This week’s blog is indebted to a good friend who wrote to me requesting that I have a listen to Remona’s view of spirituality in the radio show, above. My friend had seen my post a few weeks ago about an encounter I had with a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Glasgow and wanted to know what I thought…
Continue reading “Paradise: Why Remona Aly’s Heaven is Nowhere Near Good Enough “
Not The Real Jesus
I went to Glasgow this week for a meeting and, coming out of the train station en route, walked past two young girls stood at a Jehovah’s Witness stand doing their thing. (passively standing to attention hoping that someone might stop so that they can ‘witness’ and earn some credits or even an eternal get-out-of-jail-card).Continue reading “Not The Real Jesus “
How We Have Fallen
What would dear Horatius have written had he lived in 2017?
We’ll chat one day.
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“Man is now thinking out a Bible for himself; framing a religion in harmony with the development of liberal thought; constructing a worship on the principles of taste and culture; shaping a god to suit the expanding aspirations of the age…The extent of the mischief no one can calculate. A soul without faith, a church without faith, a nation without faith, a world without faith – what is to be their future? What is their present? When faith goes, all good things go. When unbelief comes in, all evil things follow.”Continue reading “How We Have Fallen”
Yours Is
Respect Your Elders
If you’re a millennial, listen up for a minute!
One of the generational characteristics of millennials – though not always – is often a fundamental lack of respect for adults older than them – “elders” if you want an old-school word. At some point you will have been negatively influenced by this through peers, poor parenting/teaching, pop culture, the spirit of the age…whatever. Being married to a long-suffering secondary school Teacher I know this is a major issue within this particular generation and one that holds back the individual in question, plotting a course for their future that will ultimately be mediocre riddled with stunted relational intelligence.Continue reading “Respect Your Elders”
Redeeming Radicalisation
Call Him Abba
I bumped in to a neighbour today out on the street on the way home from work. He’s an Iraqi Muslim who’s lived in Scotland for probably longer than I’ve been alive, has a wife and children and grand-children. He’s such a great guy…so gentle and willing to genuinely discuss and talk about loving God. We stood in the street for just fifteen minutes or so but for the whole time we talked about the Bible (like, “oh what’s your new job, Nick? What does Bible Advocacy mean? etc etc) about faith and about Western/Eastern world views that influence spirituality.
It was awesome.
Then, as I sensed the conversation shifting, I felt like I needed to just emphasise the Father.
Just for the moment, forgetting the state of the world, the mutual exclusivity of the Bible/Qu’ran, Trump, North Korea, terrorism, unbelief riddling the Nations, the cesspit of false teaching in the church, blind “leaders” leading others like sheep to the slaughter, societal obsessions about so-called gay marriage and mirages of equality and inclusion and counterfeit love….just for the moment let’s just talk about Him.
About Daddy.
So, I said that to him…Continue reading “Call Him Abba”
The Miracle of Soft-Heartedness: Escaping Our Hate
There isn’t a greater healing possible than that of the human heart. Not a healing from angina, leaky valve problems, left ventricular hypertrophy or some other kind of disease, but healing from the unbelieving, human spirit condition of hard-heartedness, common to us all.Continue reading “The Miracle of Soft-Heartedness: Escaping Our Hate”
Masquerading Messengers of Light
In Matthew chapter 10, we read Jesus sending out His sheepish yet hard-core company of followers into a dangerous world with the gospel and an express set of instructions that are particularly interesting – particularly interesting because He usually didn’t prescribe formulas for miracles. There was no Visa, no North Face apparel, no weekending bag picked up for a snip at T K Max – just the gospel and a heart and mouth of Spirit-drenched faith.
Fledgling in their spiritual authority, Jesus told them to speak to the houses that they entered (v12), monitor the activity of their peace (v13), find the places that were deserving of their presence and to shake the dust from their feet in protest against the places that weren’t (v14). [Related reading: The Places We Call Home]
Church, Wake Up!
Exercising an Exorcising Faith
I love thinking about Jesus. Because His name is inextricably linked with infinite, creative power, even my thoughts about Him hold potential to change my heart. Indeed, the epic hymn Be Thy My Vision exclaims,
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night…
So, settling down with the Bible in hand and regularly spending time soaking in Jesus’ gospel stories – His words, actions, thoughts, prayers – is the best thing you’ll ever do.
He Could Not Be Hidden
But there’s one moment in the life of Jesus that has always left me particularly confused.Continue reading “Exercising an Exorcising Faith “
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