A warning

As a young Christian I was taken to a large conference and told to read a booklet. I loved what I heard and read:

Define, Declare and Defend the Truth!

How great was that?!

Minister Monday

This week I want to take a little break from introducing you to some emerging church leaders and offer you two helpful resources on leadership. I hope you don’t mind…

Hey stranger…

…how was your Summer if it’s not too late to ask?

Good.

Let me tell you about a bit of mine. The lady and I had the privilege of attending an international student conference overseas. Here we met students representing Christian student groups from over sixty countries, and very quickly we started to realise that our ‘teaching/leading’ role was rapidly inverting itself. You see, as a Brit going ‘cross-cultural’, no matter how hard you might try, there’s always that sneaking little superiority complex in the back of your mind. We Westerners know how to do mission. We’ve got the speakers, the theologians, the books. The traditions.

Minister Monday

On Saturday I got the privilege of going to the WEST (Wales Evangelical School of Theology) start of year service. I went primarily to support Sammy Davies, but it was also great to see a handful of friends being welcomed into the college as well.

Over the last few years it has been great to see the work that Jonathan Stephan has done at WEST to bring it onto the radar of many and ensure that this is the place to study. Indeed, in the words of one famous Welshman…. WEST is Best! I must be honest, I think its worth going there just to be lectured by John Kendall and his coloring pens!

Anyway, one of the guys there on Saturday who made me want to stand and clap when he was welcomed was a fellow Ammanford-ite…

Simple is as Simple does

One of my favourite 20th Century philosophers

Wisdom. What is it? Jonny Raine has defined it. But Mr. Dr. Rev. Packer has too.

In Chapter 9 of Knowing God Packer teases out an understanding of wisdom that goes further than intellectual and encapsulates the moral and practical. It’s knowing the best thing to do (btw saintjonny’s definition is this very thing).

Real Wisdom then is only found in God. And what a Wisdom it is! While the wisdom of mankind is often misguided or even frustrated by circumstance.

Not so with God who is, “wise in heart and mighty in strength (Job9: 4).” Wisdom and strength? Do they go together in our modern thinking? “Wisdom and strength are His (Dan. 2:20).”

In God we have boundless Wisdom and endless Power united. This makes God utterly worthy of our fullest trust.

Majesty, Worship His Majesty

Her Majesty. Also available in a commemorative series of stamps

I wonder how many of us could give a decent definition of the word Majesty? I’m sure a few (although not most) could give some definition. The problem with language though is that even those people would define a usage that’s not quite the way the biblical authors used it.

Packer defines Majesty thusly;

Our word ‘mjesty’ comes from the Latin; it means greatness. When we ascribe majesty to someone, we are acknowledging greatness in that person…

This ‘revelation’ alone was enough for me to brand chapter 8 of Knowing God a ‘corker’. I sat still for a few moments and thought how it impacted my thinking of God by swapping majesty for greatness (and vice versa). Try it.

According to Packer;

The same is true when the Bible speaks of God as being ‘on high’ and ‘in heaven’; the thought here is not that God is far distant from us in space, but that He is far above us in greatness, and therefore is to be adored. ‘Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised’ (Ps. 48: 1).

The question Packer asks though could be paraphrased by the title of the song How Great Is Our God? Do we know?

Book review: The Unquenchable Flame

I have a confession. Are you sitting comfortably? Will you judge me?

Ok… I’ll tell you… I love church history. Sorry, I know, terrible! It’s true, it was my favorite part of my degree, my favorite part of working with Kevin Adams (who would talk church history ALL the time), and it’s my second biggest section of my library (after…? I’ll let you guess).

Why do I love church history?

1. It is interesting and fun to learn about

2. I can learn from the past

3. What happened in history matters

In light of this I was very excited to get my copy of a book on the Reformation by Michael Reeves (RTSF/UCCF) called ‘the unquenchable flame’. Mind you, I never expected what I got in that book.

Jazz like guidance

Over the summer I have been reflecting on guidance and the will of God. This was in large part due to reading ‘Just do something‘ (which I have reviewed here), and preaching on Paul’s prayer for the Colossians:

‘asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his (God’s) will’

What exactly does that mean?

Minister Monday

One of the most encouraging things about living and working in a small country like Wales is that you get to see people grow up. One such guy is Rhys Llwyd. I got to know Rhys when I was a student in Aberystwyth, and his parents invited me over for Sunday lunch. Over the years I have seen him go from school kid, to student, from cu member, to preacher, and from bedroom guitarist to Welsh, hymn fueled, hip hop extraordinaire (!).

God the Rock.

We believe the Bible is the word of God. We believe it can illuminate the way to salvation and the way to live in holiness. We believe that it teaches us about God, about the Father, about the Son, about the Spirit.

We read it. It’s interesting. It’s irrelevant(?).

…it all seems very far away. It all belongs to that world, not to this world.

Mr. Packer thinks this a problem that plagues many Christians. As he puts it;

Some Christians seem to resign themselves to following afar off, believing the Bible record, indeed, but neither seeking nor expecting for themselves such intimacy and direct dealing with God as the men the Bible knew.

I fear that I fit this description too well. But is it true? Is the gap so far between now and then? “No” we all say. So what is the bridge that exists to span the millennia? Mr. Packer says;

…the crucial point is surely this, the sense of remoteness is an illusion.
…
The link is God Himself.

If we are going to make the connection between what we read in the Bible and us, our lives, we need to look not at ‘us & them’ but rather at the immutable God.

God is  a rock. Scripture is clear on that. But for many tocay a rock is something that is always changing, ask a 16yr old that’s just completed their GCSE science. They are formed, destroyed. Constantly. Our God on the other hand is an altogether greater rock…