“The issue of faith is not so much whether we believe in God, but whether we believe the God we believe in. (p.35)”
R.C. Sproul, Knowing Scripture
Tag Archives: Christian Life
Pressure
June 8, 2015 
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“It does not matter how great the pressure is. What really matters is where the pressure lies — whether it comes between you and God, or whether it presses you nearer His heart.”
James Hudson Taylor
A Precious Jewel
June 6, 2015 0 Comments
“Peace is such a precious jewel that I would give anything for it but truth.”
Matthew Henry
The Finish Line
June 4, 2015 4 Comments
As a blind gamer, i was excited to be recommended(by my brother) a brand new racing game called “Project Cars” for the PS4. I’m able to attempt to play a few racing games, If they include Grand Prix tracks, i can often remember each corner from my sighted gaming days, playing F1 97 etc.
When i sat down to play for 15 minutes last night, i was surprised to be taught a lesson on being over zealous, while lacking wisdom! 🙂
⇧ Screenshot of my 1980 Capri (Group 5 – Team Zakspeed) ⇧
I chose the rather extreme Capri to drive and chose a familiar track. After leaving the pits i span off on nearly every corner as my tyres were cold and not up to race temperatures. An influx of thoughts filled my mind,….
Over Zealous…
It reminded me of when i first became a Christian and first had revelation of the Truth when reading the Bible. I couldn’t believe what i was reading, and how it described me…yes me! I then did what normally happens, and become over zealous like a screaming twin turbo engine and had to tell everyone, and point out the right and wrongs with everything and everyone around me!
I was making a lot of noise and using a lot of power and energy, but was lacking something vital, i failed to slowly warm up the tyres of Godly Wisdom!
As we mature, and grow in step with the Holy Spirit, we are given all we need to finish the race. And when we get the balance right, we can stay on track until the end, and if our tyres stay hot, even the storms won’t be able to slow us down! 🙂
Making Doughnuts…
⇧ Screenshot of my 1988 Sierra RS500 Cosworth (Group A) ⇧
After selecting “Donington”, my home town track in Derby, i decided to take the Sierra Cosworth for a ride. I stopped to make some doughnuts, and thought “Here we go again, all that power and energy…and i’m just going round in circles”.
I want to thank God for not leaving us in the pits! But instead He empowers instructs and steers us towards the finish line! 🙂
Friendly Futilities
June 3, 2015 2 Comments
Father, I don’t want to be conformed to the futile and dissolute thinking of the world. Renew my mind, help me to stop polluting it with the things the world wants me to see and hear. Transform me according to what is true about my true identity and my new self. Amen.
Christian Hope
June 3, 2015 1 Comment
“Optimism hopes for the best without any guarantee of its arriving and is often no more than whistling in the dark. Christian hope, by contrast, is faith looking ahead to the fulfillment of the promises of God, as when the Anglican burial service inters the corpse ‘in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Optimism is a wish without warrant; Christian hope is a certainty, guaranteed by God himself. Optimism reflects ignorance as to whether good things will ever actually come. Christian hope expresses knowledge that every day of his life, and every moment beyond it, the believer can say with truth, on the basis of God’s own commitment, that the best is yet to come.”
J.I. Packer
Flourishing Sin
June 2, 2015 2 Comments
“One reason sin flourishes is that it is treated like a cream puff instead of a rattlesnake.”
Billy Sunday
Made For Spirituality
May 27, 2015 8 Comments
“Made for spirituality, we wallow in introspection. Made for joy, we settle for pleasure. Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance. Made for relationship, we insist on our own way. Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment. But new creation has already begun. The sun has begun to rise. Christians are called to leave behind, in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and incompleteness of the present world … That, quite simply, is what it means to be Christian: to follow Jesus Christ into the new world, God’s new world, which he has thrown open before us.”
N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense
Symptoms Of An Evil Disease
May 26, 2015 10 Comments
“We now demand glamour and fast-flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals…The tragic results of this spirit all all about us: shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies…the glorification of men, trust is religious externalities….salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit. These and such of these are the symptoms of an evil disease.”
A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
Preserve Purity
May 25, 2015 0 Comments
The way to preserve the peace of the church is to preserve its purity.
Matthew Henry
The Purity Of Truth
May 24, 2015 0 Comments
Though the light shines on things unclean, yet it is not thereby defiled.
Augustine
✞ Reggae “How Great Is Our God” by Sherwin Gardner
May 22, 2015 5 Comments
The splendor of a king
Clothed in majesty
Let all the earth rejoice
All the earth rejoice
He wraps Himself in light,
And darkness tries to hide
And trembles at His voice
Trembles at His voice
How great is our God – sing with me
How great is our God – and all will see
How great, how great is our God
Age to age He stands
And time is in His hands
Beginning and the end
Beginning and the end
The Godhead Three in One
Father, Spirit and Son
Lion and the Lamb
Lion and the Lamb
How great is our God – sing with me
How great is our God – and all will see
How great, how great is our God
Name above all names
Worthy of all praise
My heart will sing
How great is our God
Name above all names
You’re worthy of all praise
And my heart will sing
How great is our God
How great is our God – sing with me
How great is our God – and all will see
How great, how great is our God!
The Holiness Of God & The Love Of God
May 20, 2015 5 Comments
“To be really Bible-believing Christians we need to practice, simultaneously, at each step of the way, two biblical principles.
One principle is that of the purity of the visible church. Scripture commands that we must do more than just talk about the purity of the visible church; we must actually practice it, even when it is costly.
The second principle is that of an observable love among all true Christians. In the flesh we can stress purity without love, or we can stess love without purity; we cannot stress both simultaneously. To do so we must look moment by moment to the work of Christ and to the Holy Spirit. Without that, a stress on purity becomes hard, proud, and legalistic; likewise without it a stress on love becomes sheer compromise.
Spiritually begins to have real meaning in our lives as we begin to exhibit simultaneously the holiness of God and the love of God. We never do this perfectly, but we must look to the living Christ to help us do it truly.”
Francis A. Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster
Regard People
May 15, 2015 8 Comments
“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
Hands & Hearts
May 13, 2015 1 Comment
God’s providence is not in baskets lowered from the sky, but through the hands and hearts of those who love Him. The lad without food and without shoes made the proper answer to the cruel minded woman who asked, “But if God loved you wouldn’t He send you food and shoes?” The boy replied, “God told someone, but he forgot.”
George A. Buttrick
Truth Forever On The Scaffold
May 11, 2015 1 Comment
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
James Russell Lowell
God Will Continue To Chip Away
May 7, 2015 0 Comments
I am what I am, as Popeye used to say, but unlike Popeye I know I am not all I could be. In God”s hands he continues to shape my life, and he continues to use everything I’ve experienced to shape me. I seem to remember that Michael Angelo was once asked how he turned a lump of marble into a beautiful carving of a horse. “Simple,” he said, “you just chip away everything that doesn’t look like a horse.”
My prayer is that God will continue to chip away everything that doesn’t look like the life he wants for me. If it doesn’t look like a horse yet, that’s because it isn’t finished!
Brother Ben’s Email sent to me this morning.
The Christian Church Is losing Her Integrity
April 10, 2015 5 Comments
“I fear me that the Christian church is far more likely to lose her integrity in these soft and silken days than in those rougher times. We must be awake now, for we traverse the enchanted ground, and are most likely to fall asleep to our own undoing, unless our faith in Jesus be a reality, and our love to Jesus a vehement flame. Many in these days of easy profession are likely to prove tares, and not wheat; hypocrites with fair masks on their faces, but not the true born children of the living God.”
Charles H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening
Conversation In The Womb
April 3, 2015 13 Comments
Baby 1: And you, you believe in life after birth?
Baby 2: Absolutely. It’s obvious that life after birth exists. We are here to become stronger and to get ready for whatever awaits us next.
Baby 1: This is absurd. There is nothing after birth! What would life look like outside the womb!
Baby 2: Well, there are many stories about the other side. I’ve heard there is a blaze of light there, an intense and profound feeling of joy with deep emotions, thousands of things to live for… For example, I’ve heard that we’ll eat with our mouth there.
Baby 1: That’s silly. We have an umbilical cord and that is how we eat. Everyone knows that we don’t use our mouth to eat! And, on top of that, no one has ever come back from the other world. Those stories are all coming from naive people. Life just ends at birth. Period. That’s the way it is and we must accept it.
Baby 2: Alright, then allow me to think differently. That’s for sure, I have no idea what life after birth looks like, and I can’t prove anything to you. But I like to believe that in the next world, we’ll be able to see our mother and that she will take care of us.
Baby 1: “Mother”? You mean that you believe in “Mother”? Oh! So where is she?
Baby 2: Everywhere, don’t you see it! She is everywhere, all around us. We are part of her and it’s thanks to her that we are living right now. Without her, we wouldn’t be here.
Baby 1: This is ridiculous! I’ve never seen any mother so it’s obvious that she doesn’t exist.
Baby 2: I don’t agree. That’s your way of seeing things. Because sometimes when everything quiets down a little bit, we can hear her sing. We can feel her hugging our world! I’m pretty sure that our life will start after birth.
Truth Or Public Opinion.
April 1, 2015 2 Comments
In the world today, real faith has in most cases been replaced by public opinion. People do not believe in God, but they believe in many minor things which are taught by other people.
Leo Tolstoy
God’s Power
March 28, 2015 2 Comments
“I think the greatest weakness in the church today is that almost no one believes that God invests His power in the Bible. Everyone is looking for power in a program, in a methodology, in a technique, in anything and everything but that in which God has placed it—His Word. He alone has the power to change lives for eternity, and that power is focused on the Scriptures.”
R.C. Sproul, The Prayer of the Lord
✞ Music “Pray” by More Than Rubies
March 27, 2015 0 Comments
“Pray”
Father which art in heaven, Holy is your name
Let your kingdom come, Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven
Father, give us our daily bread. And father, forgive our debts, as we forgive our debtors
Teach us to pray
Teach us to pray
Teach us to pray
Father which art in heaven, Holy is your name. Let your kingdom come
Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven
Father, deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom, and the power and the glory forever
Teach us to pray
Teach us to pray
Teach us to pray
Ahhh..amen
Teach us to pray.
Fresh And New Into His Likeness
March 26, 2015 2 Comments
Here I sit in the middle of eternity. This wheelchair has helped me sit still. I’ve observed with curiosity the way we Christians grasp for the future, as if the present didn’t quite satisfy. How we, in spiritual fits and starts, scrape and scratch our way along, often missing the best of life while looking the other way, preoccupied with shaping our future. In my least consistent moments I too try to wrest the future out of his hands. Or worse, I sink back into the past and rest on long-ago laurels But God is most concerned with the choices I make now. God, standing silently and invisibly and presently with us in the middle of eternity, is interested in a certain kind of change. He brings us choices through which we never-endingly change, fresh and new into his likeness.
Joni Eareckson Tada
God Abhors
March 23, 2015 1 Comment
“That very church which the world likes best is sure to be that which God abhors.”
Charles H. Spurgeon
To Speak…or Not To Speak
March 21, 2015 2 Comments
“You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say”
Martin Luther
Christian Community
March 20, 2015 2 Comments
“Christian community is like the Christian’s sanctification. It is a gift of God which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification. What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God. Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature. The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more surely and steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day as God pleases.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community
The Most Respectable Sinner
March 16, 2015 0 Comments
The gospel is open to all; the most respectable sinner has no more claim on it than the worst.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Stop…Think…Speak
March 14, 2015 2 Comments
Words. Do you fully understand their power? Can any of us really grasp the mighty force behind the things we say? Do we stop and think before we speak, considering the potency of the words we utter?
Joni Eareckson Tada
Earthly Goods Deceive The Human Heart
March 13, 2015 0 Comments
“Earthly goods deceive the human heart into believing that they give it security and freedom from worry. But in truth, they are what cause anxiety.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
How Do I Love Thee?
March 10, 2015 2 Comments
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday’s Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men might strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints,–I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life!–and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Judging Others Makes Us Blind
March 4, 2015 5 Comments
“Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
Love Each Other
March 2, 2015 3 Comments
Lord, some people in my life are difficult to love. I am tempted not even to try to care. But You showed love to me even when I was Your enemy. Please direct me to love in the way that’s acceptable to you, with Your power and grace, Amen.
Are These Doctrines True: Is Holiness There?
February 20, 2015 4 Comments
“And above all, you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and panelling…the question should never be: ‘Do I like that kind of service?’ but ‘Are these doctrines true: Is holiness there? Does my conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to move to this door due to my pride, ormy mere taste, or my personal dislike for this particular door-keeper?”
C.S. Lewis – Mere Christianity
Our Culture
February 16, 2015 3 Comments
“We are a culture that relies on technology over community, a society in which spoken and written words are cheap, easy to come by, and excessive. Our culture says anything goes; fear of God is almost unheard of. We are slow to listen, quick to speak, and quick to become angry.”
Francis Chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
Honesty
February 9, 2015 2 Comments
Honesty has a beautiful and refreshing simplicity about it. No ulterior motives. No hidden meanings. An absence of hypocrisy, duplicity, political games, and verbal superficiality. As honesty and real integrity characterize our lives, there will be no need to manipulate others.
Charles Swindoll
Sacrificing Truth
February 7, 2015 3 Comments
“Never let us be guilty of sacrificing any portion of truth on the altar of peace.”
J. C. Ryle
The Power Of The Flesh
February 6, 2015 3 Comments
“The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism, nor the threat of communism, nor even the threat of rationalism and the monolithic consensus which surrounds us. All these are dangerous but not the primary threat. The real problem is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually corporately, tending to do the Lord’s work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them.”
Francis A. Schaeffer – No Little People
Unity
February 5, 2015 2 Comments
To me one of the major tragedies of the hour, and especially in the realm of the church, is that most of the time seems to be taken up by the leaders in preaching about unity instead of preaching the gospel that alone can produce unity.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
True Meanings
February 2, 2015 3 Comments
“How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”
Abraham Lincoln
A Still Small Voice
January 29, 2015 8 Comments
Today i’m editing audio interviews Sarah has recorded for the latest CD version of RNIB’s Outlook magazine. As i was using the automation tool (see above) to boost a part of Sarah’s voice, i instantly thought of the still small voice of God speaking to Elijah.
1 Kings 19:12 Authorized (King James) Version (AKJV)
12 and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
I started thinking that its so easy for us to try and amplify the “still small voice” to align it with our noisy and busy lives, to try and keep doing everything we want to do and God will bless it anyway. We become so arrogant in our will, that we think we can manipulate God into fitting in (and agreeing) with our purpose driven lives, after all we are doing it for Him aren’t we?!
Are you bombarding God with foolish rantings, or are you ready to slow down and listen to His still small voice?
Spiritual Placebos
January 26, 2015 5 Comments
“When believers have a low view of God, everything focuses on meeting felt needs within the body of Christ. When the church adopts such a perspective, it often offers people nothing more than spiritual placebos. It centers on psychology, self-esteem, entertainment, and a myriad of other diversions to attempt to meet perceived and felt needs.”
John MacArthur, Alone With God
The Glory Of The Gospel
January 13, 2015 5 Comments
The glory of the gospel is that when the church is absolutely different from the world, she invariably attracts it.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
More Than Conquerors
January 7, 2015 4 Comments
It is not a true Gospel that gives us the impression that the Christian life is easy, and that there are no problems to be faced. That is not the New Testament teaching. The New Testament is most alarming at first, indeed terrifying, as it shows us the problems by which we are confronted. But follow it-go on! It does not stop halfway, it goes on to this addition, this second half; and here it shows us the way in which, though that is the truth concerning the battle, we can be enabled to wage it, and not only to wage it, but to triumph in it. It shows us that we are meant to be “more than conquerors.”
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Have A Meaningful New Year
January 1, 2015 7 Comments
Life is not life without God by our side.
He is the reason why we are alive.
He is everything.
Offer your prayer of thanks, and stay full with God’s love.
Have a meaningful New Year! 🙂
🎄 Christmas Prayer
December 17, 2014 8 Comments
Heavenly Father, We think we are ready for Christmas …Not because we have read the pages of the Bible, but because we have read our credit card statements, And they say that we have left no stone unturned, and no gift unbought, if still unpaid for. We stand ready to stagger under the weight of Christmas, To eat and drink far too much, To party with the best of them, And to worry all the time that we’ve forgotten something. And we’ll do it all, not always because we want to, but because everyone else is doing it, and we’ll go along for the ride.
Somewhere in all of this, Father, please feel free to stop us. Any place, any time, just stop us in our tracks. Stop us, grab our attention, and then place your gift in our hands where we can see it, And in our hearts where we can feel it. The gift of knowing that, a little over two thousand years ago, you stepped into the history of this world and placed yourself in a manger in a dirty backstreet stable, And called yourself a Christ-Child. It was then that we could see you and understand you as we had never been able to do before: As Creator, as Spirit, and as a man who would walk unerringly towards a Cross.
Everything else, all the food, the fun, the partying, none of it matters, and none of it has any point at all, unless we grasp this simple, beautiful gift and press it close to our hearts and keep it there…..….. that we live with you, that we are one with you, Our Lord Immanuel.
What else is there to say?
Except thank you, Amen.
Under The Word
December 17, 2014 6 Comments
The church is always to be under the Word; she must be; we must keep her there. You must not assume that because the church started correctly, she will continue so. She did not do so in the New Testament times; she has not done so since. Without being constantly reformed by the Word the church becomes something very different. We must always keep the church under the Word.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
One Alone…
December 16, 2014 1 Comment
Life passes, riches fly away, popularity is fickle, the senses decay, the world changes. One alone is true to us; One alone can be all things to us; One alone can supply our need.
John Henry Newman
The Glory Of The Gospel
November 27, 2014 3 Comments
The glory of the gospel is that when the church is absolutely different from the world, she invariably attracts it.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
The Simple Way
November 24, 2014 9 Comments
A couple of weeks ago, Paul (one of our preachers) asked if i’d like to share a song that’s on my heart before his sermon (which was yesterday). It’s not a full band song, but one where i accompany a single singer, a prayerful and reflective song. My first thoughts were “Oh yeah i’d love to go up to the front and terrify myself while i share some words and try to play a song”. So i said “Yes i’d love too”. He said “Great, the theme is unity”.
As i went away i said “Wow, thank you Lord” as for nearly 2 months now i’ve been doing a personal daily expositional bible study on Ephesians 4 & 5, which is all about unity. Verses suddenly flooded my mind about unity in the Spirit through the bond of peace, unity in the faith, unity in the body and on and on they came. I started getting excited and thought instead of sharing a song, i’d share all of the things i’d been learning for about 6 hours instead! lol. 🙂
Then the more sobering verses and thoughts came along…
“If we are without Hope and without God (Ephesians 2:12), and if we are not growing in the knowledge and understanding of Christ, if Jesus isn’t the head, and if He is not leading the way, then unity is IMPOSSIBLE!” Jesus who is The Way, The Truth and The Life, simply said “FOLLOW ME!”.
✞ Song “The Simple Way” by Sara Sargent
I then went to ask my loving sister in Christ Sara if she would bless us with her beautiful voice while i accompany her on acoustic guitar, and to maybe show me some of the songs she had written but kept quiet. So last week Sara came and showed me “The Simple Way”, wow! 🙂
This is a short section of the song which i recorded on my iPhone as i was learning the guitar chords. The quality isn’t brilliant, but i hope you too are blessed by Sara’s beautiful voice.
The Deceitfulness Of Sin
November 24, 2014 1 Comment
Hebrews 3:12-13 New International Version – UK (NIVUK)
See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today’, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.
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