• In Him Was Life

    Reading Time: 8 minutes

    “You can’t read the New Testament without seeing the call to holiness in the Christian life. But that holiness is a work of God’s grace as the Holy Spirit empowers the believer to live a life pleasing to God. New Testament holiness is a joyous privilege, not a heavy burden and duty.
     
    New Testament holiness enhances life, it never diminishes it. This is what Jesus modelled so well and it’s why genuine seekers of God were…

  • Keeping The Faith

    Reading Time: 9 minutes

    It’s been nearly five years since the religious community I grew up in ‘regretfully accepted my withdrawal from fellowship’. In reality, I did no such thing, their statement was simply an awkward and disingenuous way to excommunicate me because I could no longer affirm, without reservation, particular tenets they held to be watertight and immutable.
    I feel that had the Bible genuinely been our mutually agreed authority, there would have been no good cause to excommunicate…

  • Without The Applause: Examining Celebrity Culture In The Church

    Reading Time: 8 minutes

    I recently wrote an article which I called ‘Beneath The Skin’; a critique of sorts of modern Christianity and the Western church.
    The article focused primarily on the collective Christian identity; The Church, not on any one particular denomination or way of ‘doing church’ but, rather, on the church’s influence and presence, as a whole, in the world today. I endeavored to identify both the good and the bad, historically and now, but, in particular, I was…

  • The Holy Spirit | This Same Power

    Reading Time: 10 minutes

    “If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you” | Romans 8:11, ESV

    “…This is my prayer. That God, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ and the all-glorious Father, will give you spiritual wisdom and the insight to know more of Him: that you may receive…

  • Regeneration + The Holy Spirit

    Reading Time: 9 minutes

    “Though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” | 2 Corinthians 4:16, NIV

    There can be a tendency to reduce the work of the gospel to simply to a culture of ‘making us nice’. That is to say, that being a Christian equates to a program of basic self-improvement. Yet there are plenty of nice people who aren’t Christians; people who do good things for others without having Jesus in…

  • Judging // Discerning

    Reading Time: 9 minutes

    It seems to me that it has become increasingly difficult to speak into many issues or situations that the church faces today; not because the Bible is silent, not because the church doesn’t have or hasn’t held a historical position on a matter, and not because we, as Christians, don’t know what we ought to be doing. Rather, we are feeling pressed into silence, in many instances, simply on the basis of one little verse…

  • Ruth: The Inconsequential Outsider

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    The Weft And Warp Of Scripture
    The word of God is like a vast tapestry, its main theme interwoven with many sub-plots and side stories that run like golden threads through an intricate design. Each of these threads complements the complete telling of God’s story and narrates again and again to us the way in which God views our world and us, the people who inhabit it.
    The story of Ruth, a seemingly inconsequential outsider, is one…

  • The Faith | Works ‘Conundrum’

    Reading Time: 6 minutes

    The simple truth that we find acceptance with God by grace through faith alone is the Bible’s most beautiful theme. Grace began long ago when God set in motion the means for humanity to find their way back to Him, to find their way home. He promised Adam and Eve that a redeemer would come who would save humanity from the consequences of their sin. That redeemer would be His very own Son, born for…

  • Searching For Identity

    Reading Time: 5 minutes

    “If I find in myself desires nothing in this world will satisfy. I can only conclude that I was not made for here.” | C S Lewis

    Searching For Identity
    I want to confess, at the outset, that as I was attempting to put down some of the thoughts I wanted to share relating to identity, my mind ran an internal commentary about myself. Thoughts such as, “what will people think of me?”, “how will I be…

  • Radical Social Change: A Letter To Philemon

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    “Injustice: unfairness, unjust act, Unfair: not equitable or honest, not impartial or according to rules, society: organised and interdependent community, system and organisation of this” – The Australian Oxford Dictionary, Third Edition
    The issue of social injustice* has always been one that is close to my heart. It’s something that I like to talk to my kids about often, to try to impress upon them just how fortunate they are in many aspects of their life.…