When I began to date Robyn I was unbearable … to my mates, I fear.  I could not stop talking about her like the night we caught a movie.  Robyn was away as a leader on an outreach to bikies and so I was missing her.  The movie escapes my memory now but I do remember saying things like: “The woman in that movie is so much like this young woman I’ve just met.  Funny, adventurous – you have to be adventurous to go to Bathurst as a leader on a team trying to reach the bikies”.  “The woman in that movie …” and on I would go.

It was unstoppable.

I simply could not help but speak of her to my mates. Three weeks later I proposed, she accepted and, well here we are!

When we find pleasure in something, or someone, we praise it or him or her.

Praise completes our enjoyment of that in which we find pleasure.

The world resounds to sounds of praise.  Lovers praise their mistresses, readers their poets, walkers the bush, players their favourite footy team.  There is praise of weather, wine, food, actors, children, flowers, mountains, rare beetles. We delight to praise what we enjoy.

Praise does not just express joy: praise completes joy.  Which is what happens when a wife says to her husband, as they enjoy a sunset after an evening meal, “Isn’t that a wonderful sunset?”

Those who, like King David, find their pleasure in God will exalt him and glorify him in their praise.  This certainly will include singing songs of praise.  It also invites others to enter into the joy of the relationship with the Creator and Redeemer.

And what is more,  in a world in which people are acutely aware of a thirst in their spirit and soul,  God says he can satisfy the thirst. He is the great thirst quencher

To him who is thirsty I will give drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. Revelation 21:7

A church which exalts God is a church with life pulsating through each and every heart,  mind, soul and every ministry.  That is why exalting God is the number one core value here at St Paul’s.

Join us as we worship the great God of all heaven and earth. The One who loved us so he would rather die than live without us.

View here: Lillia – Be Her Freedom

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?” – The LORD God.  Isaiah 58:6

Little Dave (not his real name) is breaking hearts.

When you first meet him he looks like most 3yos: full of beans and mischief.

This belies his life. He is white. His foster parents are multiracial. He can now say a few words. Two weeks ago he could not. He did not know how to brush this teeth. He has not been toilet trained. He had been in the same nappy for days if not weeks when he was given into foster care. His little backside looked like raw meat. His new foster dad, a police officer, says it looked as if he had been sexually abused. When put to bed Dave crawled under the bed. When told it was time for “nigh-nigh” he curled up in a foetal position on a lounge chair. When he hears his mother’s voice over the phone terror races through his body taking hours to stop running.  Little Dave has such poor toilet practice and is so traumatized doctors believe he has a year’s worth of waste backing up in his tiny body.  His ribs are so pressured they are way out of alignment. It will take at least a year, or two, for this back up to be released.

He is white. He is three. He is the 4th child of a 23 yo woman but he does not share a common father with his siblings . They each, one and all, seem to have only a mother in common.

This is the 21st century. It is a Western country.

Is he part of the harvest Jesus told us to open our eyes and see? (John 4:35)

I met Dave. His foster mum and dad are delightful and are finding Dave is “messing with their heads”. They so much want to see him have a shot at life. They want to see him know Jesus. They are showering him with a love he has never known. He can now brush his teeth. He can say a few words, use a fork and smile. Toileting is pain filled and anxiety ridden.  Still … he is safe.

How many other Daves are there? “He’s one of thousands”.

How many Samaritan women are there?

How big is the harvest?

“Open” eyes “looking” will tell us.

The galaxy of which our solar system is a part is about 100,000 lights years in diameter.  Light travels at 9.4 trillion km/yr making our galaxy 940,000 trillion kms in diameter.  It holds some 200 billion stars.  Our Sun is but one and it burns at a modest 6,000 degrees Celsius.  It travels in an orbit at about 216 km/second.  It takes about 250 million years for our Sun and Solar system to complete one circuit of our galaxy.  We live in one of about a million galaxies that are in the optical range of our most powerful telescopes.  The one who created all this says,

“To whom can you compare me? Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One.  Lift your eyes and look to the heavens:  Who created all these?  He who brings out the starry host one by one,  and calls them each by name.  Because of his great power and mighty strength,  not one of them is missing. Isaiah 40:25 – 26

This One wants us to experience the best there is.  When you think about it,  the best possible thing for us to experience and enjoy can only be God himself.  There is nothing better and so God sends Jesus his Son to die for us to bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18) so once again we might be able to enjoy him.

A photo of a girl, held by her hands, being swung around by her dad captures the kind of joy God intends.  The camera was strapped to her dad’s chest and captured a crystal clear image of the daughter with the background whirring behind. In her eye you can see the image of her dad.  Pure delight, exhilaration and joy radiate from her face as she gazes into her dad’s face.

King David knew this in his relationship with God:

You have made known to me the path of life;  you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. Ps 16:11

Regardless the circumstance, no matter the pace of life, with eyes fixed on the Creator who also sent Jesus to die for us, we will find “eternal pleasures”.