Never forget who you are
Why it is important to remember who you are and where you’ve come from
I’ve recently been in Germany & it seems like a lot of Germans would like to forget the 20th century ever happened. In the 1930s a madman took control of the country. He created an atmosphere of fear, where people were afraid to look sideways in case they were arrested. He led them in a war that would have most of the world thinking they were pure evil. And he systematically attempted to kill every single Jew he could get his hands on. Needless to say, the Germans were happy to be free of him. These days Germans won’t even name their dogs Adolf. That’s how much they want to forget him.
The second half of the 20th century wasn’t much better. The country was split in half and a big barrier set up, right down the middle. If you lived in the eastern half, you lived in a communist country. If you didn’t like it, tough. You weren’t allowed to leave. In 1989, East and West Germany were rejoined. Many Germans would like to move on and forget this sad part of their history.
But as you travel through Germany, there are memorials to these events. Lots of them. As much as they’d like to forget, they’ve chosen to remember. If they were to tear down all the concentration camps, remove all traces of the wall, pretend like none of it ever happened, then they would be in danger. They would be in danger of it happening again.
Germany chooses to remember who they are and where they have come from. They don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past. They don’t want anyone to think that these tragedies were a good idea and worth repeating.
The people of Israel, back in the Old Testament, were also big on memorials. Each year they celebrated the Passover meal, in order to remember what God did for them in Egypt. When Joshua brought the people into the Promised Land, God had them set up 12 large stones as a memorial to remind them of what God had done (Joshua 4).
In the New Testament, we are encouraged to share the Lord’s Supper together “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” (1 Cor 11: 26) We are to remember that Jesus died for us so that we may be free from sin. And that he will come back again. That’s something worth remembering.
Never forget that Jesus died to save you. Never forget what your salvation cost God. Never forget what it means to be one of his people.
Don’t take it for granted that people will always know this. People need to be told. They need to be reminded. Otherwise they may forget. Otherwise they may never know who Jesus is and what he has done.
Remember who you are. Remember what has been done for you. Go out and tell people. They need to know the truth. But if no one remembers, if no one shares the truth, if we keep it to ourselves and forget it… then that would be a far greater tragedy than anything that happened in Germany in the 20th century.
Written by Joel A Moroney | fervr.net
Feeling Guilty?
How to deal with that feeling you get when you know you’ve done something wrong
What do you do when you feel guilty? When you’ve done something really wrong, and if people found out what you’d done, they’d either hate you or laugh at you? How do you deal with feelings that you’ll never live up to other people’s standards? How do you deal with guilt?
Are you like the man who became Spiderman, Peter Parker: do you do good things to try and outweigh your guilt? Peter Parker was a nerd at school, unpopular with the ladies, not many friends. One day he was bitten by a radioactive spider, and the venom had a crazy effect on him: he took on spider powers! He could climb walls, shoot webs from his hands, jump high and do crazy flips and things like that.
According to the original comic book series, Peter Parker became a famous TV star with his own show – and one day at work, a thief broke into the tv studio. Everyone expected Peter to stop the thief – but instead, Peter refused. The thief got away – but not before something very bad happened. Peter’s Uncle, Ben gets killed. By that thief that Peter could have stopped.
Peter is torn apart by guilt. He could have prevented Uncle Ben’s death. He learns his lesson: with great power comes great responsibility.
He becomes Spiderman, and his guilt drives him on, to fighting crime and beating up bad guys. He’s trying to outdo his guilt with good.
Is that how you deal with guilt?
Hebrews 10 tells us that God sent Jesus to us, to deal with our guilt. Guilt is proof that we have failed God, but Jesus is proof that God is committed to us, and wants to save us.
How does Jesus deal with our guilt? He became our sacrifice. Before Jesus came, Jewish Priests would sacrifice animals – innocent animals to show that God deals with sin by death. Those animals were a foreshadow of Jesus – all he would be and do. God sent Jesus – an innocent, perfect man; God in the flesh – and when he was killed, he suffered God’s punishment on our behalf.
And his death deals with our guilt, finally and permanently.
How do you respond to that? You trust him. You love him. You devote your life to him. You follow him.
Written by Matt Jacobs | fervr.net
All Christians are adopted
The privilege of becoming a child of God, even when we don’t deserve it
My mum is half-Japanese and my Dad is Caucasian. In my family, we often joke that my brother Mike took all the Asian, while I got stuck with all the white! Once, at a costume party, I decided to go dressed as him (I thought it was a pretty good idea at the time). It took four layers of mum’s makeup to even get close to his skin tone! Naturally, over the years, this has led to many jokes about how one or other of us is adopted – especially seeing as we have polar-opposite personalities.
Funnily enough, this isn’t too different to the picture painted in the book of Romans (8:12-17). We’ve seen that although we reject God, cut ourselves off from him, and deserve his anger and punishment, he has worked in those who trust him, to unite us with his Son, Jesus Christ. In doing this, Jesus’ death counts as our death – the death we deserve for our sin. And because of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, we can have the hope of new, eternal life with God (Romans 8:1-11).
Now we see something that’s perhaps even more amazing
We are adopted as God’s sons (8:14-17). We who had completely rejected God and lived like we were our own “gods”, we who had always done wrong to God and each other; we who deserve nothing more than being cut off from God’s love forever – we, by God’s Spirit, are given a status like Jesus, God’s Son, the King of the universe.
In the time Paul was writing, a father’s inheritance was divided up between his sons. So, as he writes in verse 17, because we are adopted as God’s sons, we get to share in Jesus’ inheritance – his reward and his glory. We get to be friends with God. We get to enjoy a perfect relationship with him and each other forever, along with all the good things he will provide when he fixes this broken world once and for all (for a taste, see Revelation 21:3-4).
But how are we adopted as God’s Sons?
By trusting in Jesus as our saviour and King, who took our punishment in our place and who rules all things for all time (Romans 1:17, 3:24-25, 4:1-25, 5:17-21).
We who trust God should therefore put to death “the deeds of the body” – that is, the actions that are against God and his loving commands (8:13). We should instead, live with obedience to God as our goal, being happy to suffer in this life (more on this in the next article!) knowing the great things to come in the next (8:17).
Will you live in obedience to your heavenly Father, knowing what he has in store for you?
Written by Alex Greaves | fervr.net
SPIN 2010 Leaders
As a ministry, SPIN has been incredibly blessed to have so many amazing, godly and passionate leaders supporting and serving it each week. Currently in 2010, these are the leaders that we have serving and leading the ministry SPIN, and loving, discipling and pastoring the many youth that combine together to make SPIN!
Click the image below to see this years leaders, as well as their contact details:
