For followers of Jesus, today is the most important day. If Easter Sunday didn't happen, then everything we believe changes. Don't get me wrong, if Jesus had just been a good man who had come and lived the life He lived, i still think it would be worth following Him. The man who preached enemy love, who reached out and touched and spoke to and welcomed in the marginalised and the sick and the uninvited, [...]
This is the day when we remember a significant death. And how it changed the world. i began today, celebrating the start of the Easter weekend, watching the dvd from my best mate Rob Lloyd's funeral - a collage of photos and some video set to music... it's been just four months and i miss my friend so much. His death was significant and it changed my world. There is a Rob-shaped gap that remains [...]
This is the second extract i want to share from Stephen Lungu's excellent book, 'Out of the Black Shadows' which i just finished reading [get a copy and read it and pass it on!] and this is from right at the end where he looks back over his life from violent rejected gangster to preacher and evangelist and it gives a glimpse of how God's hand can be present all through someone's life. This takes [...]
Following on from the previous post asking if it is okay for a follower of Jesus to get a tattoo, i thought i would share the story behind my tattoo: THE PLACE For the longest time i thought it was going to be tennis ball sized and on my left shoulder. Then quite recently, when i started seriously thinking about it [has been on and off thought for at least five years] i realised that [...]
Boko Haram... Charlie Hebdo... Pupils in a Gauteng school re-enacting dog-fights... Sometimes, far too regularly, it seems like the world has gone mad. What are we to do? i was encouraged by this excerpt from a Dutch friend of mine who sent this as part of his end of year newsletter: One thing has become clearer to me than ever before: Jesus Christ is the only hope for man and mankind. Especially studying the chapters [...]
Bruce Collins is one of my best friends in the category of 'people i have hardly spent any time with at all' - our spirits seem to connect strongly when it comes to God and life and relationships and things and i just love his passion and wrestling and honesty... he has a great gift for writing too which is why i am reblogging this post of his which feels like something i could have [...]
How do you judge good character? The idea or concept of ‘Character’ and ‘A person of good character’ seems, to me, to be a bit of subjective or elusive in terms of definition. And so, instead of trying to come up with any kind of definitive definition [is there such a thing as a non-definitive definition?] of what i mean when i talk about a person of character, i thought it might be more helpful to describe some aspects that i [...]
i don't feel very strong right now. i feel wronged. badly done by. hurt. betrayed. disappointed. and yet again and again it comes back to me that the call is on me to forgive. pride. ego. self-righteousness. my idea of "justice". all these things rally against me, trying to convince me that i am in the right [maybe i am] and that the other should approach me [maybe they should] and seek peace and restoration. [...]
and let Him loose in my life... was end of grade 10 or 11 [or standard 8/9 as we used to call it in the days when we had to trudge 50 miles barefoot in the snow just to get a glass bottle of milk!] when that happened, but let me back track. i was five years old when i asked Jesus into my heart - looking back now i may have not understood the [...]
i haven't shared this one for a while so i thort i'd repost it cos it really helps explain the concept really well for me: So i often hear the question ‘how good do i need to be to get to heaven’ or else the question can be phrased in a different way – ‘how is it that you (followers of Jesus) say that if a serial killer repents and becomes a follower of Christ [...]
