Faith

Recently, my wife and I got hooked on a TV show. We’d wait in anticipation for the latest episode each week. The show was Old people’s home for 4-year-olds. The basic premise? Take a class of cheeky, energetic, curious four-year-olds (some of who lacked a filter) and have them spend a significant amount of time with the elderly residents of an aged-care facility.

Why personalising Christianity could threaten your salvation.

No one has ever seen God, but the One who knew Him before He was born on this earth taught us all to address Him in prayer.

"Hi, Alina! I hope you had a productive weekend" was the opening line of an email that, to me, encapsulated a whole misguided philosophy of life.

Jeddah is different, at least according to its city motto. This Saudi Arabian port city on the Red Sea is home to more than 4 million people and is a gateway to Mecca: the holiest city in Islam. Millions of pilgrims come through Jeddah to visit Mecca, some 65 kilometres to the east, and Medina, Islam’s second holiest city, 360km to the north.

Rediscovering the blessing that resides in the little things of life has been one of the challenges of every season I've lived through. This is the conclusion I always come to when I take a moment to reflect.

Could we have a quality Christian ministry without an authentic relationship with God? Anyone can pretend in the short term, but to truly succeed in the long term you need a devotional life full of passion and a continual closeness to Jesus Christ.

When all we have left is God and He remains silent, we need a faith that endures, even when our resources are depleted and we feel as though we have been forgotten.

My body felt like it was on fire, as if someone had pierced my skin with thousands of burning needles, and I could barely breathe. Fear had crept into my life some time ago, following me like a shadow that drained my soul and stole my precious moments of peace.

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.

“God's viewpoint is sometimes different from ours—so different that we could not even guess at it unless He had given us a Book which tells us such things.”[1](Corrie ten Boom)

When I was at high school, I played basketball a lot—most days at school, then team training sessions and often two or three games each week. At university, I played on the best team I have been part of. We trained and competed regularly over two years, and twice won our league championship.

The field of science was flourishing, and amid its youngest and brightest, one student in particular consistently topped physics and chemistry courses, took its academic prizes and was courted with offers of scholarships by prestigious universities. His trajectory was toward the heights of the scientific world.

The end of the last century created the perfect context for postmodernism to exercise its veto over all the ethical dilemmas of the day. As a result, today, as in vitro fertilisation, abortion, euthanasia or homosexual marriage enter the legislative agendas of more and more countries, we see political correctness taking precedence over religious morality.

We have trouble understanding and accepting the image of a loving God, as we have grown too familiar with the type of love that offers itself only when it finds in a person the qualities that make them easy to love.