Saturday 23 July 2011

Prayer for the anxious

Ah, Lord. I feel anxious again. I feel this dread and fear. I am burdened. Forgive me my sin of anxiety. Heal me, God. Heal my heart of this dread, fear, this heaviness, and give me that easy yoke, the light burden. Let me rest in You. (Matt 11:28-30)

Monday 18 July 2011

What Bible is not about

The Bible is not an ethical textbook. The biblical writers are interested in revealing God's plan of salvation. They were not concerned to integrate the scattered moral elements into a systematic whole. Moral ingredients are dispersed throughout the text of Scripture and when these ingredients are gathered together they do not in themselves present a totally comprehensive picture. There are many gaps, and these do not allow us to correlate everything into an entirely comprehensive arrangement.

p. 248 The how and why of love: An Introduction to Evangelical Ethics by Michael Hill


Take the bible as a ethical textbook, you will get some crazy religious people.
Take the bible as the progressive revelation of God's plan of salvation, centred on Jesus, you get a life-transformed (and transforming), love abounding people.