Choose Life.

2 Timothy 1:6,7 “I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God… for God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline.” On a spectrum with ‘corpse’ at one end and ‘fanatic’ at the other, where do you think you’d be in terms…

Matthew 10:16: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” An Indian farmer had crippling debts to the unscrupulous old village moneylender. The latter agreed to forgo all debts if he was allowed to marry the farmer’s beautiful young daughter. She and her…

James 1:22 “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” A man once approached John Wimber, the founder of the Vineyard group of churches, complaining about the depth of teaching on a Sunday. “When are we going to get to the meat?” he asked. Wimber replied: “The meat…

1 Corinthians 15:58 “Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.” Whether it be driving on ice, snow or silt, the natural response when entering a skid is to slam…

Isaiah 55:1 “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters.” I’ve visited a number of friends’ lavatories in the UK and found a plaque on the wall announcing that it has been twinned with a loo in Rutana Province, Burundi! It’s an innovative and fun way of raising money for a sanitation project,…

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE 1 Corinthians 16:13 “Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong.” Sometimes when I’ve been fixing a bicycle or packing the car for a journey, my kids have asked to ‘help’. But after a few minutes they’ve got distracted and lost interest, whilst still…

John 1:12 “Yet to those who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” I’m convinced that the single big enormous truth that we find so hard to grasp and so often skip over is essentially quite simple. God loves you. Completely. And it doesn’t…

Matthew 6:33 “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” The consultant pulled out a one-gallon, wide-mouthed mason jar and set it on a table in front of the executives. Then he produced a number of fist-sized rocks and put each of them into the jar. When the jar was filled to the top…

Proverbs 12:18 “Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” In 1943, during the Second World War, the Allies were bombing Kassel. Heavy and relatively cumbersome B-17 bombers would be accompanied by smaller more agile fighter planes to protect them from enemy fire so that they could unleash their…

Philippians 1:6 “…being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Is life a problem to be solved or an adventure to be lived? One of my cycling adventures took me all the way around Burundi with nine other…