Dr Paul Allen

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...

Life will triumph over death. Goodwill overcomes evil. The defiled will be cleansed, the broken mended, the wicked judged, the faithful rewarded, and God’s creation purposes will be accomplished. All these realities play into biblical hope. From this perspective, the psalmists write. The psalmists have come to understand that Israel will be exiled from the land, but they also believe that Yahweh will keep His promises to show mercy in the form of a new exodus and return from exile (see Deut 4:25–31, and esp. the quotation of Deut 32:36 in Ps 135:14). They know that though the Davidic king may be dethroned (Ps 89), ultimately God will keep his 2 Sam 7 promises to David (Ps 110). Gary Millar concludes, “To pray in the psalter, then, is to call on the name of Yahweh, as the psalms fill out the conviction that has shaped the other material in the Old Testament.” The Fear of God The most important thing that can happen to anyone who studies the Psalms is precisely what their authors intende...

“And they lived happily ever after. The end.” That’s a common way to end a story that begins “Once upon a time.” We call those stories fairy tales. Fairy tales are imaginary stories for children, filled with magic and with fanciful people and places. We love a good fairy tale because it echoes the real story of the Bible. God has wired us to love stories that resolve — stories that end with not only justice but with exuberant joy. This conviction was held by two friends who wrote some of the most iconic fiction of the twentieth century: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. After the great battle at the end of Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, the characters discover that the new Narnia has been their real country the whole time, and they have nothing left now but to travel further up and further in. Tolkien, in Lord of the Rings, enlists Sam Gamgee to ask, after the ring has been destroyed, whether everything sad would come untrue. Tolkien even coined a term for a sudden happy turn in the story ...

We’ve all had to make difficult decisions in our lives. Whether to own or rent a house, whether to use an inheritance to invest or to see the world, whether to have more children or close up shop. But as difficult as those decisions may feel at the time, I’m sure not many of us have had to make the decision 28-year-old Aron Ralstron made in 2005. Aron had to choose to live or die. It all started when he broke the cardinal rule of mountain climbing: always take a buddy, or at least tell someone where you are going. He went climbing on his own and after climbing down a narrow slot in Bluejohn Canyon, Utah, a boulder shifted and crushed his left arm, pinning him to the canyon wall. He tried desperately to move the rock but it wouldn’t budge an inch. Aron wasn’t expected at work for days, and when people did decide to come looking for him, they would have no idea where to start. He knew he was going to die. He carved his name and “RIP” in the rock and used his camera to record messa...

“To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace . Because the carnal mind is enmity against God : for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” ( Romans 8:6-7 )   This passage defines for us both the carnal mind and the spiritual mind, not with formal definitions, but by giving equivalent terms.   First, the carnal mind is identified as being “enmity against God” (v. 7), a rampant disregard for God’s law. Furthermore, the carnal mind is equated with death, specifically eternal, spiritual death . A physically living person may have a carnal mind, bringing with it a spiritual deadness and eternal doom. This also serves us as a working definition of death—being hostile toward God, or minding the things of the flesh . “So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you” (vv. 8-9).   Next, we see that the spiritual m...

Image via Wikipedia There is a difference between  power  and  strength  and why so many Christians live powerless lives.  The tragic truth of our time is that countless Christians are living without strength when their God is full of power. And I firmly believe that one of the main reasons this happens is that we don’t understand the difference between  power  and  strength . It seems like semantics, but this is actually what separates the ordinary believer from the great men and women of faith in the Bible and throughout history. Every Christian believes God is powerful. But not every Christian understands that God’s power is not just an abstract proposition. It’s a tangible, practical reality that you have to seize and appropriate to your life .   In other words, God’s power isn’t an automatic trump card . It’s possible for God to have all the power but for you to live in total weakness. Think of it like this: God is stil...