i send out a weekly email message called thort for the week aimed at challenging and encouraging Christ-followers to really live out what we say we believe - i thort i'd share this week's with my blog [if you would like to receive the weekly messages simply email brettfish@hotmail.com with the email address you would like it sent to and a 'please add me' subject line] - trust you enjoy... I was sent this psalm [...]
read this post by john of ellis this morning which my beautiful wife val alerted me too saying it was rather good and the message there is exactly spot on. the book 'unlearning' is written by my friend sean tucker and his blog is definitely worth checking out as well take a read here or find sean's blog over here - i don't always agree with everything he says - and i generally enjoy his [...]
i haven't shared this one for a while so i thort i'd repost it cos it really helps explain the concept really well for me: So i often hear the question ‘how good do i need to be to get to heaven’ or else the question can be phrased in a different way – ‘how is it that you (followers of Jesus) say that if a serial killer repents and becomes a follower of Christ [...]
in terms of life catchup and our favourite question of ‘so what are you doing next year?’ which has suddenly become ‘so what are you doing this year?’ [wow, so quick] the answer is that my wife - the beautiful Val – is finishing up her thesis – handing in second draft this week and final draft second week of feb – and we are still waiting on God and trying to listen and hear [...]
why is this stuff important? i don't think this is about arisefest and my blog - not anymore, that was just a catalyst to a lot of in depth thinking about a crucial topic which i feel is hugely lacking in the church... [was i right in wot i wrote about arisefest? i'm not sure, perhaps not - the one principle that was intentional though was mentioning names of some of the bands i was [...]
and that seems to perhaps be the principle [your thorts are greatly appreciated] - that if you sin in public, you need to be cautioned/rebuked/challenged/held accountable in public - and my reasoning is this... the people observing the non-Christ-following behaviour need to be made aware that that is not Christ-following behaviour otherwise they might think it is okay and go and do the same... so when peter is chilling with the gentiles and then the [...]
what came to mind and this is really just to get people thinking more than making any point cos i think i naturally would have gone with the 'gently pull aside' approach is a bunch of incidents when that didn't seem to happen: in matthew 16.23 Peter starts to rebuke Jesus for speaking about His death and Jesus responds by saying, "Get behind me, satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; you do not [...]
so my arisefest blog got quite a few people heated in terms of the manner in which i dealt with some of the frustrations i had concerning my arisefest experience (which for the most part was a completely incredible experience - the people who missed the point certainly didn't spoil it for me or anyone else i doubt) and some of the behaviours i witnessed... [what was an interesting phenomenon was how quickly the issues [...]
sometimes i like to picture Jesus in a modern day setting and wonder how His life and ministry would have looked if it was 2011 when God decided to come to earth in human form to settle the original score instead of 2000ish years ago would He have watched movies or played computer games? Would He have had His own Facebook page or blog? Would Jesus own a cellphone (my thorts are He probably wouldn’t [...]
i have been involved with the vineyard church for around ten years now and although i am never going to be a ‘lift high this denomination over another’ i have really enjoyed most of my time here – it is not the one true church for sure and we can definitely still learn and incorporate a lot of stuff from other denominations, but there are a couple of specifically vineyard things that i really do [...]