Prevenient 

This one word sums up the only impulse for our continuing prayer and love for God that sometimes may seem to flicker rather than blaze. Like a heart that only beats because it was created to be myogenic.

When you feel as though you don’t desire God as you should, as you want to, remember that you only have any desire in the first place because He first moved toward you! It’s His grip on you…

It’s this specific aspect of the nature of God, of Jesus, of Holy Spirit, that never ceases to amaze me or communicate deep comfort to my heart.

APART FROM THE SHEER, UNIMAGINABLE MERCY OF CALVARY, HAVING ANY *ONGOING* DESIRE FOR JESUS, WHATSOEVER, IS THE GREATEST GRACE AND MERCY I THINK I CAN IMAGINE

A W Tozer says it like this:

We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit. “No man can come to me,” said our Lord, “except the Father which hath sent me draw him,” and it is by this very prevenient drawing that God takes from us every vestige of credit for the act of coming. The impulse to pursue God originates with God, but the out working of that impulse is our following hard after Him; and all the time we are pursuing Him we are already in His hand: “Thy right hand upholdeth me.”

Excerpt from The Pursuit of God

Praise Him!

Great Doors

If you look at the very end of 1 Corinthians 16, you’ll read Paul describing a spiritual reality that I believe is at the very heart of effective Christian ministry, fruitful discipleship and that is also one of the most difficult lessons to learn as we mature in faith as ‘ordinary’ men and women.

Grab a coffee or can of diet Coke or a Kit Kat or something; I think it deserves the spotlight for 5 minutes:Continue reading “Great Doors”

Recapture the Wonder

I’m reading this jolly good book in my lunch-times at the moment – Recapture the Wonder by Ravi Zacharias.

At the beginning, Ravi focuses on an ancient theory from Plato who believed that all philosophy began with wonder until it was replaced by knowledge – that there is a world of difference between belief and knowledge:

Plato said, ‘belief was the position of a child; knowledge was that of an adult.’

Zacharias replies to Plato’s theory with this:

Can it not be our hope as well that the shadows and beliefs of our childhood become only greater and more wonderful when dispelled by knowledge? Can there not be a reality where the mere world of fantasy is superceded by the fantastically true?

He’s pointing us of course to our daily waking reality as followers of Jesus which is meant to be thoroughly infused with wonder and knowledge together (imagine a diagonally ascending line from left to right where X is knowledge and Y is wonder).

Like me, you may have secretly wandered into a wardrobe as a child, shut the door quietly behind you and gently reached out to touch the back, longing for it not to be there. As your finger tips touched the thin splintered back, the crashing knowledge that the fern cones and snow weren’t really there felt genuinely gutting, only compounded by a brand new sense of your own ‘silliness’ as your childhood dreaming began to drift across Plato’s bridge to the cul-de-sac of adult knowledge.

But both little children and big adults can be reminded again of the truth that the Kingdom within really will be like a ‘magic’ Kingdom without – to touch and taste and see; that this suspension bridge of other-worldly, gospel hope is more than sufficient for the wonder of belief to thrive side by side the ‘knowledge’ of our enchanted here and now.

The Father Never Lies

The world reminds you every day that

“The camera never lies”

But The Father reminds you every day that

“The Father never lies”

I’m reminded that there is a father of lies but assured that the Father doesn’t ever lie.

I saw a man today crippled by the fear of what the camera said, by the bad news message preached from the camera of lies echoed again and again by the media malaise of our day.

I’m reminded that there is a father of lies but assured that the Father doesn’t ever lie.

We may have grey and we may have bumps; we may have wrinkles and we may have spots.

I’m reminded that there is a father of lies but assured that the Father doesn’t ever lie.

The Father looks at the things that man can not observe, that the father of lies understands not, that the camera can never see.

The King is enthralled with your beauty

Psalm 45:11

I’m reminded that there is a father of lies but assured that the Father doesn’t ever lie.

The father of lies means for us to live bent over, doubled up, hounded by crippling species of fear.

I’m reminded that there is a father of lies but assured that the Father doesn’t ever lie.

The Father has a picture of you as on His fridge in all your unspeakable beauty, in all your unseen worth.

He’d like you to see His picture.

I’m reminded that there is a father of lies but assured that the Father doesn’t ever lie.

The

Father

Never

Lies

Soul Speak

I was watching Match of the Day last night (MOTD) which, for anyone reading this from outside the UK, is a staple part of most football-loving chap’s Saturday evening. 

In the match between my beloved Liverpool FC and West Ham United, the referee had a mare: he wrongly sent off two players, one from each team.

John Noble was the West Ham player to get shown a straight red for a challenge that barely warranted a yellow. But it was the Commentator’s phrase in response that caught my attention when the player went in for the supposedly horrendous tackle. He asked provokingly, 

“What did this [a supposedly terrible challenge] show us of his soul…?”

As it happened it didn’t show us anything, other than that Noble was quite gracious in the end because his tackle definitely didn’t deserve a red card.

For us, what does X, Y and Z of our daily life and behaviour show of our soul?

When I read this following verse this morning, I was glad of His watchful eye over my often ‘leaky soul’.

“For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.” 1Pet2.25

  Photo taken in Edinburgh’s Pentland Hills with Arthur’s Seat in the distance 

Man On

Have you ever been lied to? Has someone ever tried to deliberately mislead you? Or have you ever bought something and afterwards have had that horrible feeling that you’ve been ripped off? Maybe at a car garage when your car needed an MOT/service? Or when you were getting a quote for work on the house? Or when your Landlord wouldn’t give you all your deposit back? I’m sure you have.

Thankfully, most people are decent and aren’t out to lie, deceive and cheat.

But “the primary strategy of the devil is to deceive us. He is primarily a deceiver…” as John Piper says in a recent blog article from Desiring God. I’d encourage you to read it because it got me thinking about the questions, above, about our life under God.Continue reading “Man On”

New Day

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Persevere

Mairi and I, along with our friend Sam, spent a glorious few days last week in Torbay filming on location for the Jesus Come project which is coming along nicely.

We also had plenty of time for much-needed relaxation including finding my old childhood fishing spot off Berry Head where I have memories of catching fish as a wee boy. It was so much fun.

We’d got the rod out and set up camp at Berry Head but for three or four hours there was barely even a bite on the end of the line. Then, all of a sudden, Continue reading “Persevere”