Thinking about God, Jesus and The Big Questions

There are many examples in the Bible of God punishing people when they did not listen to Him. So it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking God is always looking for reasons to punish us.  The more I have been reading the Bible and praying, the more I see that in fact, it's exactly the other way around - God by default wants to bless us. We are His children. He wants us to have good things for us spiritually. Again, this is different to giving us the equivalent of a bunch of candy, which I have written about before .  Even in the book of Job, where Job suffered an incredible series of calamities, none of these came from God. They all came from Satan. This is not to say that God didn't punish people - there are plenty of examples of that in the Bible too. The message I'm trying to get across here is that God by default wants to bless us. Again, blessings are things which are good for us. Often these may take the form of spiritual gifts, such as wisdom, but can take the...

This is about the difference between knowing something intellectually and knowing it in your heart. I have written before about how Heaven is not an ephemeral airy-fairy thing. It is more real and more solid than this world . We just do not detect it easily. A bit like atoms - atoms are the very real building blocks of this world - but for millennia we simply weren't able to detect them because we didn't have the tools for them. For several years, I knew intellectually that Heaven was more solid and real than our physical Universe (the Earth, the planets, etc). However, I realized recently that I finally know this in my heart too. It happened when I was praying. In my prayer, I was saying "Of course, in real life...", meaning it as a reference to Heaven. It was at that moment that I realized that I now knew in my heart what I had previously only known intellectually.  Heaven is "real life".  If you found this post interesting, you might also like these rela...

It's easy to get caught up in the busy day to day things that we need to do and forget what is literally the most valuable thing in the universe. It's the Kingdom of Heaven. Its value is spelled out clearly in the Bible, and we will take a look at this passage below.  The Kingdom of Heaven not just a nice-to-have; it's a must-have. It's to the point that we should be willing to trade anything else for it. As a reminder, if God exists and is the ruler of the Universe, and if He guided the writing of the Bible, then the writings of the Bible should be more significant than any other writing in this world. Let's take a look at what Jesus himself told people about the value of Heaven: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. ‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls;  on finding one pearl of great value, he went and so...

At the end of times, Jesus will come again. It will be sudden when it happens. Here are some scriptures about this event: “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for th...

Lately, I found myself wondering exactly what I would say to a close friend if I was to explain what the Christian beliefs are.  It is actually pretty simple to explain. God the Creator God is the creator, and created everything in the universe. He also created Heaven. Heaven is a real place, a place of happiness where there is no sickness and no death. The one thing that can separate us from God There is only one thing that can separate us from God: sin. Sin is when we do bad things. God hates sin (he does not hate us , he hates our sin) and does not want to be around it. This is a problem for us, because we all have a sin nature. Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, fell into the temptation of sin. We all have that same nature, so we all sin, even though we try to be good. None of us are perfect. None of us can meet God's standards. A path for us to be saved While this sounds like quite a hopeless situation, it's not, thanks to God. This is why: God made a way fo...

Do you frequently hear people advocating long-term planning, yet theirs does not go beyond the point of their death? That is not long-term planning; it's short-term planning! Long-term planning should go far beyond our deaths, and it is far more important than any will or inheritance we plan to leave to our loved ones. One day we will leave this world, and go to a world beyond, where we will meet God. It's crucial that we are prepared for that time. Getting our earthly affairs in order is merely short-term planning; dealing with spiritual matters is long-term planning which has eternal consequences. If we expect to plan for the long term, our focus must be on the long term, not on the short term. This means keeping a focus on spiritual matters. This is not always easy to do, as day-to-day living can quite easily take up 110% of our time, effort and energy. Also, it is necessary to work in the earthly world, raise our children, and so on. I am not advocating taking tim...

The scripture about binding and loosing is something which I had always struggled to understand.  I had typically not worried about it too much in the past. But now, on my second time through reading the Bible, I decided that this was something I needed to understand, or at least attempt to understand. I figured this verse was a very important verse, for two reasons: Jesus uttered it himself He actually spoke these words twice, once in each of two different chapters of Matthew in the Bible. I figured that for it to be said twice, it must be very important.  The one which I noticed the most was the second time it was stated, in Matthew 18: “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Matthew 18: 18 So I decided it was time to understand these scriptures. What did I do? Well, first I prayed. I knew I would not get anywhere with this without prayer. Secondly I stu...

If we want to send a message in its most virtual form, then email (or text message, etc etc) is the mode of communication we would choose. Moving up one level into the 'real world' setting, we would write a notecard or talk to the person face to face. Moving up one more level into the even more concrete realm, we would pray. These three modes of communication are shown from most virtual to most real.  Before reading the Bible, I would have put the prayer as being the most virtual.  Now, I really do know that prayer is the most real of these three methods of communication.  Why? Because it lets us touch heaven .  Remember, the spiritual world is not ephemeral. It is actually more concrete than the physical world .  We ourselves are not able to detect it so easily and directly as we can the physical world, but that does not mean the spiritual world is less concrete. Besides being more real and more concrete, the spiritual universe surrounds our uni...

The more I read the Bible, the more I am aware that we need to choose our spiritual words with care. This is because there is a vast spiritual world out there which is bigger, vaster and more real than than our physical world.  The spiritual world is eternal, i.e. it goes on forever.  In contrast, our physical world exists for only a short time.  A body can die or be killed, but this will not affect how long the soul lasts: Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Matthew 10:28  Our words and actions can have spiritual impact on others - whether positive or negative: “If anyone causes one of these little ones - those who believe in me - to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea.  If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed ...