This week I started reading ‘The Confessions of St Augustine’, and it is one of the most amazing works that is not Scripture that I have ever read. Every word is written by a man who loves and cherishes the Word of God about anything and everything. And the thing is that I am more awe struck by reading this account of a man’s sinful life turned to God than I am by any of the stories I hear now. Not because I can’t see how the Father is at work now in those around me, but because I see how God is the same God now and then. He is never old and never new. He is without age and He does not see decay. He is the Alpha and the Omega. The Beginning and the End. He created all things and by His will they have their being.

So why do we so often do we fail to praise God, Father, Son and Spirit, all the time and only do it when we deem it appropriate?

So often, even as Christians, we fail to...

“For I consider that the present sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” – Romans 8:18

Three Truths:
1. I experience suffering.
2. God is Love.
3. God is sovereign in all things.

While I was in highschool, a American author published a book and in one of his characters said, “That’s the thing about pain. It demands to be felt.” I agreed with him. Pain is painful, and painful things get felt. Whether be it physical, emotional, mental, spiritual or any other sort of pain, we suffer because of it. It’s a truth of the broken world we live in.
So Truth 1 is true because I can testify to it. It’s an internal truth. One that I experience and feel in my inmost being. As an observer, you can see the affects of my suffering but you do not feel it. But, if you are human, then you suffer too. Christian or not, you can testify that...

“When all else fails: pray.”

When I first heard that phrase, I didn’t want to listen to it. At the time I was a stuck up, proud 15 year old boy. What 15 year old me failed to understand was the power and emence significance that prayer has in the Christian life.

5 years on, I can think of nothing better to say to someone that is struggling with life than to depend on God in prayer.
But I want to change that original phrase. There is an implication behind it that makes is seem that only after we have relied on everything else, then we should pray.

Dear friends, how foolish are we to think that we can do anything without God first willing it to be!
So let us not just pray when all else fails but let us be constant in prayer.

In all things: Pray!

If I claim to have faith and walk in the light, yet live in unrepentant sin, I deceive myself and this around me. more than this, I lie to the Father and Spirit, and crucify the Son again in my heart. The Spirit does not dwell in me and I still live in the darkness. (1 John 1:5-10)
But if I walk in the light, striving to fight the sin in my life then the Spirit of God is alive in me. I am a child of the Father and a co-heir of the inheritance with Christ. (1 Peter 1:3-5, Romans 8:16-17)

I am not what I ought to be,
I am not what I want to be,
I am not what I hope to be in another world;
But still I am not what I once used to be,
And by the grace of God, I am what I am.
– John Newton

Who is more aware of our own faults than ourselves? We know what is broken about us. We know how we let others down, and we know our own sinful desires within us.
Yet there is one who knows more about us...

Do the stars disappear when the blind look at the sky? Or do they simply fail to see what was there the whole time?
When a tree falls in a forest with no around to hear it, does it still make a crash?

These may seem like pretty simple questions but take a minute to think them through and answer them.
…
Done? Good.
If the answers you came up with are “they fail to see” and “of course”, then you are in the majority of people. If your answers were different, take another minute to think.
The thing is, that even though the blind may not be able to see the stars, everyone else can. And a person may not be around to hear a tree fall in a forest but all the other trees and animals bear witness to it.

Is it not the same with God? We may not be able to see Him but all of creation bears witness to His existence. Romans 1:19-21 make this very clear.
“For what can be known about God is plain to...

When we say we know a person, we imply that we have a relationship with that person. We know lots of things about them but, more importantly, we know them know them personally. I can know a heap of stuff about Donald Trump but I will never know him and he will never know me.

Then why is it that we treat God so differently?

So often we say that we “know God” when what we really mean is that we know things about God. This is a distinct failure on our part as Christians to really accept this knowledge that spurs us into action and relationship with God.
As Christians, we often use the terms “head knowledge” and “heart knowledge” without actually taking into proper consideration what these phrases mean. By making a distinction between the head and heart, we unknowingly highlight the heart of the matter: Because we fail to be in a right relationship with God so we turn what we hear about...

I am not a trained theologian or a professional scholar. I am merely a young Christian man living in a broken and sinful world. I live in Sydney, Australia, and I attend Christ Church Gladesville. My name is Thomas Mitchell Guthrie and I am nothing more than a person with thoughts. I want to acknowledge that I do have biases and that these will come out in my writing, specifically concerning the truth of the Gospel, which is Christ Jesus our Lord.

I am the middle child of three. I have an older sister who is married, and a younger brother who is finishing school in less than 6 months. I currently work 4 days a week at Moore Theological College as part of the maintenance team.

I grew up in a Christian family, attending church every week. Both my parents are Christians. So are my brother and sister. But I would not have called myself a Christian until I was about 13 years old. I’ve been...