The Belt of Truth

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We’re all familiar with the spiritual armour passage in Ephesians 6 where Paul’s exhorts us to put on the armour and stand against the enemy’s schemes. As you might expect, as an author of speculative fiction, it is a passage I reflect on often, as I create my stories.

Putting the armour on is a practice that I observe frequently. Perhaps, not frequently enough, but I have it written on one of the notes attached to the base of my Mac desktop that I stare at for many hours each day: “Put the armour on!”

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Reflections on Lent – It’s all about Jesus

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As longer time readers may recall, I observed Lent last year for the first time. You can read about my experience in a series of posts I wrote, starting with this one.

So I thought I’d do it again this year. Why? Well, any practice that gets me to think more about Jesus and The Father is a pretty good thing I reckon. But in saying that I don’t want to get too religious about it which in this case means I’m doing something for the sake of doing it, rather than truly seeking Him. Often less is more, if that makes sense.

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Praying the Word

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Photo courtesy of “Stuart Miles”/Freedigitalphotos.net

Memorise Bible verses.

For most of my Christian walk I would switch off when some one mentioned those 3 words. Reading the Bible, especially the Old Testament was hard enough without adding more work to it, like memorising verses.

Guess what? I didn’t actively do it. My heart didn’t value its importance.

“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you! (John 15:7 NASB)

Jesus made that promise to us. I would often reflect on the second half of it: Jesus will give me what I desire. But there’s a two-letter word at the beginning of that sentence that makes the second half conditional upon the first half.

“If”

If we are walking with Jesus, His words will be inside of us. Remember those school and college days when we studied for exams? I found I got the best results when I didn’t just read material a few times, but I memorised it. There were some (not many) exams I knew the material so well, I could picture entire pages of stuff. It was those exams I blitzed.

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Be a Barnabas

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Photo courtesy of “chrisroll”/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I woke one morning last week thoroughly discouraged. I was struggling to understand how Angelguard was ever going to sell many copies when it appeared to only be carried by three retailers, all online ones.

I was excited having been advised ten days or so ago that stock had finally landed in the US after a month’s delay due to a bungle at the printers. This had been the second delay as the original launch date was November last year. However, my UK publisher were planning a big splash for the launch of their new fiction imprint, Lion Fiction, in March this year and decided to include Angelguard as part of the celebrations.

So to find out that none of the physical retails stores in the US were currently stocking it was disheartening.

Out of the Blue

I popped over to a blog I regularly visit and happened to notice a reply to a comment I had written a few days earlier.

BAM

I almost fell off my chair. This virtual friend shared some encouragement that blew my mind. Her words were confirmation of something I had pondered over for a while, but had never shared it with anyone else.

“Thank you, Lord,” I spoke out aloud to no one, bar Beanie our 15-week-old puppy.

He just has a way of doing that, I find. Words from out of nowhere arrive just at the moment you can do with them the most.

I stopped worrying about sluggish book sales.

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Feeding our Hunger

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A Sydney Jacaranda

We continue our series on “Walking as Jesus Walked”.

What I see from my limited study (at present) of Jesus walk was that He fed on the Word. He was the fulfilment of it. So He needed to know what He was going to fulfil, so He knew the Word.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” (Matt 5:17-18 ESV)

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Start Walking

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In my last post I reflected on the significance of loving God with “all of our everything”. My post ended with the challenge of how do we do this, not just because of our busy lives but also our humanness.

Late last year, I was thinking about which person in the Bible I should study next, and then I heard in my mind:

“What about me?”

Oh, hello there, Jesus.

Of course!

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A Lucky Dip

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Strange title for a post on something so important as reading the Bible, but it reflects how I started out when I committed to read the Word each day.

I subscribe to a number of daily devotional newsletters but one I’ve subscribed to for years: John Eldredge’s Daily Reading (subscribe here, need to put in link).

Eldredge’s takes a snippet from one of his books and usually contains some Scripture whilst the second has a weekly theme, for example, “God honours truth”. It then uses a relevant bible verse supporting the theme with a small commentary. Read more

His Presence or His Presents

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As I mentioned a couple of days ago I read a number of devotionals plus blog posts each day and I especially take note of a common theme that appears across multiple readings.

I love it when this occurs. The Lord has a particular lesson He wants me to learn and more often than not it’s something about His character.

Today was one of those moments. Read more

The Pursuit – Part 2

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I titled the page in my journal “A New Dawn”. Underneath the title were my goals for the next year, a practice that I follow most years.

It was 1 January 2009, over 3 years ago.

The first goal read: “of transformation, being renewed in my mind”, a few lines down it read, “of spending quality time with God and His Word everyday!” Read more