Category Archives: Christian Life

Acts 4:5-31 Praying under pressure – sermon notes

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Praying Under Pressure, Acts 4:5-31 (esp. 23-31)

The healing of the crippled beggar, 3:1-10 – Peter’s speech to the people, 11-26 – Peter & John brought before the Sanhedrin, 4:1-7 – Peter’s reply, 8-12 – They are warned to stop speaking in the name of Jesus, 13-17 – Peter refuses, 18-22 – They return to their fellow-believers, who offer a remarkable prayer.  So:-

1. Be clear who you are praying to, vv24-28

This is the longest part of the prayer!…

Mysticism

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Definition

Mysticism is notoriously difficult to pin down.  It may briefly be characterised as seeking ‘an immediate link with the Absolute’ (Winfried Corduan).  This would apply both to Christian mystics and to some types of Eastern religion.

Christian mysticism ‘seeks to describe an experienced, direct, nonabstract, unmediated, loving knowledge of God, a knowing or seeing so direct as to be called union with God.’  (D.D. Martin, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology)

Notable Christian mystics have included ‘Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, John Ruysboreck, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Julian of Norwich, Therese of Lisieux, Thomas a Kempis, Teresa of Avila, St.…

How adversity can promote fruitfulness

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The Spirit often effects greater fruitfulness in our lives in the presence of adversity, Jas 1:2-4; Rom 8:28:-

  1. Love matures when there are people who hate us, Mt 5:43-48.
  2. Joy deepens in adversity, being directed to eternal things and to him who never changes, Ps 63:3; Hab 3:27-28; Lk 6:20-23; Jn 16:33; Acts 16:25; 2 Cor 12:10; Jas 1:2.
  3. Peace is magnified in difficult circumstances. We have peace with God, Rom 5:1; peace from God, Php 4:7; and we are peace-makers, Mt 5:9.
…

Silence!

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‘Silence is golden’, we say.  And we can agree that silence can have more eloquence than any words, serving (as Francois De La Rochefoucauld said) ‘sometimes to approve, sometimes to condemn; there is a mocking silence; there is a respectful silence.’

But what is the role and value of silence in Christian prayer and worship?

In the Middle Ages, silent prayers were added to the liturgy, and these were taken up by the Tractarians, and in the Roman Ordo. …

Me and my two left feet

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I’ve just finished reading The Divine Dance: The Trinity and your Transformation, by Richard Rohr and Mike Morrell (SPCK, 2016).

The essential message of the book is that we’ve all got it wrong about the Holy Trinity.  And, as a consequence, Christians have failed to enter fully into the life of God.  Rohr and Morrell invite us to re-think, and to re-experience, the Trinity less as personhood (noun), and more about relationship (verb).  Although the headline metaphor is that of a divine dance, Rohr continually returns to the notion of ‘flow’. …

‘The Sin of Certainty’ – 9

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So, finally, to the ninth and last chapter of Peter Enns’ book.

The need for certainty (according to Enns) fosters a number of unholy and unhealthy traits, such as: the ‘vigilant monitoring of who’s in and who’s out’, preoccupation with debating and defending the faith, over-valuing of logical arguments, and unquestioning conformity to intellectual authorities.

Such a faith does not promote trust either in God or others.  It provokes, rather, by fear and anxiety.  Trust does not grow in an atmosphere of dogmatic certainty.  …

‘The Sin of Certainty’ – 8

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In chapter 8 (‘Cultivating a habit of trust’), Peter Enns bares his heart.  We learn that in his forties, he went through a bad time.  His daughter had developed an anxiety disorder so severe that she had to be sent away to a boarding school far from home.  A seemingly co-incidental and almost trivial incident struck him as a ‘God-moment’ that helped him to see that we do not have to know and understand before we commit to God in faith.…

Prescriptions for depression drugs double in decade

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It is a well-known fact that prescriptions for antidepressants have double over the past ten years.

I’ve been reading a short article in the Daily Mail (June 30, 2017).

Various reasons have been put forward to explain this, and there’s probably truth in many of them: many women, for example, are struggling with the pressures of trying to raise a family, hold down a job, and look after ageing relatives.

Another factor may be that mental health conditions are more frequently recognised these days, and there is less of a stigma attached to seeking help.…

‘The Sin of Certainty’ – 7

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‘God Wants You Dead’, exclaims the title of chapter 7 of Peter Enns’ latest book.

Many of us, says Enns, feel doubt creeping up on us, and then start to feel guilty about it.  So we fight it.  And then, when we find that the doubt won’t go away, we end up living lives of ‘quiet and wretched desperation’.

But doubt is not the enemy of faith, but only the enemy of certainty.  In fact, doubt is the friend of faith, because it takes us away from the security ‘knowing what we believe’ and towards trust.  …