Dr Paul Allen

In airports you find those long moving walkway conveyor belts that look like a flat escalator propelling you forward. Some passengers step onto the belt and remain static, allowing the rubber to deliver them to their destination. Others prefer to keep up a steady gait while on the belt, causing a unique sensation of warp-speed walking. Still others eschew the mechanism altogether and, like Amish conscientious objectors, choose to plod on resolutely next to the belt. We all end up where we’re going but let’s face it: those who are serious about arriving sooner rather than later tend to be the businessmen who jog on the belt outpacing their fellow travellers by leaps and bounds. Sanctification is not passive. We can’t sit sprawled on an assembly line as the Spirit fits us with the next Christian virtue. Yes, God is overseeing every tweak and turn of the process, but the more we cooperate the quicker (and less painful) the progress. It may seem like a paradox to minds that prefer dicho...

The Temptation of Christ, 1854 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Have you ever stopped to consider the sheer strength and power of God ? It is good for us to reckon with how his strength surpasses everything else that can seem so strong compared to us. Whether it’s Olympic weightlifters, or the muscular frame of a 400-pound gorilla, or the jaws of a great white shark , or the remarkable eroding power of falling water, or an earthquake or volcano, it’s not too difficult for us to be impressed by such strength, and then easily reason that the creator of such things much be infinitely stronger. But we can only go so far in trying to wrap our minds around infinite strength. And yet God doesn’t mean for us to think of his power merely as a physical thing. If he did, the Bible would be a very different book. It would read more like a science textbook and spend more time telling us about the kind of things we learn from the natural world. Romans 1:19–20 says that “what can be known about God is...