Have you ever come to prayer or Bible reading or going to church and thought it was all too hard? That you knew it was a good thing to do, and you knew you should do it, but it felt just like a chore? Like doing the dishes or washing your clothes? Essential, but not …
Most churches run Bible study groups which usually start this time of year. There will be announcements in many churches urging people to read the Bible with others in groups weekly or fortnightly. If you usually take part, you’ll go along. If you have heard those announcements and ignored them, thinking you are too busy …
It is Christmas. Again. There are some that love tradition, doing the same things in the same ways every year. Even if you don’t love this kind of thing, you cannot avoid it. The supermarkets are full of the same music, the decorations are dusted off and put up, and various meals are organised for …
Sometimes you might hear someone say something like this: “I hope the sermon today is interesting; I hope the preacher uses funny illustrations and makes the Bible interesting”; or “I love that particular Christian blogger; they make the Bible relevant to me”; or “I think non-Christians won’t be interested in the Bible; let’s reduce the …
I have recently returned from the General Assembly of the World Reformed Fellowship. As I mentioned in my previous post, this was a wonderful opportunity to meet with like-minded people from around the world, to encourage one another, and to consider carefully the challenges we face in the modern world. The theme of the GA …
This past week I have had the privilege of attending the World Reformed Fellowship General Assembly in Jakarta, alongside an elder from one of our sister churches. The World Reformed Fellowship (the WRF) is an organisation that aims to connect people from the Reformed tradition together from different churches, denominations and organisations worldwide. The hope …
It is true that, to be a Christian, there are things that we need to understand intellectually. We need to understand that we are sinners, that Jesus is God himself, that he came to earth as a man and died for our sins, rising again to prove that that the sacrifice was accepted. These are …
Our church accepted six people into membership yesterday. This is always an encouraging time as we think about what it means to be a church together. It means not just attending a place to get teaching and sing some songs, but being part of a family and serving one another. It involves commitment, and membership …
Biblical teaching about the church assumes that there will be a mix of older and younger people present in the congregation. We see instructions directed specifically to older people (like 1 Timothy 5:9-11) and to children (like Eph 6:1-3). There are instructions on how younger people should treat older people and vice versa (1 Timothy …
If all kinds of Christian churches believe that the Bible is God’s word, that should be enough, right? All Bible-believing churches should be very similar to one another. In an ideal world that would be true. The reality is that we are all sinful people who don’t always agree on things and who read the …