Category: Faith
It seems like forever since my last update, which was only two weeks ago, and the holidays have seemed busier than my normal schedule. I find it ironic, given my exhausting schedule, that this past weekend I ran a seminar about the importance of good ministry practice looking at such issues of teamwork and the need to rest when this last two weeks have been difficult in those areas. The words are echoing in my mind, “Ministry is hard and we cannot hope to accomplish it alone” and “The busier you are, the more critical it is for you to…
I was intending on writing this in my personal journal, but thought otherwise and would like to share with you my thoughts. What I’ve been reflecting on today is not so much a question of whether ‘Good Friday’ should be called ‘Good Friday’, rather the point that this day ‘Good Friday’ was a dark and malicious day for my Lord, Jesus Christ. As I think about the torment that begun late Thursday night with the betrayal of Judas to the moment where He breathed His last breath – how can I call this day ‘Good Friday’? There have been few…
James 1:26 How many times have you slipped an unintended word? Swore under your breath just that little bit too loud? Blatantly lied to someone’s face? Impulsively screamed, “I hate you!”? We all have one of the above. I’m sure each one of us can remember a time when you just wish you’d kept your mouth shut and nobody could see you. Yet, it is things like this that the words of James, I think, points at with disdain: If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his…
James 1:25 For most people, the two words ‘freedom’ and ‘obedience’ simply are not compatible. To be ‘free’ is to be unbound by submission to another authority, to be ‘obedient’ is to relinquish one’s freedom and submit to authority. Logically, they are incompatible ideals but James, and throughout the Bible, brings these two, seemingly opposite, ideas together as a part of the Christian life. Where most of us would immediately associate faith with obedience, James brings into the picture ‘freedom’ found what some might consider a rigid framework. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives…
TAB to open on Good Friday – Yahoo!7 News (void link) As a Christian, this matter doesn’t anger me, it merely saddens me. To recognise the truth of the times coming to the surface, the tides of darkness underwriting all that is good and all that is right in the world. Naturally, the politically-correct response would be to shut up and accept such a move as we live in an age of tolerance and multiculturalism. My very statements, as some will argue, are guided, or even “clouded”, by my faith perspective. However, in such a perspective, truth is not relative,…
