Last summer I spent a week in Italy teaching through three minor prophets on the Alpine Bible School. A group of us were enjoying an ice cream on an afternoon trip to a local village. About fifteen minutes before we were due to be back at the minibus one of our group started to become […]
As well as building up to Christmas this is the time of the year when we nostalgically look back on the past twelve months. We had our staff team Christmas lunch a couple of weeks back and reflected back on the past year. I came up with some highlights such as baptisms whilst my colleagues […]
Last Sunday we finished our series in Philippians and considered the themes of contentment and generosity. I probably treated contentment in a slightly cursory fashion and limited most of my remarks to wealth and poverty given that was the context of the passage. However, I wanted to return to the theme because it is a […]
Last Sunday I was preaching down at Crofton Baptist Church in the morning service and then was interviewed on the subject of same sex attraction over lunch. I found the day immensely encouraging, especially meeting the pastor there who is a son of a former pastor of the church here. The recording for the interview […]
I know most blogs at the moment should be about Donald Trump but I’ve written all I want to on that subject here. I want to write about something different because, whilst Governments do their thing, the church is involved in a Kingdom that will last forever. It could, therefore, be argued from an eternal […]
One of the things I enjoy doing most is preaching less familiar books of the Bible. Often this enables people to encounter God in a fresh way as they hear words that they have not heard before. Preaching Song of Songs over the year has given me that experience and the more recent joy has […]
Last Monday evening saw me 1800m above sea level in a hotel on top of an Alpine mountain speaking at the final of sixteen sessions on Oak Hall’s Alpine Bible School. Truth be told I was feeling somewhat emotional as before the talk I said this- “To teach the Word of God to those hungry […]
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 […]