I haven’t blogged much recently, mostly because I’ve been pretty busy with the PGCE, but I just read this and had to post a little extract from it.

What I can do, however, is have the decency to be ashamed of my drive to self-promotion and my craving for attention and for flattery and not indulge it as if it were actually a virtue or a true guide to my real merit. I am not humble, so I should not pretend to be so but rather confess it in private, seeking forgiveness and sanctification. And, negatively, I must avoid doing certain things. I must not proudly announce my humility on the internet so that all can gasp in wonder at my self-effacement. I must make sure I never refer to myself as a scholar. I must not tell people how wonderful I am. I must resist the temptation to laugh at my own jokes. I must not applaud my own speeches. I must deny myself the pleasure of posting other people’s overblown flattery of me on my own website, let alone writing such about myself. I must never make myself big by clinging to the coat-tails of another. In short, I must never take myself too seriously.

Being humble on the internet is a near impossible task, a I know I fail miserably at it on many occasions.

Read the rest of the article here:
Fools Rush In Where Monkeys Fear To Tread

Dear Christians

Please define: Revival

Sincerely,
Peter

I love the pyromaniacs, and this is a classic example of just why.

5 Ideas for 2010

Read it, then go and do it.

I recently heard a brief little talk broadly aimed at non-Christians regarding the story of Christmas. The essence of the talk was that Jesus came to show us how to live properly, because we have been following our own ideas and messing everything up. Basically, I was told that what we really need is to have our Creators blueprints in front of us so we can see how to live properly.

NO!

Jesus did not come as an example to us, that was not the point. Before the incarnation we already had a perfect example of how to live rightly before God. It’s called the law. We still have that.

A handy guide to living properly is of no value at all, because it doesnt matter what guidance we are given we will always mess up. No matter how perfect the instruction, we cannot follow it to the letter 100% of the time. In fact, we cant follow Gods law any of the time in our own strength.

The real message of Christmas is exactly the same as the message of Easter. We are hopelessly incapable of following God in our own strength. In order to live rightly before God we need new hearts, the only way to receive a new heart is through Jesus dealing with our sin by dying on the Cross.

Jesus did not come to live.

Jesus came to die.

Quantum physics says: “If noone is observing an object, it does not exist”.

I say, thank goodness God exists then! If he wasn’t watching the whole universe all the time, parts of it would stop existing.

Crazy physicists.

There are two senses in which I want to ask this question. The first is physically where is the Cross? Do you have one on display somewhere? If so is it somewhere focal, or is it in the periphery?

I have been in a few different Churches, and I know that they pretty much always have something on display. In a Church building it might be ornate stained glass windows, or engraved Bible verses on the walls. In a rented place its more likely to be handmade banners hung up somewhere. I have never been in a Church where there was nothing (although Im sure some Churches do go this way). So if youre going to display something, it should probably be the Cross first and foremost. A picture of a rainbow is lovely, but the rainbow was a promise pointing towards the Cross. A Bible verse is great, but the whole Bible is about the Cross, so why not that.

The second sense in which I ask is where is the Cross in the actual service? Is it in the welcome when you invite people to take a seat and thank them for coming? Is it in the conclusion where you invite people to stay and share tea and coffee with you? How about all of the many parts in between?

I sincerely hope that the Cross is a major (or better, the major) focus of the worship, and of the sermon. But what about the other parts of the service? How can we best display Gods grace through the Cross in the way we do Church?

When I created this website a number of years ago it was made for my programming work (or rather, hobby).

Since then the programming has fallen by the wayside, and my blog is the most prominent thing here. As such, the SpiderScripts handle is a bit weird (especially when I have to explain it to someone face to face…), and I would like to change it.

Trouble is, I am feeling uninspired. I need a new name for the blog, something which vaguely conveys it’s purpose.

Here are the things I generally post about, roughly in order of frequency:

• Theological ponderings
• Snippets of interesting things I find
• Occasional geekiness – i.e. tech news
• Random thoughts and events in life
• The odd bit of creativity on my part

So if you have any thoughts on a new blog title I would appreciate any input. If I come up with a few different ideas I might even be really geeky and have a poll!

How do you pray for someone to be healed, whilst at the same time deal with the reality of them being terminally ill?

How do you strike a balance between preparing for the worst and hoping for the best?

When do you stop praying for healing and start praying for the journey home?Or do you just pray for both despite those two things being mutually exclusive?

Phil Whittall writes in a recent blog post about a caution he received from a friend regarding his blogging.

But sometimes you can get caught up in all, number of readers, number of visits, number of comments or links. Well I can anyway, and it’s easy to play to the gallery.

I know exactly how he feels, I often find myself checking out stats and counting up recent comments on my posts. I have been writing a lot more recently and have enjoyed it, and hopefully some people have found it useful. I need to be on my guard though, because I should not be blogging every thought, and I should not be writing so that people take note of me.

Every now and then I will throw something out about my personal life, but what I really want is to point people towards Jesus.

Thankyou Phil for this gentle reminder to be careful with our words.

This little clip of Mike Reeves really got me thinking (once again thankyou Dave for blogging goodness!). In a post I wrote a little while ago, I said that:

The Bible is NOT a manual for Christian living, full of step by step self help guides. The Bible is all about Jesus, and its purpose is to continually point us towards him.

And the verse that Mike points to is Jesus saying just that.

John 5:39-40
You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.

There is no life in the words themselves, and so there is no life in the instructions you find in the Bible. The law does not bring us life.

So then what exactly are we supposed to do with the law? Well Jesus has answered that for us as well, the law is supposed to point us to him, where there is life. In Jesus we have the power to keep God’s law, outside of him we have no power at all. So when I said before that the Bible wasn’t a step by step self help guide, I wasn’t really being accurate. The Bible is a one step self help guide, and that step is towards Jesus, the only person who can actually help us.

So often I want the Bible to be more (or rather, less) than what it is. What I really want is the Bible to tell me exactly what to do to fix all the problems in my life, how precisely to become a better person. But when I read the Bible, it doesn’t offer me what I want, it simply points out my helplessness and turns me back towards Jesus.

Where the Bible contains an instruction, I have a choice. I can admit that I can’t really obey it and throw myself on Jesus, or I can pretend that I can obey it and fail miserably. My initial reaction is usually to do the latter, clearly the former is a better choice.