesus' life that we can point to and say with absolutely certainty that Jesus is God.

But only three people ever got to see it. And I know some people struggle with that. Some people don't want to believe that Jesus really is God without seeing it for themselves, without indisputable proof. They want God to prove himself to them in a specific way that makes it undeniable. They don't trust the testimony of witnesses. They want testable results, observable phenomena. That's how science works.

But that's not how history works, it's not how law works, it's not how philosophy works, and it's not how God works. The gospels are really, really trustworthy. You can trust what they say. Yes, what they say will challenge you to rethink what you believe, and what other people say about how the world works. But that shouldn't be a reason to ignore them.

We aren't the only ones who don't get to see Jesus as God for ourselves. Jesus had huge crowds of thousands of followers - none of them got to see it. He had hundreds of disciples. None of them got to see it. He had twelve special apostles, whom he especially selected to be with him. And of those twelve, nine of them were left behind. All they got was the story told by Peter, James and John, and even then not till after Jesus had been resurrected. That's all they got, and that's all we get - the same story retold to us in the Bible. That is what God gives us, and that is enough.

If you think eyewitness testimony is not a strong enough basis to believe in what Jesus said and did, then my advice to you would be to honestly think for yourself whether it's okay for God to reveal himself in a way other than how you want. Also think about what you personally require to believe something that changes how you live your life.

Because you see, even though God says, "This is my Son, whom I love, listen to him!", no-one is going to force you to listen.  God certainly doesn't force people to listen to him.  If he did, I wouldn't have to stand here telling you to listen to him, because we wouldn't have a choice.  God wouldn't even have had to say, "Listen to him!" because there wouldn't be another option.

But there is an option.  God does give you a choice.  And you should choose to listen to him.  If you want to listen to Jesus in your life, because Jesus is God, and because God says to, then there are four things you need to do.  It's a four step plan.  Step one is to hear what Jesus says. Step 2 is to talk to Jesus.  Step 3 is to think like Jesus, and step four is to do what he says.

Let's go through one at a time. So step one is hear what Jesus says. You can't listen to someone if you can't hear what they say. And how do we hear what Jesus has to say? It's in the Bible! In fact, Jesus adopts the whole Bible as being his message, so we can hear him by reading any of it.  Easy, right?

But I think we all know there's reading, and then there's reading.  How many of you have ever installed a piece of software, or signed up for a competition, or installed an app on your phone, and seen the words 'terms and conditions'? How many of you actually read those terms and conditions? How many just click "I have read the terms and conditions" without reading them? Yeah, that's not reading. Don't read the bible like "reading" terms and conditions.  Read it like an email from someone you care about. You don't just skim it to get the big picture - you actually want to know how they feel about it, and what's important to them becomes important to you.

This first step is so important, that the church does a lot to try and make it easier. They provide bible talks for you to listen to, to help explain what the Bible says. They run youth groups and Bible studies. There are even ways to memorise what Jesus says, so that it's sitting in your head all the time and you've always got it with you.  Hearing what Jesus says is really important.

So those are all ways we can hear what Jesus has to say.  Step 2 is what you do after you hear what someone says: you talk.  We need to talk to Jesus. How do we talk to Jesus? You pray. If you know how to talk, then you know how to pray. Choose a time when you can concentrate just on talking to Jesus, and do it. And when you talk to Jesus, talk to him like you talk to other people who are important to you. Talking to Jesus is as important as talking in any other relationship. Talking to Jesus doesn't make you a Christian any more than talking to your parents makes you their children. But you'd have a pretty miserable relationship with your parents if you never talked to them, or you only ever talked to them to ask them for money or to drive you somewhere. So prayer is not just about asking for stuff. Prayer opens our heart, so that we can accept what we've heard Jesus say.

So we're hearing Jesus, we're talking to Jesus.  The next step is to think like Jesus thinks. At first, this means filtering everything you think, and comparing it against what Jesus says we should say and do and think and feel. So you have to think, "Should I kiss my boyfriend/girlfriend? Should I say 'I don't feel well' when I really just don't feel like going out? Should I be deciding about what I want for Christmas when it's not even Easter yet? Should I feel jealous that someone is richer than me?" But filtering your thoughts gets tiring.  It's really hard, because you never stop thinking, and saying, and doing, and feeling. So here's the secret: build your thoughts on what Jesus says.

This makes a huge difference.  It's the thoughts that aren't built on Jesus that you have to filter. If we're honest, that's a lot of thoughts. The thoughts that say getting married is the most important thing, or money is the most important thing, or getting high marks, or being entertained, or feeling good, or being pretty or being popular, or even that family is the most important thing. These thoughts choke what Jesus says to us, shout it down so we can't hear it.

But thoughts built on Jesus, you don't need to filter - because God's ways are always right. Always. Even when the world makes them look wrong, they're still right. That's why it's so important to hear what Jesus says from the Bible, and to open your heart to accept it by praying. That's why I think memorising scripture is so awesome. Because the more of what Jesus says is in your head and heart, the more your thoughts will be built on Jesus, and the less you need to filter them.

The final step to listening is to actually do what Jesus says. We want to live the life Jesus wants us to live.  Not the life that makes us comfortable.  Not the life that makes us feel good.  Not the life that everyone else thinks we should live.  Step 4 is trying to live the life Jesus wants. Doing what Jesus says is not always easy, but it is always right.

It means having to give up on stuff that you know you shouldn't be doing. And that's hard. But it also means getting out there and doing things you aren't doing, and that can sometimes be even harder. Listening to Jesus means doing those things. Cutting out bad behaviour. Standing up for the people who get picked on. Donating money to church and to people who need it more than you. Telling people why you choose to listen to Jesus.  Those things are hard, right? There are so many times in all of our lives when we're too selfish or too scared to take this last step of listening to Jesus and doing what he says. It's really hard! But listening to Jesus means doing it anyway. James 1:22 says, "Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says."

Listening to Jesus is a package deal - if you want to do it at all, you need to do it all.  You can't think about what Jesus says if you don't know what he says.  You won't accept what you hear Jesus say if you don't talk to him.  You won't do what he says if your thoughts aren't built on Jesus. If you want to listen to Jesus, then you need to know what he says.  You need to talk to him.  You need to think like him.  And you need to do what he says.

I want to ask you all to take these words of God seriously, because they are God's words: "This is my Son, whom I love.  Listen to him!"  Don't just ask yourself if what you're doing is enough to cover this list. It's not a test.  Listening to Jesus is a choice you make. So first ask yourself if that's what you actually want to do. Do you really choose to listen to Jesus? If you do, then do it.

Prayer 08/03/15 - Trusting the King (Mark 9:14-32)

Lord of Heaven and Earth,

You are astounding. So many things make us stand in awe of your brilliance. We are surrounded by the beauty of your universe, which speaks to the creative genius of your power. We can wake up early and watch a sunrise turn the sky a myriad of fantastic colours; we can look at pictures from telescopes and see the infinite radiance of a million billion stars that make up our night sky and silently speak of your splendour. We can go for a bushwalk in the Blue Mountains and be surrounded by the beauty of your world in the endless vista of bushland and the majesty of the mountains; we can walk on sandy yellow beaches, with curling waves and crystal waters stretching out to the horizon; we can see the smiles on little children who are overwhelmed with wonder at the simplest joys; we can go to Christian conventions and sing your praises with fantastic songs, and our spirits can be lifted by the rejoicing of hundreds of fellow believers; we can take time in quiet prayer and reflection on your word, and commune with you, our maker and our sovereign.  At these times we feel so close to you, like we could almost reach out and touch you, our Lord and God.

But then we have to close our Bibles, and our prayers have to end with an Amen. Conventions end, the songs are over, and we return to our home lives and our own church meetings week after week. Smiling children grow up, and become teenagers, and then adults, and need lunches and allowances and textbooks and patience.  We switch from pictures of the universe to the daily news, and read about trouble, tragedy and temptation.  The sun goes on rising, and we have to go to work, to study, to look after our families. And we can so easily lose sight of you in the everyday of our lives. We can think of you only as the God of the good times.

Lord, help us to see you in everything. We thank you that Jesus Christ, your own son, did not only live for the good times, but came as a servant, to live and to die for your glory, and for our salvation. He denied himself, he carried his cross, he suffered mockings, beatings, rejections and pain for us, and he gave up his life for us. He walked, he worked, he faced all the world's troubles and temptations. You know what our lives are like, Father God.  You have lived them beside us, both the good and the bad. Help us to see Jesus in the face of every sick friend, every grieving mother, every suffering sister, every tired and stressed brother, every needy child. Help us to see your splendor all the more clearly in the squalor of sin and shame and suffering of this world. Let us feel close to you as we do what your word says, and carry our crosses alongside Christ, and suffer the scorn and disdain of being your disciple.

And fix our eyes on Christ, who has shown us that your Kingdom is breaking into this world. Give us a constant yearning to see all sicknesses healed, all demons cast out, all hunger fed, and all pain ended forever. Make us yearn for your kingdom to come, and give us hands and feet to help others see its coming as we take your message to the world.

Let your kingdom come, Amen