Devotion
Making Life Decisions (Journey in Discernment)
Making Life Decisions (Journey in Discernment) by Geoff Pound (2009). Good books about discernment – or ‘guidance’ as our forefathers preferred to call it – are not common. Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak has a beautiful illustration of the Quaker model of group discernment, and Marva Dawn’s Joy in Divine Wisdom is a collection […]
Pharisees and Saints [2]
Pharisees are proud of their discipline over ‘sins of the flesh’, and evangelical orthodoxy, and religious rituals. But these static habits are not the essence of Christianity – which is progress/growth in faith, hope and love. And which is why sexual sinners could be entering the kingdom ahead of them (Pharisees can’t cope with that […]
Holiness and Spiritual Growth
A friend asked me to explain briefly (on Facebook) how holiness and the Kingdom of God are related: 1. Jesus and his followers teach us that the Spiritual Life is a matter of growth, renewal, maturity etc. The aim: to become more like Jesus. 2. Jesus’ Church – of all types – have honoured saints, […]
Prayer for Guidance to Help Others
“O Lord, open my eyes that I may see the needs of others; open my ears that I may hear their cries; open my heart so that they need not be without succor; let me not be afraid to defend the weak because of the anger of the strong, nor afraid to defend the poor […]
Forgiveness
Failing to forgive allows those who hurt you to have power over you: why let them do that? One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody everything every night before you go to bed. – Bernard Baruch Carl Brakehielm writes in “Forgiveness” Perhaps one can say that it is […]
Doing Nothing for the Glory of God
THOUGHT FOR TODAY: The so-called ‘work ethic’ despises doing nothing. In our competitive/individualistic world ‘We are what we do [well]’ so we toil and sweat and strive for significance … But the biblical leaders spent a lot of time in deserts (or prisons) where they ‘do nothing for the glory of God.’ A Scottish poet: […]
Doubt
Two quotes by Os Guinness (1)”The trouble is not that people have doubts, but that they are ashamed of them.” (2) “There is no believing without some doubting, and believing is all the stronger for understanding and resolving doubt.”
Blockages to Overcome Blindness
Blind auditions assist blind ambitions – and overcome blind prejudice – as musicians seek to join the world’s top orchestras. One of Australia’s most promising trumpeting talents is a young lady I’ve known all her life. She invests her days practising; having worked with local and European orchestras, confident that blind auditions – where full-length […]
Easter: A Matter of Life and Death
A MATTER OF DEATH AND LIFE When I came to Australia 20 years ago I wondered why people kept asking the question: What is the true meaning of Christmas? As a convert from traditional Chinese religion, I had to learn what Christmas meant when I became a Christian. I had assumed that every Christian knew […]
Holiness Quotes
“The Glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man consists in beholding God” – St. Irenaeus Esse Quam Videri – Latin for “To be, rather then appear.” “Faith is to believe what we do not see, and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.” – St. Augustine […]
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