Truth

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Finding success in failure - how to hit the ground running in 2019

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Finding success in failure - how to hit the ground running in 2019

I saw two amazing statements quoted on social media this week. Here’s the first:

“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.”

Few people in the last century had the ability to express profound truth more clearly than C.S.Lewis, and this statement proves it.

People make two mistakes in relation to past failures. The first is refusing to admit they failed at all, papering over their issues with other peoples’ alleged shortcomings, and moving on fearlessly to new failures in the future. And they succeed in reaching their goal.

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Dumbing down or calling up?

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Dumbing down or calling up?

Just the other day, I had a discussion with a good friend. He was expressing his frustration with the popularity of certain Christian media personalities who have the ability to attract enormous crowds, sell millions of books and take in vast offerings, without seemingly having the capacity to make a single decent Biblical or theological point when they preach.

Some people seem to think that we need to adjust our preaching in a downward direction in order to accommodate the fact that we live in the age of attention deficit. It’s a little bit like the idea that the purpose of a youth group is mainly to provide light spiritual entertainment for teenagers who would never have the ability to sit in church and listen to a proper Biblical message. Doing this, I suspect, will produce a generation of youth group graduates who want to be entertained the rest of their lives. Or a generation of millennials who are checking their phone throughout whatever shreds of truth are left coming out from behind the pulpit.

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Challenged by change

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Challenged by change

Youth With A Mission is an amazing movement in which there’s rarely a dull moment. In fact, its motto was once described as constant change is here to stay.

We’ve been in the English city of Newcastle upon Tyne this week, working with South African friends planting a great church here. Elaine grew up nearby, and used to work in the city centre. She made the observation that while some things were the same, most things had changed, and some things were unrecognizable. And that’s always a bit of a shock - because we don’t like change.

For the most part, we understand that what we believe does not change. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.

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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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Render to Caesar

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Render to Caesar

Politics is one big nuclear hot potato zone into which preachers enter at their peril. And Jesus’ enemies knew that.

They were plotting, Matthew tells us, how to “entangle Jesus in his words.” And how better to do that than by getting him to make a political comment? Many preachers since have indeed been entangled in the political web by their ill-spoken words. And so they asked Jesus whether or not it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. They thought they had this one wrapped up. If he endorsed Caesar, he would be a traitor to the Jews. And if he defied Caesar, they could head straight to Pilate with the evidence.

As it turned out, Jesus was a little smarter than them. He asked them to provide a coin, and pointed out Caesar’s image on the coin. Then he simply said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they walked away.