Dr Paul Allen

I feel like the apostle Peter at the end of his life, as he wrote his second letter. Twice, he told his readers why he was writing to them. In the first chapter, he said, “I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder” (2 Pet. 1:13). Then, in the last chapter, he repeated it: “I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder.” (2 Pet. 3:1) What Peter really means, and what I mean, by being “awakened” or “stirred up” is to feel some measure of the joy God intends for Christmas to bring. “Behold, I bring you good news of great joy” (Luke 2:10). Not small joy. Not modest joy. But “great joy.” If we don’t feel this when we ponder the incarnation of the Son of God, we need “awakening.” We need to be “stirred up.” I have called Christmas “the dawning of indestructible joy” because the joy Jesus brought into the world was like no other kind in history. Once we have it, it cannot be destroyed. Jesus said, “No one will take your joy from you” (John 16:22...

Amazement is one of the best feelings in the world. The problem is, you can’t choose to be amazed at any given moment. Amazement comes over you like a downpour from a passing storm cloud, washing you in wonder. What brings on amazement is surprising. Sun on water. Green leaves waving to an impossible sky. A trained voice sustained a note so pure that you could almost see it in the air. A person doing some unexpected act so generous that you immediately recognize it as a glimpse of an ancient thing called love. Because amazement keeps us going to the silver screen to be immersed in worlds unlike ours. We want to be amazed but don’t know how to amaze ourselves. AMAZED BY DESIGN God designed us with the capacity for amazement. This post is part of a series that attempts to show how Scripture gives a framework for addressing different ways our hearts respond to the world. The introductory post laid out our guiding principle: God designed people to respond from the heart to the unique situa...

Our Savior was born in the humblest of settings, yet Heaven above was filled with the songs of angels. His birthplace was a cattle shed, yet a star brought the rich and noble from thousands of miles away to worship Him. He had no wheat fields or fisheries, yet He spread a table for 5,000 and had bread and fish to spare. His crucifixion was the penalty for the crime of crimes, yet from God’s perspective, no less a price could have made possible our redemption. When He died, few mourned His passing, yet God hung a black cape over the sun, and the earth shook. He preached the gospel for three years without a headquarters or organization to His name. Nevertheless, two thousand years later, He’s the central figure of human history, the perpetual theme of all preaching, the pivot around which the ages revolve, and the only Redeemer of the human race. In this season of celebration and gift-giving, let’s join the wise men who “fell down and worshipped Him.” Let’s remember, Christmas is about C...

A dear friend of mine who loves Christmas music had it playing in the background a few days ago while he was packing up his house for a move. Over the past few weeks, he’s been driving one hundred miles between his new job and his old one, finishing applications for his kids to enrol at a new school next month and searching for a new home while showing his current one. My friend has even taken two spills down the stairs while carrying boxes. This has been one of the most stressful seasons ever for him and his wife. As his stress levels climbed, the Christmas station began an old favourite—“It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” Normally, this song would bring cheer, but not this year. The pressures had overwhelmed any delight. Unable to take it, he rose from packing a box, descended the stairs, and shut down the song before it could pummel him with “happy. . . happiest season of all.” Sometimes Christmas is, and sometimes it isn’t, the happiest season of all. In my years of pastora...

Despite the Paul McCartney jingle echoing through our department stores this season, many of us will not be “simply having a wonderful Christmastime.” Much of our Christmas joy will be met, and made to sing, shoulder to shoulder with dissonant sorrows. I’ve had cancer since 2018. I received my Stage 4 diagnosis in December 2020—just in time for Christmas to be included in that year's crookedness. This blow came just a month before our third child, Jane Ridley Wright, was born. We soon learned our “baby Jane” had been born with a regressive and rare gene mutation. I bear witness that the hope and joy of Christmas are not easily held in hand with the harshness of life under the sun. It’s a weary task to unify everything: birth and disability, sacred and profane, transfiguration and tragedy, cancer and Christmas.  But, as Leo Tolstoy observes, “All the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.” Samwise Gamgee agrees: “It’s like in the great stories, Mr Frodo. The ones that really...

The Bible has a lot to say about love. In John 13:34–35, we are commanded to “love one another as Christ loved us.” In doing so, those around us will know that we are His followers. In his first of three small letters, John tells us why we are to love, “for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love” (1 John 4:7–8). We show love by allowing God’s love to flow through our lives and those around us. Loving others is not always easy and entails multiple actions on our part. For example, to love, we must show empathy and sympathy to others. We must learn to see each other as broken vessels in need of God’s love and transformation. This unique perspective of other people requires humility on our part.  When we recognize our own failings, that we are not perfect, we will only begin to approach others with a caring and compassionate attitude. This humility comes from recognizing what God has done f...

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) once described a remarkable experience he had while preaching: He suddenly broke off from his [sermon] subject, and pointing in a certain direction, said, “Young man, those gloves you are wearing have not been paid for: you have stolen them from your employer.” At the close of the service, a young man, looking very pale and greatly agitated, came to the room which was used as a vestry and begged for a private interview with Spurgeon. On being admitted, he placed a pair of gloves upon the table, and tearfully said, “It’s the first time I have robbed my master, and I will never do it again. You won’t expose me, sir, will you? It would kill my mother if she heard that I had become a thief.” (Spurgeon, 60) What do you call Spurgeon’s experience? Is there anything we can compare it within the New Testament? How about this: “If all prophesy, and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are ...

Amy Simpson has written an interesting new book. It’s called Blessed Are the Unsatisfied. I caught up with Amy recently to discuss her new book. What did you write Unsatisfied and who is it written for? Blessed Are the Unsatisfied is written for Christians who have frequently heard that they should feel satisfied because they’re in a relationship with Jesus, but who are aware that they don’t actually feel that way all the time. In particular, it’s written for people who live with serious challenges to their happiness—mental health struggles, the loss of a loved one, the lingering effects of trauma or adverse childhood experiences, and a pessimistic nature. In a sense, these are my people, and they tend to be the true realists when it comes to some of the trite messages we throw around in the church. The book is about the spiritual freedom that comes when we admit the truth: We are unsatisfied people. Now, that doesn’t mean we don’t all have some level of satisfaction in our lives and i...

Our cultural moment makes the problem feel acute, but the pursuit of happiness is a well-worn path. The book of Psalms, written about 3,000 years ago, begins with this exact issue: “Blessed is the man” (Ps. 1:1). Another way to translate this word is “happy.” “Happy is the man.” Do you want a happy life? Listen to the wisdom of this psalm; the answer may surprise you. Happy is the man whose “delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night” (Ps. 1:2). Don’t be misled by Psalm 1’s simplicity. This is profound wisdom, guaranteed to produce the joy our souls crave. Meditate on Scripture The two lines of Psalm 1:2 are parallel. To delight in the law of the Lord is to meditate on it day and night. That’s quite the task! Do you have to become a monk to be happy? Do you need to spend all day studying God’s Word and doing nothing else? If I spent one less hour per day meditating on my phone, and one more on God’s Word, I would almost certainly be happier. The short ...

Newly engaged, I was searching for a good book on marriage. I remember coming across one, commended as a modern classic, with this memorable question on the cover: “What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than make us happy?” Hmm. I didn’t like that way of framing it. Why pit holy against happy? Granted, it’s a “what if” teaser on the cover. Still, this didn’t seem like a worthwhile risk to me, even if the tagline was taking aim at a common idol in our generation. Of course, at one level, I understand, and grant, that many people have a superficial definition of, and associations with, happiness. To the degree that “happiness” refers to our experiencing momentary, superficial, comfort-based, suffering-free, pleasant feelings — and requires no new birth — then yes, true holiness, on God’s terms, will often (if not relentlessly) be at odds with such “happiness.” However, I’m not ready to cede the word happiness to such thin, shallow assumptions. That is not what we find when w...

  Saint Augustine answered that question at its root when he wrote, “You have made us for Yourself and [therefore] our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” If God has made us and designed us to be happy with him, then nothing else can take his place. God is the food our spirits need to eat. Other things will make our body happy (Eccl 2:24; 3:13; 5:18–20), but not our spirit, our soul, our true self. Other things will make us happy for a while, but not for long. Other things will make us happy on a superficial level, but not deep down. In the Bible, we read that all happiness, all joy, all beauty come from God (James 1:17). The joy of friendship, the beauty of nature, the happiness of human love were all created by God and designed to reflect his joy and beauty, to carry a little of his joy to us as the air carries the light of the sun.  Every joy you ever feel is a reflection of God. God is not one of the many sources of joy, for “religious people” only (whoever they a...

Matthew 13 is the “parables” chapter of the Gospel. In it, Jesus gives seven public parables (to the crowds), three private explanations (to his disciples), and two surprising statements on the purpose of parables. And in the midst of all of that, he also gives us two startling lessons about joy in God. What is joy in God — and what is it not? And how do we distinguish between true and false joy? What Parables Reveal and Hide The seven parables are easily organized into four groups: A parable about how we hear the word (the sower and the soils, Matthew 13:3–9) Two parables about the mixture of good and bad in this age, and their separation at the end of the age (the weeds, Matthew 13:24–30; the net, Matthew 13:47–50) Two parables about the slow but sure growth of the kingdom (mustard seed, Matthew 13:31–32; leaven, Matthew 13:33) Two parables about the value and worth of the kingdom (treasure in a field, Matthew 13:44; pearl of great price, Matthew 13:45) The purpose of these parables,...