Nahum. Soon after Nineveh had seemed to repent in response to Jonah’s message, they were back to their old ways of extreme wickedness, brutality and pride. They were smug in their own achievements having destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel, and continued to pose a threat to Judah. They’d had their chance to change their […]
Jonah. Once we get past Jonah’s every desire to want to run away from the calling of the Lord on his life, we get to the main emphasis of his message. Jonah was mostly concerned for himself to begin with. The Lord was asking him to take His word to the people of Nineveh, but […]
Habakkuk Habakkuk is pretty confused about God’s ways, and doesn’t hold back from telling Him so through his complaints. He questions why it is that his experience of God doesn’t match up to what he expected, and why the good suffer whilst the unrighteous prosper. The Lord’s response wasn’t one of rebuke for being complained […]
Hosea 11 to 14. After a strong word at the start of Hosea about faithfulness and the sincerity of our love, these chapters focus on enabling God’s people to know His love and how to relate to Him. The language used is that of a parent to child, where love is offered freely, and those […]
2 Corinthians 7: 1-13 Our prayers of repentance do so much more than enable us to say “sorry”. Genuine repentance whereby we don’t just say that we’re going to turn away from something, but we actually do it, is a transformative act. The outworking of repentance is fruitfulness in our lives of faithful witness to […]
Acts 2: 1 – 41 As we come to celebrate the season of Pentecost we will be remembering specifically how the 12 disciples were told to wait, to pray and to be expectant for the arrival of the Holy Spirit. In the book of Acts we can see wonderful accounts of all the things the […]
In the midst of all the great teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1 – 7:29), Jesus said: “And when you pray…” (Matthew 6:5). When Luke records the disciples asking Jesus about prayer, His response began: “When you pray…” (Luke 11:2). There is nowhere in the Bible that describes prayer as a “maybe” […]
Romans 12: 1-8 As we come back to Romans, we firstly have the reminder in verses 1-2 of where we left things at the end of November: “in view of God’s mercy” we need to live transformed lives – we need to be “living the gospel”. Paul helps us to apply that to the way […]