Short break…

For all of you who’re regular readers and those who’ve kindly enquired about my health of late, I’m taking a short break as I’m really not too well just now.   I’ve had a recurrence of the pain problem that beset me so heavily in 2006, only this time it’s progessed to both arms and is once again leaving me without much sleep every night.   No diagnosis or treatment is forthcoming, and so I have little choice but to rest in the Lord and seek His mercy for respite and relief.   To that end I’m going to a healing meeting this weekend, but know He may choose to not heal me miraculously (as He did last time), and so I’m opting out of undertaking anything much that requires me to think, as fatigue is overtaking me continually.

I will continue, however, to put notes together so that I can shortly restart writing again hopefully and bring you those issues I think we all need to be careful on how we view.

Thanks for your patience and I’ll catch you again hopefully in a month or two (or sooner if the Lord prevails!).

There IS proof God exists….

I truly believe you can prove God exists in multiple ways, but the best is in firstly accepting that the Bible is His Word to His creation, and thus obviously He will reveal Himself through it.   But aside from the obvious texts where God just states who He is, He has placed a lot of material in there to prove Himself to a sceptical world, and to those who at the very least, are willing to consider it.

The most important proof is still Creation.   I know many of you who read this blog subscribe to Darwin’s theories, but just stop and think laterally for once.   Aside from the unbelievable twists you have to take to provide any mechanism for getting from goo to a zoo let alone mankind, think about this.   If man had evolved from an ape no matter how many years it might have taken him to get intelligence (personally I think he’d have become extinct before it could have ever been a reality but anyway), after all that hard work and billions of years of evolving why,  but why would he then have determined he needed to create a god in any sense?   Would he not have figured he was a god to have come so far in his own journey of evolution -  it would have been a backward step to consider having any Being above him, let alone a God who would demand so much!???

A question for my Muslim readers…

I’m curious to know what Islamic belief truly is when it comes to the person of Jesus, because to me, it seems somewhat minimalist or indeed not something a lot of emphasis is placed on, in comparison to that of Mary.   I hear often about how Mary is just as revered in Islam as in Catholicism and that made me start questioning why, given that Islam doesn’t hold to much else of Christian teaching.

Mary with Jesus

Why is it that Islam places reverence on Mary (a fallen, sinful human being) to the point of agreeing with the Catholic Church that she was a “perpetual virgin” while ignoring the Deity of Jesus.    But more than that,  I also wanted to point out something I find odd in that respect.   If Mary is held in reverence because she gave birth to ’nothing more than’ a prophet (as Islam contends Jesus was), then why did God send an angel (Gabriel no less!) to give her the news (which Islam accepts)?  No other mother of a prophet in the history of the world ever had her child’s birth announced to her by an angel – not even Muhammed!!   Muhammed did indeed have a visit himself from apparently that very same angel  but only to provide him with a “new revelation.”    Jesus, on the other hand, didn’t need to have another visit from Gabriel after his birth because He IS the “new revelation” – but not only of scripture, rather of God Himself.   And why was there a particular significance about Jesus being born to a virgin if He was purely going to be a  only a prophet – the greatest prophets in the world before Him weren’t born to virgins so why is His birth so different, and necessarily so??

Isa 7:13 And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also? 14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

Whose life is it anyway??….

Have you ever stopped to consider your life – truly?   Have you thought about the awesome complexity of this “vehicle” you’ve been provided for your time on this planet?   Do you ever take pause to be grateful for the immense fact that you don’t have to think about it for 90% of your life or until some event makes you take notice of the air you’re breathing, or the number of times your heart is beating – things ordinarily we never have to contemplate as they work so well, we don’t notice.   And have you taken this one step further again to contemplate why you have been granted such an awesome body to reside within?  In other words, how often have you really thought about the meaning of YOUR life?! 

I’ve thought long and hard about my own many times – being disabled brings a whole raft of problems other than the obvious – aside from the not being able to live independently at times or not be able to do even the simplest of tasks, disabled Christians in particular then face the added burden of feeling useless in their walk with the Lord.   Many consider if they are unable to be active and “doing” then they’re not of value.   Now, I know that’s not true and I don’t believe it for my own situation, but, certainly I have had many times when I have felt pretty useless or inept in the work of the Kingdom.   When you live alone and don’t have much social interaction, you find yourself very quickly sliding into selfishness as you become so used to only ever thinking about yourself.

 He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. 1Jn 5:12

Mark Driscoll critiques Joel Osteen….

I’m in no way a huge fan of Mark Driscoll, as I believe he goes way too far overboard in trying to appeal to his younger audiences and many of his sermons are on topics that should be kept private and not blasted out across the internet where those who’re young in the faith perhaps take them out of context and/or consider this is mainstream Christianity and then don’t know how to deal with the latter when they do meet it in other churches.

However, I came across this snippet of one of his sermons where he does a critique of Joel Osteen and have to say I was happily surprised at his viewpoint, as previously I thought he was little different.   Turns out he’s got a lot of very solid truth underpinning his radical approach, and so you really have to be hugely discerning to listen to him, and ensure you don’t get swept along on his tides of intermittent lapses of wisdom.  But his take on Osteen is certainly good and well stated – so if you’re a Joel fan, please, please take heed of what is said in this short clip and rethink your position because you will fall into a lot of traps otherwise and find yourself unable to figure out how to cope when you discover that God’s plan for you is most likely not for you to have “your best life now!!”  Not in the way Osteen states it at any rate.

Mark Driscoll on Joel Osteen

Shades of grey or maybe not….

What do you think about sin?   When you hear the word, what does it mean to you?   Would you prefer it to be called something else or does it not matter in the least because it’s an irrelevant concept to you?   If you do think or care about it, and you’ve not repented of those sins you’ve committed, what do you think God will do when you come before Him in judgement?

I think most of us bandy the term about without much thought, and we look at the world and much of the evil within it and think we’re okay because perhaps we’re not a murderer or serial adulterer or whatever.   Here on earth, we tend as a society to grade sin – we consider ourselves to be “good” if we figure we don’t do anything to harm anyone else, and we consider murderers and the like to be evil and utterly sinful by comparison.     I had a very interesting conversation with some Catholic ladies recently when a Protestant lady with them said she didn’t like to call herself a Christian because she still did so many “bad things” to which one of the other ladies replied “We (i.e. the Catholic Church) don’t care what you’ve done bar murder – you’re still entitled to call yourself a Christian” with the underlying implication that applied to ALL people, whether Catholic or not.   I stated I disagreed and laid out my rather more fundamentalist views on the issue and the reply I got was “Well, if you’re not a Muslim, and you’re not a Hindu, or a pagan, what’s left?” So it’s obvious it’s now become purely a label for Westerners who don’t subscribe to any other particular faith.  Sin therefore has a gradient from the least (perhaps a “white” lie) to the worst (murder/torture etc), and many errantly think their sins are so minimal as to be of no concern to God, and thus Heaven’s door should be well open to them!  Well think on…..

The future is here and the future is ISRAEL…

Israel

Don’t get me wrong – like many, I don’t always agree with the decisions taken by Israel’s rather humanist leftist Government but regardless of that, you have to know that Israel is also God’s timepiece.   If you want to know what the future will hold or how things are going to pan out in this world, look to Israel.   Throughout history the Land and it’s people the Jews have proven themselves to be under God’s direction and protection many, many times.   However, equally so, they’ve been under God’s Judgements many times, and while I know it’s not PC to say it, IF you believe in a totally Sovereign God as I do and IF you believe His Will is perfect as I do, then you have to accept the Holocaust as being part of His plan for His people.   To do otherwise, is to give Satan a level of power he has not got.   Read Job if you want to see why – no matter what Satan wants to do to God’s people, he has to ask God for permission first!!   I’m not saying that God was judging His people per se in the Holocaust – I’m just saying it had a purpose in His Plan for them.

There’s a reason for everything, isn’t there???

It’s very much a part of life that we struggle daily to cope with and comprehend many difficult aspects of living in a “fallen” world.   We watch the news daily and reel with horror sometimes at some of the atrocities committed by other human beings and constantly hear the great cry of the aethiests and agnostics of “Where is God” or “There can’t be a God or He wouldn’t allow these things to happen.”

A truly remarkable relationship…

There is one thing that Christianity offers over every other single religion on the planet – well, more than one, but aside from a risen Saviour and forgiveness of sins and a multitude of other vital requirements, our God is the only One with whom we can actually have a relationship!   Unlike the Muslims or the Hindus, Buddhists etc who worship unknown gods and can never be sure if their prayers are even being heard let alone answered, we have a God who actually resides within us through His Holy Spirit and with whom we thus have continual commune.   We have a God who desires to hear His people talk to Him and tell them what He already knows.   And we have a God who absolutely works to help us to hear Him speak to us in a multitude of ways, but especially through our conscience.   How many times you will hear of a Christian who says that they were about to undertake some action, but something stopped them, or they knew instinctively to do something would be wrong.   And I’m not talking the obvious sins here, but more the subtle ones that Paul spoke about when he said that if someone thinks something is wrong, then it is sin for him to do that thing, even if for another person it may not be e.g. eating pork.

The root of ALL evil & it’s not money!!

We all know that famous saying about how the root of all evil is the love of money and indeed it’s a scriptural statement, but I’ve discovered over time that there is an even worse and more devious concept that has shown itself to be far more deadly and dangerous than the greed for money, in destroying lives and families.   If you haven’t worked it out yet – it’s the deadly art of LYING!!

Right from the very outset of history and time, lies have been something that man has spoken to cover up sin and protect reputation etc.  And lies don’t always come big and dark such as those perpetrated by politicians etc, because there’s not one of us who hasn’t committed the most common one of all – the “white” lie.   That one you tell because you’re trying to not hurt someone – the typical one being when you’re asked your opinion on how someone looks and in an effort to please them you say whatever you think they want to hear rather than tell them what you’re really thinking.   That one is so common it’s the source of multiple major jokes and most of us find it a harmless thing.  But is it?  I learnt a lot from having my 20-something stepdaughter living with me for a few years.  She would routinely come in to see me wearing some new outfit she’d bought and wanting to know my opinion on it.   When she first came to stay, I tended to say nice things even if I thought the outfit was hideous, but over time as we connected more and I came to know her tastes better etc, I got a better sense of what she did look well in and so by the time she was moving out last year, she knew she could trust me to tell her straight what I thought.   I never hid my initial reaction and she knew immediately what my view was likely to be, so to tell her something different was hugely obvious to her and I learnt not to even try to be deceptive in my opinion.  And while this was a very small example of the wisdom of truth over even the simplest of lies, I found sometimes that she would actually lie about situations such as being late for her work or not going in to work at all, spinning some tale to her boss – she would openly tell me about doing this, and always prefaced it with “God forgive me but…”  My view on that was always if you have to ask God to forgive you in advance of something then you know you shouldn’t be doing it to start with!!