We all desire freedom. We seek and pursue it. We cheer for individuals, groups or nations fighting for their freedom, and rightly so.

All of us want to be free.

We want to be able to make our own choices about how we live and what we do, where we live and who governs us.

The opposite of this is total control and domination. No choice. Everything decided for us, everything done for us. Imposed on us from outside.

This, we know, is not good.

There is something inside of us which understands this instinctively.

We fight against regimes like this.

They do not last. Eventually, they all fall.

Because to be human is to desire freedom – and eventually freedom wins out.

However, although there are many benefits and blessings from freedom, there is also a risk which comes with it. (more…)

Barack Obama this week spoke publicly on the subject same-sex marriage. He made clear his endorsement of same-sex marriage and championed the push to make it legal.

It’s a big issue being discussed in popular culture and the church right now.Different people both in and outside the church are taking stands on opposing sides – and there are some very cruel and unloving words being said by some, on both sides.

The thing is, all of this discussion on the rights and wrongs of same-sex marriage completely misses the point.

It’s not the right discussion to be having in the first place.

There’s a much bigger and more significant discussion we should be engaged with. One that goes to the root of the issue.

A discussion on what marriage is. (more…)

Our lives are all a journey aren’t they?

Like many journeys, along the way we often get disruptions – like death, end of a relationship, people moving away, illness – which are almost forced upon us. We don’t choose them, they simply come upon us when we least expect them, and nothing at all can prepare us for them. They are painful, overwhelming, emotional and a real struggle.

Valley experiences. Losing my mother was one of those for me. You may be in your own one right now.

But there are other valleys we walk too. The ones we choose.

Jesus chose a valley when He chose the cross. He didn’t have to do it, it wasn’t forced upon Him, it wasn’t a complete shock – and He could have escaped it.

He chose instead to surrender Himself completely to it – and fortunate for us that He did.

About 14 months ago I was sitting in a pub with a good friend. We were talking and one of the matters that seemed to come up was the issue of me trusting God. Those who know me well know that trust is always a struggle for me, because of my background being bullied, coming from a broken home and losing a parent at young age.

But this was God. (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…)

Welcome to the first post of my series on Jesus’ Passion. We begin today, Maundy Thursday, the evening Jesus was arrested.

So let’s try and picture the scene. Jesus has been in Jerusalem all week preaching. It is now late Thursday, going into Friday. Jesus has had a last supper with the disciples and broken bread with them. Judas has already gone to fetch those who will arrest Him.

Now to Gesthemene.

Jesus goes on ahead, and prays. He tells His disciples that His soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.

A sorrow so deep in His soul that it is taking over His physical body.

He knows what lies ahead. He knows the path laid out for Him. He knows what He must do.

He grasps it so fully it is overwhelming Him.

So He prays, and He is brutally honest in His prayers.

“take this cup of suffering from me…” (more…)

For so much of my life I’ve tried to control everything. Relationships, work, creativity, circumstances.

Even my faith.

Yes, I’ve tried to control God.

Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? On the face of it it sounds patently absurd, no matter what your view of God is like, when you hear the term ‘God’ you don’t think of a being you can control. The whole idea is impossible.

But I’ve tried to do it nevertheless. There are several cunning ways my soul comes up with to do this, many of which I do without even making a conscious decision to do so.

First, I can get angry with God and make demands and accusations of Him, which are patently ridiculous and make assumptions about His character which in reality I know aren’t true.

Second, I don’t give Him a chance to respond. I don’t spend enough time listening to Him to hear what He has to say in response.

Third, I restrict God to human boundaries – I treat Him like He’s human and sees things from my limited perspective. This above all is something that it’s so easy to do that I often don’t realise I’m doing it. (more…)

Depeche Mode once recorded the song, ‘Enjoy the Silence’ – a great tune. But how much do we ‘enjoy silence’?

In my experience silence is something that can be, certainly at first, very uncomfortable.

Awkward.

Strange.

Thoughts rush through our mind, things from within. You suddenly remember things you had to do, errands you had to run, things you need to buy, places you need to be.

As silence wraps its cloak around you, your mind begins to churn out things just to fill the gaps.

Because silence exposes us.

It strips us bare.

It makes us naked. (more…)

Today is Mother’s Day, and we come to the conclusion of my series about my Mother’s story. When she was first ill, she met with a therapist, and during that time wrote a lot of poetry in order to process what she was going through.

In many ways today is the end of one series and the beginning of another, as I will be sharing a couple of these over the next few weeks.

But on Mother’s Day, I felt it was entirely appropriate to post a poem she wrote about myself and my sister – who were 8 and 4 years old respectively at the time (the photo below was taken a few years earlier…)

It’s called ‘Let not the children suffer’ and in many senses it is a prayer asking for protection over us, a poem written out of the overflow of the heart. It was birthed out of her deep love for us and desire for us to be protected from what she was going through.

It is relatively short, but I still find it moving to this very day, and I hope on Mother’s Day it provides comfort, encouragement and inspiration to you too. (more…)

After my Mum (pictured left with a younger me) passed away, we found her diary. Her diary was, in effect, her short term memory. Every year we would give her a diary or filofax refills at Christmas in order that she would have a diary to write things down.

I looked through her diary, and found that in the weeks and months before her death, Mum had written several times in big letters underlined, messages telling herself to remind me and my sister to make her funeral a happy one, a celebration, full of joy and happiness.

These appeared several times, including one in the week of her death.

She’d not written things like this in her diary before.

In hindsight, it seems almost like she knew that she was in her last days. She had always had great perception and a deep spirituality.

It was almost like now she sensed that her time was almost upon her. (more…)