On this site, you can read about, comment on and contribute to my ongoing reflections as I wrestle with questions about God, Faith, Life, The Bible, Church and Theology.
It turns out I like comfort. Actually I’ve always known that. I’m a creature of habit and routine. I like things the way I like them. And I wouldn’t describe myself as a particularly out-there or radical person. But I’ve discovered over lent my comfort loving runs deeper than that…
I find the way Luke wraps up his telling of the nativity story fascinating. He essentially brings this epic tail crashing back to earth and leaves it in the mundanity of normal life…
Waiting for something which is entirely out of your control can be so hard. We like to control things, we like to make things happen. And when we’re powerless to change or affect our circumstances we can be quick to become disheartened and disillusioned…
It sometimes feels like this part of Matthew's nativity story plays out a little like the original Christmas pantomime: Herod, as the archetypal panto villain (minus the drag), is unwittingly told of Jesus’ birth by the Magi. In an attempt to preserve his evil reign he hatches a cunning plan to have the baby Jesus killed (boo hiss!).
God didn’t want Jesus' birth to be a celebration reserved for the elite, the middle-classes, or the educated. Quite the opposite. The only people he chooses to publicly announce the moment too, via an enormous choir of angels no less, were the societal rejects.
I find the little detail that “Joseph was a righteous man” one of the biggest understatements in the Bible! At the encouragement of God he puts himself in an unenviable situation! He marries Mary, a girl who is essentially pregnant with someone else's child, in a culture where such a union would be shrouded by rumour and shame.
I love how Mary reacts to her inclusion in God's story. This random, insignificant, mostly uneducated young girl responds to God's message that she would be put in the incredibly awkward position of a pre-marital pregnancy with the faith-filled words “I am the Lord’s servant…”
It's that magical time of year… you’re stressed up to your eyeballs with planning a million and one Christmas events. You’re desperately trying to find the festive cheer and end the term well but at the same time you can’t wait to just get the next couple of weeks out the way and start your own holiday…
I've been thinking a lot about size and perspective at the start of this new academic year. This year we’re rebuilding our student ministry almost from scratch with just a handful. Its easy in situations like this to be discouraged. But I keep returning to one glorious truth: God loves small things…
Too often theologians can become preoccupied with categories, and doctrines and systematised ideas. Too often theologians distort or even forget altogether that God is a being, a person to be known, and instead (albeit unintentionally) turn him into a concept that needs to be figured out and explained. To put it bluntly, we can easily end up idolising theology, our talk of God, over and above God himself.
The key to enjoying the Bible is to find something that captures your imagination and encourages you to read further. Happily, I think there are several different starting points that can be adopted by anyone at any time that can help do just that…
I often find that when I ask people how their walk with God is going, they shuffle a bit awkwardly before mumbling that they don’t pray and read the bible enough. What I find so funny and tragic about this statement is - if you think about it - its ridiculous…
Jeremiah 29:11 is one of the most well known and memorable versus in the bible. It also has to be one of the most misunderstood and misapplied…
So here’s the problem with our thinking about God’s plan and will for us, and basing our understanding on this particularly well known verse.
I’ve recently been wondering why Christians so readily describe themselves as being ‘saved’. When we say these things or talk about salvation (a word that means ‘to be saved or delivered’), what do we actually feel or believe we have been saved from…?
I recently produced a teaching session for Youth For Christ resources around the idea of Entitlement which posed two fundamental questions I think everyone needs to ask themselves: “What am I entitled to” and, perhaps the better, more hard hitting rephrasing “Am I entitled to anything!?”
There is a growing trend amongst some Christians and churches to try and make themselves more acceptable to others by stating that they aren’t religious, and/or they dislike Christians or even Christianity itself! To a certain extent, I can understand why they do it, but I’m not sure how helpful or how biblical it is...
Recently I’ve been thinking about how our relationship with God is a whole new category of relationship. But this leave us with the difficult task of trying to explain or define it…
I have been mulling over my understanding of the Gospel for a while now. Without a firm grasp of what the gospel is, how can living a life in response to it ever make sense or ever have meaning? I wonder whether a lack of depth in their gospel understanding is the reason why thousands of young people leave the church dissatisfied. Is it just that they’ve not been helped to properly see it as, not just “good news”, but the best news?
Theology is not simple. But what use is studying it, and how on earth can we build our lives on it, if we cannot at least make it tangible to ourselves or other people. We have to be able to name it to a certain extent!
You may, like me, have found yourself asking at times “Does God really want a personal relationship with me?” Recently this questions has crept into my head (again!) and so I thought I’d be proactive about exploring just why Christians believe the personal relationship thing is such a big deal….
