What shape do your prayers tend to have? I know how easy it is to be so self-focussed when it comes to prayer. Whatever issue is dominating my thinking at the time is what I ask for. It is so easy to come to God with our shopping lists, expecting him to fix everything. And …
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! …
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 …
The Old Testament is rich and full of useful things for Christians to think about. We see how God relates to his people, his faithfulness to the promises, and instructions about how to live. All of that is true. Yet there is a real danger that we don’t see the Old Testament in the right …
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 …
In 1 Kings 19, Elijah is having a hard time. He is on the run for his life from Queen Jezebel. He has been working hard to proclaim the message of God but has had little response. He is alone, far from home, hungry and tired, and he doesn’t see hope for the future. What …
Most of us would love to have a clear, personal experience of God. Wouldn’t it be great to see a vision, or be visited by an angel, or to have some miracle happen in front of us? We’d all like the spectacular things we see sometimes in the Bible to happen to us. There are …