How do you prepare your house if you know that people are coming to visit you tomorrow? I suspect most of us would clean up a little bit. We would put the areas that visitors will see into some kind of order. Yet what about the bedrooms and areas that visitors wouldn’t usually go into? …
Many people today cannot see any benefit to denominations. There has been an explosion of independent or pseudo-independent churches in the last few decades. After all, it fits with our independent culture; why should anyone else tell me what to do in my local church? Why do I need some dated bureaucratic structure that simply …
Have you heard of the “slippery slope” argument? It is the assertion that if you permit one thing, that will lead to other things being permitted. You see this kind of argument used every time a new type of law is introduced. There are those who think that this argument is flawed, that permitting one …
Most of us have many good intentions. We really do intend to clean the house, or get around to fixing that problem, or to start that exercise programme. We mean to do it, but it never seems to get done. This is not a new problem. People have always been like this. We see this …
Christians love to use the words ‘grace’ and ‘faith’. You would be hard pressed to listen to a Christian sermon or sing a Christian song without mention of one of these words. But what do they mean? Can you come up with a short and simple definition of each one? Sometimes we assume we know …
You see the word “joy” all over the place this time of year. You have probably seen it on decorations, on greeting cards, and in supermarkets. You may well have sung carols which use the word liberally throughout. It is supposed to be the most joyful time of the year. And there are things that …
What do you think it means to encourage someone? My immediate thought was that it meant to say something nice to someone. Perhaps that would be compliment their clothes or thank them for something. Perhaps it would be cheering on a child in a sporting match. While those are indeed good things to do, Christian …
Going to a church service every week is something that most Christians have historically done at a bare minimum. (There have been times when two services on Sunday, or even daily services at dawn, were the norm!) Yet the pattern for many Christians in our current age is to go to church much less regularly …
Our church had its annual church camp last weekend. It was, as usual, a really enjoyable and useful time in the life of our church. The majority of the regulars from our church spent Friday evening to Sunday afternoon together at a campsite in the suburbs of our city, hearing three great talks from Luke …
Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a wedding banquet a king is hosting for his son in Matthew 22. Through history, God had been preparing the way for his people to come to this big party. This was primarily the Jewish people through the covenants and prophets and patterns of the Old Testament. The …