This was meant to be a post about how the new phone might help with blogging. Well, it crashed!

Just as I was really getting into it as well!

It is an Interesting  day  today thanks to the SCOTUS. They have said that gay marriage should be legal all through the USA. Of course, evangelicals are getting  their theological knickers in a twist about it. My question is though; why? Yes scripture is clear about marriage but the bible also says that God loves us enough to allow us to make our own choices. There is nothing that we can really do about it now. Acting with such bad grace is not Christian and is not right.

There are other things that are more important at the minute and we need to focus on them. The poor and needy. Sharing the gospel. Serving Jesus.

Nobody is being forced to marry anyone. Nobody yet anyway. There are far worse persecutions  of believers out there.

Those animals of ISIS again attacked today. Killing in the name of their religion. Their lies will find them out and they are heading for destruction  but we need to pray for our persecuted brothers and sisters.

Preaching again on Sunday. And again in a couple of weeks. This week's sermon has been different in terms of preparation from the others. Firstly, we have been following a theme this month. The book of Hebrews. An amazing book. Each of the regular preachers at church has been looking at a different section. This week, I get to preach on Hebrews 12. It is a tough passage (more on it shortly) but I am looking forward to it. Secondly, there has been less time to prepare. I had to wait until last Sunday to see what I was preaching on. I thought it would be difficult but I have fundamentally finished it. I will read it through tomorrow, maybe make a few changes but I think it is done. Some parts of the passage leaped out at me. I know it talks about discipline and that is a hard topic to talk about but that is only because God loves us. he is the ultimate parent. It also talks about the differences between Sinai and Sion. We are citizens of Sion already. Any joy in our worship and in our prayer is a reflection of our position in the throne-room of the Lord Almighty. But, how can we, mere mortals and sinful ones at that, possibly enter the throne-room? That's the message of Hebrews. We can't but we can. We can because of the sacrifice of Jesus. His death and resurrection have opened the way. His new role as the Great High Priest lets us into the Holy of Holies. This is a really powerful passage and I hope to write more on it later.

One thing that has been vexing me a little lately is the issue of gender and God. There has been a good deal of stuff from supposed Christians who argue that t is ok to call God She rather than He. Now, I don't really have a major issue with it. God certainly doesn't. He has been called a lot worse after all but it has annoyed me for two reasons.

Firstly; much of it is coming from prominent Christians and they are setting a bad example. One piece in particular found its way into my sphere of attention this week. It comes from the chaplain to the Bishop of Rochester (the last bishop to have any authority over me).

Here is a quote for you to muse on

But how we talk affects how we think. Centuries of keeping women linguistically out of the picture has helped keep them out of the picture politically, financially and legally – what the tongue doesn’t mention, the eye needn’t see. Keeping silent about the feminine aspect of God, helps keep our theology androcentric, keeps us thinking, at some level, that God is male, that male images of God are somehow more accurate ... To talk about God as ‘her’ - not all the time, but often - widens our concept of the divine. God ceases to be an old man in the sky, but becomes someone ‘bigger’ than can be described by just one pronoun. She becomes a God of wind and fire and smoke and silence. We can stop crowbarring the Holy Spirit into some sort of false-feminine aspect, but allow the whole Trinity to be ‘she’ from time to time. God becomes the Queen of Heaven, Holy Wisdom, Divine Comforter, still robustly personal, but also more, also beyond us and above us: the Unknowable Incarnate.

The whole piece can be found here - 

God is a she

The thing is, these people get a lot of attention for their ideas. Not a bad thing in and of itself one might argue but what are their aims? The aim of a Christian must surely be to seek and save the poor, lonely, disadvantaged and lost. To preach the gospel of Christ's crucifixion, death and resurrection. Sadly though, all too often these people are more concerned with righting a wrong rather than sharing the gospel. Their all encompassing desire for full social equality ignores the real social inequalities on the streets and in the houses of Britain.

Moreover, there seems to be a desire to liberalize the church. Take on trendy ideas and you will make your church more appealing. Sorry, I disagree (as I will show in a little bit). These important people in the Anglican church need to stop sharing trendy ideas and start sharing the gospel a little more.

Secondly; there is a similar desire to do away with gender in scripture. More and more bibles are removing obviously male language and replacing it with gender neutral language. In some cases this is fine. It makes sense and it has no bearing on doctrine. The problem is though, that sometimes it does have a bearing. One verse in particular, Hebrews 2:6, often sees the phrase 'son of man' removed and swapped with various collective nouns for humans.

Removing the son of man? Why is that even necessary? Surely it misses a vital link with the Son of Man.

Overall, as I said earlier, it doesn't really matter to God. He has no gender. He does indeed have both feminine and masculine aspects but it is important to remember that one part of the Trinity does, actually, have a gender. Jesus was born a man, lived as a man (or as one particularly pedantic friend of mine would say - as a cis-gendered man!), died as a man and rose from the grave as a man. Would this affect me, were I a woman? Did Christ die more for me because we share the same gender? The answer to that is surely no.

It is interesting to note that those denominations who are sticking to Scripture and to the real message of the Gospel are thriving. Look at the Free Church of Scotland or the church I go to. Whereas, those like the C of E and the Church of Scotland, those who water down the gospel and change the saving message of Christ in line with societal trends, they are dying on their feet. The Anglican church is a generation away from irrelevancy. I will mourn its loss but will not follow its lead anymore.

If it helps you to understand God more, do play up his motherly tendencies. Don't however change scripture to suit your ideas. The gospel is bigger than your ideas or mine and should remain the focus. Do this and it will all be ok

Nehemiah 4. Wonderful chapter. It was the part that I was looking for and now I can truly understand why the Mrs chose the name she did. Here are some ordinary people who are doing ordinary things for God and they are threatened by a powerful force. What do they do? They stand in that wall and are prepared to fight and die for what God wants them to do. Definitely a new favourite chapter for me.

As for Acts 9. This contains one of the funniest as well as most important parts of Scripture. For the funny - Ananias is told by God to go and talk to Saul. Imagine his face! He turns to God and says 'are you sure?' I truly love that exchange.

Important- the birth of Paul and look at what he did ...

I read three chapters today. One of them was a whole book!

Nehemiah 3 was a detailed but somewhat dull passage. What I mainly got from it was the ways in which so many people helped out. There were people from all different walks of life and with different skills, all doing their bit. It sounded like the church should be. God needed something doing, he gave some people the authority and desire to do it and others followed their lead. Yes there was some opposition but the main thing is, it got done.

Acts 8 was as good as I thought it would be. Full of excitement and wonder. Peter and the sorcerer, Philip and the Ethiopian. Wonderful stories. I really loved the passage that the Eunuch was reading from Isaiah 53. It tells, so movingly, the story of Jesus' walk to the cross and the wonder of his sacrifice.

A message that God seems to have been putting on my heart lately is that nothing ever changes. Again and again I have seen God that what happened to the apostles and the early church, happens to us. Today's was a message from 2 John. In verse 7 he writes that 'many who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.

Now, I am sure that there are many different theological perspectives, maybe John was talking about a particular heresy but to me it is simple. All too often we hear people on the internet saying that 'Jesus never existed'. It is such an obvious falsehood but it is becoming very tempting for many in the modern world. More and more people are being convinced that Jesus wasn't real. This is a deception and a message from the antichrist.

Luckily (well, predestined good fortune rather than luck of course, we are Christians), there is an even better message in 2 John. If we are obedient to Christ, we will be walking in love and as we all know; God is love. Be obedient, ignore the deceivers and you will be walking with God.

That's a message eh!

I came across an interesting website today. Proof that you really can find anything you want on the internet. I am very interested in word-clouds and find them a very nice way to visualise the messages of the Bible. Anyway, this website

http://www.66clouds.com/index.html

has word clouds for each book of the Bible as well as each testament and the whole Bible. I am going to use them as much as I can to help with my devotionals. 

Here is the one from the whole bible

What a fantastic piece of work. I am very very grateful to the people at 66clouds.com and wish to thank them for helping me do something that I have been trying to do for a while.

An interesting pair of chapters tonight. On the surface, they could be seen to be very boring. Nehemiah 2 sees him getting upset and gaining permission to go back to Jerusalem. It just is full of language and nuance though. Little parts show the evident truthfulness of the chapter and the warmth of the King and his wife to Nehemiah is lovely to see.

Another potentially boring passage was the speech given by Stephen to the Sanhedrin. Taken out of context (oh how often does that happen when discussing the Bible with our opponents!) the speech is merely a re-telling of the history of Israel. However, this epic has a sting in the tail. Stephen recounts all the times that the Israelites ignored God and ignored the prophets he sent. Then there is his final point. The Sanhedrin are as guilty as anyone else. They rejected Jesus and that's the most heinous of all rejections.

This is followed by one of the most beautiful scenes in all of Scripture. Stephen is taken out to be stoned and he looks up to heaven and sees Jesus standing there at the right hand of God, waiting for him. Dying and in pain and ready to meet God, what does Stephen do? He prays for his torturers and for their forgiveness. What a hero.

Tomorrow we see the church persecuted and spread about. I am looking forward to reading that chapter ...