The Heart of a Fool
By Not Known We think of a fool as a person of limited intellect or knowledge. The Bible defines a fool as someone who knows about God but who denies that knowledge deep inside. Thus: the fool has said in his heart ‘There is no God’ (Ps 14: 1). We saw a fool last Sunday. Moses met the Egyptian Pharaoh. Pharaoh heard God’s message and saw God’s…
Jesus with the Works
By Not Known Small is sometimes beautiful. A newborn child, a tiny diamond or a one-line poem all show us beauty in a miniature. Small is not always best. It’s like that with the Christian message. For various reasons, people sometimes strip the gospel of important elements. This is the ‘gospel minus‘, just as others sometimes create the ‘gospel…
Seize The Day
By Not Known Philip was elected to help serve food from the church kitchen (Acts 6: 1- 6). In our terms, that makes him a deacon. He sets us an important example in seizing the day for God (Acts 8: 26- 40) One day Philip found himself on the road south west from Jerusalem to Gaza. ON the way he met an African civil servant riding in a chariot. The civil servant was…
A Time To Speak
By Not Known Don’t sweat the small stuff. This well-known saying makes a good point. We all have things that we don’t like and may even think are wrong. But most of us have a sense of relative importance. It’s not worth starting WWIII over small things. The Apostle Paul had a keen eye for small stuff. Thus he could write of his willingness to become all…
How should we then give?
By Not Known Some have asserted that giving is difficult because giving requires us to let go and to give up. It means losing something. Our culture tells us to hoard and to gather. When we give up and lose, we are being disadvantaged. Therefore to give is to lose control or to give our power away. Something that is contradictory to what we have been taught. We were…
Effective Church Building
By Not Known It’s fascinating to watch a building under construction. Effective construction means that every action of every sub-contractor and worker is directed to the shared goal. All is done to complete the building according to design, within budget and on time. The same applies to the building of God’s church. Paul uses a building illustration several…
Verbalising Love
By Not Known A Google search of the word ‘love’ produces about 1,810,000,000 links. That’s a lot of words. Love inspires many and great words of poetry, literature and song. These many words take our souls soaring and hearts heaving with their lofty abstractions and grand declarations. But, is love just words? Paul gives us yet more words about love in 1…
The ends of the earth
By Not Known Most religions are tribal and local. This is not our faith. The Scripture teaches that God made all, for, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Gen 1:1). All remains under his Lordship, even if in a state of rebellion, for:the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it(Ps 24:1). Further, all are within the scope of his redemption. All…
Free for ????
By Not Known Christianity is freedom. The truth of the gospel sets us free (Jn 8:32). Free from fear and superstition. Free from the penalty and power of sin. Free from a life enslaved by man’s rules. These precious liberties are all established by the Cross and resurrection of Jesus and his gift of the Spirit. But what is freedom for? It’s often freedom to be…
Running For God’s Prize
By Not Known Mid-first century Corinth was a city of runners. Paul was at Corinth when the spring games of 51AD were held at Isthmia which was about 10km away. Perhaps he went to the games on a day-of? These games required training. Athletes could not enter, let alone hope to win, unless they had put in the many days of hard discipline and effort. Winners in the Greek…