I nearly didn’t go because I’d heard that it was pretty “gritty” and that – like The Blair Witch Project in 1999 – some guys in America had left the cinema because they couldn’t handle the intensity of what they were watching.
Still, wooed by curiosity and the acting excellence of Joaquin Phoenix, I decided to head to the cinema to give it a try.
How was it then that Joker transpired to be arguably the most powerful film I’ve ever seen? (more…)
Jesus. You might love Him. You might hate Him. You might reduce Him to fanciful notion and religious crutch. Jesus. Regardless, I have come to find Him to be irresistibly, insatiably and authentically Who He said He was: the Way, the Truth and the Life – the only reconciling way to know and embrace the Father. Jesus. Very God of Very God. His loving Presence unmistakeable, incomparable. His eternal, infinite reality transcendent over everything physical and emotional and spiritual, making perfect sense of our incomprehensible smallness. Jesus. He is Sanity in anxiety; He is all substance found in faith. I don’t think we really know what it means to abide in Him; I don’t think we really know what it means to pray. So much of life and so much of “church” conspires against these bread and butter inheritances. Some wittingly some unwittingly. Either way, I believe God wants to revive us through tears. No man lives via bread alone. Check out my vlog on prayer via my author’s page here and, if you haven’t already, grab a copy of Body Zero by clicking here.
Is there more to life than this? Heck yes. The supernatural life of a disciple of Christ… enough wasted time. We need to be radically prepared for His return.
“Body Zero – Radical Preparation For the Return of Christ” has been out for almost one month now. It’s been an exhausting and exhilarating month of social media, events, packaging, daily trips to the Post Office and…a gradual easing into rest.
As though the finest cut of meat has been grilled, released from the fire and now sitting under a tin-foil canopy unto something like imperfect perfection, my very best is just being served as Body Zero does the rounds. Here’s what I learnt:
Do you ever wonder what the Church will look like before Jesus returns?
Please watch this space this week for pre-order info for Body Zero: Radical Preparation for the Return of Christ.
Let me start off by making a couple of very obvious comments: I am in no way belittling either the tip or the larger under water elements of any incidence of sexual harassment or any aspect at all of the abusive casting couch culture of Hollywood. (more…)
Living urgently, alertly and appropriately replete in the 21st Century has been the focus of this blog series so far. Thomas, Andy and Joshua have kindly helped us to honestly consider our Christian lifestyles, provoked by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and to what extent we’re living with urgency or lethargy, with alertness or sleepiness and with souls well-fed or deficient in even basic, Bible nutrition.
The sting of injustice is never pleasant. Like an incurable disease plaguing the entire world, all of us can see injustice functioning on a global scale every single day. We witness Robert Mugabe, corrupt Bankers, terrorism, famine, Rogue Traders, lazy Landlords, disallowed goals that have crossed the line, recruitment processes that look legal but that are internally rigged, false imprisonments, false biblical teaching, the ivory trade, endangered tigers, abuses of power, human trafficking and a whole other nightmare of unimaginable dysfunction that, somehow, manages to endure.
Despite the rare pockets of glory, our best efforts to act justly and the promises within the redemptive mission of God, we still live in an unjust, broken-down world.
Global injustice like this is meant to provoke us into faith-filled action and to woo us into the caring shelter of God, but, like a nauseating hors d’oeuvre before our eventual main course of numbness, it has a nasty habit of shutting us down. (more…)
