Continue reading »]]> What is Godly Hospitality? It isn’t about a clean home and terrific food. It is more about being eager to receive and treat friends and/or strangers with love, generosity and friendly way, as Christ did when he was here on earth.  This post is not about giving you ideas about how to be ensure your house is clean and that you have a 3 course spread on the table; unlike last month’s fantastic recipe from Jess, but instead to get you thinking about a few questions or actual starters of conversations on our blog.  Think about the following

1.  What are some ways to turn your home into an inviting place to gather with friends and/or strangers?
2. Where can we go to receive Godly advice on true Hospitality?
3. What are some quick and easy comfort food recipes?

This blog is to start the conversations and hopefully discover how women at DPC can become more hospitable.   Because this is a launching pad of ideas, thoughts and conversations, we’d love for you to comment with some of the things you have been contemplating below…to get a cyber discussion going as well as face to face.

Continue reading »]]>

On Saturday a few car loads of DPC women found their way to Orange for the Christian Women’s Convention (CWC). Travelling to and from Orange was an important part of the day because such a coveted experience enables fellow travellers to get to know one another better  and on the way home the conversation naturally turns to reflection of the shared event and its content.

It was generally agreed that organisation of the day had been well planned. Everything seemed to go to plan and without a hitch…although I did learn later that our lunch had not turned up when expected and there were some frantic phone calls but the general assembly seemed blissfully unaware of this, to the committee’s credit.

The venue was very good, the food great, (they even had snakes and coffee bags) and the singing was uplifting, even if some songs were not known by everyone (we could still read the words).

We were assembled to find out about the Beautiful Life as described in Proverbs ch 31:10-31. Susan Raventhall, who spoke at our Christmas showcase two years ago, was the speaker.

The first talk dealt with how to understand that chapter in light of the rest of Proverbs. Susan proved, to our satisfaction, that this passage gives a detailed picture of what God’s wisdom will be like when lived out in any Christian’s life. That’s right, in the life of both men and women! She achieved this by going through the previous chapters of proverbs to show that;

• There are no shades of grey with God only a right or wrong way to live,
• Wisdom is consistently referred to as she or her in proverbs,
• God’s wisdom is always the better way, and
• Having a fear of God will help us not to sin.

The second talk was about the beauty of wisdom.  Sue concluded that the wise life is the beautiful life. That is; life lived by the wisdom of God as demonstrated in Jesus Christ is the way to a beautiful life.

We were encouraged to work through how God’s wisdom (that we have in Christ through his Spirit) will be worked out in our decisions about and attitudes towards;

•  Work
• Money
• Family life
• Community life.

She encouraged us to live wisely in the tiny moments of our lives; to not just believe that God’s wisdom was only necessary for the BIG things that we face.

Also that attitude is important i.e. doing things willingly, or eagerly, and working hard. Not to put possessions before people/the Kingdom of God.

The session after lunch was reserved for a question time with a Q&A panel for which we had been given the opportunity to submit questions on paper.

This session proved to be disappointing for at least some of the people from DPC, for a few reasons, and it seems that we all thought a third talk would have been much more helpful.

• The consensus was that it would have been better if the speaker had had exclusive responsibility to answer the questions rather than it being shared by the panel.

• The answers to the chosen questions did not always help to clarify or support the teaching we had received and did not always reflect a satisfactory theological position.

Having said that we were still glad that we went and thankful for the teaching that reminded us of the importance of submitting to God’s plan for us in Jesus to submit to and serve one another eagerly and lovingly through careful planning and hard work.

Your sister in Christ,

Ruth Chapman (Tuesday Church)

Continue reading »]]> It’s nearly time again for a great morning out with women from DPC.

The last women’s breakfast was a lovely morning spent eating lovely food, being encouraged by God’s word and being challenged to read God’s word more often in personal devotion time.

Term two has already rolled around which means the lead up to the next women’s breakfast is getting smaller & smaller.

We will be meeting together again on 2nd June at the Church Building.  Please be praying for Jenny as she prepares her talk and lock the date into your diary.

Hope to see you all there!

Continue reading »]]> The transition from School to Uni life can be somewhat daunting, even for the most prepared among us.  Below are ten things to keep in mind when thinking about Uni, how uni works and how to be praying for those that we know that are making the transition from Secondary to Tertiary education.

1. The rules are typically more lax You can live as you want — if you want to put up a One Direction poster in your room, then you can. If you want to stay up until 2 AM, you can.
2. However, you’re responsible at Uni. If you do break a rule, it’s mostly up to you to handle the consequences — your parents won’t be as useful in getting you out of trouble.
3. College classes move much faster,. If you have a 15 week semester and meet for class three times a week, you meet 45 times and that’s it. Compare that to high school, where you might have class 180 times in a year. There’s a big difference.
4. Way more work is done outside of class. Not only do the classes move faster, but you’re typically expected to be study the material outside of class. In fact, if you don’t, you will have a much harder time grasping it.(trust me I have seen it!)
5. Attendance isn’t really mandatory. If you don’t feel like going to class, you can usually miss it and not get in “trouble”, though you will miss out on that day’s material and you risk falling behind. If you don’t turn up have the courtesy to tell your lecturer!
6. Your parents aren’t there to hold your hand. If you only passed in high school because your parents were there to push you, you’re going to need to take charge in college if you want to avoid failing out.
7. Lecturers do more than teach. Lecturers have a lot on their plate at once, and only one of those things is teaching. Research is a big part of a lecturer’s life, and many go on leave due to this. You’ll need to be ready to compensate.
8. There are a lot of different types of people. If your home is pretty dull and everybody is the same, you’ll be surprised at the huge variety of people in college. For many, you can more easily find groups that match you.
9. People are less judgmental. Although there is still a surprising amount of drama in university, most students are more mature than their high school counterparts. So if you approach a random person to start a conversation, they’re much more likely to be open to it and to talk to you.
10. Everyone has worked to go here. Although there are the students who just come to university to party, every student had to put in at least some effort in order to be accepted. Every student varies on how serious they are about their studies, yet you know that all of them care at least somewhat. In high school, there were many students who didn’t seem to care at all.

This post has been written by Anne McLeod of Morning Church.

Continue reading »]]> Last weekend, some of the MOB went to Katoomba for two nights for the Katoomba Youth Convention (KYCK).  We had 5 girls with 2 female leaders go and 2 guys with 5 male leaders.  The 7 females that went have given a review of the weekend’s speakers & talks.

Please pray that all those that went, especially our younger sisters in Christ, won’t forget what they learnt but, rather, are spurred on to serve our wonderful Saviour King evermore because of the teachings they heard. (Please note that the Mobsters full names are not published for privacy reasons). Laura Mansell:  Who were the speakers and what were their talks based on? What was your favourite thing about Kyck? There were two speakers over the weekend, Sam Chan and Malcolm Gill. Both very down to earth yet lively speakers who opened the word of God to us. The weekend was broken into 6 sessions, and the during those talks we looked at 6 key doctrines in the Bible. Trinity, Justification, Regeneration, Adoption, Sanctification and Glorification. The theme was “Here I stand”, so looking at our foundations, what we stand for and why.

NM: Trinity… Malcolm Gill was first up with the doctrine of trinity.  The trinity is One true God made up the Father Spirit son, co-eternal and co-existant. It is 1 God, revealed to us in 3 Ways.

God is Glorious and loving. The Son lived to shine light on the father and each member of the Trinity delights in each other. They move in sync with each other, its like as if they were doing a dance.
When we understand the trinity, we learn more asbout who we should be and that He is God.

We need to recalculate ourselves to the reality that God is the only God and you are under his rule. We need to join in his dance.

Natalie Waghorn: Justification… Sam Chan spoke about why we need justification, who justifies, how we shouldn’t seek justification and how we should seek it.

Rules are always made for a reason, when they get broken (because they always do) people get hurt and teh person who makes those rules has every right to be angry.  God has every right to punish us for breaking his rules but, because of his love for us, he gives us the opportunity to be justified…this doesn’t mean our rule breaking goes unnoticed or undealt with, it means that Jesus offered to swap places with us.

When we approach Jesus, because he’s the only way we can come into the presence of God of God, we should do it acknowledging our insignificance and minuteness and our sinfulness not talk ourselves up for all the “great” things we have done.  ”For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” Luke 18:14.
We must cling to Jesus!

AM: Regeneration… Regeneration simply means being born anew, and in the talk by Malcolm Gill, we learnt about why we need to be regenerated, how it happens, and why it happens. We need to be regenerated because we weren’t created to live in a broken world; we’ve been degenerated by sin.

Regeneration is a result of God; no matter what we do, how hard we try, we can’t do it ourselves. By spending time in the word of God, we’re changed. We’re regenerated for the Glory of God; also for spiritual Growth, for “we were not birthed to remain as infants.”

Personally, I was challenged by this talk because it made me realize that nothing matters but God, that he doesn’t care how well I’m doing at school or what plans I have for my future, none of it effects the fact that I am a sinner and I can’t change that by myself. My favourite thing about Kyck 2012 was the “mandarin of truth” where we as The Mob shared with each other about what we thought was challenging or encouraging from the talks. It was so great to see the Mobsters really thinking over what we’d heard, and what that meant for them personally.

LT: Adoption… It was about the fact that we need a Dad and God is willing to adopt us as his child, him being our heavenly father. There were three main points presented: The first one was that God will be our father and we will be his children. He also talked about how the opposite to having a father was being afraid, and we should never be afraid of God. The second point was that God wants us to call him DAD, not to be just a father, but to be a DAD. The third point was that the spirit legally testifies that we are God’s children, and by being his children we are blessed with privileges. He also talked about the fact that we are heirs of God, co-heirs with christ.

I was challenged/encouraged about the fact that even thought we are a dot, on a dot, on a dot, on a grain of sand, on a 5 cent piece, in the middle of australia, God still loves us. The fact that he is so big and powerful, and he wants us to have such an intimate relationship, as to not only call him father, but to call him Dad.

NC: Sanctification… In this talk, Sam talked about how we need to be sanctified due to our human sinful nature. He used analogies such as a dogs nature is to wag its tail and a cats nature is to purr just like a humans nature is to sin. He told us that we are to put to death our sinful ways in a full hearted way and to give it everything we got.

Romans 8:1-13 was the passage he read from that said god puts his spirit in us (v 9) then throws out the bad stuff (jealousy/envy/malice, etc) and replaces with good stuff such as love/self-control/peace.

This was my favorite talk and it has encouraged me to put to death my bad ways and to live like Jesus did, to keep in a straight line on the path to god by reading the bible and praying and hearing the word from others.

KJ: Glorification… The glorification talk was about the fact that we live in a sin contaminated world and that us Christians should have a heart felt need for the redemption of creation. The reason that we are meant to get excited is that one day in the future we will be able to be with God and he will be walking and living among us. There will me no more crying, sin or pain. As Christians we should have a hope that our fading bodies will die, but we will be raised in an unperishable body. The glorious future is certain and secure because Jesus Christ was risen from the dead.

***

All in all, it was a great weekend to get to know each other better, sink our teeth into God’s word and encourage each other on toward love & good deeds.

Continue reading »]]> There’s a website that I follow on Facebook called Growing Faith. Growing Faith, an initiative of Youthworks, aims to equip Christian parents with resources to lead their families wisely through the often complex issues that daily life brings their way. They focus on a combination of spiritual and practical areas of family life, from early childhood parenting and teenage damage control, to marriage recovery and spiritual growth in parents.

One of the latest things they shared on Facebook was a movie review for “The Lucky One” with Zac Effron.

I’m a little bit too old for the Zac phenomena, and always have been, but because of the interaction that I have with Teen girls at MOB, I thought it might be good to have an idea of what the movie is about so that I can knowingly interact with them about their wanting to watch the movie.  I thought that the mothers of teenage girls at DPC may be interested in the review as well.

You can see the review here.  The review was written by a man by the name of Mark Hadley who is a Christian script writer and analyst.  He was the writer of the scripts for “The Christ Files” and “The Life of Jesus”.  He’s a very qualified journalist and writer.

Mark does not tell you whether or not you should allow your children to watch the movie, he just presents you with the facts so that you can make the decisions yourself.

Seeing that I probably won’t see the movie till it’s on DVD I found it helpful to have a little idea of it’s content and themes so now I can talk with the MOBsters about it.  I hope that you find it helpful too!

This post was written by Natalie Waghorn who goes to Evening Church.

Continue reading »]]> Jess Richards is from Night Church and she has shared the following recipe which is not only easy to make but also dairy free.  She has yet to try and bake it with gluten free flour but why not have a go and let us know what you think.
Enjoy cooking!

Pineapple Carrot Cake
1 cup plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
¾ tsp bi-carb soda
½ tsp cinnamon
1 large cup grated carrot
½ cup raw sugar
½ 400g tin crushed pineapple (drained)
½ cup sultanas
¼ cup walnuts
2 eggs
5 tbs oil

Mix dry ingredients. Add sugar, carrots, nuts, sultanas, beaten egg and oil. Stir until combined well. Large round or square cake pan. Bake in mod oven for 34-40 minutes. Ice with lemon or cream cheese icing when cooked.

Since this cake uses half a tin of pineapple and half a block of cream cheese for the icing I usually make two at once- freezing the second (or not).

Continue reading »]]>

What brought you to Dubbo?

We moved here from Coonamble after the farm was sold , because we had family here and had heard  there was a good church in Dubbo. So it seemed like a wise start. That was in 1994 ….

How long have you been a Christian?

I’ve been a Christian for about 29 years .

What are some ways you are connecting with other women?

I meet with a Christian friend to read the bible and pray each week and I really value that time. I am not so good at getting together with others in term time, usually only through phone calls and even then I’m not great.  The school holidays are when I try and catch up and get together …invite them over or have coffee etc.

Have you read any good Christian books lately you can
recommend to other women?

I have recently read  “Who We Are and How We Relate” by Larry Crabb.    I found it interesting and challenging in that so often we fail to trust the goodness of God.   The chapter “Selfish not Giving” challenged me with the idea that  we find it hard to accept the unpredictability of life, we try to change God’s good principles into promises that give us guaranteed results. We are always looking for why. Life this side of heaven is messy, unpredictable and painful. We put a lot of energy into trying to make circumstances happen as we want and figuring out principles for successful living rather than learning to rest in the character of God.  For those like me who often look for answers/reasons in life this book is worth reading.

Continue reading »]]> A book has been chosen…

The date has been set…

WE’RE READY TO ROLL!

This year, the book on the agenda is “Respectable Sins” by Jerry Bridges.  You will need to purchase your own copy of the book (Koorong and Word are selling it for $14.95).

Group discussion will be held on the following Monday Evenings: April 30th, May 14th & May 28th.

If you would like to join in with the book club, please let Kathryn Blanch know either by phoning 02 6884 2009 or emailing her at kathryn@dubbo.org.

Continue reading »]]> Hi everyone,

This is just your friendly reminder that CWC is coming up soon! It’s just under a month away!

There is an early bird fee of $35 if you register by the 1st May otherwise it is $40. This includes morning tea, lunch & tea/coffee. For all other details, you can see the last blog post on the convention here.

Carpooling, where possible, is a great way to travel to convention.  The travel time is a great opportunity to get to know each other better and to flesh out what you have learnt at the convention as well as to encourage each other and “spur each other on to love and good deeds”.

If you would like to claim a seat in someone’s car, the following people are who you need to see:

• Early Church – Kathryn Blanch
• Evening Church – Leanne Corfield
• Tuesday Church – Sue Smith

It should make for a great day!