danny’s space

Tuesday was a pretty challenging day.

In the morning, Gibbo spoke about God’s household and the mutual, genuine love that all Christians should have for each other. As Romans 12 says, love between people of God’s family should be genuine, mutual, practical, deeply felt, humble, and forgiving. We were created to be like God, and his goal for us is to become more like his Son each day (Romans 8). I think all of us were highly rebuked in terms of having feigned love for those around us. We are called to be like Christ and so we should love like he loved. This needs to be practiced at church and beyond church - we should relate with tenderness, compassion and other-centerdness, sharing our time and taking the initiative to love others.

After morning tea, strand groups continued where we learnt of Christ’s resurrection demonstrating God’s satisfaction of Christ’s sacrifice. It proves his divinity and that the crazy things he said were right.

Then came lunch, and then 2 hours of free time. James, Tim, Vivian, Dee and myself went to see question time in the House of Representatives. It sounds pretty boring but it wasn’t that bad. It’s funny seeing the ‘leaders’ of this nation act like little kids and arguing and carrying on. Tony Abbott was sitting in his seat twiddling a pen in his mouth. Malcom Turnbull was apparently dozing off. The discussions over economic reform were pretty boring. Needless to say I nodded off in the viewing area and was rudely awoken by one of the security/guide guys shaking my leg and wagging his finger once he had forced me to regain consciousness. Come on, why can’t you sleep in the viewing box? It’s not like I was camping out there. Bleh, respect. So let this be a warning to those who want to watch question time - bring a Gameboy.

After free time we had a mission team meeting where we got to meet the other people in the Sydney Uni EU teams and get things organised for the mission that was to start in less than a day. It was really great to see the number of EUers at NTE - sooo much more than in 2004, the teams were actually team-sized! We went around the circle for names and fears, and most people feared doorknocking the most. I feared everything except for lunch. But it was good anyway, getting together to overview the next few days of mission and to commit it to God.

Dinner followed, and so did another talk from Chin from Deuteronomy about God’s Old Testament Laws. The Law was meant to attract the world to God, express God’s character, to be comprehensive, and to bring prosperity to Israel in the given land (must read this in context! e.g. Deut 5:33 cannot be taken as support for the prosperity gospel preached by some). As Chin liked saying, a text without a context is a con. Indeed, in comparing Deut 15:4 and 15:11, we can see that God knew Israel could not possibly keep the Law.

As for God’s OT Law, they were given to Israel, preceeded in a context of God’s grace - therefore the Laws were a response to what God had initiated. Most of the laws were also expressions of the 10 Commandments. Nevertheless, all of the Law was to be obeyed with no categorisation. The Law was good, but were a boundary that humans naturally wanted to cross. Therefore a new type of law was needed - Christ fulfilled the Law perfectly.