I recently led a short theology class on singleness, love sex and marriage. The second session explained the Biblical teaching on sex. There were 27 people in the room, most of whom had grown up in Christian households. As part of this, I asked the group how many of them had their parents make some …
I don’t have a lot of hair, which means that this short episode in 2 Kings 4 catches my eye: 23 He [Elisha] went up from there to Bethel, and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, “Go up, you baldhead! …
Last Sunday night, my church hosted the annual Reformation Day combined service for our denomination. We are part of the Westminster Presbyterian Church. This is a small denomination of 11 congregations in Western Australia and 6 congregations in other states. The combined service was a couple of hundred people from these congregations singing with gusto …
One of the greatest cultural crimes you can commit today is to be intolerant. We must be accepting of everyone’s beliefs, whatever they might be. Now to most of us who have grown up in this world that seems perfectly reasonable and rational. We’re all free to make our own decisions about things, and we …
An increasing proportion of the population of the world is single. According to the latest census figures (2016), 24% of Australian households contain only one person. That percentage is rising sharply. There are a number of reasons for this, of course. An ageing population means there are a larger number of widows and widowers. A …
Have you ever slammed your finger in a door? Or stubbed your toe? The pain is immediate and significant. At that point in time, you cannot think of anything else. The whole world is reduced to the pain in your finger or toe. Nothing else seems to matter. After a while, when the pain subsides, …
‘Faith’ is one of those Christian words that everyone assumes that they know what it means. However, it is one of those words that people mean different things by. So let’s start by seeing what faith is not, before we see more clearly what faith is. Faith is not blindly hoping something is true. I …
I want you to think about your friends for a moment. Who do you spend time with the most? What kind of people do you most easily call your friends? For most of us, our friends are actually quite similar to ourselves. University students tend to spend time with other university students. Mothers of young …
Christians all love the idea of being forgiven. We love to sing of our sins being paid for and know how kind our God has been to us. That is 100% correct. If we trust in Jesus, we are secure knowing that Jesus paid our penalty for us. This has led many to struggle to …
When Christians think about sin, often it is in the context of our sins being forgiven. We know that we are sinners and that we do all kinds of things that disobey God, some of them unknowingly and some of them intentionally. But we have been forgiven for our sins, right? Jesus died for our …