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Steve Swain helped us to look at Christmas with new eyes. It was an interesting morning.

Matthew 1: 18-25

If we agree that God is infinitely wise, powerful and creative, we also agree that he could have brought His Son into the world in an infinite number of ways. What does the way He chose to do it, tell you about the nature of God? What intrigues you about it?

His birth was predicted 800-1000 years earlier by Isaiah (Isaiah 7:14-16).

The gospel of Luke tells the same story. Mark starts with Jesus as a grown-up, as it was aimed at the Romans who were more concerned with action.

Steve Swain began this Gathering with a short talk on giving.

He saw a motivational speaker once, who gave his three rules for financial independence. 1. Save 10%. 2. Give 10%. 3. Live on 80%. This came from a hard-nosed businessman, who didn’t know why it worked, just knew that it did.

In the Bible, the tithe is equivalent to 10%. Tithing is an old Testament principal and was about keeping the priesthood, whose lives were dedicated to serving God and whose direct work generated no income.

Steve was amazing at stepping up at the last minute, to share at our June Gathering. Here’s my notes from his message.

Egypt at the time of Passover was a world power. It also had a focus on death - known for its pyramids and mummies etc. God assaulted all the power of Egypt with the many plagues, but when he assaulted them with death to defeat them, in turn death was defeated, by the blood of the lamb on the doors of the Jews.

The gospels have all sorts of stories and quickly run through miracles, events, parables and more, but quickly get down to what the situation is about.

As Steve led us into communion, he shared this with us.

Who we are and what we do has moved God - from heaven to earth.

It has been said that God is the unmoved mover, but this is not true as we have all moved him, through our action, good and bad.

He made an unbelievable sacrifice. If we didn’t believe it, we couldn’t believe it.

What does the cross say about God’s character - those in attendance offered Love, Mercy, Compassion, Sacrifice, Value, Worth.

Steve picked up on a question that Evan had asked at the February Gathering. “How do we make it work?”

He admitted that he is better at the academic, rather than the practical side. Like us all, he does some things bad and some things OK.

When he became a Christian, he learnt how it all worked by reading a lot and by watching other Christians. He absorbed the things liked and discarded those he didn’t. He is still learning, from people he has observed in the past and from those he observes today.

Steve told the story of setting goals in his diary.

Steve Swain presented an informal session, starting with an interview with Helen Crothers on her affiliation with African Action International. (done at very short notice - well done Helen!)

Why did Helen go to Africa? All her life she had an affinity with coloured people. She wanted to go but was scared to, after the Entebbe airport hostage crisis in 1976. However, her interest in Africa grew and she was encouraged further by her first trip there in 2005. She loves the people of Africa and what God is doing in their lives.

At the last gathering, Jeff shared his dream for his ministry at the school. Here’s my notes.

Four years ago he felt the call to the local community. So in turn, he offered his services as a youth worker to the local secondary school in Noble Park. It was for three days, no pay and was accepted by the school - despite concerns about religion, which were worked through to the satisfaction of both sides.

Yesterday morning I took Maddy down to the Anzac Day service. In a sense we took the easy route and went to Berwick whose service was at 11am, rather than Narre Warren’s dawn service, although I plan to go to one there in future.

I can’t say I enjoyed it, although in a way I did, because of the things it made me think about.

Community: I am lousy at estimating crowd numbers, but I would guess that there was at least a thousand people there yesterday and that was apart from all those who participated in the march itself. And it was all about community.

What is the Junction about?

The Junction began as a group of people wanting to be Christians without the overactive church activities. Wanted to be Aussies in chuch loving God, but also Christian outside of church.

The Junction’s core values are Mission, Community, Disciplines and Mentoring with Love overarching it all.

In some ways, we are still working out who we are. We don’t have to do something, we can be something.

Just a quick reminder, that due to the Labour Day holiday being at the end of the first weekend, our March Gathering has been scheduled later. It will be the following weekend - Sunday 14th March.