I get asked fairly regularly by people, who feel they don’t know the Bible well enough, how to approach knowing itbetter.  Usually the issue is that they are reading it, but it’s not going in.  Now, in some cases, this is simply a matter of time – I think it probably took me three or four times through before it started sticking.

This paper is about the Law and commands, and how to think about them.  There are some subtleties, but they are really important.

Let me pose a question.  Let’s say we lived together and every day you woke up in the morning and took a sip from a cup filled with poison.  After I while, if I said to you “can you stop doing that”, would you consider that a command?  Or would you realise I’m simply asking you not to do something that isn’t good for you?

Matthew 7 speaks to the importance of living out faith and in so doing creating strong foundations (building a house on rock). The single biggest challenge in creating a foundation for an individual’s faith is that is has a practical effect on the way they live their lives.  In particular, note 2 Cor 13 v5, which says:

“5 Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?”

There are a number of questions in life, the answer to which can be life-changing.  Should I marry this person?  Should we have children?  Should we move to a different state?  Should I change from Starbucks…?

For those that are committed to following the Lord, at some point – and that may already have arrived – you will contemplate whether you are “all in”.  And all in really means am I willing to submit completely to the will of God. 

This will seem like an odd title for a paper, but in fact the paper is ultimately about something other than limitations. 

One of the things I have noticed in the faith walks of people I have encountered is that quite often God is put in some kind of a box.  What does that mean?  Well, it means that we create certain types of human ideas and thinking that describe God so we can understand Him.   I will say more on this shortly.

We share below a transcript (edited for written fluency) of a substantial portion of an event that Keith Peeler and Mike Faulkner ran on Kings and Prophets.  The subject matter was how leaders can think about using the prophetic, but importantly this follows from Ephesians 6 as the reader will see.  The consequence of this passage leads to an appreciation of the prophetic and its role more broadly.  More generally, it invites the believer to consider whether they have a wide enough view of the spiritual world.

This paper is more straightforward than some of the others because the point is obvious.  But there are some nuances that are worth understanding.  Hence the scriptural content will be relatively high.

I want to start with Matthew 23.

In this paper we provide an overview of how to think about shaping and gifts, building up to an understand of Romans 12.  The idea that God wants us to flourish in our gifts we believe is a foundational belief in our faith.

We start with an old joke…