Whatever your problem(s), start with God
For believers, the ultimate end-point of everything is certain: an eternity with God in paradise. But that’s definitely not always how we start when confronted with a trial or problem in the day-to-day. To endure through dark times, we must take our eyes off of ourselves and our problem(s) and fix them instead on Christ Jesus.
Is it time to stop buying books from Amazon?
Did you know that over 50% of books in the UK are sold through Amazon? This share jumps up to 70-80% for books bought online. Meanwhile, independent Christian bookshops are falling by the way-side, and now Amazon are making moves to cancel and censor Christian writers.
When God doesn’t answer our prayers
Let’s be honest, the life of prayer isn’t always a joyride. Sometimes it can seem that God doesn’t hear our prayers and His presence seems far away. We feel discouraged as heaven is silent. If this has ever been you, then I hope you can take some comfort from this blog post. God is on the throne and He is good!
Let’s get rid of excessive evangelism and reform the church
Over the last few decades, I believe that many of us have lost sight of what church is about and are instead gripped and obsessed with modern evangelism techniques in all their shapes and sizes. From seeker sensitivity to the construction of endless cafes, churches up and down the land have neglected the lives of the congregation. This is not healthy.
Learning from the Sardis church
The church of Sardis is a warning to all of our churches as we pursue growth, numbers and a thriving community. In this post, I aim to draw our attention to our hearts, and who we are really serving.
Generational divides in the church
Have old and young ever been so divided? In the last fifty years we’ve seen seismic political, social, economic and technological gaps emerge between generations, the like of which has probably never been known in human history. These generational divides affect the church too. Local churches suffer when young and old don’t mix.
Seven things the Holy Spirit does for us
It seems to me that Christians today either make too little or too much of the work of the Holy Spirit. In this post, I want to consider seven ways in which the Spirit has communion with us (with thanks to John Owen for pointing them out in his book!).
Signals of transcendence
Os Guinness, in his new book, defines a signal of transcendence as a life-event or experience that transcends you beyond the normal, material world revealing something deeper which causes you to stop and think on the big questions of life and death, meaning and purpose, or the prospect that there is something more — a reality beyond physical matter.
Fight the good fight of faith
‘Fight the good fight of faith.’ Those words written to Timothy could not have been timelier. The young Ephesian pastor and his fledgeling congregation had to flee many things whilst living in a city dominated by pagan religion.