Excellence in what I do....

I believe that many people misunderstand 'excellence' when it comes to church. We think:"There's no way I can play guitar like them, they're excellent!" "There's no chance I could teach like that, that was an excellent message!"

What we do is we attach someone else's 'excellence' to our own abilities - and that's where we go wrong!

Check this passage out...

Gen 4:2-7

"Abel was a herdsman and Cain a farmer. Time passed. Cain brought an offering to God from the produce of his farm. Abel also brought an offering, but from the firstborn animals of his herd, choice cuts of meat. God liked Abel and his offering, but Cain and his offering didn't get his approval. Cain lost his temper and went into a sulk. God spoke to Cain: "Why this tantrum? Why the sulking? If you do well, won't you be accepted? And if you don't do well, sin is lying in wait for you, ready to pounce; it's out to get you, you've got to master it." 


We want so much to be accepted and loved by others. We see from this story that Cain missed out on that acceptance because he didn't bring his best, the best of the gifts that GOD had given him. He went into a rage of jealousy for his brother because he thought that his gift had some relation to Abel's, which it didn't!

It had to do with bringing the best of what GOD had equipped them with. It had nothing to do with being 'better' than others... Jesus was clear that we are all equal, we can never out-give someone else because each of us should give as we have decided in our hearts (2 Cor 9:7). The gifts that we bring show GOD our hearts.



The New Testament Epistle writer, Paul, spent much of his time reminding his readers that all of us have gifts that GOD has given us. I want to encourage you to bring the very best of those gifts to GOD.

 

All these gifts have been given to us so that we can meet the needs of others in GOD's strength. Our ministry (meeting the needs of others) is threefold;

• to the Lord
• to believers
• to non-believers

The gifts that we bring (talents, treasures, time, nature, body) need to be better than our previous gifts if we want them to be excellent. If we keep doing the same thing over and over again, then our best becomes our average.

Abel brought his best and found favour with the King. He showed GOD his heart for excellence, a heart to give GOD his best! We will expand on this concept over the next few posts and encourage you to always, always bring GOD the best that you have!

DEALING WITH ANGER

How can I deal with anger in my life and become an encouraging person? I believe that GOD's design is for all of us to be encouragers and build one another up - I don't believe that we should settle for second best or a mediocre life where we pass ourselves off as 'difficult' or 'grumpy'!

Before you read on let me remind you that you are GOD's masterpiece, created and designed for a purpose! Seek the best, seek excellence, seek HIM!

Let us not be misconceived, anger is real and it's hard to deal with, but it is possible! It may be easier said than done, but here are a few easy steps that you can incorporate into your everyday life to become less angry and more encouraging!

1. WAIT ON GOD

Psalm 39:13-15 – I will wait for You Lord, You will answer – David let the Lord take control of a situation that could have angered him. In Proverbs 20:22 we read Do not say, "I'll pay you back for this wrong!" Wait for the LORD, and he will deliver you! How encouraging is that! We must never underestimate the value of not rushing into things, waiting allows GOD to move in HIS timing.

2. BE PREPARED, IT MAY HAPPEN AGAIN!

How many times should I forgive someone who keeps repeating the offence? Peter asked Jesus the same question in Mat 18:21-22, Jesus gave him such a large number that it was implied that we should keep on forgiving. I believe that it's because it will probably happen again... so we should be prepared to forgive. GOD gives us a model for this in HIS Grace, we can never out-sin Grace!

Silly Anger...

(this post is part of our series on dealing with anger)

There's no better way to describe this last type of anger other than calling it unnecessary, wasteful, silly anger...

How are we silly in our anger?

Grumbling
“Do not grumble against each other.” James could not have put this any simpler nor any more precise. DO NOT GRUMBLE AGAINST EACH OTHER. If we look at this action, we can see how it's the easy way out! When we grumble it shows that we are not willing to deal with our problem since we will not say out loud what we are feeling. Instead we duck and divebomb leaving nuances and cryptic clues as to what the actual problem is. Like distant thunder, we can hear it coming but never know when the storm will hit!

Stored Anger...

(this is part of our series on anger)

How can we encourage others if we are keeping note of everything that they've done to annoy us? Anger that is stored up hinders our relationships with others and with GOD.   It makes it really hard for us to worship Him and seek justice in the world.

There is a beautiful verse in Romans which says Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (12:21). In Genesis 4 we read of the first murder in the Bible, Cain took his brother Abel out because sin was crouching at his door and, although GOD warned him, he allowed the anger in his heart to master him. If we want to become encouragers for Christ, then we need to check this out big time!

I believe there are three ways in which we can store anger - let's take a look...

Sudden Anger...

Have you ever been driving down the road and someone pulls in front of you and cuts you off? Our reactions are often a great example of sudden anger! Anything that will get you splitting mad in a split second... that's sudden anger.

Proverbs 12:16 tells us that a fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult.

There's this unofficial law in life - Murphy's law. It suggests that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong, at the worst time! When we are late for a deadline and our printer fails, the stationary shop that is always open is closed, the clothes that we need have not been ironed, our relationships are going well and then we are betrayed, we work hard for our raise and it goes to someone else, we dedicate time and effort into planning and organising an event and half the guests don’t pitch, walking home from the shops a packet of food drops and spills in the middle of the road... you get what I'm saying?

Anger - Loving or Not Loving??

Anger is a heightened emotion that leads us act against someone or something. It can either be a right action, or a wrong action. I think the defining quality in our actions must be love. Are we acting out of love or not?

I think there are two main ways in which we can get angry and still love...

When we get angry because of injustice, we need to respond in a way that restores relationship and show GOD's love. Our actions need to remind others of GOD's promises and purposes for His people. We need to encourage them and show them His love.

Anger is also a necessary step in dealing with grief or trauma, if the heightened emotion leads us to growth and renewal, then our anger has been righteous! I believe that if we are led to stand up for GOD AND encourage others, then we are learning more about how Jesus lived.

Does anger make me a bad person?

Before we explore anger any further, I have really been feeling a sense of 'let's get our minds right' first. It's easy to analyze and write nice things about anger, but what about when it really effects me and I am so hurt that I respond in a way that is influenced by my anger?

The main reason that we are looking at anger, in the context of being an encourager for Christ, is to encourage us that anger itself is not wrong, it's our response that counts! In Eph 4:26 we are told 'In your anger, do not sin.' So, it is not our anger that is the sin, but our unmeasured response to the deep emotions that we know as anger.

As I said in our previous post, it is often difficult to encourage others when we are angry, but it is actually our enemies that we really need to be loving and encouraging (Matt 5:44). So, if we can get our minds right, and our hearts aligned with Christ, then hopefully, we'll be able to be angry and not sin. Wouldn't that be awesome!! To have such self control that we can manage our anger and not let it manage us? I believe that it's not only possible, but that it is part of GOD's plan for your life!

So, if you're still asking 'Does anger make me a bad person', then let me encourage you with this breif concluding thought. In God's eyes, He loves you no matter what. His love is unconditional, so whether you're a super positive person or a grumpy old pile of misery - GOD LOVES YOU!

It's not conditional on you being good or bad, it's not conditional on you getting things right and always having a smile on your face. So, to GOD, I believe that it's not about good or bad, because we'll always mess up somewhere along the line, it's about being saved. It's about being in a relationship with Him and constantly working on that relationship. (If you want to know more about this relationship - please mail us!).

Keep an eye out for our next post as we start to look at three types of anger in our lives, until then - BE BLESSED!

Alice the Camel - Introduction to Anger

When we were kids we used to sing this song called Alice the Camel. The idea was to start off at the highest number you could think of and count backwards as Alice loses another hump... as we would get closer and closer to zero we would get louder and louder and more excited! Eventually (depending on how high we could count!!) we would get to the last verse: Alice the camel has no humps so ALICE (shouting it now...) IS A HORSE!!! Then we'd keel over with much hilarity and, if our parents were extremely unlucky, we'd start again.

I think that anger is a lot like this song, only we don't fall over laughing. We start our day off with loads of humps, although some people have the unfortunate disposition to only have a few, and as each event of the day unravels we tend to lose a few humps. If the day has found itself to be highly frustrating, we may lose all our humps by lunch, and become a little hoarse from shouting, screaming and tossing the occasional piece of office stationary. We get angry! My dad always used to say to me: "When you get cross, things get worse." At the time it never really helped, but upon reflection, his words were wise.

Anger comes in more than one form, it can come gradually or immediately, we sometimes store it up and hold imaginary black-books against people. Either way, anger hinders us from encouraging others. The last thing you feel like doing when you're angry is saying: "Hey, good job!" If we are able to muster those words, it's often through gritted teeth!!

I look forward to journeying with you as we look at anger, what it is and how we can effectively deal with it through GOD's love and hand in our lives. Ultimately, I think we all want to be happy and encouraging people, but with the curve balls that often get pitched our way, it can be hard. Being a Christian, or Christ Follower, doesn't mean that we get it right all the time, but it does mean that we are Saved, Justified and Sanctified by GOD's grace. I love Rom 8:38 where we are reminded that nothing can separate us from GOD's love that is ours through Jesus Christ! So be encouraged by those words, even if you get so mad and let your anger totally control you, GOD can fix the situation!

A Challenge to the Church

(this is the final post in our series STOP LISTEN LOVE)

If you've been following all these posts on encouragement, we hope that you've been motivated by GOD to change and grow in certain areas of your life, just as we have... if so... then here are two steps to encorporating these principles into your life and church!

1. When people need your time, help, and gifts, STOP. LISTEN. LOVE. You are equipped AND called by God to meet the needs of others, and by doing this, you will become involved in this beautiful thing called the fellowship of believers.

Doing as Christ did - LOVE

LOVE

In this final look at the Stop. Listen. Love. principle we look at love. I will soon be sharing on anger and how it can hinder our love, but for now, let's continue with love. If we are going to encourage one another in love we need to know the following:

1. Don't let go. I think the most encouraging part of the crucifixion story is that Christ never let go. His act of love was so great that He never let go, even to the point of death. If we are going to encourage others, we need to stick by them. It’s one thing to say “You can do it!” But it’s another to support someone as they do it. You can encourage a tight-rope walker to cross to the other side, but will you get in the wheelbarrow that he’s pushing? Not letting go lets the other person know exactly how committed we are to helping them!

2. By not letting go, we are availing ourselves to be a part of the miracle that God is going to do in that person’s life. God is the very centre of love, it is the essence of His nature. Love can only exist where God is, and where God is, miracles happen. I don't know about you, but I mostly see miracles happen when we rely more on GOD's power and love, especially when times are tough. The saying "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." reminds us about the world's mentality. Being tough means that we stick around, our reward is that we become a part of GOD's miracles!

3. Encouragement is infectious – and here’s how we can grow church in encouragement. As we encourage those around us, they will be better equipped to encourage others too. If we have a culture of encouragement, people will feel like church is a place to belong do.

So, just as 1 Thess 5:11 says to keep encouraging as we are already in the habit of doing, I encourage you to keep doing the same. I think that we should encourage ALL THE TIME. We shouldn’t just encourage those who are down and oppressed, we should also encourage those who are doing fantastically well.

At the end of the Comrades Marathon, the crowds don’t only encourage the last 5000 people, if anything, they shout loudest for the front runners!

The winner receives thunderous applause as they enter the stadium – but why, they’re first, they don’t need encouragement. Let’s ignore them, they’ll be fine! Sounds ridiculous, but that’s so often how we treat those in church who do well, we get a little jealous, a little threatened.

So, what comes out of our mouths? Discouragement… and that’s when we get stuck in the place that I started talking about earlier. The place when church is no longer a place where people want to be.

Instead – we should be going out of our way to encourage one another – at every opportunity - to show Christ's love!

Doing as Christ did - LISTEN

LISTEN (part of the series Stop. Listen. Love.)

1. Listening helps us to get it right.

My wife and I attended the Alpha Marriage course a few years ago and I will never forget what they had to say about listening. We listen, so that we can know what is going on with the other person. We listen so that we can get it right! It sounds obvious, but how often do we listen before trying to encourage?

If you are in trouble and go to a lawyer, if you are sick and go to a doctor, if your car breaks down and you go to the mechanic – what do they do? Well, hopefully, they listen first. If they just try to fix something without knowing what to fix, they may spend a whole lot of energy, money and time, and not even get to the thing that’s not working.

2. Prepare to heal.

Once you have stopped, focussed and know what’s wrong, you can now prepare to heal. Healing is a process, it doesn’t happen quickly. When I was 12, we went on a family holiday to the Carmel Christian Guest Farm in George. It was over Christmas and we’d spent the day swimming down at Vic Bay and that night, I woke up with intense ear-ache. I lay in bed in with tears in my eyes, hoping the pain would go away, but it didn’t, it got worse, to the point that I began throwing up. The next day was Christmas… so you can imagine how many doctors work in a sea-side town on Christmas day! 

Somehow my parents managed to find an emergency doctor and we rushed off to see him. I sat on his examination bed whilst he listened to my parents explain and then he examined my ears, only to find that I had a massive inner-ear infection. I was expecting him to poke something in and fix the problem. I could feel the pressure and thought, “well if you just relieve the pressure, I’ll be fine.”

But he didn’t, he prepared for healing by giving my parents antibiotics to clear up the infection. There was no quick fix, I just had to wait whilst the healing took its course. Of course, because the doctor had listened and prepared, the infection went away and the pain was gone within a few hours. If we are going to encourage others, we need to know that we must prepare to be a part of the healing process.

3. When we listen, we can be USED BY GOD. If we don’t listen, we will miss out on an opportunity to encourage that person in the way that God wants them to be encouraged. I believe that part of God’s plan for allowing suffering is that it allows us to become a part of His divine plan to heal and encourage. 

God could quite easily fix all our problems by Himself, but He chooses to include us in the journey, because He knows how awesome it is to encourage someone, either through being there or by sending a miracle. We miss so many miracles in life purely because we ignore, resist or just don’t listen.

Let us learn to Stop AND Listen, that’s the only way that we’ll start to become better encouragers for CHRIST!

Doing as Christ did - STOP

STOP (Part of the Stop. Listen. Love. series)

1. We are saying, by our choice to stop what we are doing, that someone else is more important. When Jesus knelt in the dirt with the woman accused of adultery, He said nothing to her, but everyone knew that she had His full attention, His full priority at that moment. What an awesome moment that must have been for her!

Can you picture it, as the buzzing of voices moves to the ringing of silence in your ears, the people poised in prosecution hold their tongues and watch in awe and trepidation and the Messiah, Christ of Creation, ignores them and communicates in silence just how important that lady was! That brings prickles to my skin! What an amazing moment, what a life changing point for her and those watching – never underestimate the importance of stopping to listen and love.

2. When we stop, we are not distracted by what’s going on around us. The world keeps going, but we are stepping back to take note of something more important. Let’s think of that woman, thrown and Jesus feet, no doubt, there was a commotion, but Jesus was not distracted by the instigators around Him, He wants to absorb fully the situation at hand. Everyday we let life distract us, do we always realize how much we’re missing?

3. You can now focus all of your God given Spiritual gifts, heart attitude, your abilities, your personality and your experience to help this person. Your unique shape to minister, to meet the needs of this person.

As we seek to be better encouragers in Christ, let us take time to stop, listen and love.

Learning to Encourage

If we want to grow the fellowship of the church, then we need to learn to encourage.

He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.

1 Thess 5:10-11

We have had many people come to stay with us, people from all over our country and the world. When other people stay in our house – it’s actually quite difficult. Sure it’s awesome to have people staying with us, but it means adapting to them in our house. They put things away differently in the kitchen, they leave toothpaste on the inside of the basin, they leave their clothes lying in the lounge, they don’t wash the bath out properly. And my biggest one, they use dirty coffee spoons in the sugar… ever had that! Living with other people is not always so easy.

God’s plan for fellowship – Introduction to Encouragement

"If there is a beacon of life – it should be the church. If there is a place of hope – it should be the church. If there is a place of sanctuary of healing – it should be the church. We stand here and preach that God can meet all our needs. We go into the world and say that God can meet their needs. But then why, why are so many people discouraged by church?"

There is an old-cowboy song – "Home, home, home on the range, Where the deer and the antelope play, Where seldom is heard, a discouraging word, And the skies are not cloudy all day."

As we grow up, as we start to experience life, from about the age of 5, we realise that the other kids in the playground don’t always have nice things to say. The people around us don’t always give us a fair chance. The people who often promise to help us, pull the rug from beneath our feet as soon as they get a good grip. The sky is often cloudy and words are often nasty.

What is the place we call church? God tells us in His Word, and let me tell you, the design of the church is not decided by the Pope. God’s design and plan for His church is this – beautiful, majestic, Christ’s bride, an attractive place. I believe that if there is anywhere people would want to be or go visit – it should be the church!

We make malls, play centres, movie houses, restaurants, theme parks, golf courses, spa’s, game lodges. When we want a break, when we want fun – this is where we go. But why can’t church cater for these things. Why can’t the club house at Eagle Canyon be a church? Why can’t the coffee shop at Garden World be a church? Why can’t NuMetro bioscope at Monte Casino be a church?

If there is a beacon of life – it should be the church. If there is a place of hope – it should be the church. If there is a place of sanctuary of healing – it should be the church. We stand here and preach that God can meet all our needs. We go into the world and say that God can meet their needs. But then why, why are so many people discouraged by church?

Here’s why, because most churches don’t encourage enough. We cannot call ourselves followers of Christ if we are not encouragers! Jesus Christ walked this earth and to those who came seeking forgiveness, HE freely gave it.

He told the blind that they could see, He told the lame that they could walk, He told the prostitutes that they were good enough, He told the adulterers that they could hold their heads up high again, He told the last that they would be first, He told the children that they were examples, He told the poor that they would be rich, He told the oppressed that they would be set free.

Now that's encouragement! That is a man so divine in character that even when He was cross (and on the cross), He encouraged!  The message of Grace is encouragement - build into others as Christ built into you!