After the Bible talk, the discussion groups, having dinner and hanging out with your friends and the leaders, games are the best bit of any youth group. But some games are not appropriate for youth group.

In a previous article, we considered how the Christian God is love. It’s intrinsic to his Being and it’s demonstrated to us in the coming of his Son. The God who is love calls us to love him. We are to love him wholeheartedly. Similarly, we are to love God by obeying him (John 14:15, 14:21, 1 John 5:3). In this article, we’ll turn to the love of people. Why do we love other people? Who are we to love? What does love look like? How do we love others?

Now, it’s time to discuss God and time and God and the absence of time. When is God? God exists in eternity and in time, now and forevermore. And, as a little bonus, we’ll consider how this question intersects with the question of the Son’s subordination, and Rahner’s Rule.

So far in this series of articles, we’ve been asking various interrogative questions about God: What is God? Who is God? Now, we’re up to the how question. I suppose there are a few ways I could spin the how question. But in this post, I want to consider how God is God concerning his being One and Three. How is God One and Three? How is the One Three? How are the Three One? The answer is extraordinarily complex. But it’s also kind of simple.

In the previous article, we explored the question, “What is God?” Our answer was, “God is the One self-existing Being.” Now we come to our second question: “Who is God?” It might be tempting to think this question is pretty much the same as yesterday’s. Admittedly, there is a fair bit of conceptual overlap. And when we considered what God is, we came into contact with the “who” question at several points. And that’s to be expected. After all, we’re talking about the same God!

In the previous post, we talked about the importance of coming before God humbly but hungrily. Now it’s time to dig into our six “interrogative” questions. In this one, we ask: what is God?

In short, my answer is:

God is the One, self-existing Being. 

I’ve titled my next little series of posts “Interrogating God.” The idea is that I will ask questions of God based on what grammar nerds call the “interrogatives,” words like what, who, how, when, where and why. The first two of these might even be called interrogative pronouns, while the latter four are interrogative adverbs, just in case you were wondering.

But before I launch in, it’s worth asking a question: can we interrogate God?

Christians love love. Everyone knows that Christians love love. God loves love, and Christians love that God loves love. The Bible even says that God is love. He loves us. And he calls us to love him and others. But what does that even mean?

Have you ever noticed that the New Testament often refers to ”the Lord” without specifying who “the Lord” actually is? Sometimes, it can be a bit confusing.

Over the past few days, I’ve been getting plenty of ads for New Year’s resolutions. I have to say, I really enjoy the prospect of a new year to kick off a new habit. I have a bunch of plans I’m really excited to kick into action, and hopefully, some of them will stick.

As the Old Testament stream of my Bible-in-a-year plan reaches its end, I've been enjoying reading Zechariah. I’ve always found the book tricky, so I’ve written these notes on the symbols and imagery to help me understand the big picture. Hopefully, you’ll find this helpful, too.

Every now and then, I enjoy bustin’ some Augustine at Marticles.net. Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD) ranks second on my list of “Most Influential People of the Past Two Millennia”, with Muhammad in first place. When it comes to the Western world, I put Augustine in first place.

I’m the kind of person who loses things a lot. I simply cannot remember where I put my things, whether it’s my wallet, my phone, my keys, my AirPods, my garage remote, you name it. (Things got so bad that I ended up attaching them all.) Therefore, I often find myself looking for things. Truth is, we’re all looking for something. A job. A girlfriend. A boyfriend. Recognition. A crew. A mark. Happiness. Success. Peace. Health. We’re all looking for something. What are you looking for?

This morning, I was reading through Micah. It spoke of a day that is coming when

Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree.
Micah 4:4 NIV

The vine and fig tree symbolise a world free from fear and conflict under God's reign. It envisions a time of peace, provision, security and flourishing.

If God exists, why won’t he make himself more clear? Why won’t he show his face so I can see him with my eyes? Why won’t he speak to me with audible words that I can hear with my ears, like when we spoke to Samuel in 1 Samuel 3? Or why won’t he write up some words on a wall, like he did for King Belshazzar in Daniel 5? Why doesn’t he have a word for these guys but not for me?

Yesterday morning, I was reading through Psalm 138 in my trusty NIV Bible. One verse stood out to me in particular. Verse 1 reads: “I will praise you, Lord, with all my heart; before the “gods” I will sing your praise.” One word in particular stood out to me: the word “gods”. And not just the word “gods” but also the inverted commas. This stood out to me because, in most other places in the Psalms where “gods” are mentioned in the NIV, there are no inverted commas.

Recently, I had the privilege of doing my first-ever house blessing. A family from church was moving into their house later that day, and they asked me to come and share a Word from the Bible and pray for their new home.

In the previous post, we began to consider how we should respond to the good news of the gospel. In Mark 1:15, Jesus calls people to “repent and believe” in response to the gospel. In the previous post, we thought about what it means to repent. It means to stop living our way and start living God’s way. This post considers what it means to “believe” or “have faith”.

News worth hearing demands some kind of response. In the last several posts, we’ve been reminded of the core truths of the gospel. But how should we respond to this good news of the gospel?