Above all else

OK, so I wore white today.  Before you jump the gun, I hope you'll read this with an open mind.  Here are three things I think you should know: 1. Who really says Christians hate gays? Homosexual activity is just like any other disobedience with God.  No different from greed, anger, adultery, theft.  So, in exactly the same way that Jesus loves the sinner, we are required to love every sinner too.  It is hypocritical for any Christian to say he hates gays, because that would mean he hates all sinners, including himself.  As the Bible instructs us,"Love your neighbour as yourself". BUT that doesn't mean it's OK to sin.  Just as Christians still love sinners, absolutely including gays , we also love the hothead and the adulterer for example.  But we still think it's absolutely wrong to be hot-tempered and to commit adultery. So if Christians don't hate gays, why do so many people think so?  It's because of the activists.  The only people who co

So, how many of us remember the scene in the 2000 stop-motion movie Chicken Run, when Babs the chicken makes a narrow escape, and then remarks "All me life flashed before me eyes..." before disappointedly concluding, "it was really borin'...!" Well, I definitely had a "life flashed before my eyes" moment last week. We'd gone up to Malaysia for a short holiday with the kids and my parents.  We found an adventure park that had some decent reviews on Tripadvisor, so we headed there one morning. You know, tree and rock climbing, tunnels and mazes, ropes and obstacles.  Both kids love this sort of thing. The highlight of the place was supposed to be this gigantic flying fox above the trees.  It's split into four legs, two short flights, and two long ones.  Daniel unfortunately didn't make the minimum weight of 40 kg, so only Nat could go, and I went along just to make sure she was fine.  Upon reaching the first leap, I have to admit I ha

As a sort of mental / soulsearching exercise, I was asked this at a training course I was recently sent to: what are you most grateful for?  What are you most proud of?  And what are you most looking forward to?  Such a simple but great series of questions to ask.  They compel me to think positively about my past experiences, and hence identify my strengths and passions.  This then leads me to what I'm going to do about those strengths and passions.  People are so much more driven and inspired by purpose, rather than tasks - so if we can identify our purpose, then our lives, whether at work, in our ministry or at home become so much more than just "onethingafteranother". So what am I grateful for?  So much that I'm pretty sure if I were to write them all down here, I'd have lost your attention well before I'm done.  So let me start with this - I have a wife that I'm utterly convinced God prepared for me from the beginning of time!  For a number of ye