Remember Me
I was stopped at a red light in the middle of Hereford one beautiful sunny morning last week. I watched …
I was stopped at a red light in the middle of Hereford one beautiful sunny morning last week. I watched …
When it comes to musical taste we all think we are experts. My upbringing in music was mixed. Dad had …
I hardly ever sign off my emails ‘God Bless you’ but a lot of people do. I always felt it …
I spent an afternoon out in the sticks this week. Our friends have a farm that is approached via narrow …
I have been in French speaking Quebec for the last week. Language has not been too much of an issue, …
“Seems you created your own illusion, fuelled by an image of me” The above are lyrics to a song by …
Below are the lyrics to a song called ‘Lost My Way’ by Plan B. It’s quite long but stick with …
I was thinking about prayer this evening. A lot of us have probably been told that we shouldn’t ask God …
Having just finished a two-week business trip to New Zealand and Australia in December 2000 I had one day free …
The Bible describes itself as a sword, in fact a double edged sword, yet many Christians use it like an umbrella rather than a sword. We cower under it, misusing and twisting it to protect ourselves from what God wants us to do, rather than letting it equip us to do what He wants us to do. The time we do actually unsheathe the sword we are so untrained with it we usually end up damaging ourselves or other Christians with our wild swipes and swings, and that’s not to mention the Christians who deliberately use it to engage in friendly fire incidents.
I was broken, and I was furious. How could this happen? How could he do that? How could society allow that? How could God allow that?
Jesus is praying for a way out. Yes you read that right. “Father this burden is too heavy, it’s too much surely you can’t expect me to? There must be an out, a plan b?” Jesus? Praying for a way out? An escape?
Can you imagine a church like that? I think I read about one once in a little book called Acts, but I don’t know that I have ever seen one. I do know I’d be knocking the door down if I did. A church where new ministries were set up because there were too many volunteers for the existing ones, where a bring and share lunch resulted in the left overs being used to benefit those who were hungry, where the treasurer came out of their counting room declaring that too much money had been put in the offering and we have to quickly decide who to bless with the excess. A church where prayers are answered by God, simply so he can get some peace from the sheer volume and noise of the requests!
I do not live up to the preconceptions of what my colleagues think a religious Christian should be. Am I a good advert for God? I think it’s the times I try to hardest to be a good advert that I end up failing the most spectacularly.
And what of our questions to God? Do we question Him fairly? Or do our questions miss the point and become nonsensical? Do we choose the right arguments, or do we stubbornly hang onto our own interpretations of God and scripture, flaying anyone who points out where we may be misguided?
I thought that reading through Matthew would be a bit routine; a familiar stroll down well read chapters and verses. But I discovered something as I set about my task, I discovered that I didn’t know Jesus at all.