Thankyou, now use those 3 and a half minutes to watch the video here:
Persecution in India: These Are Your Brothers and Sisters

So Genesis 6-8 is all about the flood, Gods judgement on a corrupt world. Noah is singledout by God because “Noah found favour in the eyes of the LORD” (6:8). Indeed in the next verse he is described as a righteous man,blameless in his generation.

Now you might think that having been given such high praise God might be pretty pleased with the situation post-flood. We are left with a single group of people, being led by a man who walked with God. It would be easy to think that Gods promise that “I will never again curse the ground because of man” (8:21) flowed out of hope that he would not need to, that man had learnt his lesson from the flood.

This is not the case, 8:21 reads in full

And when the LORD smelledthe pleasing aroma, the LORD said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of mans heart is evil from his youth.Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.

The reason God promised not to curse the earth again because of man was that he looked at Noah and co., and realised that he would have to. Mans heart is evil from his youth, so the corruption of humanity was inevitable.

So often the rainbow is described as a reminder of Gods mercy and grace, and thats brilliant. But lets not forget that it is also a reminder of our corrupt and evil hearts which led to the near destruction of the planet. Praise God that in his mercy he came up with another plan, praise God that he sent his son instead of the second flood we deserved.

It would be easy to look at Genesis 3-4 in a negative light. In these two chapters you find the fall of man with accompanying curse. You also shortly afterwards discover the murder of Abel and a further curse upon Cain.

These chapters are filled with devastation, the paradise of Eden is lost and humanity is torn apart.

But in the midst of that I cannot help but be overwhelmed by Gods love and mercy. Adam and Eve were told that they would surely die if they ate the fruit, and this is true, they did die. But God was merciful and did not kill them immediately, instead he clothed them and sent them away. Not only that, but he also blessed them with children as evidence that he would allow them to continue their task.

And Cain, who was cast intothe wilderness to wander for the rest of his life, was also protected by God. A mark was put on him so that no one would kill him, and he had children, a brief genealogy is listed in chapter 4.

Gods great mercy shines through in the early chapters of Genesis, despite the immense disobedience of man. Praise God.

On any given Sunday it is not sufficient to claim your words are Biblical and true. You must also demonstrate that they are Biblically grounded and true by drawing them out of the text you are preaching.

If you don’t, then one of the two the following things happens:

1. People don’t believe you – And why should they? Human wisdom is empty and meaningless compared to God’s, so unless listeners can see the truth in the words of Scripture they have no reason to trust what you are saying. The sad thing is you are probably saying true things which are found in scripture, but without that authority behind you words people will ignore you.
2. People do believe you – Whilst the first option is sad, this is downright dangerous. If listeners are taking everything you say as gospel truth but can’t see how it comes directly from the Bible then you are cultivating disciples of yourself, not of Jesus. People must be shown that truth comes from Scripture, not from men. I pray that people would never quote me, I pray that they would see me quote scripture and do the same.

And if you are a listener, then you have a part to play as well. Weigh everything against Scripture, get your Bible open and keep it open, check that it really does say that on those pages. Make notes not just of what is said, but which chapter and verse it comes from.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

CS Lewis, The Four Loves

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.