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 …
In Lancefield in Victoria last year, some people found a lost sheep. This sheep had once belonged to someone, but she had obviously been living by herself for several years. She looked like this: Those who found her called her Baarack. No-one knows how Baarack came to be the way she was, but it was …
Matthew 18 is a chapter with a theme: Jesus is speaking about what the Christian community should be like. And the fundamental thing we have to understand is that our stance should be one of humility. When we think of others in the Christian community, we are to realise that we are like little children. …
What would Jesus do? It has turned up on bracelets now for decades, and many Christians find it a helpful thing to consider. After all, Jesus was without sin, and if we want to live a life that pleases God, surely Jesus is a useful example! And yes, of course we see aspects of Jesus’ …
In 1 Kings 22, King Ahab had a decision to make. The king of Syria had promised to return a series of cities to him, and after three years one key city had not been returned to Israelite rule. Should he ignore this breach or go to battle over it? He sought advice from four …
In 1 Kings 21, King Ahab was sulking. He wanted to have a field next to his palace for a vegetable garden, but the owner of the field had refused to sell it to him. He acted like a toddler. He “lay down on his bed and turned away his face and would eat no …
“Do not covet” is one of the ten commandments (Ex 20:17). That word, to covet, is not a word that we tend to use much anymore. It means to want something that is not yours. In Exodus 20, we are given the examples of a range of things that belong to your neighbour: his wife …
We always tend to see the sins and shortcomings of other people more clearly than we see our own sin. As Jesus said, we are the kind of people who notice the speck in the eyes of others rather than the plank in our own eyes (Matthew 7:3). It is hard to honestly assess our …