I’ve been reading through the first few chapters of 1 Kings recently. The theme of 1 Kings 6-7 is the building of the temple- you have a long list of measurements in chapter six and, after a brief interlude to describe the building of the palace, a significant section on the temple furniture in chapter […]
A few weeks ago I posted the handout that accompanied my recent talk on John Bunyan. In that talk I focused principally on three of Bunyan’s works- Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, Pilgrim’s Progress and his Advice to Sufferers. I didn’t have much time to reflect on his Holy War that I read […]
In the last two posts I have argued that, despite the difficulties of handling the text, we need to read and preach Song of Songs more. We live in a culture where there is much talk about love and the song gives us an opportunity to speak about a love which is as strong as […]
So what do you discover if you do read or preach Song of Songs? You learn about a love that is as strong as death and burns like a blazing fire (8:6). Instinctively when we read that I think we know that is true- love is the force that moves us and motivates us most […]
Once a year I attempt to do a biography of a leading Christian character on a Sunday evening. You can hear the talk on John Bunyan here. I tried to tell Bunyan’s story using his own words. That meant there were lots of quotes! So, if you want to follow the talk, it is probably […]
I first preached Song of Songs by accident. A few years ago I was asked to speak on Oak Hall’s Alpine Bible School. The print deadline for their brochure was coming up so I had about twenty minutes to work out what I wanted to do 16 sessions on. I had recently done Job and […]
One of my favourite books over the last few years has been Jack Miller’s “The Heart of a Servant Leader”. It is a compendium of letters from an older pastor to younger missionaries and church workers and was actually recommended to me at a Pastoral Refreshment Conference a few years back. Amongst other things, Miller […]
I wrote last week about the many things for which we could give thanks as a church over the last year. So what have we got planned for 2016? The first week of January sees our week of prayer. We saw so many answers to prayer from the equivalent week last year. Any encouragements that […]
At our Carol Service this year I reflected on those end of year montages that you often see on TV programmes at this time of year. I am a bit of a sucker for them and I particularly enjoyed those on the Sports Personality of the Year programme that I caught up with subsequent to […]
I am afraid that Christmas is likely to pass the blog by- any spare thoughts I have on the subject tend to appear in the various special sermons at this time of year! But I did want to pull some threads together from our recent series on busyness. It is our tradition here to examine […]