"But how can we be sure?"

How Can We Be Sure That What the Bible Says is True?

How can we be sure? It's a great question! And it's actually a really important one, we could do with knowing the answer.

A lot of people I know say things like, "I can't believe the Bible/God/Christianity unless I have proof that it's true." Which sounds very reasonable. But I think perhaps that's setting the bar rather higher with that statement than we do with other things. Take for example Julius Ceaser, Genghis Khan, Abraham Lincoln and other historical figures. We believe in them, even though we've never seen them, even though many of us have never even seen the historical documents testifying to them, or have any idea what they say!

We are right, however, to set the bar higher for Jesus and the Bible than for Genghis Khan or Hannibal Barca. Whether or not Genghis Khan existed may have a massive effect on history, but it has very little effect on you or me today, things have still turned out the way they are, one way or another. But if Jesus exists and the Bible is true then everything, the entire way we perceive and try to live life, changes. It's not something we can allow ourselves to be tricked into.

So how high are we going to set the bar of evidence needed to accept this stuff? Well, that's up to you. But why not see what evidence there is, regardless of whether you think you'll believe it?

The Bible contains lots of eye-witness accounts, reasoned arguments, genealogies and historically verifiable accounts. The books John and Luke are probably the best to start with, as they're all about Jesus and put a big emphasis on the need for eyewitnesses. Might be a good place to start thinking about whether or not any of it can be true.

Making Things Simpler

My Posts So Far Have All Been Quite Long...

And I reckon they could do with being simpler and more concise. Writing things in a concise manner is something I really struggle with (see my first post!), but I'm going to make more of an effort with that, to make this blog more accessible! Sorry for how long winded things may have been so far!

Christ in the OT #4

The people of the time (Old Testament) knew who the person of God we call Jesus was

(Sorry for the bad grammar there, if there was any :P)

That's my claim, and I believe it's Biblical. But I'm not claiming that it's at all central or important to understanding the Bible, who God is, or how to be saved.

Where do I get that idea from?

Well, the people who wrote the Old Testament knew that their God was a more than one person God. We know they know this because they wrote the OT that way. Check out Genesis 1:26, "Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let..." as an example. Why else would they write that way?

They believed in the Spirit of God, Genesis 1:2, "Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters." and Exodus 31:3, "and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with..." as two more examples.

And, as previously discussed, they seemed to believe in the Angel of the LORD, who was not the Father but who was God.

(As well as obviously believing in the Father.)

It's the Angel of the LORD bit that I believe to be Jesus. Someone who isn't the Spirit and isn't the Father, but is God. And not just that, but like I said last post, every time they see or hear God directly it must be Jesus they're seeing or hearing, based on what Jesus said himself!

They knew that their God was three persons; Father, Spirit and Son. Further evidence for that is that the New Testament people knew that they were looking for the Christ, the Son of God, before they spent all their time with Jesus.

But what's the big deal?

Well, you could argue that there isn't one, and most people I know do (or they argue that the people just didn't know). But I reckon it does make a difference. I reckon it helps us to have more confidence in two things:
1) The Old Testament really is about Jesus, and anyone who takes the time can see that, you don't need some special fancy person to tell you based on knowledge there's no way you could get. The Bible is for anyone who's prepared to take the time.
2) God is consistent in His love for His people, He doesn't dramatically change between Malachi (the last book of the OT) and Matthew (the first book of the NT), and we need a consistently loving and self-revealing God.

Christ in the OT #3

This tells us a LOT of very cool stuff about Jesus/God/the Bible

I felt the need to slightly expand the title of this one to include "/God/the Bible". I'm not planning on spending too long on this one, though there's plenty that could be said. I'm going to look at two of the examples that stand out to me, and you can look up more for yourself if you're interested.

1) The Bible Is Consistant and Understandable
No more confusing divides between the Old and New Testaments, they're all part of the same book. God doesn't suddenly change who He is, what He's like and what He expects from us between the two. Now we can begin to make sense of otherwise confusing passages, prophecies, laws and so on.

How have I got that conclusion? A few examples:
a) The Ten Commandments, the rest of the laws, the need for priests and sacrifices etc. Remember the Precepts in the last post? What's the point of the Ten Commandments and the Law? To show us our need to be saved, our need for Jesus (check out Romans and Hebrews, they talk a lot about this stuff). It's not about obeying rules, it's about having a way to be saved because we can't obey the rules.
b) Relitively ointless seeming books, like Judges and Samuel. They stop just being about history, they're all pointing forward to Jesus, what he'll be like (/is like!) and the need for him. Abraham, Moses, Joshua, all the Judges, David, Solomon, Hosea etc, they are all meant to show us a little bit of what Jesus is like (but they're messed up and flawed, Jesus isn't!). So reading these books, with the right mindset, can tell us more about Jesus!
c) Prophecies and promises start to make sense when you put Jesus into the picture. All the promises of redemption and hope, for an everlasting kingdom of righteousness, the promises of saving and deliverence from oppression and suffering... they're all possible through Jesus!

It's all about Jesus!

2) Jesus is Really Awesome
If the Angel of the LORD really is God, and if every time the people in the Old Testament see or hear God directly they're actually seeing or hearing Jesus, then your perception of Jesus is expanded massively from just his time on Earth in the New Testament. It says that the Angel of God (who is interchangeably used with God, leading me to think it's Jesus, but I might be wrong) stays with the Israelites when they're wandering around the desert moaning about God for FORTY YEARS. He cared about his people so much that he was prepared to spend 40 years non-stop, 24/7, leading them despite their hatred and unfaithfulness towards him. And in places like Isaiah 6, which I mentioned in the last post, we see just how glorious Jesus really is, he's amazing! He's awesome!

Christ in the OT #2

The WHOLE of the Old Testament is About Jesus

I wrote a really long post on this, looking at loads of verses and examples. While there were good points to that, I didn't really think it was the best way of approaching this on the blog. Instead, I'm going to do a quite simple (I hope!) post just explaining some of the methods I was shown to find out how the Old Testament is about Jesus, with only a few examples on the way. [Edit: Haha! I tried to keep it short!]

My supervisor gave me a sheet, which is basically what I'm going to work through.

How does Jesus view the Old Testament? What does he think it's about?
Check out: Matthew 5:17, John 5:39-47, Luke 24:25-27, Luke 24:44-47, 2 Timothy 3:14-15

Matthew 5:17, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them."

John 5:39-47, "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. ... But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?"

Luke 24:25-27, "He said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?" And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself."

(This one is by Paul, not Jesus) 2 Timothy 3:14-15, "But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus."

What're are we meant to get from that?
The Scriptures (here this means "the Old Testament") are able to bring us to have salvation (eternal life and relationship with God - I'll do a post on it) through Jesus.
Moses wrote about Jesus.
Indeed all the Scriptures are about Jesus.

In what ways does the Old Testament point to Jesus?
1) Promises: Check out 2 Corinthians 1:20, "For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "Yes" in Christ..."

This means that all of the promises the Old Testament makes are somehow fulfilled through Jesus.

2) Prophecy: Check out: John 19:24, 36-37, Acts 10:36-43

John 19:24, ""Let's not tear it," they said to one another. "Let's decide by lot who will get it." This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled which said, "They divided my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.""

John 19:36-37, "These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled: "Note one of his bones will be broken," and, as another scripture says, "They will look on the one they have pierced."

Acts 10:36-43, "You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, telling the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. You know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached - how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him. We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen - by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name."

This is a pretty limited selection of examples - but like I said, to go through all of them would take a really really long time. The point is, if you check out the Old Testament prophecies, you'll see they are all in someway about Jesus (it may take a bit of working out, they can be confusing! But it's the only way they will make sense).

3) Precepts: Remember what Jesus said about fulfilling the Law? Jesus was perfect, he kept the laws of the Old Testament, he was perfect. The precepts (laws) are about showing us are need for Jesus.

4) Picture: Check out: John 1:29, 6:32-33, Hebrews 7:26-27

John 1:29, "The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (think of the Passover (Exodus 12) and passages such as Isaiah 53)

John 6:32-33, "Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."" (In Exodus God sends bread to the Israelites to eat in the desert)

Hebrews 7:26-27, "Such a high priest meets our need - one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once and for all when he offered himself."

There are so many more examples, many clearer. But again, to find them all, write them down, explain their contexts, I could be here for years.

5) Presence: John1:18, 8:56-59, 12:41 (referencing Isaiah 6), 1 Corinthians 10:1-15, Hebrews 11:26, Jude 5 (this and 2 before referencing Exodus)

John 1:18, "No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known."

John 8:56-59, "Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he was it and was glad." "You are not yet fifty years old," the Jews said to him, "and you have seen Abraham!" "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds." (I AM is the name that God gives himself in the burning bush in Exodus 3-4, Jesus is saying he's the same God!)

John 12:41, "Isaiah said the because he saw Jesus' glory and spoke about him."
(Isaiah 6:1-4, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings, With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.""

1 Corinthians 10:1-4, "For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ."

(About Moses) Hebrews 11:26, "He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward."

Jude 1:5, "Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord (or Jesus) delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe."

Then there's the Angel of the LORD. I could go to town on this, and at some point I probably will, but for now, "angel" means sent one, or more widely messenger. So, "the Angel of the LORD" is translatable as, "the Messenger of the LORD." Notice that it says, "the" and not, "a". Interesting. Also think about where the Angel of the LORD pops up, my favourite being from Exodus 3, "Then the angel of the  LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush... When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him within the bush..." The name, "Angel of the LORD" and, "LORD" are used pretty interchangeably in the passage. My other favourite is from Judges, "When Gideon realised that it was the angel of the LORD, he exclaimed, "Ah, Sovereign LORD! I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face!" But the LORD said to him, "Peace! Do not bee afraid. You are not going to die." So Gideon built an altar to the LORD there and called it The LORD is Peace." 

Anyway, I could spend a long while on this post. This is the shortened version!!

What's all this been on about?
Well, I've hopefully just shown you a few of the things you can be looking out for when reading the Old Testament, so that you can spot when it's talking about Jesus, and understand what it's really on about.

Christ in the OT #1

The Old Testament Is All About Jesus

I thought I was pretty clued up on this. "Yes," I would say, "The Old Testament points to Jesus Christ, and now that he came we can see that looking back. But the people at the time didn't know who Jesus was."

Turns out the truth is way cooler.

I'm going to do three posts on this (I think!). Expecting it to look something like this:
1) The WHOLE of the Old Testament (not every verse individually out of context though) is about Jesus, in some way or another.
2) This tells a LOT of very cool stuff about who Jesus is.
3) The people of the time knew who the person of God we call Jesus was (I reckon this is actually more important than you think, but I'll get to that later).

More to come..!

Humility

What is Humility?

This is a long post... apologies!

I was given three books to read by my supervisor and told to write an essay on humility.

The books he gave me were Mark's Gospel (by Mark), the Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness (by Timothy Keller) and Humility: True Greatness (by C.J.Mahaney), and I would definitely recommend reading them yourself.

The whole task was really enlightening, and really challenging. It was really striking just how much God hates pride, which I hadn't grasped the extent of before (check out verses like Proverbs 16:5, "The Lord detests all the proud of heart. Be sure of this: They will not go unpunished." and Psalm 138:6, "Though the LORD is on high, he looks upon the lowly, but the proud he knows from afar."). The questions I was then asking myself were, "Why? Why is pride SO bad? Surely stealing or something like that is worse? Something that is actually physical and not just the way you think?".

The answer became clearest to me in looking at the Fall in Genesis. For those who don't know how it goes, at the start of the Bible it tells us that God made the universe and everything in it, including people. He had an amazing relationship with us, but we severed it by sinning, and that's the reason the world is so seriously flippin' messed up... I'm paraphrasing. I believe it's symbolic, others take it literally, but the message is still the same. The reason God may seem so distant and unrevealed, the reason the world is so broken, is because of sin.

But what was the first sin? What was it that started it all off? It was pride. Check out Genesis 3:5-6, ""[the Devil speaking] For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." When the woman saw the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it." In this the first people (symbolic or not) sinned by having the pride to try and be like God. They wanted to take God's position.

This is the sin that separates humanity from God (Genesis 3:23, "So the LORD banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken."), but pride not only separates us from God, it also prevents us from desiring to go back to Him, Psalm 10:4, "In his pride the wicked does not seek him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God."

So that's why pride is so bad, it separates us from God, and it keeps us separate. Ouch.

BUT HOLD ON.

I thought this post was about humility, not pride!

Well, yes, but we had to start by seeing the need for humility.

Humility is the opposite of pride. If we're proud and we need to not be pride, we need humility. So what is humility and what does the Bible have to say about it?

I found Philippians 2:5-11 really helpful, "Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

And God doesn't just say how much he hates pride, he also says how much he loves humility. Check out Psalm 149:4, "For the LORD takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with salvation." Our reward for humility is... salvation?? Wow!

But what about now, practically? What does being humble look like? I really like the quote from C.S.Lewis in "the Freedom of Self Forgetfulness", "If we were ever to meet a truly humble person, Lewis says, we would never come away from meeting them thinking they were humble. They would not always be telling us they are a nobody (because a person who keeps saying they are a nobody is actually a self-obsessed person). The thing we would remember from meeting a truly gospel-humble person is how much they seemed to be totally interested in us. Because the essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less."

Keller has a lot more good stuff to say in his book, and I really recommend reading it.

What's the problem though? Well, we're proud. We're born proud, raised proud and encouraged to be proud. And like we saw, pride leaves no room for God. It leaves no room for humility. So how are we meant to get humility? How are we meant to be humble? C.J.Mahaney suggests quite a few really good was of "cultivating" humility, and they're worth doing, they certainly help, but I think at the end of the day it comes to the Spirit. We need the Spirit to change us, because we're just so incapable of doing it ourselves. We need to realise what the problem is, and repeatedly ask for change, and it will come. Try to live by the Spirit, and the Spirit will get you to live by it!

One final quote. It's talking about love, but I reckon humility ties in pretty strongly with it, 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."

Personally... I have realised just how proud I am in so many ways, and I'm sure there's a lot of ways I haven't realised yet. I'm very quick to dismiss other people's opinions, very quick to anger when people have something bad to say about me and so on. But it's actually really encouraging and exciting, now I'm aware of this, I can pray about it and work on it and watch God change me in it. Not trying to constantly satisfy your ego is pretty refreshing.

PT #1

A Practice Talk - Water Into Wine

As part of my trainee year we have training to give talks once a week. Every so often we get given a randomly assinged passage from one of the books of the Bible that we're studying, and have to come up with a talk for the rest of the people there. A few weeks ago (before I started this blog) I gave a practice talk on when Jesus turned water into wine in John's gospel. It was designed to be evangelistic (to non-Christians), but not necessarily a youth talk. Here are my notes, they're not particularly impressive, I'm not a seasoned talk giver by any means, so make of them what you will!

Introduction

- I hope you're all having a good evening.

- I'm going to talk for about 10 or 12 minutes.

- And my hope for this talk is to show you three things.

- The first is that this book, the Bible, is true. It's not made up, and it contains evidence to say so.

- The second is that it has something important and interesting to say.

- And finally, the third is that it really is readable, you don't need to be a scholar or a theologian to make sense of it. Though that's not to say that it's not difficult, but anyone who's prepared to think about it, can get what they need to know from it.

- So how's this going to work? Well, I'm just going to go through the passage we just read, bit by bit, having a look at what it has to say, and that's it. I'm not going to force anything on you, you can decide for yourself what you want to make of it.

- Let's take a look at the first sentences then.

1 On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there, 2 and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.

- The scene is set, it's at a wedding, the perfect place for a good bit of drama.

- But this is more than a good story, the book we're reading from is an eye-witness testimony about Jesus, a person with big claims, and the writer wants us to know that what he's telling us is true, so he's taken the time to tell us exactly when and where what he saw happened.

- Let's read on

3 When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”

- It might be a short and blunt sentence, but this is a really big deal, it's a complete disaster. Imagine you're at a wedding reception and they run out wine half way through. Now imagine that reception lasts a week, involves an entire village and has nothing else to drink but wine, not even tap water, not even shloer. The guy who organised this is in big trouble, to say the least. It's awkward.

- Now Jesus' mum, has obviously found out about this and is trying to do something about it. The only trouble is, there's not much she can really do.

- Except she knows Jesus. She knows he can fix this.

- How does she know this though? Jesus didn't have loads of money, he didn't own a vineyard, there's nothing it seems he can do either. Unless she has some kind of evidence that tells her that this Jesus is not just your average bloke.

- Well, as it happens, she did have her own evidence, and that's written in another of the eyewitness accounts about Jesus, but we don't have time for that now. It's free to look up for yourself if you like, though.

- So she goes to Jesus with the problem. But... what's his response?

4 “Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”

- It seems rather confusing, almost funny.

- Something to point out is the little note which says that the word woman does not infer any disrespect in the language this was written in.

- So what's he saying? Well, I could suggest an answer, but just sticking to what it says in this passage alone, it seems that Jesus has got some task, some mission that he's waiting for, and that anything aside from that is outside his “job description”, so to speak.

- I guess as weird as this may seem, it's actually pretty important. Jesus is saying that he's not the quick fix man that Mary may think he is. He's not here to do a party trick.

- But he's NOT saying that he doesn't care about what's going on, or that he won't do anything to help.

- That's clear because only two verses later, after asserting his authority, he is in fact helping. He obviously wants to help, even though he doesn't have to.

- I think that's something worth dwelling on. The person this account is about is important and has authority, but unlike normal people who've got power, he wants to take the time to help everyday people like you and me.

- Let's read on.

5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

6 Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.

7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.

8 Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”

They did so,

- Woah! Hold on. This is crazy!

- Jesus has told the servants to fill some dirty washing pots with water and give it to their master, who's expecting wine, to drink.

- And here's the craziest thing, they actually did it.

- Why would you do that if you didn't trust the person who told you to do it? And why would you trust them if you didn't have some kind of evidence? And we're talking about some serious evidence here, because I'm guessing if someone told you to take a bowl of dirty water and feed it to your boss, pretending it was wine, you'd be pretty reluctant, even though they can't have you flogged and beaten.

- Whatever the case, they did it, and people reading this at the time it was written could well have found them and asked them about it. Which is another bit of evidence that what we're reading is true.

- Are you seeing what's happening here? All the right bits of evidence are been put forward, it's the kind of stuff you'd want for a court case. You've got the place, time, witnesses. And there's still more to come!

- So what happens?

9 and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside 10 and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”

- I love how matter of fact this is, someone's just turned water into wine and they just spend three sentences on it. But that's the thing, nothing is sensationalised, it's all just laid out as it happened, not to bore you, but so that you can trust it.

- But let's think how big a deal this is,

- At some point between the washing pots and this guy's taste-buds, Jesus has managed to turn this horrible, disgusting water into seriously good wine. It's pretty impressive.

- I don't know about you, but I'd want to get to know this person, and more than just for the sake of being able to do a really good party trick, he's someone with power, who cares about people and who wants to help them even when he really doesn't have to.

- My response was to find out more, and I was impressed with what I saw. The same goes for Jesus' disciple's, which is the name given to the group of people who had been following him around since the previous day, check out verse 11.

11 What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

- These guys figured the same thing.

- This Jesus person is worth getting to know. It says they believed in him, be careful not to misread this as saying that from that point they were 100% sold, they were 100% there and 100% got everything. If you read the rest of this account you'll see it took a lot more than just this one chunk of evidence to get them all the way there, but this was enough to get them to stick with it until they got what they needed.

- I would love to encourage you to find out more too.

- I hope that you've seen that I haven't done anything fancy with this text, I've not said anything that you can't work out for yourselves by reading it or by reading the rest of the book.

- And that's the way it should be. This account is meant for everyone, so that everyone can check out the evidence for themselves.

- And again, like I said at the start, I hope you've seen this isn't fairytale stuff, it's evidence based, and we've seen quite a lot considering we've just checked out eight short paragraphs.

- If you are interested, feel free to talk to me, or any Christian you know. Or to take a copy of this account. I've left a few piles by the exists, they're free to take, it's why they're there.

- Have a read for yourself, decide what you think.

Excuse me...

Excuse me, who made you?

(Can't be bothered to read all this? Just read the bits in bold!)

Do you ever feel a bit like Moses? Say what? Little explanation first!

[I originally wrote this at the start of September...] I've just started a year as a Church youth work trainee. This blog is an attempt at recording some of what I learn and sharing it for anyone who's interested. Of course, I'm not sure who that might be, so please forgive me if I end up explaining stuff you think everyone should know (I'm not trying to be patronising!) or if I don't explain something I really ought to (in which case feel free to leave a comment! Though I'm really not sure how many people I expect to read this, either..!).

But a moment to make something very clear – I'm limited about what I can actually say, I can't talk about any youth I work with, for child protection purposes. Not only that, but I don't want to name or describe any of the people I work with, youth or not, or the specifics about the events and things we do, for the sake of their privacy. So, like I said, this blog is about what I learn and not what I do.

So, back to Moses. We've started a, 100% optional, year long Bible study on Exodus (the second book in the Bible). Many would say that's crazy, but my supervisor has run it passionately for a few years, and the youth seem to love it. The point being that we've just read chapter 4 with them this week. Chapter 4 starts off midway through a conversation between Moses and God (Jesus specifically, I believe, but I'll discuss that in another post!). God is telling Moses that He's heard about the suffering of Moses' nation back in Egypt (I've really downplayed this, amongst other things, these people were being forced by Pharaoh to kill their own sons at birth. That's horrific!) and has a plan to rescue them through Moses. GREAT STUFF, RIGHT? Apparently not to Moses. 

 Moses is terrified of his task, he doesn't feel worthy and he's afraid of the risks. He starts coming up with all sorts of excuses about how he couldn't possibly do it, one of which is him saying he isn't a good public speaker, he's not good with words, he's not eloquent...

...And I just love God's response... “The LORD said to him, “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.”

(The conversation goes on, with Moses still pleading not to go, and it turns out God already had something in mind (v14b), but you can read that for yourself, if you like.)
Isn't that awesome? I am not, as you may have realised, eloquent at wording stuff. Nor am I at all good with grammar. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't know what I'm saying, it just takes me forever to try and word it so that it doesn't look messy and confusing. This can make me quite nervous (though, no doubt, nowhere near as nervous as Moses was), and passages like that I find really helpful. This is a God who knows us personally. He knows our weaknesses, but He loves and uses us anyway. Our own weaknesses and failings aren't enough to stop His plans.

Pretty cool.

I got shown this video clip the other day by someone else, while not 100% Bible accurate (it's not meant to be, it's a simplification, and it's hardly against what the Bible says), it expresses this scene pretty close to how I imagine it, I really like it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5BQWubuC8g

How do I finish this? All the best? You get the idea. Stop reading. Ta.