Theology

In centuries long buried in the mists of time, the Bible was a book for which people were willing to die—whether burned at the stake or thrown into prison. There was a time when Bibles were chained to monastery walls. Today, they are printed and distributed by the millions. Yet it seems fewer people are actually reading them.

The way we pray in public reveals what our secret prayers are truly like. Beyond mere words, it is our attitude and motivation that give meaning and substance to prayer.

The imbalance between the requests and the thanksgiving we bring into our worship is a topic any Christian can talk about, and not just based on other people’s experience. As long as we approach praise and thanksgiving as duties to be fulfilled, we will miss the greatest blessings that can rest upon a heart full of gratitude.

Without ever looking for doubt I often welcomed it with interest and gratitude. I did not run away from it, nor did I treat it with indifference. I rather sought to tone it down.

Norma Nashed has been running the Restore a Child organisation for more than two decades, helping 4,000 children in ten African countries.

In 2015, charismatic evangelical Jeremiah Johnson, who worked as a pastor and church planter in Florida, USA, made a bold claim. He announced that a voice from God had told him in a dream that Donald Trump would become the President of the United States. When this prediction came to pass, Johnson gained nationwide fame.

In the heart of the most powerful man in Judea, a greater fear than any other was born: the fear of losing control. Herod's story could be our story.

The sermons. My mother’s stories. The little sand table and Sabbath School for children. Adults’ conversations about religion. All the information I absorbed in childhood helped me sketch an image of Jesus with one major flaw: it was rendered in far too many shades of grey.

At the appointed time in the plan of salvation, Christ was sent to us: "When the set time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law..." (Galatians 4:4).

We are generally surrounded by people close to us—family, friends, or colleagues. We build a kind of microcosm in which we stand at the center, alongside the relationships we choose to maintain. But on that particular day, I was reminded that everyone has their own microcosm.

Traces of the ancient kingdom of Israel occasionally emerge from the dust of the Holy Land. These discoveries are immediately and inevitably followed by fierce controversies among archaeologists. As amateur spectators, Christians are eyewitnesses to these debates and, in one way or another, their faith is shaped by them.

I still remember it like it was yesterday: the brightness of the sun on my skin, the chill of the water, the crowds of cheering people. We had gathered that Saturday afternoon on the shores of Lake Jindabyne, a half-hour drive from Mount Kosciuszko, Australia’s tallest mountain.

God uses the traits we dislike as well as our weaknesses to create something great, beyond our abilities and imagination. This is the message that pervades the pages of "The Woman with the Book", the biography of the missionary Gladys Aylward.

This coronavirus crisis has, for me, some perplexing parallels with a well-known incident narrated in the Gospel of Matthew (14:22-33). The disciples are confined in a little boat in the middle of a terrible storm, almost as we are confined at home today by the emergency laws of our countries.

Professor Bailey V. Gillespie, from La Sierra University's Department of Theology and Christian Character in California, impressed me with both the diversity of his interests and his prestigious achievements, particularly in the field of young people's religious experience.