Filed under: Christian, Quotes | Tags: God, wisdom, death, love, justice, John Piper, wrath
The wisdom of God has ordained a way for the love of God to deliver us from the wrath of God without compromising the justice of God. And what is this wisdom? The death of the Son of God for sinners.
John Piper, in his 1986 book Desiring God
“At some point people who care about free speech will realise that free speech has to be funded, otherwise it’s not free.”
Paul Lashmar, quoted in a BBC news article
WikiLeaks, for those of you who don’t already know, is a website which publishes anonymous whistleblowing documents. It has had to stop operating, temporarily at least, because of a lack of money. It costs money to retain complete freedom from editorial control, a sentiment beautifully summed up above.
A wise person has something to say. A fool has to say something.
I’ll leave it to your discretion which I am!
This coming week is Reading University Christian Union’s events week. This is a week in which we plan to host loads of events, talk to as many people as possible, and share the message of the Bible with them. I won’t post a full schedule here (it can be found at http://www.freedom-project.com if you want to see one) but I would ask any Christians reading this to pray for it. I will be a panellist in a ‘grill a Christian’ event on Wednesday lunchtime, answering any and every question which people can think of to ask me and the rest of the panel. I’ve not done anything of the sort before, but I trust God to give me the words to say.
I just read the common enough phrase “the powers that be” and it occurred to me that Christians can have a much better perspective on the world. This is only one Power that is, and He is good. Hardly profound, but what a comfort!
Filed under: Christian, Personal life, University | Tags: death, food, pleasure, rat, starvation
A scientific study which I’d come across before was mentioned in my bionics lecture today. A scientist called James Olds managed to locate the ‘pleasure centre’ in rats’ brains. This is an area which, when electrically stimulated, produces a feeling of pleasure. Olds attached electrodes to the pleasure centre of some rats, and wired them to a button to which the rats had access. They quickly learnt that they could induce pleasure in themselves by pressing this button, as would be expected, but more interestingly when given the choice between immediate pleasure and food the rats starved themselves to death in favour of the short term pleasure.
It struck me that people are no better. The rats died because they didn’t consider the long-term consequences of their choices, but do people? Certainly not! Most people consider only the short-term, physical effects of their behaviour, missing out the eternal spiritual effects. They too starve themselves to death, feeding themselves on extremely temporary pleasure rather than the living bread which lasts forever. Small wonder that they’re spiritually dead!
Filed under: Christian, Quotes | Tags: Baldock Baptist Church, Jonathan Northern, unity
True Christian unity is not something we build. True Christian unity is something that already exists.
There is an essential unity between the Lord’s people. We are all united to Christ.
Jonathan Northern, in this sermon at Baldock Baptist Church (2008)
Taken from Ephesians 4:3, in which Paul exhorts believers to keep, not create, the unity of the Holy Spirit.
This touch typing lark is slow going but still rewarding. This post is typed using my new found skills, but whenever I male a mistake I re-type the whole word. It’s especially irritating knowing that my primary motivation for learning is that the increased accuracy will lead to increased efficiency, but of course while I’m still learning my accuracy is way down. Still, if it was easy I wouldn’t put as much effort in, and I expect it’s the effort which is so valuable.
For reference, the title and the above paragraph took 5 minutes and 18 seconds to type and correct.
Having just been reading some of the mark sheets for my final year project, I have come across an interesting mark scheme. I had naively assumed the mark which I received would be somewhere in the range 0-100% (inclusive). While this is true, I have found it is impossible to score outside of the (again inclusive) range 15-95%. And there was I thinking that daft marking procedures were left behind at school to be replaced by sensible people at university. Apparently not.
Filed under: Christian, Other blogs, Quotes | Tags: Bish, cross, Leonard Ravenhill, missionary
“A Missionary isn’t someone who crosses the sea, but someone who sees the cross”
Leonard Ravenhill
From Bish, whose recent return to blogging is very welcome, and who rightly points out that all Christians should be missionaries to the people around them.
