Do you love Jesus? Are you trying to follow Him? i recently compiled a list of 40 tips on some different ways you can be a better disciple. This list is a summary of those tips with a brief explanation of each one, but if you click on each tip it will take you to longer version so you can read a little more deeply. Would love to hear which of these you found [...]
The final five tips in our #4oTipsForChristFollowers series and there are some really good ones here: #36 Do something for the least of these. In Matthew 25 Jesus gives us this beautiful and terrifying parable of a time of judgement to come where the King stands before two distinct groups of people, categorised in the story as sheep and goats. 'Then the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are [...]
Here are the next five tips in a series of 40 tips for people wanting to follow Jesus better...#31 Be different.Or as Peter Storey put it the other day, 'Be different. If we aren't different, we have nothing to offer the world.'One of the easiest ways to discover that you are failing is if you look just like everyone else who doesn't share your faith [sadly, with a lukewarm compromising church the same can often [...]
#21 Trust God without a backup plan. Sho, this is a tricky one, because it might seem to contradict Tip #4 which was about reconnecting your brain [Love God with all your mind!] and all i can say is that sometimes we have to hold seemingly contradictory ideas in tension. The best example of this has to be in 2 Kings 4 where Elisha is confronted by the death of a child [whose birth [...]
#16 Stop putting people on pedestals. The reason i prefer to call myself a Jesus follower than a christian is because it reminds me that i need to be following Jesus. [the title really doesn't matter, but how we live our lives completely does!] i have been inspired by many other Christ followers [with Keith Green and his story in the book 'No Compromise' one of the most influential, but more recently people like [...]
What if only some of it matters? You decide you want to try your hand at planting veggies so you prepare a patch in the garden behind your house and you plant four sets of seeds. A professional gardening expert comes over for a meal and you take them out back to show them what you've done. After looking at the setup they tell you that three quarters of your plants are destined to fail. [...]
had lunch with a friend of mine who doesn't 'go to church' any more... i know, i know, i should have been spending the whole meal challenging him about how important it is and how pathetically self-focused he is being and something something about the body of Christ and all that... but i was too busy finding the encounter so refreshing. you see, Bill [let's call him that - i know how friendly you okes [...]
i posted a Bonhoeffer quote the other day on the book of facings and the tier of twit that got an insanely hectic amount of likes on it, and despite it being a deliberately Christian statement, a fair amount of those likes were from people who would not label themselves as such: 'Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will.' [Dietrich Bonhoeffer] clearly what Bonhoeffer says [...]
'you will be known by the Love you have for each other.' [Jesus Christ, john 13.35] that's almost very completely different from 'you will be known by the lack of love you show to each other' it blows my mind that this concept has been abused all over the world in many different ways by people quoting scripture '[or at the very least chanting 'the bible says' in response to any criticism] to justify things, [...]
so last nite we had another incredible time with enGAGE – our church congregation – i preached a talk called ‘The Crit of the Hippo’ – crit being and assessment, a mark, an evaluation... and hippo being a really big creature... so The Big Evaluation essentially... and of course the words ‘crit’ and ‘hippo’ combining nicely to form the word ‘hypocrite’ of which the original meaning was simply actor – so being someone you are [...]
