Original post deleted.
It's fair enough to pour out my troubles at the time, but there is no need for a permanent record of the grizzly details.
This note remains to confirm that (like everyone else) my marriage has its ups and downs, but through the prayers of friends things can be resolved.
"If you want to walk on water you've got to get out of the boat" - John Ortberg
Photo credits
The Embalse de Riano in northern Spain. The picture was taken by .... me!
Wednesday, May 29
Friday, May 24
Current marital status
Original post deleted.
It's fair enough to pour out my troubles at the time, but there is no need for a permanent record of the grizzly details.
This note remains to confirm that (like everyone else) my marriage has its ups and downs, but through the prayers of friends things can be resolved.
It's fair enough to pour out my troubles at the time, but there is no need for a permanent record of the grizzly details.
This note remains to confirm that (like everyone else) my marriage has its ups and downs, but through the prayers of friends things can be resolved.
Monday, May 20
Binary opposites
Hell is where you get everything you deserve.
Heaven is where you get everything you don't.
Heaven is where you get everything you don't.
Saturday, May 4
Still hanging on.
I find that my faith has, on an intellectual level, taken a real battering by my wife's teaching on Daniel's lions. If the story does not have at least a source in a literal story of a man being saved by God, if it is just an invention projected back on a King Arthur type figure, then it is of no value. It cannot say 'God saves people' if in fact he did not save on that occasion. It is a delusion.
So why do I still believe in Christ?
Because he speaks to me.
When I am at rock bottom, I call for an answer. And it comes. Not every time, but on the key moments. Not as an audible voice, but through other means. In the most recent case I was calling for deliverance from temptation, and received an email which said in summary "It depends what you really want". The temptation was very desirable, but the life I would have by resisting was better. It was the Word of God to me at that moment.
And I have had my moments of unexpected spiritual ecstasy. My moments of divinely inspired preaching.
And there is of course the fact that having been brought up as a Christian, I just don't know how to live as a person of no faith. I don't know how to behave day to day. I don't know how to live without the constant conversational prayers that involve Christ in my day-to-day.
Of course, these could all be just psychological.
But Rob Bell writes in Velvet Elvis that our faith should be one that can survive finding out that we were wrong on core doctrines. God is bigger than our transient theologies.
So my faith perseveres. Just. I have some evidence for it, and I don't know how to do without it. But my brain questions the faith and my logic for hanging on.
And I'm hoping to apply for ordination??!!??
So why do I still believe in Christ?
Because he speaks to me.
When I am at rock bottom, I call for an answer. And it comes. Not every time, but on the key moments. Not as an audible voice, but through other means. In the most recent case I was calling for deliverance from temptation, and received an email which said in summary "It depends what you really want". The temptation was very desirable, but the life I would have by resisting was better. It was the Word of God to me at that moment.
And I have had my moments of unexpected spiritual ecstasy. My moments of divinely inspired preaching.
And there is of course the fact that having been brought up as a Christian, I just don't know how to live as a person of no faith. I don't know how to behave day to day. I don't know how to live without the constant conversational prayers that involve Christ in my day-to-day.
Of course, these could all be just psychological.
But Rob Bell writes in Velvet Elvis that our faith should be one that can survive finding out that we were wrong on core doctrines. God is bigger than our transient theologies.
So my faith perseveres. Just. I have some evidence for it, and I don't know how to do without it. But my brain questions the faith and my logic for hanging on.
And I'm hoping to apply for ordination??!!??
Thursday, May 2
It links back to dirty pictures
Blogger, this site's host, provides me with a very basic 'stats' facility that says where visitors to this site have come from.
It doesn't explain why on random days I get surges of visitors who have been referred to this blog from sites which - when I follow the back links - turn out to be full of naked men and women doing rude things to each other, which I find disturbing. OK, some of my posts do refer to sex usually in a theological context, but those are not the pages that the people have visited. The pages on my blog that they do go to seem to be quite mundane, boring and random, but there will be four times my usual daily total going to the same one on one day. In some weeks I have had more referrals from one of these sites than from Google.
So why?
Is my web site being abused by some malign net-criminal for his/her activities?
Or is God diverting people - in the course of their sins - to a place where they can read about his love and how he will help them to a better life if they will only let him?
It doesn't explain why on random days I get surges of visitors who have been referred to this blog from sites which - when I follow the back links - turn out to be full of naked men and women doing rude things to each other, which I find disturbing. OK, some of my posts do refer to sex usually in a theological context, but those are not the pages that the people have visited. The pages on my blog that they do go to seem to be quite mundane, boring and random, but there will be four times my usual daily total going to the same one on one day. In some weeks I have had more referrals from one of these sites than from Google.
So why?
Is my web site being abused by some malign net-criminal for his/her activities?
Or is God diverting people - in the course of their sins - to a place where they can read about his love and how he will help them to a better life if they will only let him?
Begging for comments
Please comment.
I've not had a comment for ages.
This either means I'm very boring, or that you've tried to tell me how wrong I am but for some reason the comment didn't get posted to me.
So, please make a comment, even if its just a single ".", so that I know the system is in working order.
I've not had a comment for ages.
This either means I'm very boring, or that you've tried to tell me how wrong I am but for some reason the comment didn't get posted to me.
So, please make a comment, even if its just a single ".", so that I know the system is in working order.
Wednesday, May 1
Just a test
I don't seem to be able to upload photos from my office computer. This is just a test of my home laptop.
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