Dr Paul Allen

  By John Starke THE CRAB NEBULA is an exploding star about forty-two hundred light years away. I first learned about it in Annie Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Talk . Light from this exploding star first became visible to earth in 1054. It was a supernova then, so bright it could be seen during the daytime. A thousand years later, the star is still exploding. What explodes for a thousand years? What has the density and size to keep up this pace? If you look at the Crab Nebula today through binoculars, it looks like a little ring. If you stare at it, even with earnest stillness, you will see no movement. The naked eye clothed with binoculars looks at this exploding star, and it seems more like a statue. “Photographs of the Crab Nebula taken fifteen years ago seem identical to photographs of it taken yesterday,” and yet the Crab Nebula is expanding at the rate of seventy million miles a day, and it’s been doing that for millennia. 1 We are in a universe where something that has incr...

A vibrant prayer life is possible for you. I know it may not seem this way, but the whole thing is rigged for triumph. That doesn’t mean that prayer will be easy or comfortable. It won’t. In fact, we should prepare for the long, slow haul of discomfort, confusion, and frustration, laced with joy, love, stability, and wholeness.  There aren’t a few techniques merely to pick up so that next week the struggle for prayer will be over. Instead, there are realities that we need to grasp that lead to pathways (rather than techniques) toward intimacy with God.  These realities—like the incarnation of Christ, our participation in Christ’s exalted status, and his participation in our troubled and lowly place—rearrange how we think about ourselves, God, and the world around us. This often means unlearning lies about ourselves, God, and the world that have shaped how we’ve lived and made decisions so far. That will take time because it’s not merely changing our minds or our perspectives b...

 

 

 

The public ministry of Jesus didn't create demonic activity, but it did expose it, theologian and New Testament scholar N.T. Wright said during a recent episode of "Ask Me Anything," cautioning Christians against both the denial of spiritual evil and the unhealthy fixation on it. Responding to a question  about whether Jesus’ arrival triggered an apparent surge of demonic activity in the New Testament, the 77-year-old British author said the Gospels portray Jesus’ proclamation of God’s Kingdom as a moment when hidden spiritual forces were suddenly confronted. “When Jesus comes into Galilee and starts saying, ‘The Kingdom of God is at hand,’ it’s as though suddenly all the furniture starts flying around the room,” Wright said, pointing to Gospel accounts of public confrontations and exorcisms. “The dark powers realise, if He does everything that He looks as if He’s going to do, then we’re in deep trouble.” Wright, one of the world’s leading biblical scholars and a former A...

  Peter lays great stress upon separation from evil in its many forms. Christians are not to return evil for evil, v. 9. In speech they are to refrain from it, v. 10, and in conduct to turn away from it, v. 11. If they suffer, let it be for doing good and not for doing evil, v. 17. ‘The Lord’s eyes are upon the righteous and His ears open to their prayer’, v. 12 lit. The Lord’s promise of ‘open ears’ can be claimed only if two conditions are met.  First, the supplicant must be ‘righteous’. Measured by God’s standard of absolute perfection, we are ‘the unrighteous’ for whom ‘the Righteous One’ suffered to bring us to God, v. 18. Nevertheless, having been reconciled to God, we should now be characterized by righteousness in our conduct, 2:24; 3:14. Of ungodly and unrighteous men, God has said, ‘though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them’, Ezek. 8:18. Second, our petitions must be genuine . Mere words are not enough. We must be particularly careful ...

The basic meaning of the word translated ‘hindered’ is ‘to block the way’. Many indeed are the obstacles which bar the way between us and prayer. Alas, so often our experience attests the truth of William Cowper’s words, There are five of the most common roadblocks that we encounter on the highway to the throne of grace, and suggestions for removing them: ‘I can’t afford the time’. But prayer is important; I cannot afford not to pray. I need to make the time. Daniel handled top-level affairs of State yet made the time to pray three times every day, Dan. 6:1–3, 10. Perhaps I would accomplish more if I attempted less and spent more time praying about it. ‘I don’t honestly see a need for it’. But, my self-sufficient heart, the Lord Jesus has explicitly said, ‘without me you can do nothing’, John 15:5. Do I know better than Him? And have others no needs for which I can pray? What of Christian leaders, other saints, and non-Christian contacts? Dare I ‘cease to pray’ for such?, 1 Sam. 12:2...