In our last few posts we've seen what can happen when a Christian or a church puts too much emphasis on only one aspect of our responsibilities towards God and towards each other. One way this can happen is an over-emphasis on challenging false teaching and rejecting from the church those who promote it. If …
Continue reading "What are we without love? Getting our priorities right."
In the last two posts we saw the two extreme positions that churches can end up in when they lose sight of that which ought to be the foundation of all Christian thought and behaviour. The church at Ephesus (Revelation 2:1-7) had with great zeal tested anyone who wanted to be a teacher of God's …
Continue reading "What are we without love? Finding balance between two extremes."
Last time we looked at Jesus' memo to the church at Ephesus and saw that, while a zeal to preserve the purity of God's truth is a good thing for a Christian to have, it's possible to take it too far. The church at Ephesus had made zeal for doctrinal purity such a central part …
Continue reading "What are we without love? Avoiding the other extreme: Thyatira"
In our last post we saw that the defining characteristic of a true Christian is to be motivated by love. This should be the foundation of every Christian's faith. We also saw that Christians can easily lose sight of this, instead basing their faith on either having a correct set of beliefs and practices or …
Continue reading "What are we without love? Avoiding one extreme: Ephesus"
What is the hallmark of a true Christian? How do you tell a true church from a false one? You could ask those questions of a variety of different people and get a variety of different responses back, but most of them would probably centre around one of two things. Some might point to Bible …
Continue reading "How to grow as a Christian (part 5) – what are we without love?"
In previous posts we have looked at some of the crucial ingredients required for the Christian life. Today we come to one more: the need to trust God. That sounds so simple. Of course we trust God. Don't we? Why wouldn't we? What does it mean to trust God? First, it means to believe that …
Continue reading "How to grow as a Christian (part 4) – do you really trust God?"
In our last two posts we saw that two essential ingredients for growth in Christian discipleship are, first, meeting together regularly with other Christians and, second, increasing our knowledge of God and the way he thinks. In this post we'll look at a third, starting with three Bible passages from the New Testament. Jesus said: …
Last time we saw that one of the essential ingredients for Christian life is the continual practice of meeting together with fellow believers to encourage each other and inspire each other to put our faith into practice. The early Christian leader Paul wrote to the church in the city of Colossae: …since the day we …
In previous posts we've looked at the importance of coming to "know" God. We've looked at some of the opening verses of the letter from James and seen that Christians need to ask for God's help to see their lives and in particular their suffering and hardship from God's point of view. Doing so will …
In the last post we considered that knowing God requires us to come to his message in the Bible with the right attitude, namely one of willingness to learn, to be corrected and to be inspired into practical action by what we read. Reading the Bible isn't the only way that a Christian can learn …
Continue reading "What does it mean to ‘know’ God? (part 4)"
Nihilist to Christian