What does it look like for God to show up?

Dev points us to Peter Leithart reflecting on nature and super-nature.  It’s reminded me of some diagrams I’ve been meaning to draw for a while… Maybe it’s been since the Enlightenment and/or maybe it’s come through Aquinas with his Aristotelian nature/grace divide, but either way… Today we tend to imagine the interaction of nature and [...]

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The fruit of the Spirit as works of the flesh [repost]

For years I prayed for the fruit of the Spirit every day.  (Galatians 5:22f)  Yet, looking back, I prayed for the fruit in an altogether fleshly way. How so?  Well basically my prayers were petitions for the moral character of ‘love, joy, peace…’ as abstract qualities. I would judge my own spiritual walk that week by how [...]

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Substitutes for the Spirit [Thawed out Thursday]

We have endless substitutes for the actual, dynamic, personal presence of the Spirit in our thinking.  Here’s a sketch of just a few off the top of my head. Of course, many of these can be means by which the Spirit works. Yet if they are cut off from the Source they have no life [...]

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Evangelists and Apologists note: The six things that have already happened

Through Christ, the Triune God has already revealed Himself unmistakably in every aspect of creation so that humanity is without excuse. Against Christ, humanity has taken knowledge into its own hands and so barred the door against all claims from above. In view of Christ, God has handed humanity over to its chosen futility, locking [...]

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I am in Christ AND Christ is in me

Something I think the Lord has been teaching me recently is to prize both these truths: I am in Christ  and Christ is in me I am clothed in an alien righteousness but also filled with an outworking Power.  My standing before God is entirely outside myself – in Jesus.  Yet my walk in the [...]

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The fruit of the Spirit as works of the flesh

For years I prayed for the fruit of the Spirit every day.  (Galatians 5:22f)  Yet, looking back, I prayed for the fruit in an altogether fleshly way. How so?  Well basically my prayers were petitions for the moral character of ‘love, joy, peace…’ as abstract qualities. I would judge my own spiritual walk that week by how [...]

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Trinity sermon part 2

I’ll get round to responding to comments soon.  Here’s the second part of yesterday’s trinity sermon . Trinity Sermon part 2:  Galatians 4:4-6 (audio here) …The trinity is the good news that God is love.      On the other hand: – the imaginary, solitary, self-centred god is nothing but bad news.        [...]

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Where is the power?

We’re in the middle of a mission at the moment (prayers always welcome!).  One of the things we’re doing is door-knocking our neighbourhood and we’ve seen people turn to the Lord even on the door-step.  Praise God! In our morning meetings there seems to be one kind of prayer that recurs more than any others [...]

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What do you give the person who has everything?

Penicillin. arf arf. But seriously folks… Nick Cornell, fellow Eastbourne curate, asked us last night at our joint prayer meeting: What do you give to a people who already have everything? Because Ephesians 1:3 says we are that people. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in [...]

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Do not worry about what you will say…

The post is about something else, but I liked this from NT professor Ben Witherington. [A] student… came up to class one day frustrated and said “I don’t know why I need to do all this research, and writing and studying of the NT. Why I can just get up into the pulpit and the Spirit will [...]

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