A bishop was making a pastoral visit to an old people’s home in his diocese. He went up to one elderly lady, sitting in her chair, and asked her how long she’d been living there. “Why do you want to know?” she snapped.
He carried on regardless. “Do you have your own room?”
“Go away and leave me alone!” she said.
The bishop wasn’t used to this kind of response. “Do you know who I am?”…
Luke 9:23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.
Jesus has attracted to himself not only a group of 12 disciples, but also a large number of admirers. Events such as the Transfiguration, and Peter’s confession, have marked a change of direction in his ministry. Hitherto, he has been occupied for much of the time in the north, around Galilee.…
Evangelicals these days tend to be particularly uptight about guidance. Anxiety is caused by: (a) uncertainty about how to get it; (b) fear of consequences of not getting it. The following notes are based on a chapter by J.I. Packer in Laid-Back Religion, 71-89:-
The desire for guidance is a mark of spiritual health.
The world has alternative sources of guidance: gurus, palmists, astrologers, clairvoyants, agony aunts, counsellors.
The fear of spiritual ruin through mistaking God’s guidance is unwarranted: it assumes that missing one point in God’s plan forever ruins the whole, leading to a permanently second-class Christian life.…
1. If I should die in the pulpit, I should desire to die preaching repentance, and if I should die out of the pulpit, I should desire to die practising it. (Philip Henry)
2. To do so no more is the soundest repentance. (Luther)
3. Our Lord has laid down most emphatically that a man must repent of his sins, and particularly of his critical and independent attitude towards God, or he cannot begin to live the Christian life. …
To pray is to be identified with God’s will. (Alan Redpath)
Prayer is nothing but the promise reversed. (William Gurnall)
Prayer is something more than asking God to run errands for us. (Anon)
Prayer is the key of heaven; faith is the hand that turns it. (Thomas Watson)
Prayer in its simplest definition is merely a wish turned Godward. (Phillips Brooks)
Prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God and a scourge to Satan. …
Mt 7:1 – “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.”
I once heard it said that a generation ago the most celebrated verse in the Bible would have been John 3:16 – “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” But nowadays, the speaker went on to say, most people’s favourite verse is possibly Matthew 7:1 – “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.”…
E.C. Hoskyns put it forthrightly: ‘When a Christian man declares that the four times repeated response in the Litany of the English Church – “Have mercy upon us miserable sinners” – has no meaning for him, he proclaims that he has as yet no understanding of the Christian religion or that he has apostasized from it.’ (Q in A Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, 308)
Confession of sin may be general. Examples are found extensively in the Bible, and also in most liturgies.…
I read somewhere of a man who was working in the garden of his new home, when his lawnmower had broken down. He tried fruitlessly for two hours trying to get it going again. Suddenly, one of his neighbours appeared with a handful of tools. “Can I help?” he asked. In twenty minutes he had the mower working beautifully. “Thanks a lot,” the newcomer said. “And may I ask you, what do you make with such a fine set of tools?”…
‘Honesty’ covers a family of virtues of truthfulness. These include:-…
A bit of light relief. Here are a few of my favourites from Children’s Letters to God:-
Dear God…
‘I would like all the bad things to stop.’
‘My father is mean. Please get him not to be. But don’t hurt him.’
‘Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones why don’t you just keep the ones you’ve got now?’
‘Please send me a pony. I never asked for anything before. You can look it up.’…
