Category: Guest Posts

I was listening to Jackie Hill Perry’s new album recently and was struck by some lines from Shai Linne in the song “Hymn” in which he says “Why we gotta talk about him? Hmm, wrong question. We ain’t gotta talk about him.  We get to talk about him. We were made to make much of him”. It’s a thought that has stayed with me and has been swirling around in my head. I’ve found that so often these days we don’t really talk about God so much. Instead, we focus on living a holy life and God pops up as a side character in our pursuit of a better life. We say that Jesus is the centre of what we do but we never actually focus…

Recently I noticed a church saying “let’s be known for what we’re for, not what we’re against”. While this is a nice idea and appeals to a generation desperately clinging to positivity and acceptance, it’s unrealistic—and frankly negligent—of a church to not be willing to say what they’re against. This pervasive theme of compromising biblical truths, sometimes masked in ‘ecumenicism’, is resulting in a church unwilling to stand for biblical truths if it means being labelled ‘divisive’ or the ever-increasing ‘bigot’. Would the early church have been as effective in their faithful ministry had they not out-rightly denied early heresies like Arianism or Gnosticism? There is a responsibility upon 21st century Christians to stand for the gospel, and stand against that which seeks to attack…

I am unashamedly a child of the Internet age. I am the IT expert in my family and I work in IT. I always have my phone within 10 metres of me and I read about half of my books on an electronic device. As an extension of that I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I haven’t used a physical Bible in any significant way for almost a decade. Instead I have the YouVersion app on my phone which gives me access to every conceivable Bible translation in a few seconds. So why is it that I’ve just ordered a physical Bible? Firstly, I’m changing how I’m reading the Bible this year. In past years I’ve followed plans that will take me through…

Today’s guest post comes from Stuart Millar. Stuart is the founder and director of Train to Proclaim Inc. He trains Christians to be more effective in sharing the gospel and develops quality and innovative resources to equip contemporary Christians everywhere. With 23 years as a full time evangelist, he is passionate about Christians being the best we can be at communicating the best message of all time. I asked Stuart the question Do you need the gift of evangelism to do the work of an evangelist? Stuart: I have been offering $1000 in many churches over the last decade if anyone can find anywhere in the Bible where it says that evangelism is a gift. In the two big “gift chapters” that cover the manifestational…

I read an interview recently with a Christian artist who was asked about his use of an expletive in a recent song. His response was that this particular word is something found in his normal vocabulary so it would be “disingenuous to leave it out.” It got me thinking; when did we start valuing authenticity over holiness? We are seeing more and more people in public arenas – particularly musicians and pastors –  who are using expletives and the justification tends to be that they are just being “real.” Now I understand that there are Christians who don’t have an issue with swearing, but while there is a conversation to be had with regards to Ephesians 4:29, that’s not something I’m going to take up…

Even today one of my greatest struggles is refusing to let my knowledge of God stand in the place of genuine faith in God. Sometimes I can barely tell a difference. Am I speaking from conviction or from a head full of knowledge? Am I acting rightly out of a sense of moral obligation and knowing it’s “the right thing to do” or out of a life that seeks to honor Christ? Am I speaking the truth out of love or out of a desire to impress? Motives are rarely clean and pure. It is difficult to delineate, especially since knowledge is part of faith. But the difference shows up in how I feel about my actions. If I find joy in honoring Christ when…

I am an American Ninja Warrior Fan. There’s something about watching people going through obstacle courses and performing feats of endurance, athleticism and strength that I could only dream of doing. I’ve seen 7 seasons so far and amidst all of the amazing feats there is something that has stuck out to me because of its familiarity. One of the big things that they do is try and get to know the contestants and there’s been a familiar story that comes through over and over again. “I was a drunk/drug addict/suicidal/depressed/didn’t have a place in the world… but then I discovered American Ninja Warrior and I started trying to do some of the stuff and it helped me turn my life around and now I’m…

I’ve just finished reading Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. Reading about his various trials made me think of what our comment as Christians would be to him. I think a lot of us would tell Mr. Copperfield that the answer to his life’s woes is to become a Christian. Now I do agree of course that we should want and encourage everybody to know Christ, but I think we tend to sell that by making promises that God doesn’t make. We have a theology that says God will give us all sorts of blessings, and it implies – if not states outright – that when bad things happen it’s because we’ve stepped out from God’s covering or we’re being attacked by the devil.

It seems to me that one of the big topics being taught at the moment is that of leadership. We have books on it, we have conferences on it, and it is being taught from pulpits across the world. The message appears to be that the goal is to get as far up the church organisational structure and that the best way to do that is to develop leadership skills. A measure of how good a Christian somebody is would correlate to their position in the church. It seems to me, however, that this teaching doesn’t really reflect the teaching of Christ Himself. Reading the gospels, I find Jesus spends very little time teaching about becoming a better leader, which you would think he would want to do given that he only had three years with the disciples before he was going to leave the church in their hands.

I was in a church recently and everybody was talking about the love of God. It struck me that while we are more than happy to wax eloquent about the love of God, we never talk about the fear of God. Now don’t misunderstand me; by no means do I want to diminish the amazing love of God – far from it – but I think that if that is all that we talk about then we are left with an incomplete and inadequate view of God. It can very easily lead to the image of God being a kindly old man who winks at sin because he loves us and even if he didn’t like it then he probably couldn’t do a whole lot about it anyway.