Every encounter these days includes COVID-19. Read more…

I just read about two monks coming to visit Pambo in Nitria, Egypt. Pambo, who died about AD 375, was visited by many, including influential spiritual leaders of his day. Read more…

Feeling kind without acts of kindness contradicts holy love. Holy love acts kindly, even when it doesn’t feel like it. Read more…

In the last while I have had so many punches to the soul that I am weary. What do I mean by that?

This is all rooted in what I have termed “The Eden Syndrome” which is when people play God.

I have people respond with, “God doesn’t do that!” when I share what God wants me to do. Or someone discounts the Bible because its words do not suit their personal doctrine or theology.

Or facts of reality are roundly rejected simply because the reactor had a differing opinion.

Anyone who lives their faith openly faces this. What God wants is rarely what human society wants. Humans do not want to be humbled by God’s high ways because humility goes contrary to the obsession with “being like God” (Genesis 3:5-6) instead of serving God. The famous line from Paradise Lost rings true across the ages: Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven (Book I line 263).

Now, I have not yet been murdered or kidnapped or imprisoned as the prophets of old were. So I shouldn’t complain, I guess. Yet, I understand why Jeremiah concluded that resignation from the job as prophet was a preferred option. I also understand that, when he handed in his resignation he realized it couldn’t happen, because the words of God which were given to him had to be uttered.

What a dilemma – do what is right and get hit right in the head from those God wants rightly to save! Right?

When something bad happens to us we ask, “Why?”. We also ask, “What did I do that God is punishing me? What did I do to deserve this?”

Let’s face this lie right off the top. Bad things happening do not mean God is punishing us, as though God is a mean and abusive parent. There are many reasons why bad things happen, some of which are: our own stupidity (driving fast on an icy road); overeating (heart attack); people do evil things (incest); a government may serve the few only (famine); the earth is active (volcanoes and tornadoes); etc.

I am often drawn to the military metaphor. I am a front-line soldier and may be cold, wet and miserable. Now the General is not picking on me, punishing me for some reason. The General is fighting a war, and that means sometimes the soldiers will be in great discomfort, even die, for the campaign to move forward to success over the enemy.

The suffering anyone of faith may experience may be for the benefit of someone else, or merely part of the overall strategy to overcome the world!

I will give a very short version of an example from my own life. A group of religious people, whom I had served, turned against me and committed great evil against me. That evil, however, rescued a number of people who used to be a part of that group leading them to escape the whirlwind into darkness and find a rich, new spiritual life. Deeper than that, the religious congregation sinned against Jesus Who withdrew from them (they had lost their First Love, Revelation 2:4) and so what I went through was trivial compared to two other things: the risk they entered in turning against God; the sadness God felt that the group scheduled to lead a local revival had so utterly failed the Saviour.

It is arrogance to think that my suffering or persecution is about me. I am not the General. The big picture is outside the scope of my vision.

Faith trusts Creator has a plan, is working the plan, and will succeed.

I pledge loyalty to my Sovereign Saviour – my choice, my life, for the love of God that extends to the whole world and not just to me!

Prayer does not change God’s mind – it changes ours. (eg. Abraham and Sodom, during which Abraham kept changing the limits of his request until he finally gave in to God completely, in Genesis 18:17-33.) Read more…

When I was growing up we had no money. No fancy toys. Sometimes barely food. Hand-me-down clothes. No travel to foreign countries, or even the city. Read more…