Christianityworks Official Podcast

Christians are always talking about faith. My faith walk. Faith this, faith that. So what is faith? Not the theory? But what does it look like when you live it? The sort of faith that pleases God.

What Is Faith?

It’s really quite amazing, but over a thousand weekly editions of this program, Christianityworks, have gone to air since it launched way back in 2004.  It’s been qui...

The whole resurrection of Jesus thing – can be a bit hard to swallow. I mean – did it really happen? And if it did, what does it mean for us here and now?

That first Easter was so incredibly unfair. Jesus – the innocent man – was crucified and Barabbas – the man guilty of murder – walked off Scott free. If you were God, would you have done things that way?

Sin is such a funny word. Short – but judgemental. And yet this thing called “sin” lies at the heart of Easter. Jesus died to pay for our sin. So what does that actually mean – “sin”?

As we head towards Easter yet again, perhaps it’s time to think about – well, what makes us so special, that God would do this Easter thing for us?

If God is a God of blessing – then what about all the suffering we go through? And anyway, if God does bless, does that just mean a new car and a bigger house?

Sometimes, we can be walking in the promises of God, and things start getting tough.  Opposition.  Battles.  What’s going on?  Is it time to give up? What happened to all those promises?

You know something – you and I can read about and listen to the promises of God until the cows come home.  But eventually, eventually the day comes when we have to cross over into the promised land. Eventually the day comes for us to lay hold of God’s promises and live in them.

Have you ever been standing on the threshold of something good – perhaps one of God’s promises – and all of a sudden it’s as though everything starts to go wrong?

You know – God is full of promises. Amazing promises. But so often – it’s hard to see how those promises fit into the reality of our lives – here and now.

Stress is affecting so many people – in fact, it’s a global pandemic. And what we’ve all discovered is that the shallow, band aid solutions that the world offers us, simply don’t work. What we need is power. Power to deal with the stress in our lives, once and for all.

There are all sorts of things in this world that cause us stress. And I’ve heard so many ridiculous ways of relieving it – have a cup of tea. Take a hot shower. Okay – so they might relieve the symptoms for a short while. But what we need are some powerful solutions to the root cause of our stress.

Sometimes stress is triggered by other people or circumstances – things out there, many of which we don’t have any control over. Other times, it’s something that we bring on ourselves. Whichever of those two it happens to be, you and I, we need to know how to handle stress.

Stress comes in all different shapes and sizes, but whatever its cause, none of us was made to be under constant stress and yet, that’s how many people are living. In a constant state of stress.  Well, it’s time to do something about it.

Many people are prepared to accept that God exists, even that He has the ability to bless us – or at least bless other people. But when they look at their own lives, well the reality doesn’t appear to match up with the promise. What’s going on here?

Most of us want to be happy, so we go looking for happiness …. everywhere.  No stone left unturned, only to discover that we can’t find lasting happiness.  Because at the end of the day – happiness isn’t what we’re looking for.  It’s joy that we’re after.

With all that life throws at us, not to mention our own foibles and quirks, it’s easy to end up with quite a distorted view of what God our Father means when He talks about His blessing in our lives.  What Jesus means when He talks about giving us an abundant life.

Life’s full of its ups and downs. You and I we know that. Jesus knows that.  That’s why when He promised us an abundant life, He made that promise in the context of a story, a parable, about life’s ups … and downs.

This whole Christmas celebration thing is of course a birthday celebration. And birthdays are all about celebrating new life. Would it surprise you to know that that’s exactly what God has in mind for you to celebrate? Your new life.