Thinking for yourself
‘Do you think for yourself?’ asked the conspiracy theorist keen for an opportunity to get onto his favourite soap box and deliver his spiel about Bill Gates, the Rothschilds, the Pope, the World Economic Forum. Conspiracy theories aside, he raises a good question, how many of us genuinely do our own thinking?
What ever happened to good works?
Today it seems that many Protestant Christians can sometimes slip into practical antinomianism, living as though it doesn’t matter how we live because only faith saves. So what role do good works take if only faith saves? What did the Reformers believe about the role of faith and works?
Reading Psalm 119 one verse a day
I followed an old Puritan challenge of reading one verse from Psalm 119 each day. The psalm is all about the psalmist’s love of God’s word so it lends itself quite naturally to this practice. Here’s what I learnt along the way…
Charles Spurgeon on suffering, depression and humour
For those uninitiated into the colourful world of one of the most gifted and flowery nineteenth-century preachers, you’re in for a treat! However, one side to Spurgeon which doesn’t get too much attention is the very real struggle he had with depression throughout his own life.
Mind over emotion
Emotions are not really helping us.
We live in an emotion-fuelled world, and it often seems that decisions, from politics to consumer choices are based on how we feel in the moment. It does seem that in many church services there is an over-emphasis on our feelings and emotions. Whether that be the prayers, the preaching, or perhaps more obviously, the songs.
Context, context, context
What are the words you will most likely hear in a history lecture?
‘Context is key’
I have had that ingrained in me ever since I began my history undergraduate some years ago. Yet, ‘Context is key’ is also what we should remember when we open the Word and read Scripture.
Adoption: the most amazing but the most forgotten Christian doctrine
God has many titles to us as Christians: Creator, King, Lord, Redeemer, Saviour. All awe-inspiring in their own right. But our relationship to God is even more tender and precious than that: ‘Father’, writes James Packer, ‘is the Christian name for God’.
Keep going
There are many terrific quotes attributed to Winston Churchill, even discounting the ones erroneously given to him. For a man who ‘mobilised the English language and sent it to war’, Churchill did a good business inspiring turns of phrase to lead and motivate the British people through the dark times of the Second World War.
Dealing with doubts
Doubts. We don’t often talk about them, but we all get them. We’re in a great spiritual war. Wherever a little green shoot of life pops up, you can bet your last Rolo that our enemy the devil will rush to jump on it. To survive, we must deal with our doubts and fight back.
Don’t start with your problem(s), start with God
For believers, the ultimate end-point of everything is certain: an eternity with God in paradise. But that’s definitely not always how we start when confronted with a trial or problem in the day-to-day. To endure through dark times, we must take our eyes off of ourselves and our problem(s) and fix them instead on Christ Jesus.
When God doesn’t answer our prayers
Let’s be honest, the life of prayer isn’t always a joyride. Sometimes it can seem that God doesn’t hear our prayers and His presence seems far away. We feel discouraged as heaven is silent. If this has ever been you, then I hope you can take some comfort from this blog post. God is on the throne and He is good!
Seven things the Holy Spirit does for us
It seems to me that Christians today either make too little or too much of the work of the Holy Spirit. In this post, I want to consider seven ways in which the Spirit has communion with us (with thanks to John Owen for pointing them out in his book!).