The Blessing of Things Going Wrong
You’ve made all your plans. Everything’s prepared. You double-checked and triple-checked. You committed it all to prayer. You’ve made every effort. Despite all the preparation, something goes wrong. The computer crashes and you lose all your data. Your guest speaker suddenly can’t come. The kids fall terribly ill. All of a sudden, your well-made plans are scuttled and you’re left wondering what on earth went wrong. At this point, you can consider a couple of responses. God forbid but some blame […]
We’re Stewards, And Not Owners
The idea of stewardship is found throughout the Scriptures. In fact, an important foundation that needs to be laid in all our lives is a realisation that we’re all stewards in this life. The one thing that causes us to fail to understand this is when we think we’re owners instead of stewards. This is easily evident in the way we speak and how we make decisions. When our conversations are filled with ‘mine’ and ‘I’, in all likelihood, we’re […]
Time to Discard
It’s a new year and the most common thing that people do is to make new year resolutions. We may not call it that but we all make decisions that amount to resolutions. Pray more, be more consistent with our quiet time, spend more time with family, exercise more, and the list goes on. The point to consider though, is that it’s a lot easier to eat junk food than to exercise off the extra calories we put on. It’s easier […]
What Is A Breakthrough?
A breakthrough is something we’ve all heard about very often. It’s something we pray for and perhaps something we pray over others. Personally, I’ve often wondered what a breakthrough really is. Is it a situation in our lives that stands like an immovable mountain that’s suddenly removed? Is it a sense of barrenness in our lives that’s broken? I suppose, those are all pictures of breakthrough. In the realm of the secular, a breakthrough is often much more easily defined. A […]
What Is A Breakthrough?
A breakthrough is something we’ve all heard about very often. It’s something we pray for and perhaps something we pray over others. Personally, I’ve often wondered what a breakthrough really is. Is it a situation in our lives that stands like an immovable mountain that’s suddenly removed? Is it a sense of barrenness in our lives that’s broken? I suppose, those are all pictures of breakthrough. In the realm of the secular, a breakthrough is often much more easily defined. A […]
Time to Tell A Story
“Facts tell, stories sell.” This is the mantra of advertising. It holds true because we all remember a good story, but facts are quite easily forgotten. Is it any wonder that much of our Scriptures are brought across to us as a testimony of lives and events? Amazing that our God would weave truths and principles within the fabric of human stories that can be far more easily remembered and retained in our memories. Jesus, did likewise, by the parables that […]
The Price for His Presence
The account of Mary’s anointing of the Lord is found in John 12. This may seem like a beautiful account of Mary’s devotion to the Lord, but really, if you could be present at that moment, you’d have found it awkward and intense. Awkward, because she broke cultural norms in order to step into a moment reserved only for men, to anoint the Lord. Intense and perhaps hostile, because her actions were misunderstood and totally inappropriate in those days. What […]
The Truth About Salt & Light
I believe there are some essential descriptions of Christians given by our Lord Jesus Christ that’s crucial for us in deciphering how we’re to respond in an ever-changing world. I’m certain that the Lord foresaw the days of every generation right up to the days of His Second Coming, and gave us keys to understanding how we’re to thrive in it. Two of those descriptions given to His followers are that we’re the “salt of the earth” and the “light […]
The Creation of Boundaries
The Creation account is so full of wisdom and understanding, but so few people pay close attention when reading through it. Our focus is often on the content of what was being created on each day of Creation, and we gloss over the process of creation and pay even lesser attention to what it says about the Creator. For one thing, Creation is punctuated by a principal word – “order”. God laid out order on a planet that was without […]
Thriving in the Culture
Quite recently, I heard a message from Pastor Chris Hodges of Church of the Highlands and he was preaching from the book of Daniel. The message got me thinking quite a bit. While this is not a reproduction of his message, many of these thoughts were catalysed by that sermon and I want to give due credit to that. Daniel and his friends were captives in Babylon and they were placed in a culture and system that was diametrically different […]
