Dr Paul Allen

In the Book of Jeremiah, the prophet Jeremiah expresses his feelings of being deceived by God in Jeremiah 20:7 . Here is the verse: Jeremiah 20:7 (NIV): "O LORD, you deceived me, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me." In this verse, Jeremiah expresses his deep frustration and betrayal, feeling that God has enticed him into a problematic and unrelenting prophetic ministry that has brought him nothing but mockery and suffering. Jeremiah felt deceived by God because of the intense and relentless opposition, suffering, and ridicule he faced as a prophet. Here are several vital reasons why Jeremiah felt this way: Unpopular Messages : Jeremiah delivered messages of impending doom and judgment to the people of Judah, calling them to repentance for their sins. These messages were unpopular and often met with hostility and rejection. Personal Suffering : Jeremiah experienced significant personal suffering due to his prop...

At first glance, it seems odd that human acts of any kind could affect God. After all, the distance between the Lord and us is infinitely greater than between us and a worm, a fly, or a slug. Indeed, we are uniquely created in His image. But He is eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, the Creator of the universe, while we are here today and gone tomorrow, full of weakness, corruption, and wickedness. That’s why many atheists and agnostics reject the very concept of the God of the Bible. If such a deity existed, they reason, His last concern would be how human beings lived — unless, of course, He was a petty, mean-spirited, tyrant bully. Otherwise, why would our sins concern Him? But it’s not just atheists and agnostics who have raised this question. It is actually posed in the Bible itself, as Job, amid a tormenting trial, cries out to God, “If I have sinned, what have I done to you, you who see everything we do? Why have you made me your target? Have I become a burden to you?”...

By   TYLER O'NEIL   Published on  January 4, 2024 Imagine the government told you what you  can and cannot pray for , inside your own head. Such an idea seems better suited to “thoughtcrime” dystopias — such as George Orwell’s  1984  or Aldous Huxley’s  Brave New World , where the government attempts to control your every thought — rather than to the modern, free English-speaking world. Yet a government in the Australian state of Victoria has trodden on the sacred space of one’s own inner prayers, all in the name of protecting people  who identify as LGBTQ . The Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act 2021, which went into effect in August 2022, forbids certain practices aimed at changing or suppressing an individual’s gender identity or sexual orientation. The law also bans “carrying out a religious practice, including but not limited to, a prayer-based practice, a deliverance practice or an exorcism.” The Victorian Equal Opp...

Samuel Emadi I’m naturally suspicious of anything that smacks of religious ritualism. Prayer labyrinths? No, thank you; I’ll stick with corporate prayer in the church and the private prayer Jesus commends ( Matt. 6:6 ). Candles and incense? Again, I’ll take plain preaching and congregational singing. So when asked whether we should anoint the sick with oil, I confess I reflexively resist the idea. For someone in my theological tribe, pouring oil on someone just feels . . .  weird . But faithful theology isn’t an enterprise in following feelings or intuitions; it’s a matter of submitting to Scripture wherever it leads. In this case, Scripture directly addresses whether we should anoint the sick with oil. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the church's elders, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. ( Jam...

As Genesis 31 opens, Jacob has been living in a foreign and hostile land for twenty years, outside the land that he was promised by God. He was driven out of this land in Genesis 28 after he had stolen the blessing meant for Esau, his elder brother. He fled to Paddan-Aram, where his uncle Laban lived. There he stayed and worked for Laban and married his daughters, Leah and Rachel. Yet throughout these years, Laban took advantage of Jacob and dealt with him dishonourably. Here in Genesis 31 Jacob finally decides to leave Laban after the Lord instructs him to return home to the promised land (Gen. 31:3). So Jacob and his family leave, in obedience to the Lord, taking with them all the livestock and property that he received as payment for all the years he worked for Laban, as Genesis 30 explains. But in Genesis 31:19 there is a seemingly throwaway line that reads, “And Rachel stole her father’s household gods.” Looking closer, this line is indeed a shocking revelation. Rachel, the God-fe...

By MT Cooper I learned early on in my Christian life that the shortest verse in the Bible was “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). It wasn’t until studying Greek that I discovered that John 11:35 is three words, although one of them is a single letter definite article. The actual shortest verse in the Greek NT is 1 Thessalonians 5:17. ln English it is often translated with three words, “pray without ceasing” (ESV) although in Greek it is only two. You can get it to two words in English easily enough, “pray unceasingly,” but then you have competition for the shortest verse. A Digression The real surprise, however, occurred when learning that the Bible was not divided into chapters and verses until the 1500s! And for good reason. With the emergence of the printing press making the Bible more accessible, chapter and verse divisions made studying and recalling the location of thoughts and stories easier. Yet, for most of the Bible’s history, people had no idea about the shortest verse because there ...

By Jonathon Aigner The war against the once-beloved “Onward, Christian Soldiers” is decades old. When the United Methodist Church was revising its hymnal in the mid-80s, it made the mistake of trying to drop this hymn from what would soon become the current United Methodist Hymnal. Good Methodists and Methodists are good people. They started a war of their own, essentially inundating the hymnal committee with correspondence which, according to Carlton Young, made it “impossible for the committee to go on with its work.” Suitable for those lovely Methodist saints. Other denominations have long since dropped it like a hot potato. “Onward” hasn’t been in a mainline Presbyterian hymnal for 50 years. Other traditions still have it in their hymnals, like the Episcopal church, but I would guess that few Episcopal churches would use it lest they make those among them with little Scripture knowledge uncomfortable. On the one hand, I understand how militaristic language can be complex. It can be...

Myth #1: Jesus commands his followers to fast. Jesus assumes his followers will fast, and even promises we will fast, but neither he nor his apostles strictly command fasting. While many biblical texts mention fasting, the two most important come just chapters apart in Matthew’s Gospel. The first is Matthew 6:16–18, which comes in sequence with Jesus’s teachings on generosity and prayer. Fasting is as basic to Christianity as asking from God and giving to others. The key here is that Jesus doesn’t say “if you fast,” but “when you fast.” Second is Matthew 9:14–15, which might be the most important scripture on Christian fasting: Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.” (Matt. 9:14–15) When Jesus, our bridegroom, was here on earth am...

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . . (Matthew 6:9) How many lips have formed these words since the Lord Jesus first taught them? How many languages have uttered them? How many different people, in how many different circumstances, have bowed their heads and hearts to pray as Jesus famously instructs? The dying has prayed it. The uneducated have prayed it. The unbelieving and villainous have even prayed for it. Children have prayed for it. The great and wise have found room for it. Every continent on earth has heard it whispered. Tribes in remote villages and kings in tall palaces have bowed and repeated after the Jewish prophet from Nazareth. Has there been a prayer more prayed; have there been words more often spoken? “For some of our wandering prayer lives, the best thing for us to learn is how not to pray.” And yet, for as many as have repeated our Master’s teaching on how to pray, how many can repeat what words come directly before them — namely, the ones teachi...