Earlier this year I was speaking with my Grandfather who has just turned 90 years old. He has followed Jesus since being a boy. He is still as sharp as ever. I was showing him the new design for my blog here on Patheos.com. He was looking at it intently, and his eyes alighted on a single phrase in my sidebar. It said “Follow Adrian Warnock.” In a flash, he said with some force “We should be following Jesus,... Read more
PRAYER is the soul’s sincere desire, Utter’d or unexpress’d; The motion of a hidden fire, That trembles in the breast. 2 Prayer is the burden of a sigh, The falling of a tear; The upward glancing of an eye, When none but God is near. 3 Prayer is the simplest form of speech That infant lips can try; Prayer the sublimest strains that reach The Majesty on high. 4 Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath, The Christian’s native air; His... Read more
This is a list, taken from my Top Christian bloggers list. The ranking is based solely on number of Twitter followers, which does of course have limitations, but is something that is easily verifiable. Please do refer also to my post about being aware of the dangers of being too interested in whether you are or are not in a list like this. One fascinating thing, especially in light of the complementarian / egalitarian debate is that although many of these women figure very... Read more
This is a list, taken from my Top Christian bloggers list, omitting group accounts and senior pastors (ie the leader of an individual church) / denominational leaders. These people are primarily exercising informal influence rather than organisational leadership, although of course many of them will lead organisations, even if they do, they are not exercising spiritual authority in a church context. The ranking is based solely on number of Twitter followers, which does of course have limitations, but is something that... Read more
This is taken from a guest post I have written this morning on the Desiring God Blog: One key aspect in how we faithfully pursue fruitfulness is what we are hoping for. After last week’s post on Spurgeon, I was asked by someone which of his books I would recommend to begin with if they’ve never read him before. I am tempted to just say, Any of them! But perhaps that’s not a very helpful answer! If you are wrestling... Read more
OK, I want you to imagine for a moment that you are a top radiologist, examining CT-scans for minute traces of possible cancer. Get yourself into that mindset, then examine this scan: So, what did you notice? Did you fixate on a couple of white dots and try to decide if they were cancer or not? Or, did you see the gorilla in the top right hand corner? If you missed the gorilla, you are actually in good company. 83%... Read more
In the current anti-christian climate it is vital that we do two things. 1. Demonstrate to the world just how much good the church can do for them even in temporal matters. 2. Make some form of common cause with those who are of other faiths. The secular mind is trying to tell us that people of faith just fight with each other, do no good to society, and in short, ideally, all religion should be mocked, and eventually banned.... Read more
One major source of the differences seen in the church today I outlined in my Charismatic-Cessationist Spectrum are differing approaches to the book of Acts. Some say it is merely a descriptive book to tell us the story of the growth of the early Church. Others say it is prescriptive, giving us an idealised model of what church life should be like, it is in other words “normative.” That does not mean that churches will always look like this, but it... Read more
This sounds remarkably like the methods used in Foundations for Farming, and suggests again that it really is possible for us to help the poor feed themselves. Instead of planting three-week-old rice seedlings in clumps of three or four in waterlogged fields, as rice farmers around the world traditionally do, the Darveshpura farmers carefully nurture only half as many seeds, and then transplant the young plants into fields, one by one, when much younger. Additionally, they space them at 25cm... Read more
This post was a guest post about Spurgeon, surprisingly enough given my current interest in him over at Desiring God’s fabulous blog. If you don’t read that blog already, I urge you to do so. I must confess to having slightly overstated my point in the title of this post. I rejoice in the recent resurgence of interest in the Puritans, who have so much to teach us. Perhaps a better way to capture the thought propelling this post would... Read more
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