Delve Blog
Delve into the bible through our informal, easy to read Delve Blog articles. A new article is posted regularly.
Thursday, 05 January 2012 16:24 | and posted in Prayer & Guidance
Psalm 147 begins, “Shout praises to the LORD! Our God is kind, and it is right and good to sing praises to him.”
God made you and loves you to bits. You are his precious child, and through the Bible he speaks words of love and promise to you. Yet how often do you return words of thanks, love and praise to him? When was the last time you really told God how brilliant he is, let alone shouted it out?
Friday, 23 December 2011 10:38 | and posted in Jesus & the Gospels
I absolutely love Christmas. I love decorating the tree, choosing gifts for friends and family, posting out Christmas cards, hearing endless Christmas songs in High Street stores, attending church carol services, and eating Christmas dinner!
God is with us.
But even though I love Christmas do I feel the affect of his presence? All too often in the lead up to Christmas I feel frazzled by all I have to do and begin to worry about whether I can fit it all in. Have I got time to make the perfect pudding for our family Christmas dinner or post my cards before the last posting date for a change or make the carol service I’m helping organise the best ever? Instead of feeling the peace and joy of God I tend to feel stress and anxiety.
Thursday, 15 December 2011 17:42 | and posted in Sharing Your Faith
In evangelism the emphasis always seems placed upon the other person, but should that be the case? Do we gain anything from such conversations?
Two stories from the Bible spring to mind. The first is from the gospels where Jesus sends out his disciples and tells them, “Take nothing for the journey – no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra tunic.” (Luke 9:3) They are to rely on those they are evangelising to for their well-being. I don’t think this detail is merely teaching us to be people of faith, instead I think there is a character point to be made here too. As Christians, Jesus is directing us to remove ourselves from a position of power, to not come from a place of knowing-it-all or having-it-all but to come with an attitude of vulnerability and humility where we are willing to receive as well as give.
Thursday, 10 November 2011 15:11 | and posted in Sharing Your Faith
I stood in a Borders woodland clearing: an afternoon stop in a dull cool summer day. There were a dozen of us on a long scout hike. I was the only Christian by any description. The discussion was red-hot. Lads I had known for years asked questions about what I believed and what difference being a Christian made. It was the moment that I had prayed for. The conversation took a new direction: sex and anger and lust and how I as a Christian dealt with them. I sensed the trap. If I said these were not problems then my shiny Christian faith would appear unblemished, because Christians are sin-free. If I said I struggled with all of these and more – then what difference did being a Christian make? So I lied. . I lied by presenting a struggle free Christianity when the real thing was very different. And in lying I lost them and I lost credibility.
Friday, 07 October 2011 15:10 | and posted in Sharing Your Faith
When was the last time you got into an argument about what you believe? I bet that even if you “won” the argument you didn’t feel great afterwards. That triumphalist feeling of “I was right,” soon fades leaving a bitter aftertaste. It feels even worse to be the person being shouted down or made to feel stupid or perhaps even made to cry. Having your opinion ridiculed or not being listened to feels horrible. You probably end up feeling like the “winning” person is so infuriatingly arrogant that you want to avoid them.
Wednesday, 14 September 2011 15:36 | and posted in Sex & Relationships
Imagine if Joseph had not forgiven his brothers. Imagine if he had refused them grain and sent them packing as the bunch of persecutors “deserved.” It would have brought God’s purposes through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to a grinding halt. The family could have died out.
But forgiveness changes everything and it allows God’s purpose to move forward. The brothers return to their father and explain everything, including presumably an embarrassing confession of their part in how Joseph arrived in Egypt in the first place! Their father is absolutely over the moon; the son he thought was dead is actually still alive.
Wednesday, 31 August 2011 13:56 | and posted in Sex & Relationships
Jealousy, anger and revenge can wreck relationships. The story of Joseph certainly shows that, and then some! It gives us a lot of incentive to stay clear of anything that will cause relationships to be broken. And that ties in with Jesus’ teaching that if we have something against someone else we should deal with it immediately. In Matthew 6:23-24 Jesus tells his followers that if you are about to worship and remember a broken relationship, go there and then and sort it out even before you worship.
Friday, 05 August 2011 14:23 | and posted in Sex & Relationships
Once hatred and revenge have got into a relationship it takes some untangling. That seems to me to be what the story of Joseph in Genesis 42 and 43 teaches us. After the brothers had had it up to here with Joseph, they sold him as a slave and he arrived in Egypt. You may remember the prison to Prime Minister story that then saw Joseph become second in command in the Egyptian government.
Meanwhile his brothers were in a famine and were forced to go to Egypt to find food. Ten of them arrive in Egypt and have to negotiate with Joseph. The thing is, they didn’t realise it was Joseph; so there they are bowing and scraping to this ‘Egyptian’ ruler, completely unaware that Joseph’s dreams were coming true!
Monday, 18 July 2011 16:54 | and posted in Sex & Relationships
I don’t know if you ever watch Super-nanny, where Jo Frost sorts out the behaviour of unruly children. One of the things she likes to get straight with parents is that their children make choices. If a mum says, Denise can’t help it, she’ll say: ‘Yes she can, she can choose to be different’. I don’t know if you agree with that but it certainly underlines that a lot of life is about the choices we make.
Tuesday, 10 May 2011 10:46 | and posted in Sex & Relationships
For a while in my church, a long time ago, we sang a song called “A Naggy Mum”, it went something like this…
“A naggy Mum, a grumpy Dad,
A brother who’s a pain,
A sister who takes toys and never gives them back again,
All the same all the same
In sunshine or in rain
No matter who we are you know
God loves us all the same!”
Families can drive us mad. When I get in from work, tired and weary and carrying bags of shopping, what awaits me in the house can just tip me over the edge or calm me down and relax me. Dishes piled up at the sink, the carpet covered in crumbs, the bins full and the dog barking because he hasn’t had his dinner – get me very grumpy. I am the naggy mum!