My roomie is having his breakfast now. Like a weird.

In life, the only meetings that are necessary are prayer meetings and the only studies that are important are Bible studies.

On the board of my study desk in hall (hostel): Motivational quotes that keep me going as an NIE trainee and 'Moral compass' from the Teachers' Compass Ceremony which serves as a reminder of my duty as a teacher to guide my pupils in the right direction, and also symbolises the strong moral bearing for me to lead, care and inspire all pupils who pass through my hands.

True vs Truth, an excerpt from 'My Sheep Hear My Voice' by J. C. Hedgecock

I am going to share with you an illustration of the difference between something being 'true' and 'truth'. Many years ago, I heard Arthur Burt (a man of God from Wales who lived in England at the time) share the difference between 'true' and 'truth'. Now I share this illustration everywhere I teach.

When Arthur visited our church, he stayed with one of the elders. He mentioned that, even though it is a British custom to take tea every afternoon, his host had never offered him tea during the many visits he had made to the elder's home. That was true. He then asked the congregation what we thought of such a host. Of course, everyone quickly judged the elder, but the truth was that Arthur had told his host on his first visit that he didn't like tea and not to bother offering him any! The first thing he said was true, but because he had left out an important part, the conclusion it left was a lie rather than truth. When he added the other part, it became truth.

Anytime you come to a conclusion that is contrary to what God says, it is not truth. In fact, it is a lie! It doesn't matter if you find 50 scriptures to 'back it up' and reinforce your opinion. If someone presents a doctrine (or you decide something is a doctrine) and it contains portions that are true but the conclusion is not the rightly divided truth of God's word, it is a lie. If you only have spiritual understanding of some portions of a doctrine and fill in the rest with theory or your personal interpretation of the Word, you will come up with a false doctrine. It is not 'truth' even though it may contain things that are 'true'. Truth is never threatened by a lie, but a lie will always be exposed by the truth.


The Word must be rightly divided and interpreted by the Holy Spirit, not by myself or any other man. 2 Peter 1:20 says no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.



 - pg 28 - 29

Another excerpt from "The Reason for God" by Timothy Keller

The faith that changes the life and connects to God is best conveyed by the word 'trust'.

Imagine you are on a high cliff and you lose your footing and begin to fall. Just beside you as you fall is a branch sticking out of the very edge of the cliff. It is your only hope and it is more than enough to support your weight. How can it save you?

If your mind is filled with intellectual certainty that the branch can support you, but you don't actually reach out and grab it, you are lost.
If your mind is instead filled with doubts and uncertainty that the branch can hold you, but you reach out and grab it anyway, you will be saved.

Why? It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you. Strong faith in a weak branch is fatally inferior to weak faith in a strong branch.


 - pg 234

Listening to the printer do its job in the staff room makes me realise an inconvenient truth: I am in the largest tree-cutting industry.

Excerpts from "The Reason for God" by Timothy Keller

C. S. Lewis gives us a metaphor for knowing the truth about God when he writes that he believes in God 'as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else'. Imagine trying to look directly at the sun in order to learn about it. You can't do it. It will burn out your retinas, ruining your capacity to take it in. A far better way to learn about the existence, power and quality of the sun is to look at the world it shows you, to recognise how it sustains everything you see and enables you to see it.


Here, then, we have a way forward.We should not try to 'look into the sun', as it were, demanding irrefutable proofs for God. Instead we should 'look at what the sun shows us'.Which account of the world has the most 'explanatory power' to make sense of what we see in the world and in ourselves? We have a sense that we are very flawed and yet very great. We have a longing for love and beauty that nothing in this world can fulfil. We have a deep need to know meaning and purpose. Which worldview best accounts for these things?


Christians do not claim that their faith gives them omnisience or absolute knowledge of reality. Only God has that. But they believe that the Christian account of things - creation, fall, redemption and restoration - makes the most sense of the world. I ask you to put on Christianity like a pair of spectacles ad look at the world with it. See what power it has to explain what we know and see.


If the God of the Bible exists, he is not the Shakespeare that Hamlet is looking in the attic of his castle, but the Playwright who relates to us (characters) in a play. That means we won't be able to find him like we would a passive object with the powers of empirical investigation. Rather, we must find clues to his reality that he has written into the universe, including into us. That is why, if God exists, we would expect to find that he appeals to our rational faculties. If we were 'made in his image' as rational, personal beings, there should be some resonance between his mind and ours. It also means that reason alone won't be enough. The Playwright can only be known through personal revelation. That is why we have to take a look at what the Bible says about God and the human condition.


In the Christian view, however, the ultimate evidence for the existence of God is Jesus Christ himself. If there is a God, we characters in his play have to hope that he put some information about himself in the play. But Christians believe he did more than give us information. He wrote himself into the play as the main character in history, when Jesus was born in a manger and rose from the dead. He is the one with whom we have to do.


 - pg 122 - 123

Masks

Strangers, again

Crucifixion & Resurrection of Jesus Christ