There’s this divide amongst Christians when it comes to God’s soverignty. Group one characterises the group two’s view as we’re robots and God has scripted everything and we’re just moving through the motions, and group two considers group one’s perspective as we’re entirely free agents and God is basically watching to see what we’ll do, crossing his cosmic fingers and maybe dropping a few incentives or putting up a few roadblocks along the way. ...
Scroll with me for a second… A caravan parked on a red dirt track somewhere in the outback #blessed A set of keys held up in front of a SOLD sign. #blessed A new car with a bow on the bonnet. #blessed A tropical beach, coconut in hand. #blessed Kids in matching clothes at the airport. #blessed We’ve all seen these kinds of posts, and being fully honest, I’ve thought similar things while standing on a beach, or after purchasing a new car. Often the person posting in my feeds is a Christian, someone who loves Jesus, goes to church, prays before meals. They’re not wrong, either. That holiday is a blessing. That house is a gift. ...
Sorry, TLC. Imagine you’re carrying a bucket… Nothing special, just the kind you’d wash the car with. Someone filled it for you, and you’ve been carrying it around ever since. Here’s the thing about this water: it’s precious to you, you need it daily, everybody does; it’s life. Every drink keeps you going. So, of course, you look after it. But your bucket has a small leak. Nothing dramatic, just a slow drip from a crack near the bottom. You can’t fix it, and most days you barely notice it. But every time you look down, the level’s a little lower than you remember. ...
C.S. Lewis preached a sermon called The Weight of Glory in 1941. It’s fantastic and if you haven’t read it, you should. But Lewis takes the idea somewhere different, but his title and opening words inspired this article. What does “glory” mean? How would you describe glory? If someone asked you, what would you say? If you’re anything like me, for a long time my best answer was something like Laaaaaaaaahhhhh — some kind of onomatopoeic angel radiance. Glory felt real but difficult to pin down into a definition that resonated (no pun intended). ...
Why do we change? Do you ever think about why you’re not the same person you were ten years ago. Not whether you’ve changed, you obviously have. But, why. (Insert Ryan Reynolds meme) You’ve aged, for a start. Your body has done things you didn’t authorise. You’ve learned things, picked up skills, been handed experience you didn’t ask for. You’ve been moulded by events that you had no control over: a job that ended, a friendship that soured, a diagnosis, a birth. You’ve seen enough of the world to see it differently. And if you’er a Christian you’re also being sanctified, changed by the Holy Spirit into something more and more like Jesus. ...
We can’t have it all. The bible says this in many ways: you cannot have two masters; choose this day who you’re going to serve; deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me (Jesus). In life many decisions are trade offs, they are mutually exclusive: if you want one thing that means saying no to another. This is part of a finite physical world. ...
Identity: modern terms and their parallels in scripture 1. Race Common definition: A classification of people into groups based on shared physical traits (commonly skin color, facial features), often treated as if biologically fixed. Scriptural parallel: Scripture doesn’t classify humanity by phenotype. The closest structural analogue is the “Table of Nations” (Genesis 10), which sorts humanity by descent, language, clan, and land - genealogical and geographic, not skin color. ...
Imagine that you board a plane and fly to India, when you arrive you catch a train out of the city towards the more rural regions, then you hop on a bus and finally arrive at a small mountain village. The people stare at you strangely, wondering what a foreigner is doing in their village. You then proceed to share the Gospel in fluent English, a perfect articulation of 2 ways to live… The villagers continue to stare. You’d be crazy right? To share the gospel with those people you’d need to speak in their language, you’d need to communicate with them. ...
Note: I originally wrote this to help clarify the 1 Tim 2:1-8 passage, I have reworked it for this format in case it’s helpful for others. This post is written through a reformed understanding of God & His work. While I’d enjoy diving deeper and unpacking that topic, this post seeks to dive deeper into a specific outcome of a of the pillar of “Calvinism” namely, the scope (not value) of Christ’s atonement. ...
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control Galatians 5:22-23 ESV A quick google search for “fruit of the spirit” results in images like this: While these are lovely, heartfelt images created with great intentions, the “fruit” is depicted as several distinct kinds of fruit, sometimes all growing from a single tree, other times depicted separately. But doesn’t quite work logically or botanically. ...