These are difficult days for those who pastor God’s people. In many parts of the world, especially in the West, culture and society have turned away from their Christian past. It’s almost as if Christianity is passé, or even repulsive. Churches are profoundly divided over how to cope with this disorientating situation, and there is much unseemly confrontation in public debates.
Read more
When was the last time you were at a ministry conference (or any sort of conference) and the speaker at the front was someone who had failed. That is, their plans, dreams and hopes for their project had decidedly dive–bombed? And if that kind of person was given the opportunity to speak, would we even be willing to listen, or is it just the ‘experts’ who have a track–record of ‘success’ that we care about?
Read more
The death of someone you care about, whom you don’t think was saved, is surely one of the most heartbreaking of circumstances. It can haunt for a lifetime. Yet the eternal loss of unbelievers is something most believers experience several times over. Four times in Scripture, God condemns false prophets for ‘healing the wound of His people lightly’ and ‘saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.’[1]
Read more
Everybody loves a good story. And there’s plenty of good stories to be found in the famed Lewis revival of 1949–52. Such as the seven men who prayed together in a cold barn through long winter’s nights, two or three times a week. Or the story of the two elderly Smith sisters – aged 84 and 82 years respectively; one completely blind, the other bent double with arthritis – who received premonitions from God that revival was coming, and prayed the movement into being.
Read more
I’ve been charged with writing a blog about my recently published book on Psalms 38–51 called ‘My Exceeding Joy’. Actually, I don’t write blogs; I rarely read blogs. I remember theologian Addison Leitch saying that magazines were the enemies of books. I think blogs are the enemies of books. We’d be better off if far fewer bloggers wrote blogs. So my writing a blog to commend my book is clearly hypocritical. But it’s only temporary.
Read more
Among eminent Victorians, few were more widely known, or greatly appreciated, than C.H. Spurgeon—a pre–eminent philanthropist, college founder, and patron of orphanages—and the pastor of London’s great Metropolitan Tabernacle.
Read more
During the 1980s my family did some mammoth car journeys. My parents seemed to think nothing of attaching a caravan to the back of their Citroen estate and heading off to a tiny little village in the South of France, or a soaking wet caravan site on the banks of the Rhine. The car was one of those unusual vehicles you don’t see anymore, as they’ve been replaced by minivans.
Read more
The fall of man altered every atom of creation. From manhood to motherhood to matrimony, nothing is as it should be. Some after–effects of the fall are mere annoyances, like the fear of spiders, or indigestion, or having to wear uncomfortable clothing. But most by–products of the fall take the breath from your lungs, wrench your heart from your chest, and are counted in tears. Childhood mental illness is one of those by–products.
Read more
The great nineteenth–century preacher Charles Spurgeon described the Song of Solomon as the Most Holy Place. He compared the historical books of the Bible to the outer courts of the temple, and the Gospels, Epistles, and Psalms to the Holy Place: the place that only the priests could enter. His point was that, to a greater and lesser extent, all these books bring us near to God. But the Song of Songs is ‘the Most Holy Place’, the inner sanctum, a holy of holies. It ‘occupies a sacred enclosure …
Read more
Do you know someone living with dementia? Most of us will be able to answer yes to this; more people are being diagnosed each day and it is a disease which affects over 850,000 people.
This means that dementia is not only about the person living with the disease – its impact is far more wide–reaching. Memorable Loss is a story of friendship, and how an Alzheimer diagnosis challenged, changed and deepened my friendship with Kathleen.