Failure and success

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The path to revival

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The path to revival

Every move of God is a sovereign exercise of his will. Let there be no doubt about that. There is nothing we can do to force him to bring the revival that we so desperately want and our culture so desperately needs.

But what we overlook is the significance of our response.

If we examine Isaiah 52 and 53, we see the great redemptive work of Christ, his suffering, his pain, his rejection. But when we look to the beginning of chapter 54, we find that suddenly a completely different note is sounded: “Shout for joy, O barren one... break forth into joyful shouting.”

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The crucial step of faith

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The crucial step of faith

Every miracle begins with a step of faith. The feeding of the five thousand began when a little boy surrendered his lunch to Jesus. For him, that was a massive step of faith. It left him with nothing to eat all day. But there would have been no miracle without it. Jesus had no problem multiplying the loaves and fishes, but he needed something to work with.

And it’s the same today. We often ask Jesus to come in and solve our problems, but we forget that he needs something to work with. For every miracle, there is a contribution we have to make.

Sometimes that contribution is simply making the decision not to give up, not to get angry, not to despair, but to put the matter in his hands, believing he can do something about it. Many times it involves stepping out of our comfort zone to do something God is calling us to do that we could not do in our own strength.

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Time for a test

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Time for a test

“Everyone loves a test!”

If that were a true or false question, the correct answer would be easy.

I’ve spent the last few days marking exams for the course on Revelation I’ve been teaching at seminary this summer. It was nice to be on the judging side, rather than the student side. I can’t remember how many hundreds of tests and exams I wrote, but I wish I’d had a party after the last one.

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Hope for the desperate

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Hope for the desperate

What happens when depression or anxiety strikes people who love the Lord? 

The body of Christ should be the greatest place to get help, but there’s a problem. To begin with, for anyone, Christian or not, there’s more shame associated with emotional issues than there is with physical sickness, because mental health issues seem to reflect on our worth and value more than physical illness does.

But what makes it really hard for Christians to ask for help is the fear that, in addition to this, people will also question the reality of our faith or our walk with the Lord. And so we hide. And it gets worse.

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The trap of unrealistic expectations and how to avoid it

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The trap of unrealistic expectations and how to avoid it

One of the biggest reasons people give up is unrealistic expectations.

And there are all kinds of these. Some of them are even reasonable. For instance, my wife has a number of quite understandable expectations of me that for various mysterious reasons may never be met. At least not this side of heaven!

All joking aside, though, unrealistic expectations can be an absolute killer. When I met with people coming into our church, I always made a point of saying they probably had some expectations that would never be fulfilled, if only because no church is perfect.