Dream & Interpretation: Two Lions

I had a dream a few nights ago that I recognised intuitively was Jesus speaking to me while I slept. There were two scenes in the dream that relate to my own personal life but, I believe, also to a generation of young people:Continue reading “Dream & Interpretation: Two Lions”

Ancient Missional Adrenaline

KFC Church

When I read the book of Acts, I really want to be a believer, a lover, a follower of Christ. I’m glad to be. I’m proud to be. When I go to church, I often feel like there’s something very important missing and I can be left feeling like I do when I occasionally go to KFC for some fried chicken – i.e. I’ve just eaten a bucket of it but I want to eat something else to combat that slightly empty, greasy feeling that it leaves me with. (Not that I’ve ever been to a church that I would describe as being greasy, or ‘chickeny’).

I’ve been ‘in church’ all my life so I’m not talking about looking for the mythological ‘perfect church’. (It’ll be our wedding day when we are ‘perfect’). And I absolutely agree that church certainly isn’t all, or even mainly, about our consumption and ‘being fed’. But it is a bit, isn’t it? Even when we’re ‘self-feeders’. Believers need the gospel as much as unbelievers, surely? Pastors need discipling as much as anyone else, right?

What I am talking about is the frustrating and inadequate compromise that there seems to often be in churches who excel in one major area of ecclesiology but then struggle in others. Let me give you some examples:-Continue reading “Ancient Missional Adrenaline”

Russell Brand’s ‘Manifestations of the Infinite’

It’s been another harrowing week on planet earth. The terrible atrocities in Paris and Nigeria (and elsewhere not covered by the media) have again functioned as the exclamation mark for the statement of our times – of threat, fear, violence and deceit – churned out from terrorist groups all around the world: “we will strike anywhere; you are not safe”.

I don’t know about you but I have a world-view that includes a conception of a spiritual realm – that beyond the world that we see and touch and taste and hear, there is another ‘more real’ world…the world of the infinite. This isn’t a world of confusing and sad-feeling interstellar realities, or of the actual post-code of the Lady in Black; it is an actual realm of angels and demons and of armies of both.

You may or may not believe in ghosts – I do – though not Casper ghosts or any kind of ghost that can be ‘busted’ by Bill Murray or Dan Aykroyd. I believe in a spiritual dimension comprised of a Triune God, One God in perfect oneness and yet individually knowable in Three Persons: – The Holy Ghost (The Holy Spirit), Jesus Christ the Son of God and The Father. I believe in a Triune God like this because the Bible tells me that He is so. The Bible also tells me that angels and demons (try not to hear that as a Dan Brown novel title) are a major part of the unseen spiritual realm: angelic hosts that worship God and do His will and demonic spirits that wage war against the purposes of God in heavenly places and on the earth. These are some of the ‘big stories’ from the ‘big narrative’ of the Bible.

Russell Brand

Continue reading “Russell Brand’s ‘Manifestations of the Infinite’”

Introducing: God’s Green Room

Last year I wrote and submitted a book proposal with several UK and US publishers for a fresh book on prayer which is currently in the process of being edited and re-worked. It’s a book for millennial young people and young believers about radical prayer – so it’ll be fresh & original though I’m sure I’ll be brushing up on my semi-colon usage 😉 Continue reading “Introducing: God’s Green Room”

Ten Thousand Little Things

Last Year’s NY Prayer

firebrandnotes's avatar

Happy New Year! I’m praying that love for God this year would blossom like never before in our lives personally and within the world-wide church as a whole.

Have you ever thought about the extent of the beauty of the world-wide church based on the extent of her love for her Bridegroom, Jesus? How beautiful will the Bride be when He returns and how beautiful is she at the moment? Or how whole-hearted is her love?

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What is the origin of the term “Christmas?”

Great thoughts on the heavily commercialised greeting “Happy Christmas” #advent

bography's avatarOneDaring Jew

Here are two explanations of the derivation of the word “Christmas.”

1. The word Christ stems from the Middle and Old English word Crist meaning the anointed one, the Lord’s Anointed.

It is borrowed from the Latin Christus and from the Greek Christos also meaning the anointed one. The Greek is a translation of Hebrew mashiach meaning anointed of the Lord or Messiah. In the word Christmas, the suffix -mas evolves from the Old English word maesse meaning festival, feast day or mass.

And from Wikipedia:

 2. Christmas derivative of Christ and Mass.

Mass is the term used of the celebration of the Eucharist in the Latin rites of the Roman Catholic Church. The word itself is derived from the phrase with which the liturgical celebration concludes in Latin, Ite, missa est. In this phrase, the word missa is usually explained as late Latin for classical Latin missio…

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