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Faith is the key to your willpower.
It seems to me the role of faith in the formation of willpower and emotional health is one of the strongest arguments against Atheism. Paul was right when he wrote in 2 Corinthians 1:24: "It is by faith you stand firm."
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Good Friday is a reminder of a completely different approach to life… a life that actually produces life by being willing to die…
It’s Good Friday. Today we celebrate the execution of a young Jewish man who made some startling claims. Very few serious historians doubt the historicity of the death of Christ by crucifixion, and one of the peculiar things about this moment in history is that his followers came to claim that his execution was actually a victory, not only so but they also claimed that one of the most common things this young Jewish man said was that his followers were to follow his example and be ready to suffer in the same way he had. The gospels record the 33 year old carpenter as saying we must take up our…
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Our Appetites are leading us towards destruction.
The seeds of destruction were planted in the American declaration of Independence. You can thank the founders for Trump and Hillary.
Sadly, we have seen Christians on both the left and right wing, being more influenced by their culture than by the gospel.
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We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started…. #TSEliot
T.S. Eliot penned the words of the title of this reflection as part of his poem, “The Little Gidding.” The words have been running around my head lately because it they capture the trajectory of our next twelve months. In 1992 my journey in ministry really started with a journey to the top of Mt. Wellington in Hobart. I was in the city on placement after finishing Fusion’s six month bible college intensive. A friend had challenged me to consider the possibility of “digging in” in Hobart and committing to Fusion’s work for the long haul. I didn’t want to. I was scared. I knew I didn’t have the answers. So…
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Lets stop settling for desires far below what we were created for.
Recently I spoke about the fact that words like Peace, Love, Hope and Joy express deep longings we all have, but that we end up settling for “stuff” that promises to deliver these longings but never does. Over the last couple of nights I have been reading a book that has given me new language to understand just how profound that settling for less actually is. Regular readers of Faith Reflections will know how much the books of N.T. (Tom) Wright have had on my heart and mind. There has been a deep relief as I encountered his writing because I found him expressing the truth of the bible in a…
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It is important not to sentimentalise the baby born in Bethlehem, but to recognise him for who he is: the instigator of a revolution of love.
The front yard is blanketed in snow and there is extreme cold weather warning for this part of the world for the next 24 hours. Christmas must be coming. As we come to the end of a year in which politics and power seemed to dominate every news bulletin, we find ourselves again being reminded of a little baby born in Bethlehem who gained more followers than any politician in history, yet never grasped for power. That wasn’t how the Messiah was supposed to act. Lots of Jews had been waiting expectantly for a baby to be born, but not this baby, not this way. They expected a baby who would…
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The role of faith in the formation of willpower and emotional health is one of the strongest arguments against atheism
One of the core questions I have been wrestling with for the last three years is how a person actually changes. I have been wrestling both for myself and for those I am responsible for in the church. At the core of the question is how it is possible for a person to make choices and not simply be determined by their circumstances or feelings. I agree with Roy F. Baumeister who wrote “Self-regulation failure is the major social pathology of our time” I have just finished reading the New York Times best-seller Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierny. One of the interesting things that emerge in the…
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Just because I always have, doesn’t mean I always will. I can change.
For a long time I have been committed to the wrestle of what it means to live faith with integrity. This website is an expression of that wrestle for me. I have spent a fair bit of energy thinking about, writing about, and talking about this wrestle. I have authored two books, gained a Masters Degree in Theology and travelled the world sharing this wrestle. In a new way I have seen that thinking, writing and talking are actually a very small part of the work that is required of me if I want to continue on this path. If I am to be serious about all of this, it is…
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The six sick practises we have developed to avoid conflict, which eat away at the church like cancer.
Yesterday I sat in a room with a bunch of pastors as we tried to work out what it meant to genuinely be in fellowship. For a number of years we had met and been warm and polite, but yesterday something shifted, just a little bit, and we were starting to be more real than we had ever been. Later in the afternoon I sat with another pastor as we reflected on the Christian church, and together we agreed that one of the biggest challenges we faces is that we are generally isolated as individuals. We agreed that this was largely because we avoid the potential for the pain that conflict might…
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It is not the refugees who need us, it is we who need the refugees.
On one day, in Feburary 2016, I was confronted by the dramatic need facing refugees from the Syrian crisis. It was meant to be my day off but two phone-calls I received yesterday changed things. The first phonecall was from a friend who is working with me on supporting one family who are currently in Lebanon after fleeing Syria, to come to Canada. We were expecting that the timeline would be 2-3 months, however we found that they would now arrive the following week. The second phonecall was from the landlord of a young refugee from Congo, Thierry, who we have been supporting as a result of a number of bureaucratic…
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Freedom from the lies that keep us in locked in a small, self centred and broken world.
Once a year, when I was in Canada, we delivered a course in a weekend retreat format called Encounter God. My job in that course was to teach the first three units. The first one sets up the weekend and teaches a very basic truth: life is a battle. I know this is not news, but my perception is that most of us forget that we are in a fight, and on the flip side, those who focus on being in a fight tend to project what looks like anger at people who are not like them. I think most of us are on the journey to learn to identify and fight…
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You think you make your own decisions, but actually that is very rarely true.
Last week I posted a reflection that came from my wrestle with what I was seeing ISIS doing. Last weeks posting was one of the most read ones since I started Faith Reflections in 2010, so I guess that I’m not the only one who has been disoriented by the constant wave of violence we are seeing played out around the world. This disorientation is similar to what people felt after the second world war as the nature of the atrocities committed by Germany started to come to light. One Psychologist, Stanley Milgram, established an experiment to discover what kinds of people would commit those kind of horrific acts against others. Basically the experiment asked…
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It is as we reflect on ISIS that we can see just how confronting, and in fact disturbing, Jesus was.
Every week there seems to be a new example of a world descending into new levels of craziness. I have avoided videos and pictures of the extreme violence of ISIS because it revolts and bewilders me. How can one person do that to another? At the moment the news media is picking over the events surrounding a mass shooting in San Bernardino, which seems to have been inspired by ISIS. Whether it was the line of men slaughtered on a beach, the Paris shootings and bombings or this most recent attack, thing like this are so hard to understand, there is nothing in my current worldview that can make sense…
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The life of half-faith, faith mixed with fear and doubt
I’ve been meaning to write a reflection every day for the past couple of months. It’s been such an eventful time. I’ve been learning so much, and I have been stretched so far, but I haven’t found the emotional energy to be able to put fingers to keyboard. I’ve been travelling the journey of the last couple of months in the company of N.T. Wright and his commentary/devotional Matthew for everyone. For the last few years I have felt like Tom Wright has been a bit of a mentor as I have consumed books and listened to podcasts. He has a very helpful way of putting the bible in context and explaining…
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A confronting Punk Rocker challenges me to trust and ask for help
I have been wrestling with what it means to not have a predictable wage lately. A big part of me would like not to have to rely on the generosity of others to support the ministry that I believe God has called me to. In our capitalist society, living without a wage doesn’t make sense and means that I, and my family, are continually in a place of vulnerability. In my quiet time this morning, I was struck by Jesus’s command to his disciples as he sent them out for their training run in Matthew chapter 10 verses 8-13 “The message was free when you got it; make sure it’s…
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Today you can listen to my blog instead of reading it…
I had a great day today sharing at the Christian Fellowship Church at Spruce Grove. They recorded the sermon so I figured this was a chance for me to let my regular blog readers hear a little of my voice. The link to the audio is here: How God’s heart is focussed in His care for His people – and what it means for us I was speaking about a topic that has been an important discovery for me personally: the connection between the cross and becoming yourself, bouncing off two quotes from C.S. Lewis and two from N.T. Wright, using Mark 8 as my main text. Today I had prepared…
