Pressing On

I guess that depends on what you do with your time!! For me it was a time for spending with the kids, swimming, cycling, playing cards etc. No screens in sight for anyone ... And so we were "forced" to talk with each other!! Good to have nothing to do with a day except whatever presents itself ... Well, for two weeks anyway... Reading also played a big part of the time - two Harlan Coben novels (weekend reads) then Hunger for Reality (G Verwer), Outpouring of Grace (Roy Goodwin), Discerning the Spirit of the Age (D Tidball) followed by the completion of The Everlasting Man (G K Chesterton) ... An excellent riposte to the wave of aggressive atheism based on the 'science' of evolution. The scientific argument may have moved on since 1925 but the underlining arguments for a creator God remain unshaken and, indeed, unanswered by science. Having space ... no emails, texts, phone calls, facebook, twitter etc ... So what happens in space? In my experience, if you a...

Last week I had the privilege of spending a week with about 100 teenagers in a field! I was at WEC Teen Camp for the week ... and what I saw and experienced fills me with such hope for the future. Young men and women, despite all the 'stuff' that is going on in their lives. The world's value system that is force fed to them, that shapes their thinking and affects their daily lives ... for some in traumatic ways which are all too raw and apparent to them and, for some, in subtle ways that are damaging yet not currently apparent to them. (When the time is right the Spirit will reveal these things to them and deliver them from them ... after all He did, and still is doing it with the rest of us isn't He!) But still they worship, still they pray and still they have a passion for the Lord and for His kingdom coming to the ends of the earth ... I can't wait until it is unleashed! Lord let it be soon! The week ahead is one of relaxation and refreshment as we put all that...

I am a pragmatic person, who wants things to be real ... I want integrity. If something promises to be life changing then I expect it to be! The gospel is no different ... I did not become a Christian because I agreed with a creed or theology - I heard a message of 'fulness of life' in Christ, along with the promise of an intimate and imminent relationship with the Living God, my Father in heaven - through faith in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. I responded and have spent the years since increasingly understanding that 'fulness' and the One who made it possible. So on that level I want integrity, but integrity works itself out on another level as well. It is great went things seem to flow and the Lord hears and talks to you. But, what about those times when it all seems like hard work? and the heavens seems as though they are a brassy, impenetrable barrier? How do we deal with that? We have to show a level of integrity at those times and acknowledge they a...