Don’t let the eloquent voices of our culture make you doubt your faith. There is no magical argument that disproves Christianity. For many generations, people have claimed that it is foolish to trust in Jesus who died and rose again. They have based this view on their understanding of science, on their philosophical positions, and on their personal preference to be free of some higher authority. Yet there is no killer argument that disproves our faith. There cannot be one, for what Christians believe is true. The message of the gospel is uncomplicated. It is simple enough that small children can understand it.

The Assyrian army threatened the city of Jerusalem in 2 Kings 18. A great army massed outside the walls and a spokesperson (with the memorable title of the Rabshakeh) came out to speak to the people of Judah. This man was clearly educated and clever. The Rabshakeh spoke to the official delegates of the king and to the common people in their own language. And his speeches are eloquent, full of rhetoric and repetition, convincingly putting his case across.
The message of the Rabshakeh was clear: you should surrender to Assyria. Don’t believe that King Hezekiah or your God or your own strength can save you, for they cannot do it. No other nation has been able to resist Assyria, and you are no different. You face certain ruin, so save yourselves now.
This reminds us of the eloquent voices of our own culture. There are spokespeople like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Fry who use any opportunity to mock Christianity as being ridiculous. University professors write books against our faith and television writers and producers present a vision for the world without God in it. This message is put forward with cleverness and force. At times, we might even wonder if we have chosen the right side. All the power and eloquence of this world seems to be united against our faith.
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I know many people who have become Christians from non-Christian family backgrounds. They want to live a life honouring the true God but need to set up new family traditions and ways of living. What does it look like to be a Christian husband? What does it look like to live a single life that is faithful to God? These are questions their parents never asked or attempted to answer, yet they are trying to do these things day by day. And, by God’s grace, they are setting up ways of life that might well not only influence themselves but their families and those around them.

Every family falls into patterns of doing things. It can be something minor, like placing the cups in the cupboard upside down when you have washed and dried them. Or it might be something major, like a pattern of responding to disagreements with anger or resentment with little forgiveness or grace. Some families value sport above all other things, while others value reading with every member of the family engaged in a book of their choice.
There can be something very positive about family traditions. But there can also be something terribly destructive. Following other religions often continues for generations. Big issues like drunkenness and violence also have a tendency to be passed on from parents to children.
If you’ve grown up in a destructive family tradition, or a family who have followed another god than the true God, you might feel negative or despondent about it. All of us are a product, to a significant degree, of the way we have been brought up. Yet there is always hope; you can change the path set before you by your parents.
We see this in the latter chapters of 2 Kings. The family line of kings in Judah was almost entirely negative. Most kings tolerated the high places where people worshipped other gods. Some of the kings went far further than this, actively following other gods and persecuting the prophets of the true God. What hope was there that a child born into this kind of family would end up living a faithful life?
Well, we do see this on a couple of occasions. Hezekiah was the son of Ahaz, a man who built a major altar in the temple to another god.
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We need to be challenged and encouraged. We need hope as well as conviction of sin. Let’s do all we can, if we formally teach the Bible or informally meet with other Christians, to share the hope that we have. We need to hear the wonder of the gospel regularly to keep us going in a world where we don’t see a lot of hope anywhere else.

What do you expect from a sermon when you go to a church service? What is it that you need to hear, and what is important to be included?
I have been listening to sermons my whole life, preaching for over 15 years, and now help to teach others how to preach as well. I have also been visiting churches from other traditions and denominations in the past few years to get a sense of the variety that is out there. Of course, every preacher has their own personality and style; there will always be a large variety in how sermons are delivered. There is no one way to preach faithfully.
When Christians come to listen to a sermon, we need to be fed from the word of God. This means that the sermon needs to be based on the Bible (and not in a loose ‘this is a proof text for what I wanted to say anyway’ kind of way). It needs to explain how that particular Bible passage applies to the lives of those present.
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When you find your conversations dominated by complaining, stop and pause for a moment. You have far more to rejoice in than you do to complain about! Let’s stand out as people who know God works all things for our good.
Complaining is a way of life for so many people. It seems to be the default setting in our minds. When something doesn’t quite work out the way we would like, we complain. We complain about traffic, about weather (whether it is too hot or cold or rainy or humid), about our co-workers and family members, about the cost of living, about the government, about anything that comes into our minds.
Just read the comments section on any news article on the internet (and note that the news article is probably also complaining about something!). The comments are just more complaints.
I noticed this complaining bias when I looked online to find reviews of a product I was interested in buying. While I knew it was a good product with a good reputation, there were quite a number of very harsh and critical reviews and a relatively small number of positive ones. Why was this? It is because people who are happy with a product don’t tend to go online to write reviews. The people who go to write reviews are the angry people who are dissatisfied. If we are unhappy with something, the research says that we are far more likely to tell others than if we are happy with something.
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Getting ready for Jesus’ return is not a matter of working out the exact date; Jesus told us that was impossible. It is about just getting on with the job God has called us to do. Just ask yourself again each day: how I can live for my Lord today? How can I love God and his people well with the opportunities I have been given?

If you want to get fitter and stronger, it takes time. Going to the gym once for three hours won’t do it. Neither will going for a 5km run and then never running ever again. The key is to do with regularity. Even small amount of exercise, done regularly and often, will lead to you getting fitter and stronger. It is a process, something that you need to have as part of your everyday life.
When you have been working on your fitness and strength for some time, you are ready for all kinds of things. If a friend asks you to help them move house, you can physically do it. If you need to go for a hike, you will be capable of doing it. The regular work has meant you are always ready for physical tasks.
Why are we thinking about exercise? After all, this is not one of those fitness blogs! I think the process of working on our physical fitness has some useful connections to working on our spiritual health.
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Above all, our sickness should drive us to our knees in prayer. God can heal the sick. And even if He chooses to delay this longer than we might want, we should thank God for controlling the world even on days we cannot control even our little part in it.

It is that time of year when everyone seems to be getting sick. I had a virus a few weeks ago and many family members and friends have been taking time off work. There also seems to be a higher than usual amount of people with more serious, long-term illnesses. Like with all aspects of our lives, we should ask: “how does this help me serve Jesus? What does this tell me about God?”
We must not draw the wrong conclusions about what is happening to us when we are unwell. It is easy to feel cheated as if we deserve whatever plans we have made to work out, and incredibly frustrated when they have not. Instead, there are some important things that we can productively think about when we are sick, including:

We live in a fallen world

We probably already know this theologically; when we are sick, we feel this personally. We feel the impact of sin in the world in our sore joints and runny noses, in the way that our body cannot do what it usually does. This reminds us that so much of our lives are marred by sin even when we are not obviously sick.
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Drifting away from your family devotions leads in a certain direction. Allowing some sin in your life and not doing anything about it will lead to greater sin in the future. It is much easier to stop things when they are smaller. Let’s serve God with all our hearts and be careful not to step aside to the right or to the left.

Have you heard of the “slippery slope” argument? It is the assertion that if you permit one thing, that will lead to other things being permitted. You see this kind of argument used every time a new type of law is introduced. There are those who think that this argument is flawed, that permitting one thing doesn’t necessarily have bigger consequences. Yet there is a case to be made that starting in a certain direction will mean that direction will continue. We see it illustrated in 2 Kings 15 and 16.
2 Kings 15 gives a brief summary of the reigns of seven kings, two of whom are from Judah, the southern kingdom. Azariah and his son Jotham are given much the same assessment from God. They both worshipped the true God, albeit with major problems. They did nothing about the high places where their people worshipped in a way that God had outlawed. They permitted this false worship, despite it being something God hated. When Jotham died, his son Ahaz came to the throne of Judah (2 Kings 16). Ahaz was assessed more harshly by God as someone who did not do what was right. He worshipped all kinds of other gods. And instead of permitting the worship at the high places, Ahaz participated in this kind of worship himself (v4).
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God hates sin. God loves reconciliation. Those things remain true even if our sin and reconciliation issues are difficult. Christians are called to do something about the hard things. Make the first step in confessing your sin, repenting and setting up accountability.

There is an old disused power station just outside of the Perth CBD, the city I live in. It used to be the major electricity generator for the city for many decades. When it became obsolete, it was closed down in 1981. Successive governments have tried to rehabilitate the site. It is complicated; while it is on prime real estate, the soil is heavily contaminated. Parts of it are heritage listed due to its rich history making modifications difficult. Government after government have had this on their agenda, but so far nothing has actually happened. It seems too hard to fix.
We see something similar to this in 2 Kings 15. Azariah and Jotham, successive kings of the southern kingdom of Judah, were condemned by God for not removing the high places. Many people still sacrificed on shrines on the tops of hills rather than at the temple in Jerusalem. Likewise, the five kings in the northern kingdom of Israel in this chapter were all condemned for maintaining the worship of the golden calves. The faces on the thrones changed, but in terms of these long-term sins, they did nothing about them.
There were a few reasons why this was the case.
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The free offer of the gospel is critical to our faith. We must understand that we are saved through what has been done for us by Jesus and his work and not by our work. But as we try to communicate that with others, we must consider how our message is heard. What we think we are communicating might not be what is being received.

It is very common to describe the gospel as being a free gift. Salvation is something that is done for us rather than what we do. It is a component in my favourite gospel presentations because it resonates with me. The idea of getting a gift I don’t deserve makes sense and helps me understand grace.
Of course, this is not only a modern way of explaining the gospel; the language of receiving a gift from God is all through the Bible. Jesus uses this language when speaking to the Samaritan woman in John 4:10. Peter and John rebuke Simon the sorcerer when he tries to purchase the gift of God with money in Acts 8:20. And, famously, Paul describes justification as a gift in that incredible passage in Romans 3:24.
Yet it has occurred to me lately that when we describe the gospel like this to people, it is possible that they are not understanding it in the way we might intend it. I minister to many people who have grown up in Asian cultures. Gifts are common in these cultures but there are also obligations attached to many of them. You must give a gift to certain relatives on Chinese New Year.
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We should ask how we can serve God with what we have been given. Sometimes we don’t have a lot of choice in our lives, we just need to work or study or raise small children or struggle with our health issues day by day. But when we do have a choice, when we have freedom, we have the freedom to love God and love other people with our time and resources.

If you had been freed from prison today after a long time inside, what do you think you would do with your freedom? I suspect all kinds of ordinary things would seem like luxuries. Eating when you want to, lying outside in the sun by yourself, and going where you want for as long as you want. And when it comes to the bigger issues like what to do with your life after this point, it would be great to have so many options.
What we do when we have time and space and freedom reveals a lot about our hearts. When we can choose our own agenda, what we decide to do shows our top priorities.
After a long time of external pressure, the kingdom of Judah had a period of relative peace in 2 Kings 14. King Amaziah didn’t have to spend all of his time defending himself from other nations. Egypt was in decline and the Assyrians had internal problems that made them withdraw from the eastern border. Syria was weaker than in previous generations and posed no threat. Amaziah easily defeated Edom to the south and found himself with options. He could have progressed a religious reform agenda for the high places, or done more to care for the poor and fix the corruption in his country.
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