Are you feeling discouraged at the moment? Perhaps weighed down by past failures, or struggling with present difficulties, or worried about future uncertainties. Imagine getting home and finding on your answer-machine or voicemail a personal message of encouragement from God himself to you. That is what we have in this passage!
Daniel 1:1-2 If Christianity were true why is it so pathetic? Whatever place Christianity once had in our public life, it is now more likely to be seen as part…
Most modern people don’t quite get the Bible’s obsession with idolatry. We think of idolatry as an ancient problem for backward people who bowed down to statues, not a relevant one for sophisticated folks like us. But we aren’t beyond idolatry. We simply dress it up in different clothes.
Matthew 21:33-46 As we look around the world it seems obvious that Christians do not have a monopoly on doing good. In many cases Christians are put to shame by…
Matthew 21:33-46 Christians are often put to shame by the superior kindness and integrity of those who don’t share their faith. Is it not then arrogant to suggest that people have to be Christian to be acceptable to God? Here Jesus’ teaching on whether good is good enough for God.
I wonder how would you react if you saw a church leader having lunch with a group of people who were guilty of fraud? Or maybe a Bible study leader hanging out with known drug addicts? Would you be a bit shocked, perhaps even judgmental, that they would even consider associating with such people? This is how Jesus was treated by the religious people of his day. We can distance ourselves from God not only in obvious rejection of him, but also in our religious morality – and this can be the more dangerous if it goes undetected…
2 Peter 1:1-11 We can’t become Jesus’ followers by trying to be good but does becoming a follower of Jesus Christ make us better people? How important is it for…
A lawyer asks Jesus “what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” This is one of the most fundamental questions that everybody at some point asks, about what will happen when we die – we might phrase this question today something like “How can I be sure I’ll be saved in the end?” If we profess to be God’s people, then this will show in how we live our lives – not only in how we love God, but also in how we love others. Jesus challenges us not to think about who we are to love, but to be loving…
Luke 12:8-12 The most important talk anyone could hear about who will really be welcome in heaven. Words of Jesus with a challenge for everyone!
Luke 7:36-50 What does a Christian look like? Often we make assumptions about what Christians looks like – but the story of the sinful woman overturns those assumptions and cause us to look at ourselves afresh. It shows that our assumptions about what a Christian looks like depends on what Jesus himself is like.