Analysis

Our daily habits and actions constitute our state of mind. However, few people know that we hold great power over our own thoughts. Developing this power could pave the way for happiness.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Europe was hit hard by several disasters, the proportions of which are difficult to imagine today.

Very few people have ever found rest in what they are and what they do. They are always seeking what they do not have and trying to become what they are not. These people talk about transformation, development and fulfilment but no matter their accomplishments or status, they are always thinking that they need to surpass their present state, that there is something...

"If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them" (James 4:17).

Two recent stories in Australian media shocked me to my core. Two 12-year-olds in different states took their own lives after being bullied at school. 

Renee James was 18 when she decided to stop praying. If God was going to be silent, she thought, she would be silent too. She had been praying for years for the healing of her brothers, Sean and Niall, one suffering from autism and the other from Down syndrome. Yet there had been no answer.

Nine years ago, as my then-fiancé and I were deep in the throes of folding paper flowers, painting glass bottles, and designing and making our own wedding stationery, the question popped up fairly regularly: Why don’t we just elope?

Apologetics, the branch of theology that seeks to defend the faith by offering logical evidence in its favour, is often considered an ineffective tool for missionary work. How can it be employed in a non-coercive manner to avoid the forced rationalisation of all aspects of faith?

The book "Sometimes I Don't Feel Like Praying" is a hall of mirrors. It strips you of religious clichés and the trappings of spiritual practices that mask a dysfunctional Christianity. It reveals spiritual failures that are hard to admit. Above all, however, it is an extremely useful tool for Christians for whom the concept of grace remains largely unexplored.

I had a ringing in my ears due to that unusual inner silence which I was paradoxically experiencing at the same time as a thought-storm that made me scream on the inside. 

I have always liked to participate in public worship and to practice some of the spiritual disciplines. I did not experience a stormy conversion. God revealed himself to me, instead, like “a gentle whisper” (1 Kings 19:12).

It’s something many of us overlook, yet the research is showing that getting outside is better for us than we might imagine.

Changing habits is like tightrope walking: an exercise in which the balance is always fragile, but it is the small changes that pave the way to truly remarkable results.

Although poverty remains a part of our world, love still works wonders.

Living one day according to God's plan is a good idea to start with. But learning to live in such a way every day is something else.