Theology

With Jesus, it was always different. For most of my life, I could only see God the Father through a legalistic filter. But with Jesus, it was always different.

The Bible has 66 books written by different authors over about 1,500 years. Is there a common theme, a leitmotif? If so, which is it? Is there an Old Testament God and a New Testament God?

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14).

God gave Christians a message to spread. The whole Bible talks about creation, about the fall of the world into sin, but also about the existence of a Saviour, in the person of Jesus Christ.

In The Simpsons episode entitled “Homer the Heretic,” Homer Simpson has a conversation with God.

“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)

“We need a bigger vision in prayer. We need God’s vision! Let’s keep praying and daring to ask for more—for God’s glory, that the gospel may go into all the world, into all nations, that Jesus may come!”

Christians take their name from Jesus Christ. According to World Population Review, there are 2.38 billion Christian adherents across the globe. However, there is also a large portion of the world’s population who know little to nothing about Jesus. Research by Baxter in 2007 found that during that year, 30 million people would die without having heard about Jesus.

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.

If we were asked how many of the thousands of sermons we’ve listened to in a lifetime were truly memorable, the answers might not be too encouraging for those called to share Scripture. Equally challenging, however, remains the way we prepare to be good listeners of the Word.

Virtually every civilization has been characterised by religious beliefs about the end of all things, not least about the timing and the conditions that precede the end, and signs of its imminence. There are many differences between these beliefs across civilisations, but many similarities too.

“All  need  Thee,  even those  who  are  unaware  of  their  need—these  most  of  all.  He  who  hungers  goes  in  search  of  bread  and  knows  not  that  his  hunger  is  for  Thee;  he  who  thirsts  imagines  that  his  longing  is  for  water,  but  his  thirst  is  for  Thee;  he  who  is  sick  believes  he  is  seeking  health  by  many  means,  and  his  sickness  is ...

The stakes are high when it comes to identifying the one to whom we should pray, and we can discover who by answering an apparently simple question: Can we expect prayers to be heard no matter who we address them to?

Let's go back in time to the day when Jesus spoke His apocalyptic words. At that time, rather than giving a revelation about the future, He was more concerned with warning about the dangers of deception.

Trust is the main currency of the age in which we live, and people seem to be changing the directions they invest in faster than in the past. How is our life of faith influenced by how we relate generally to trust?