What on earth is wrong with James?

Well, it’s been a while, but I’m back again. I hadn’t realised that two months could go so quickly—you’d think I might be used to that sort of thing by now! My theory is this: the reason each year feels shorter than the last is that with each new year there are more years past to which we can compare it. To this year I will have 19 others to compare. Every year becomes a smaller fraction of our life.

You’d think we would have stopped getting so surprised.

What’s new?

At the time of writing, a very significant change has taken place in my life. By God’s grace, it’s one that he’s helped to guide. I’ve entered into a relationship with a girl who is very dear to me, and the future seems to be staring at me whilst screaming at the top of its lungs, “Opportunity!” There are (at least) two feelings that I’ve never felt before that define me at the moment: enormous untapped opportunity, and the fear I’ll make entirely the wrong decision. I believe both of these find their genesis and resolution at the hand of the Lord my God.

So I’m asking a few questions.

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His burden is light

Here’s a very interesting thought, in response to something I read on www.gotquestions.org today:

The “question of the week” that was posed was, “Do Christians have to obey the Old Testament Law?” The answer was an emphatic “No”, and for this reason which I had not considered before—the Law was not written for Christians! It was written for the nation of Israel, as guidelines for how they could interact with their God in purity, and to be free from sin. Hence laws regarding things such as sacrifices, festivals, and the priests. As Christians, we follow Christ’s law, because he fulfilled the Old Law. What is Christ’s law? “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself” (Mt 22:36–40).

You can read more of this article here.

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Reaching out

As time has gone on, cultures have changed, and so has the way the church interacts with people. I notice something very interesting when I read the accounts of the growth of the early church that are depicted in Acts: you don’t see the Apostles appealing to different demographics—there are no kids’ ministries, no men or women’s ministries, no family programs, no youth ministry. In fact I get the impression that church leaders dealt fairly intuitively or logically with issues that arose within the church, and the church’s appeal to the communities they were part of was universal.

This is definitely not the case today. What’s changed?

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And Then Some (about the title)

You may be wondering, what does And Then Some mean?

You also may be thinking nothing of the sort, but I’m going to pretend that you are. If you’ve ever watched Pinky and the Brain, you’ll know that when Brain asked, “Are you pondering what I’m pondering?” he never actually meant it—and Pinky would always just go along with it anyway.

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