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.
Does it matter what you wear to church?
Are those who dress smartly in their ‘Sunday best’ for church just holding onto silly traditions? Does it matter what you wear when you worship God?
In heavenly love abiding: from acting to Christian ministry
Paul and Elaine Harper were actors beginning to enter the ‘big time’ in their careers in the late 1960s. Theatre and TV work was coming their way. Paul had just had a big break as part of a very successful theatrical production in London’s West End. However, despite these successes, they both felt a gaping emptiness and growing unease.
The decline of the local church
Our prayer is that people would come into our churches from the local area, saved and unsaved, to add to our numbers. Yet, I’ve been troubled in recent months by the thought that many of us don’t go to churches local to us. Instead, we go to the ones which fit our specification and forget the little faithful congregation next door.
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.
The surprising genius of Jesus
Jesus was (and is) a genius. As a statement of fact that’s unlikely to surprise you, after all, He is the Son of God, King of Kings and Lord of Lords! And yet in a world where we’ve had Jesus’ teachings taught, analysed and criticised for the past two thousand years, sometimes we lose sight of the earth-shattering intellectual geniusness of Jesus’ message itself.
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.
Is it time to stop buying books from Amazon?
Did you know that over 50% of books in the UK are sold through Amazon? This share jumps up to 70-80% for books bought online. Meanwhile, independent Christian bookshops are falling by the way-side, and now Amazon are making moves to cancel and censor Christian writers.
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!
Let’s get rid of excessive evangelism and reform the church
Over the last few decades, I believe that many of us have lost sight of what church is about and are instead gripped and obsessed with modern evangelism techniques in all their shapes and sizes. From seeker sensitivity to the construction of endless cafes, churches up and down the land have neglected the lives of the congregation. This is not healthy.