October 2nd, 2006 by 
dowboy
Romans 1:18-32
We live in what is called a pluralist society – a society in which no distinction is made between different religious and moral beliefs. In the past few weeks, from my regular visits to coffee shops in the West End I have picked up flyers advertising Islamic teaching societies, Zen Buddhism, New Age meditation groups and fringe Christian activities. And the question I ask as the society in which we live slips into complete anarchy and immoral relativism is, why am I a Christian, and does it really matter whether I am a Christian or a Muslim, a Buddhist or a Wiccan?
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October 2nd, 2006 by dowboy
Genesis 1:26 – 2:3
Last week, I happened to be speaking to someone who works for an organisation called ‘Campus Crusade for Christ’. She is an older Dutch lady and she and her husband have spent many years talking at Christian conferences on the topic of Christian marriage. We spoke for some time and I learned a lot – but perhaps the most alarming thing I heard was that in Holland, as I suspect in Britain too, the Satanist Church has, as its number one priority, the breakdown of Christian marriages. And so the Satanists pray fervently to their master that he would break up Christian husbands and wives. Unfortunately, we only see too well how many Christian marriages are breaking up – according to one American report, Christian marriages are just as likely as non-Christian marriages to end in divorce.
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October 2nd, 2006 by dowboy
Psalm 19:7-14
I recently bought a book of the short stories of a 19th Century Russian author named Anton Chekhov (not to be confused with the Chekhov in Star Trek). Chekhov was a prolific writer whose short stories are a testament to God’s common grace. The book has an introduction written by a professor of English literature at Columbia University. In his introduction, Plante writes, “In Chekhov’s writing, everything, absolutely everything, is seen as a problem that has no solution; everything, absolutely everything, is questioned by why? Why? Why? though no answer to the question is ever proposed.” Again Plante writes that Chekhov’s works are dominated by “a great, unrealizable longing impelling the cry “Why, why?” while the one crying knows that there are no answers.” It is little wonder that Chekhov became fascinated with the philosophy of Nihilism, where nothing really matters. But what I want to know, and I’m sure what you want to know, is whether Chekhov is right – are there no answers? You won’t find answers looking in Chekhov’s short stories, but is there a book we can go to which will both state the problems of the human condition and at the same time provide realistic and workable answers to the why? questions?
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October 3rd, 2006 by dowboy
Read: Matthew 6:5-15
Ask any Christian and he or she will tell you that prayer is one of the hardest elements of their faith - it is one of the hardest things to keep doing. There can be many different reasons why it is so difficult - in-discipline, unbelief, over-busy-ness and so on. But I think one of the reasons we don’t pray as we should is that we don’t really understand prayer and why it is so important to our Christian lives.
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October 12th, 2006 by dowboy
In reading the ancient Church Father Cyprian, I came across these few beautiful paragraphs - I think you’ll enjoy them too…1. Although in very many of you, dearly beloved brethren, there is a stedfast mind and a firm faith, and a devoted spirit that is not disturbed at the frequency of this present mortality, but, like a strong and stable rock, rather shatters the turbulent onsets of the world and the raging waves of time, while it is not itself shattered, and is not overcome but tried by these temptations; yet because I observe that among the people some, either through weakness of mind, or through decay of faith, or through the sweetness of this worldly life, or through the softness of their sex, or what is of still greater account, through error from the truth, are standing less steadily, and are not exerting the divine and unvanquished vigour of their heart, the matter may not be disguised nor kept in silence, but as far as my feeble powers suffice with my full strength, and with a discourse gathered from the Lord’s lessons, the slothfulness of a luxurious disposition must be restrained, and he who has begun to be already a man of God and of Christ, must be found worthy of God and of Christ. Read the rest of this entry »
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October 19th, 2006 by dowboy
In a world of increasing fragmentation and suspicion, what is one of the things which every human being has in common; something every Homo sapiens does every day? The answer is pray. In fact, as a species we should not be called Homo Sapiens - the man who is wise, but Homo orans - the man who prays. Given that prayer is something every single person in the whole world does everyday, what does the Bible, as understood through the lens of the Shorter Catechism, have to tell us about who we should pray to? After all, when I say everyone prays, I do not say that everyone prays to the same god - some pray to themselves, urging themselves on to better performances in their work or leisure; some pray to false gods, others kneel down at the altar of their possessions and family to pray. But what about us, to whom do we pray? We are given the answer in the Shorter Catechism A.98 - “Prayer is an offering up of our desires to God“. For prayer to be true prayer, its primary ingredient must be that it is offered up to the God of the Bible - not ourselves, not the gods of the other religions, not the god of materialism or ’spirituality’, but the God of the Bible. Read the rest of this entry »
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October 19th, 2006 by dowboy
Read: John 14:1-14
One of my favourite sayings is ‘the best of men are men at best’. It is true that those we idolise, those in positions of power and respect whether in sport, government or the church, whilst they may be great men and women, are all too fallible. Ben, contestant in TV’s X-Factor admitted this week his addiction to cocaine. John Prescott was exposed as an adulterer. The best of men are men at best – even in us, we know that there are flaws, things we do well to hide, but if they came out into the open it would cause a scandal. Over and above the best of men stands one who is unique – one whose words combined so perfectly with his works that He was a one-of-a-kind – the best of all men but without the flaws which mark us off as human beings. Someone whose dignity, nobility and glory; someone whose love, compassion and mercy were so pure as to make Him the centre-piece of all human history – someone whose personality and character has so enraptured millions of people as to draw them to Him in a way we aren’t to anyone else. Of course, I speak of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is He, and His life, which constitutes the third reason why I am a Christian today. Read the rest of this entry »
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October 30th, 2006 by dowboy
Colonel Herbert Jones is probably a name which is known to very few of you – some of you here are too young to remember him, but I do. I remember listening to the radio before I went to school that fateful morning in May 1982 and hearing of the bravery of this man. He was a Colonel in the Parachute Regiment, commanding 2 Para during the Falklands war. The British invasion of the Falklands had hit a barrier – a heavily fortified Argentinian gun position on top of a hill at a place called Goose Green. The Argentinians had already inflicted several casualties among the assaulting British paratroops – and the invasion was at risk of getting bogged down. But Colonel Jones, according to his citation, picked up a sub-machine gun and ran at the Argentinian gun emplacements causing his own death, but cracking the enemies’ desire for battle. The Argentinians quickly surrendered and British liberation of the Falklands rolled on – but all because of the death of Colonel H. Jones. Next time you are in London, go to the National Army Museum in Chelsea and you’ll see his posthumous Victoria Cross on display there. But there’s man who, in his death, achieved much. But I want to talk to you today about another kind of cross and a man who achieved even more in his death – I want to talk about Jesus.
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Why I Am a Christian: (1) God’s World