Senior Pastor, Southland Church
Rob Norman: David | God’s Heart
God’s own testimony is that David was a man after his own heart. What an amazing commendation! David, who lost the battle with infidelity when he committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband killed in an attempt to cover his sin, was deeply flawed and sinful, yet God said he was ‘a man after my own heart’. This statement says as much about a Holy and merciful God as it does about David himself.
Rob Norman: Joshua | God’s Visionary
Apprentices don’t learn in a theoretical bubble. Joshua served a long and ‘experience rich’ apprenticeship under Moses, it was in this context that he developed as visionary leader.
Rob Norman: Moses| God’s Leader
Leadership is both a gift and a discipline. God gives the gift of leadership, but great leaders are formed over time and with training, practice, and experience.
Rob Norman: Joseph | God’s Favour
Joseph’s life began with great promise. He was the favourite son of his Father, and he had a very positive outlook and healthy self-esteem. Favour invariably brings challenges with it, like Jacob, if we want to see God’s favour materialize we must learn to ‘stay the course’ with Him.
Rob Norman: What In The World Is Happening | Live For The King
As kingdom people, the way we live will present a stark contrast to the way everyone else in this world lives, even more as we grow in obedience to Him. This puts us on a rapidly diverging path from the world and its ways.
Rob Norman: What In The World Is Happening | Hearing God
We live in a world where “words” are prolific and so we unconsciously filter out the noise and process our auditory senses accordingly. This ability to filter and decode words can either enhance or dull the way we hear God. Unfortunately, the supernatural has been filtered out of western secular intellectualism.
Rob Norman: What In The World Is Happening | Leading With Integrity
Leaders in the world manipulate the facts to fit with their particular agenda. When integrity isn’t maintained, a number of symptoms begin to appear –
Rob Norman: What In The World Is Happening | Raising Families
Parenting is hard. If you’re struggling with raising a family, you are among friends. In a world where the prevailing values and ethics are changing so rapidly, how do we move forward?
Rob Norman: What In The World Is Happening | Knowing Our Ethics
Ethics and morals relate to “right” and “wrong” conduct. While they are sometimes used interchangeably, they are different: ethics refer to rules provided by an external source, e.g., codes of conduct in workplaces or principles in religions. Morals refer to an individual’s own principles regarding right and wrong.
A Biblical code of ethics and morals will always bring true Christians into conflict with the world. We should not be surprised when we come under fire from the World on any number of areas including marriage, relationships, family, sexuality, abortion, money, justice, just about everything…
Rob Norman: What In The World Is Happening | Knowing Our Message
The Christian life has always been lived out in a World that is struggling to find meaning. This world is fallen and will NOT recover. The Church is the only hope of the people of the World, and our message is “Jesus”
Rob Norman: The Acts Church | Equipping
It is evident in the Gospels that a large part of Jesus’ earthly ministry was devoted to equipping disciples for the ongoing ministry of The Church. Paul, the Apostle saw this and articulated its importance in Ephesians 4. From the ascension of Jesus and outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts 1 and 2 through to the end of this book, the church can be seen emerging as God’s vehicle for bringing the ministry of the kingdom of God to the world.
Rob Norman: The Acts Church | Persecution
People that spend time with Jesus are bound to be persecuted. Do people around you recognise that you have been with Jesus? I want to suggest this morning that there is nothing more injurious to the Gospel message than “Christians” who have not been with Jesus.
Rob Norman: The Acts Church | Power
A church without power is a church without God. The Old Testament account of Gideon is a great picture of God and His Church. Judges 6, 7 & 8 unfold the exploits of Gideon and his unlikely army and how they broke the yoke of their Midianite rulers.
Rob Norman: Christians and Politics
Whenever there is an intersection between faith and politics, people tend to get a bit anxious, and arguments abound around the historical problems of Christendom and the principles of Separation of Church and State. It might shock you, but the Christian call to politics is fundamental to the great Commission.
Rob Norman: The Acts Church | Prayer
When we understand prayer, we also begin to understand that prayer is at least as much about hearing from God as it is about God hearing from us.
Rob Norman: The Acts Church | Testimony
Testimony is a legal term; it is “a solemn statement made by a witness under oath; an assertion offering first-hand authentication of a fact; a testimony serves as evidence”. Disciples are Jesus have a testimony or testimonies that bear witness to His work in our lives.
Rob Norman: The Acts Church | Preaching
Mark 16:20 Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.
Clearly from this verse the preaching was done by the disciples; disciples are not special people; they are simply followers and apprentices of Jesus.
Rob Norman: The Acts Church | Seven Marks of an Apostolic Church
The church of the book of Acts was dynamic and experimental; it was powerful and daring; it had problems, but it was also effective at reaching the lost. New Testament churches minister with the same authority the Apostles used, in this sense they are apostolic.
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | The Great Commission
The Great Commission is the mission statement of Christ’s Church. This commission is is dripping with a mandate to preach and demonstrate the gospel of the kingdom of God. Mark’s Gospel reveals the threefold nature of the Great Commission, namely:
1. Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation
2. Baptize all who believe
3. Signs following
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | The Human Condition
Jesus understood fear and anxiety with all the emotions and physiological processes that take place in the human body when we are gripped by fear. In the lead-up to being taken away to be crucified he experienced the frailty of humanity in a very tangible way.
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | Understanding Worship
Mark 14 is a weighty chapter. The beginning of the chapter builds the foundations of Christian worship when a woman lavishly anoints Jesus with a years’ wages worth of expensive perfume. Jesus was the centre of her worship experience and He is also the centre of our worship.
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | The Last Days
The destruction of the temple in AD70 was, to those in Jerusalem, an apocalyptic event that effectively marked the end of the Old Testament sacrificial system. All this took place within 40 years of the death and resurrection of Christ. As with most apocalyptic prophecies, there is often a relatively short term fulfilment as well as a long term recurring fulfilment until ‘The End’.
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | Apocalyptic Patterns
Biblical apocalyptic literature has been the subject of intense interest for centuries. We all want to know ‘what will be’ and ‘what the signs are’, of the end of the world.
Mark 13 and its parallel gospel texts Matthew 24 and Luke 21 are apocalyptic texts and are best understood when we take the time to understand how this unique kind of prophetic writing works.
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | Confrontations & Conflict
But the message of the kingdom of God is a confrontational message that will often bring us into conflict with the worldviews, practices and values of others. So if our message is confrontational we had better learn how to do conflict.
Rob Norman: Prophetic Pitfalls
Rob looks at some of the pitfalls of the prophetic ministry and offers some helpful insight.
Many well known, contemporary ‘prophets’ have made predictions that sound like Old Testament Prophecy. This kind of prophetic model is either specifically premised with “thus says The Lord” or it is spoken with such authority and certainty that it has the same implied meaning as “Thus says the Lord” and because it comes from leaders who are respected and, in some cases, revered it carries disproportionate weight or authority.
Unfortunately, when ‘prophets’ speak with such certainty and authority, the damage done when they inevitably get it wrong is almost unmitigated.