In the last year or so I’ve become more aware of the work of Jeff Goins. He is a writer, successful blogger and soon-to-be published author. I published a two-part interview of him for this site earlier in the year and I recently wrote a guest post for his site.

He’s just written a new e-book, ‘You Are a Writer‘, and I’ve had the privilege of getting an advance copy to review. There’s also a great website related to the book, which you can find here.

I don’t often review others’ work, but Jeff is a compelling, challenging writer and it’s no understatement to say his work could be life-changing for you. Even if you don’t think of yourself as a writer,  wait and give this review a read – then go and get this book.

Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

Jeff Goins is a writer.

In his new e-book, he makes clear you can be one too.

In this relatively short but powerful e-book, he calls us out to embrace who we can be – to stop dreaming of being writers, stop waiting to be picked and to start calling ourselves writers – and teaches us how to be writers.  (more…)

Today I’m going to be going back to the topic of social media . In the time since I last blogged on the subject I’ve decided that this topic is far too big to merely have a short-term series on it.

The issue of social media is so significant  and there are so many areas to cover that we need to devote time to it, and so from now on it’ll be one of the ongoing discussions/themes of my blog.

I recently decided to take some time off from social media. I’ve always believed it important we take regular sabbaths from social media  – but I’d always struggled to really lay it down and actually do it.

Which is a good sign that I really needed to stop.

So with the help of a couple of accountability partners, I decided to spend 48 hours out of the digital realm.

Cut off. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Google + or e-mail, for 48 hours. (more…)

Welcome to the final post of my series of posts on the Passion of Jesus. To resurrection Sunday, when Jesus rose from the dead. Triumphed over death, sin and suffering.

We live in a world where people put their faith in all sorts of things. Money, success, career, power, status. We also put our hope in people. There is this very natural human desire to put our faith and our hope in something, to believe in something or someone better than ourselves, and a way of life, a way of seeing the world that is better than we have right now.

We want to believe it.

We need to believe it.

Indeed, we were created to believe it.

The problem of course, is that we put all this into people and desires we really shouldn’t. That maybe aren’t bad in themselves, but we put in the wrong place in our lives. One of the reasons we have become so cynical as a culture is because we put impossible expectations on leaders and public figures.

Culture and media encourages us to do this. It’s so easy we can do, and we’re so trained to do it that we can often begin to do this subconsciously. (more…)

As many of you will be aware, this week is Holy Week. The week we remember the week leading up to and including Jesus arrest, crucifixion, death and resurrection.

This is a week absolutely fundamental to all of us who choose to follow the way of Jesus, the week that makes all other things possible, that culminates with the fulfillment of true hope.

So this week, I will be posting a series of posts – one each day from Maundy Thursday, reflecting on the events of the week and how they speak to us, what they mean for us.

But I’ll be trying to move beyond the obvious and take some quotes, perspectives and events from the story that are less reflected on and examining them. (more…)

As many of you know this is not the only place where you will find my writing. I also guest post for various sites on a fairly regular basis.

This week, however, there’s not just one but two guest posts written by myself which have gone live.

The first of these is on a site called ‘Goins, Writer’ and it’s run by Jeff Goins – who some of you may remember I interviewed a couple of months ago. It’s a site about writing, creativity and how to become more effective and mature in those areas of our live. It has been a big inspiration to me in my own writing and creativity, and for anyone with a creative spirit I would heartedly recommend it. (more…)

Recently I posted an interpretation of Psalm 139, rewritten from my own experience, to include and be part of my own story. As if I was writing it from my own perspective right here, right now.

I thought it was such a great experience which drew me so close to God, made Him part of my story and me part of His. So I decided to do it again. I came to Psalm 25, another incredible Psalm.

Honestly, it is such an amazing experience – using words of scripture and intertwining it creatively with your own story.

I would recommend all of us to try this, especially with the Psalms. Although it can be difficult and even painful at times to be so honest and vulnerable, there is power in bearing your heart, in writing down your story. There is healing that can take place which can happen in few other ways. (more…)

One thing I always want to do is explore and develop my writing and creative gift. One area that’s always fascinated me is the concept of parables – I’ve not really written much fiction in my time, but a good friend recently challenged me to spend more time on some parables and to share those with people, to try to grow in my faith and develop my written and creative gifts.

So over the next few months I hope to be sharing some parables I’ve created with you here. A good parable, for me, is a story which answers some questions and leaves us with more questions, which communicates truth in a way we can understand – I will share more on that topic in a future post.

In the meantime, enjoy my first attempts at a Parable. We begin with ‘The Parable of the Perfect Church Service’: (more…)

Regular readers will have seen part 1 of my interview with writer and blogger Jeff Goins earlier in the week, where we discussed his journey so far, his new book and the difference between writing a book and writing a blog. Today we move on to discuss the creative process overall and how Jeff experiences that. So here goes.

James Prescott:Jeff, what have been your biggest struggles overall when it comes to creativity – not just on your book, but overall, and how have you dealt with them?

Jeff Goins: Yeah, I definitely appreciate what that struggle is. The biggest struggle I feel and experience as a creative person is finding my harmony in the tension of what Seth Godin calls ‘shipping’, getting your art out there to the world, and getting it to good enough.

I tend to have these two opposing extremes when it comes to my emotions. One side is perfectionism, like nothing feels good enough, and that’s what keeps me working on something for months and months and years and never sharing it with a soul, because I’m afraid – of failure and what people would think, and there is something holding me back from sharing this with the world.   (more…)

Christmas has now been and gone. It’s less than a week and we’ll be into the new year – which is only two months away from my next birthday.

It’s a time where you naturally come to reflect on what God has been doing in you in the past year, what might lie ahead in the year to come and begin to get some perspective on things. It’s a natural process and one I tend to go through in the last couple of months of every year.

It’s strange, looking back, just what God has been doing. To be honest, it’s nothing like I expected at the beginning of the year. I realise now looking back, that I had all these plans of what God was going to do this year, how I was going to grow, what was going to happen.

It hasn’t happened anything like I planned – and I thank God for that.

One thing that I am feeling overwhelmingly right now though, at the end of the year, is thankfulness.

I have seen people I love pass on to be with Jesus this year. I have seen good friends lose their jobs, homes or in some cases loved ones. All this has happened in my immediate community, and impacted my world. I have been praying this year for people to find jobs, find homes and for God’s comfort in their grief. I have also had the privilege of seeing people I care for make a public commitment to Christ and be baptised, which has been a source of great joy.

At the same time, God has been taking me on a journey inside myself, into my own heart. He’s been exposing truths about me – some I knew existed, some I didn’t, and it hasn’t been pretty.  (more…)

I’ve been loving talking about the theme of Advent the last few weeks in my blog series. Many of you will also know that last year I did a guest post for Christine Sine’s blog, ‘Godspace’, which was then more recently published in a book of Advent reflections.

Well this year, I’ve been at it again.

I’ve written another guest post for her site for this Advent – this time it’s on the theme of ‘Jesus is coming, what do we expect?’, which all the posters on her blog throughout Advent have been posting on.

I have guest-posted a blog in relation to this theme entitled ‘Have we lost Jesus at Christmas?’ which has gone live today! You can find this post here, so feel free to go have a look and leave a comment! (more…)