Centre for Christian Living podcast

Life is filled with many things that we appreciate: health and children are among some of the most treasured things we enjoy. We all appreciate health, as sickness, disease and disorders can affect what we consider a "normal" life. There is also a desire in most of us to raise children. But as good as health and children are, are they ends to be pursued at any means? Much in our modern health prac...

Have you ever wondered if you’re doing enough? It’s hard to escape this question. Do you ever feel like you haven’t exercised enough, read enough, given enough, spent enough time with people, or spent enough time alone? Thinking about these things is exhausting. It’s no wonder that many find life a worry. In the information age, there is always so much more than we can consume. And because we’re m...

Church discipline is a much-neglected topic in the modern church. However, the Scriptures suggest it is needed for the good of the church and because Christians are called to love people caught in sin. How do we apply the biblical principles of church discipline to the modern church? What can we do at earlier points to ensure that more drastic church discipline is not required? Furthermore, how do...

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Our recent live event looked at Jesus’ teaching on lust in the Sermon on the Mount. We were challenged in that event to consider once more the lives of holiness befitting Christian disciples. This includes abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage, but we also looked at the problems of pornography and living lives in the midst of a sexualised culture. In this episode of the podcast, we’r...

Jesus raises alarm when he warns us that adultery isn’t limited to sexual intercourse outside of marriage, but actually begins earlier in the lustful glance of the eye and mental fantasies. Adultery isn’t just physical; it can be done in the heart. So great is the threat of a wandering eye or a straying hand that Jesus suggests losing a part of the body instead of facing the fire of hell. Kingdom...

In many places around the world, it’s easy for Christians to take peace for granted. But for much of history and even in many current contexts, Christians live with the real fear and threat of violence. One of God’s great provisions in this world is the establishment of nations and national powers. These powers are intended to provide defence for their people, as well as just rule. But Christians...

Violence is not only a physical activity, it's also something that lurks in our hearts. The Lord Jesus cautions us that refraining from physical violence is only half of the equation. We are also liable for our thoughts towards one another. Kingdom righteousness demands that Christians pursue reconciliation with one another, rather than harbouring a grudge. This is urgent work! At our first live e...

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In this episode of the CCL podcast, we get to know another one of the students on our CCL team—a young man named Jordan Cunningham who, as you’ll learn, has come from quite a long way to study at Moore College. Jordan’s story is quite different to Brooke Hazelgrove’s, who we met in an earlier episode, though there are similarities in some of the steps they both took on their path to theological ed...

For many Christians, the law is one of the most challenging topics for their life. It’s as if they feel they’re walking a tightrope between legalism on the one side and licence on the other—as if they either need to perform, or else they’re simply embracing a loose way of living. But careful examination of the teaching of Jesus helps us gain a richer picture of the law and its place in our lives....

Some of our modern church practices can fool us into thinking that our faith is a private matter, or perhaps even that church itself is something for us to sit and enjoy, listening to a nice message and then leaving. But the Christian life is inherently focused on others, not just on self. A quick search of the New Testament will show that there are more than 50 occurrences of commands for one ano...

In this episode of the CCL podcast, we get to know one of the students on our CCL team—a young woman named Brooke Hazelgrove. In some ways, Brooke’s path to ministry and Moore College was quite typical of many of our students: she was raised in a Christian home, she attended a Christian school and she decided to answer the call to ministry around the time she graduated from university. But in othe...

Community isn’t something that is static; it stretches through time, as culture is passed from one generation to another. The Bible has many commands about ensuring that its truth is passed on to the next generation. Yet as simple as this command is, the practice of raising up children and new leaders can cause great anxiety. At our October 2021 event, Ruth Lukabyo, Dean of Women at Youthworks Col...

In every age, societies have had methods for finding a future spouse. For better or worse, our culture embraces dating. But what is dating? Is it Christian or not? And if it isn’t, is it redeemable, or should Christians be looking for an alternative? In this episode of the CCL podcast, we feature a recent event from our partner, the Priscilla & Aquila Centre, at which Moore College Dean of Student...

When Paul and Silas came to Philippi in Acts 16, a woman who was demon possessed began to pester Paul. Paul commanded the demon to come out of the woman and she was set free from spiritual bondage. But Paul and Silas then got into trouble, because setting this woman free came with economic consequences: she had been enslaved by owners who exploited her demonic abilities for profit. Now their slave...

Children are vital to God’s great plan to save the world: Jesus one said, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” (Mark 10:14-15). But as simple and stark as this object lesson is, it also has packed into that simplicity, incredible profundity and com...

Perhaps you’ve noticed that awareness about issues surrounding mental health has risen sharply in recent years. More and more people have been coming forward, sharing their own experiences of their struggles with depression and anxiety. New articles and books about this topic seem to come out every month. In Australia, RU OK? day in September has become a national annual fixture. And of course, th...

The most liberating truth of the Christian life is that our sins have been forgiven. But one of the most difficult challenges of the Christian life is forgiving others as we have been forgiven. Does forgiving mean forgetting? If we forgive, must we still trust? At our August 2021 CCL event, Kanishka Raffel, Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, and Philip Kern, Head of New Testament at Moore College, lea...

What do you choose to rejoice in? What do you give thanks for? In the middle of a pandemic, do you thank God for your health, for your home, for your job that continues to provide for you through the restrictions? Could it be that you are focusing merely on the circumstantial—material and “desirable” lifestyle matters—rather than the theological? In this interview with Archie Poulos, Director for...

One of the most horrible realities of living life in a broken world is knowing violence in your own home. Each person expects to have safety and security amongst their nearest and dearest. And yet, because of sin, too many people—women, children and even men—don’t enjoy safety in their homes. This has been true of families since the first family, when Cain killed Abel. But unfortunately, this rema...

There’s a been a long history of discussion about living life with purpose. This goes back to ancient times and the works of philosophers, but features more recently in Christian books like “The Purpose Driven Life”, or in secular leadership and lifestyle books. There’s something sensible in recognising that purposeful living is better than simply drifting. And yet while many of us think about wan...

Our most recent event from our series on community focused on “Dealing with sin”. Today on the podcast, we bring you a special follow-up episode with our speaker, Moore College lecturer Chris Conyers, to answer some of the many outstanding questions that came to us during the event.

Sin is a real threat and problem to our lives and our communities. The Apostle Paul warns us that “a little leaven leavens the whole lump” (1 Cor 5:6) and Jesus told his disciples that it would be better to lose an eye or cut off a hand that causes one to sin than for a person to go to hell (Mark 9:42-48). But how are we supposed to deal with sin? We hide it in our own lives, and we are quick to j...

Women undoubtedly face very different struggles than men. They have pressures related to body image, beauty and sex that men are often unaware of and certainly don’t understand first-hand. While there are many times women talk about facing up to these challenges, one question we don’t often ask is how men can help. Today on the podcast, Chase talks with Akos—another man—in full recognition that th...