Living from God’s perspective

Living from God’s perspective is essential for living a life with purpose and joy

In a talk I gave lately I used a passage a prisoner of Rome wrote two millenia ago. In this passage he tells us how he was able to live a life with purpose and joy even in this unusual situation.

You can find the talk here but go to minute 27:25

The passage is in the Bible. You can find it in the letter of the apostle Paul to the Philippians chapter four, section four to seven.

I talked about the following: Identity. Guidance. Perspective. Focus.

You can also find it at the ICF Delft website here

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. — Paul the prisoner

Tagssermon

God’s design for marriage

STRUCTURING YOUR MARRIAGE AROUND GOD’S DESIGN AND VISION

Sunday, 26 February 2023|Time: 12:30 at ICF Delft 

Here is the link for the sermon

Marriage is God’s idea.

It reflects something of who God is: God is love. It also reflects something about the church: a loving community.
A couple can feel disconnected at times:

– Why is this happening?
– Is there something we can do about this?

It is helpful to go back to the Bible and re-discover God’s design and vision for marriage. We then must take (drastic) decisions to realign our lives with God’s vision.

We looked at Genesis 2:24 and some other important passages. Our focus is practical: how can we improve our communication?

My Activities

My speaking schedule for 2023

• ICF Grace church Amersfoort February 12th 2023 

• ICF Delft February 26th 2023 

• ICF Grace church Amersfoort April 30th 2023

• ICF Grace church Amersfoort July 9th 2023

• ICF Grace church Amersfoort October 15th 2023

• ICF Grace church Amersfoort November 26th 2023

Biblical images of leadership

The leadership image of a shepherd

A few years ago I attended training for IFES staff and students. I was impressed and inspired by the teaching of the Bible about spiritual leadership. A few images did draw my attention especially. The image of a shepherd, servant, and patient helped me most during this training. 

At Studentlife we thought that a series on leadership would help us. So we decided to use a variety of materials for these training sessions. 

We will have a closer look at the image of a shepherd as a leadership model. This comes from Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. The main passages come from Psalm 23; John 10; Ezekiel 34; Acts 20; John 21.

Some of the lessons are the following: 

• Good shepherding begins with God as our shepherd.
• If God is our shepherd, then we have the following benefits: abundance, security, and intimacy. We, therefore, learn to lead out of a sense of our needs being continually satisfied. Leadership is healthy if leaders are not using others to meet their needs. 

We will discuss a few case studies that will help us make it practical and concrete. We hope the training will better prepare us to coach and mentor our students and student leaders.

Tagsbook study, student leader

Connexxion Amsterdam retreat 2019 Reasons for our faith

At this student retreat, we talked about reasons for our faith and communicating the good news with our friends. The Christian faith makes sense of reality. On the practical side, we talked about “asking good questions” in conversations we have with our friends. 

Connexxion Amsterdam, a student group, had their annual retreat this year in a nice hostel castle at Heemskerk. Martha Moore, the student worker for this student group, invited me to give three talks. The retreat was planned for March 30th-31st.

Retreat Group Photo

The three sessions

In the first session, we talked about what Christian apologetics is and why it is important, especially for the 21st century. At this link, you can read about the content of this session.

Next, we talked about some “reasons for our faith.” In this session, we addressed topics such as “the nature of faith,” and two main ways to show that Christianity makes sense. Here you can read more about this session.

At our last session, we talked about “an unlikely witness for Jesus” from the gospel of John chapter 4. Furthermore, we dealt with the following: Giving a gospel presentation, and how to ask good questions in a conversation.

There was one more talk given by Martha herself. This was an inspiring and visionary talk about living day to day with Jesus and participating in what God is doing in the world.

Session: Reasons for our faith

Q&A session

Finally, we had a Q&A session on Saturday evening. The students collected about 15 questions and Pia and I replied the best we could. This was a highlight for me personally. I always enjoy these moments of interaction with the students. Their questions are open, sincere, and authentic.