Before you do anything else today (apart from reading your Bible, brushing your teeth and praying), point your browser to Barry Newman’s blog, set it on autopilot and wait for the good stuff to roll in. Right now he is looking at what the Bible has to say about the soul. (more…)
Archives: gordon-cheng
Bethlehemian rhapsody
Everyday Ministry
I feel a bit wrong posting this video to the Sola Panel as an actual contribution, but if I were God, this is how apologetics would be done: (more…)
Jesus advertising: Give me an (ad) break
Pastoral Ministry
My goodness, ‘Jesus advertising’ annoys me. When people I knew at Bible college do it (as they currently are), it annoys me even more. (No link is provided because, frankly, no matter how funky it is, I don’t want to know and I’m not interested in having others know either.)
What to do when the sermon sucks like a vacuum cleaner
Pastoral Ministry
I subscribe to more than 70 blogs while pointedly avoiding some, but Ying, missing yours was an honest-to-goodness mistake.
(By the way, for those of you who are curious enough to reconstruct which blogs I read, click through to my blog and check out ‘Gordon’s shared items’. They are a tip of the bloggy iceberg, so don’t be offended if yours isn’t there, because I read and enjoy a lot more than I let on.
Fixed NIV fixed by fixers with a New new NIV
Life
The New International Version (NIV) translation of the Bible was good. Really, really good. So good that even the bits that weren’t quite as good were still pretty good. I used mine as my regular daily Bible for many years. (more…)
A rich man’s identity discovered?
Thought
Ever since I first came into contact with the rich fool of Luke 12, I’ve been intrigued by the stupidities of his personality. He is a man so rich that he can even afford to tear down his barns and build bigger ones. This is a strange piece of non-thriftiness that a friend from a farming background assured me is still not unknown in rural Australia—something which I witnessed, in modified English form, for myself just the other day. (Well okay, watching Grand Designs on the telly may not count as ‘witnessing’, but let’s just say that there are enough rich fools about for any of us to recognize the type.)
Conversion by law
Life
Leviticus, one of the Old Testament books of God’s law, seems, for some reason, to be the target for particular mockery both by non-Christians (who will invariably allude to the silliness of the food laws as they attempt to satirize its opposition to homosexual practice) and even some Christians (who will use it to empathize with some who feel that Bible reading is boring).
But Dave Bish over at the Blue Fish project reminded me of the wonderful story of how Charles Simeon, uber-preacher of Cambridge University during the late 18th and early 19th century, became a Christian:
Confession
Life
I became a Christian at the age of 15.
When I began to go to church, we used the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and prayed the prayers from it each Sunday.
God did it. Have I missed something?
Thought
Hit me with a Psalm!
Everyday Ministry
Psalm 53, to be precise.
Psalm 53:5, to be preciser.
Okay, so if you really wanted to connect the gospel with the people in the community, you just know intuitively that telling them that they’re under judgement is marketing suicide. It’s a bit like selling your medicine by asking people to come along to a discussion group so that they can share about their favourite disease.
Christians who believe judgement is real often respond, therefore, by hiding the information about God’s wrath inside the fine print of their mind. After all, they reason, the Bible reserves its worst words of judgement for religious insiders.
Sexual immorality: Some thoughts from Corinth
Thought
Pornography, sexual temptation and sexual failure are one of the great issues for God’s people as we learn to live in the always-connected age. It’s a problem that’s not about to go away any time soon. In the face of such a massive challenge to Christian living, it is important for us to learn how to talk honestly with each other about our struggle to live pure lives. Our churches need to provide places for Christians to support each other in this struggle. That’s the essence of what James Warren’s excellent article is about. But instead of running it as the first feature in this issue, we decided to start with Gordon’s piece on lessons learned from Corinth. The final and ultimate solution to dealing with our sexual sins is not community (although that is vital), but the death and resurrection of Jesus. As you spend some time thinking about these problems, don’t jump straight to the second article; we need to hear everything both articles have to say—over and over again. (more…)
Walking with Gay Friends
Review
Walking with Gay Friends
Alex Tylee
Inter-Varsity Press, Downers Grove, 2007, 160pp.
Suggesting that homosexuality is a sin is unpopular. Going further and suggesting that change and healing from homosexual sin is possible is always going to be a tough sell. Nevertheless, this is exactly what Alex Tylee manages to achieve in Walking with Gay Friends. (more…)
How to steal another man’s wife
Thought
It’s not so hard to steal another man’s wife if you’re a king:
And Abner sent messengers to David on his behalf, saying, “To whom does the land belong? Make your covenant with me, and behold, my hand shall be with you to bring over all Israel to you.” And he said, “Good; I will make a covenant with you. But one thing I require of you; that is, you shall not see my face unless you first bring Michal, Saul’s daughter, when you come to see my face.” Then David sent messengers to Ish-bosheth, Saul’s son, saying, “Give me my wife Michal, for whom I paid the bridal price of a hundred foreskins of the Philistines.” And Ish-bosheth sent and took her from her husband Paltiel the son of Laish. But her husband went with her, weeping after her all the way to Bahurim. Then Abner said to him, “Go, return.” And he returned. (2 Sam 3:12-16; emphasis mine.)
I put it to you that King David ended up as a nasty, sleazy piece of work because he always was (1 Kgs 1:1-4, 2 Sam 11). (more…)
Fallen short
Up front
Psalm 19 is famous and rightly so:
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
How to freak out your church treasurer
Everyday Ministry
Here’s something simple and biblical.
- Buy something necessary, but not cheap, on behalf of your church—for example, all the meat for the men’s evangelistic barbecue evening, or a large amount of food for a soup kitchen.