A friend has just started full-time at a Bible college
I must tell you that my personal quiet times and prayer have been more regular than they have been for a long while – how much I need the discipline and encouragement of corporate, community times! Read the rest of this entry »
I receive a newsletter from a mission society on the continent. An article in a recent edition made me write the following to the society:
In the September issue Mr C wrote about the transforming power of good Christian books. He said, “This… led to a longing to serve the Lord”. Dare I say that is theologically inaccurate since Mr C seemed to already be a believer? One of the marks of being a believer is that we long to serve the Lord – isn’t it? Read the rest of this entry »
Leslie Ludy, an American author and speaker, writes
A Christian publisher once told me, “You shouldn’t always write about missionary Christians… Why don’t you share about some normal, everyday Christians who live in the suburbs and work for IBM? Those kind of Christians are just as important as the ones who go to the mission field. Don’t just focus on Christians who had a ’special calling’ to go and change the world”.
Well, sorry to be blunt, but most “normal, everyday” Christians… are living pleasure-seeking, self-absorbed lives… Are we, as the majority of American Christians, pouring ourselves out for the lost of the least, or are we lying on our couches, eating pizza and watching reality TV”
“That’s a double ooch” (as many middle-aged people might recall from ‘The Banana Splits’)
I subscribe to The Briefing: “a short regular shot of encouragement and fresh Christian thinking to stimulate biblically faithful Christian life and ministry.” – and it does this, mostly. Read the rest of this entry »
“We are convinced that England will never be converted until the laity use the opportunities daily afforded by their various professions, crafts and occupations.” Towards the Conversion of England, 1945
Click here for how this inspired work at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.
Overheard in the City:
A Christian in his early fifties had evidently done well enough to be able to retire.
“Now I can spend time with the children, having ignored them for the past 20 years.”
Discuss.
I read the following written by a church leader about a church member:
I have know NNN for almost two years as his pastor. In that time he hs entered into a new dimension of faith and commitment. When I first knew him he was caught up in the busyness of business and had little time for the various meetings in the church.
Is that the primary measure of someone’s spiritual maturity – time for church meetings? It was certainly the only one the leader chose to bring up.
Why no mention of whether he was running his business with integrity; loving his wife; bringing up his chidren in the discipline and instruction of the Lord; doing good to all people (especially those who are of the household of faith); stirring up other believers to love and good works; and talking to people about Jesus?
The leader mentioned none of these. He is a teacher in Israel and he doesn’t know this?
The preacher said that the Younger Son of Luke 15 never tired of telling people what a great Dad he had. I wonder if people ever got tired of hearing the story – or if they thought “Why does this young man think I am interested?”
On the five hundredth anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, a French reformer, the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity says
Until the Reformation, really serious Christians became either monks or priests. Calvin, on the other hand, argued that the primary way we show love for one another is by working for the good of other people through useful work that contributes to society
Amen and Amen. Click here for more.
I am very closely involved with a woman and her six children where I live. I am the main father figure these children have in their lives. I pour much of myself into them – and the mother – for no financial remuneration. I spend a lot of time with each child; I help them with their school work; I have taught each one to read; and I finance just about all the household bills – complementing what the mother gets through child benefit.
Do I do this because I am a great guy? Or is it because I am a member of a voluntary group; a group that nearly always has a positive effect on its members; where there is genuine give and take; where it is sometimes hard to spot who is the ‘volunteer’ and who is the ’service user’? Sometimes, indeed, the whole group does voluntary, unpaid work to help outsiders.
