Monthly Archives: August 2015

A beautiful prayer

Posted in Matters of Faith, Spirituality by

I’m just finishing Heinrich Arnold’s book, ‘Discipleship’, which I’d heartily recommend. Lots of helpful wisdom, very Biblical, very absorbed in the reality of Christ’s presence with us. I thought I’d share one little prayer, which I think is beautiful:

The Spirit pierces hearts like a sword
that cuts through bone and marrow.

We plead: give us your Holy Spirit
and pierce us deep into the past,
into the present, into the future.

May Jesus enter deep into our hearts and change them.

May he reach his hand into our past,
to the ultimate beginning of our being.

The Holy Spirit can change all things.

We believe this.

For this, Jesus experienced godforsakenness
on the Cross.

Is Christian faith a triumph of heart over head? No. For me, both win.

Posted in Apologetics, Matters of Faith by

I’ve just written a piece for Christian Today, reflecting on a recent article by Brandon Withrow. He was brought up in an evangelical home, and had worked in a Christian university. But after what he describes as an ‘intellectual journey’, he has publicly declared he does not believe, and is now a secular humanist. He sounds genuinely heartbroken over this, which I find really sad – even more so as I don’t think it’s necessary.

I’ve probably said all I’d want to say in the piece, so please do go and have a read. But I think it’s really important that those of us who have a ‘thinking’ faith articulate very clearly why we believe – the ‘heart’ reasons and the ‘head’ reasons. There’s no intellectual reason to abandon Christian faith. The only reason to do so is to conform to the dogmatic secularist worldview that most of us are absorbed without even being aware of it.