We are created for a great dignity, but one which only Christ by his death could make a reality. So becoming a follower of Jesus means becoming truly human for the first time, and taking up our rightful place in the cosmos.

Faith withers through lack of rehearsal and reflection.

A tale of two gospels: grace and religion. Two kinds of lost people: the lost who know it, and the lost who don’t. How (not) to rest in the Father’s arms of grace.

Invest yourself in that which will produce heaven’s greatest joy. What does this say of the church which pours all its wealth into the saved who “need no repentance”? Are we driven by earthly passions, or heavenly?

Is our lack of experience of God’s power and intervention simply indicative of our laziness and half-heartedness in prayer? Surely a word of rebuke to the western church. We expect lavish blessing for meagre seeking. Perhaps we don’t appreciate God’s grace enough, nor appreciate how much we depend on it.

A Christian leader who isn’t seriously, consistently and visibly committed to their own growth is a spiritual danger to themself and those God has entrusted to their care.

The habit of thanking God (e.g. meal graces) means we recognise that we live in an ordered universe, in which grace is a deeply embedded principle. God is always the giver, and people always the receivers.

It’s God’s design that functional families produce functional people. Therefore service that targets families is more than an evangelistic strategy; it is also a means to impacting the health of the community, building a society closer to the one God intended. Consistent with this, it is profoundly strategic and responsible to defend the sanctity of marriage and family life as set forth in Scripture. To ignore this is to abandon our post.

Leadership is recognising the marks of the hand of God, and gathering leaders to the task. Vision biblically is not creating new plans out of nothing, but seeing where God is already at work, naming it, and fashioning direction out of it.

Jesus says clearly here that he has no accidental, random or conscripted followers. A disciple is someone who has made an informed, conscious, costly and counter-cultural choice.