A shed in Yatala in SE Queensland seems like an unlikely place from which greatness can grow. And yet it has. 3 women Aussie boxers are now world title contenders. The shed in Yatala and the seed in the Kingdom of Heaven have a lot in common.
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Taylor Sheridan of Yellowstone fame is carving up our screens. I recently devoured the blood soaked Western 1883. Here's my reflections on it. This reflection is 100% spoiler because of the story telling arc of 1883 and the message behind it: freedom.
The world seems more dangerous than ever. One thing we can do is pray. This is a short and simple prayer.
There are two different ways of thinking about God (primarily). One of them is 100% wrong. That’s the bad news. But the good news is that the other is 100% correct. Understand these two different ways and you have the key to understanding God, the great news of Jesus and the Bible.
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If you’re a Christian believer or a mission organisation, how do you evaluate risk? Or put another way, do you have a theology of risk?
With thanks to Sammie Chaffin on Unsplash (edited)
Scholar Bart Ehrman proposes that term are a lot of contradictions in the Bible. He is very enthusiastic about us reading the Bible horizontally. However, when we take the time to read the text carefully, as he suggests, many of the contradictions are very fragile. And some are not contradictions at all. Here I work through some of the contradictions he proposes. Why don’t you be the judge?
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This might be a surprising twist to you. Celebrating Christmas because of Jesus is not celebrating myths, rumours and half-forgotten folklore. Rather, it is a celebration of events that unfolded in history. It seems again, that people worshipping Jesus are on the right side of history.
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Is the Trinity a Biblical truth? Yes it is! It isn’t hard to see the Trinity is in the Bible. You’re right the word Trinity never appears in the New or Old Testament of the Bible. But verses that show there is one God and three persons are scattered across the New Testament.
It sounds so awesome, the armour of God: swords, helmets and chest plates. In amongst all those passages of the Bible that talk about mercy, compassion and turning the other cheek, here is red-blooded combat. And it is necessary combat. For the devil has his schemes and there are demonic spiritual forces at work, right here, right now in this present darkness.
But, perhaps, before we slip on our chest plates or breast plates we ought to ask, ‘What exactly is the Christian putting on?’
Original photo by Hugo L. Casanova on Unsplash Edited by G Hohnberg
The story we keep hearing is that traditional morality crushes and destroys us. If we can just recognise this we can find the new way of freedom, especially our sexual freedom. The surprise in the Bible is that it agrees with the problem of traditional morality.
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Have you ever met one of those Christians who just seems so sure about their salvation? What’s with that? Are they so sure they’ve kept all God’s rules and laws? Is that it? No, not at all. A Christian’s confidence comes from the fact that the laws have been fulfilled for them by someone else.
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Apart from the horror of what’s been unfolding, the question that has been on my mind over the last two weeks is, ‘What could an atheist say to the Taliban?’
Photo by By VOA - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAg7egiXClU, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109043891
Every life has hard times and hard places. Sometimes those hard places feel like places of spiritual death. God has brought us out in the desert to die. But the Scriptures reveal that the opposite is the case. The hardest times can be the source of life.
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Shiny shekels seem to be upsetting a lot of people. They read just a handful of sentences from the book of Leviticus and have concluded that women are less valuable in the Bible. It’s all part of the Christian patriarchal agenda. And that theory holds up until you read just a couple more sentences in the very same chapter. And then you have a problem because you see its about women being more valuable.
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Luke’s Gospel is a beautiful piece of writing revealing to us the beautiful saviour Jesus Christ. May this short summary help you see the story line of Luke’s Gospel. You should also check out our Luke’s Gospel reading guide blog post.
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Dear Disney, Marvel, sitcoms, romcoms and finding your true self dramas, could we please have another script? Because you’ve been using the same one for too many years and it is booooring. Even my youngest son is bored by it.
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Did Jesus claim to be God? Yes! But we need to have the eyes to see it. And a key to seeing this key lies in understanding Jesus’ I am statements.
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Tom Holland's thesis, in his book Dominion, is potentially controversial but difficult to ignore: while the West has definitely moved into a post-Christian era, most of the core basic beliefs that we all hold true are lifted directly from the Christian faith.
Easter - the most important Christian event of the calendar. So important that without Easter Christmas has no point. For Easter is all about Jesus’ death to take away sin for humanity. But is this all just a myth? Can we have any confidence in the historical details? Yes we can. We can know what Christians believed about Jesus as early as 35 AD even from sceptical scholarship.
When I moved to Brisbane, everything changed. Finding a new church was exhausting but even more exhausting was wondering if I’m good enough. I started to doubt myself and this turned out to be a very good thing.
With thanks to Beth Rufener for the photo on Unsplash
My life has turned 180 degrees in the last two years through the work of Jesus in my heart and being involved in Risen Church. I was influenced by Jesus but now I’ve become a follower.
Many people think that the Old Testament is all about keeping the rules. But, here’s the thing. The Jews could never keep the rules. And the only way they could be rescued was by God saving them. In Isaiah we discover a God who saves by grace - looking forward to Jesus. Here is the gospel in Isaiah.
When we hear the word dogma we get worried. It just sounds bad! But before we race to reject Christian dogma we need to consider things a little more deeply. I want to suggest that there is even - good dogma.
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How can a good God create evil?
The problem with this argument is easily exposed. It is not the concept of God that is logically inconsistent. It is something else.
