Author: David Beddow

All organisms have the same choice. Grow or die. Our Faith gives us that same choice. We choose to follow Christ and drink deep from the Living Water. Or, we don’t.

This is a part of my testimony. God’s Grace supporting me through the darkest times in my life. I will just list three here as I have limited space and a long story. Perhaps there’s a book in there, but when I meet people for the first time they tend to think I’m exaggerating until they get to know me better and realize I don’t do that.

God’s description of the humans He just made is unlike anything He did before. Plants, animals were all created as beings that had a measure of life to exist through His Word in them. Mankind had more than that. It had God’s own character – freewill – seared into the psyche.

Chances are if you’re reading this you’ve already asked the first and recognized the truth of Jesus Christ. But the second question is harder to ask, and harder still to act on. It requires us to look beyond ourselves and out into the world. It may involve discomfort. It may involve travel.

Recently a man I admit I respect, Stephen Fry, gave an interview. Fry is an atheist and an incredibly intelligent – in the world’s terms – man, well educated although I forget if it was Oxford or Cambridge he went to, and a man of quick wit and smart, pithy answers to most questions. Which is why I was so gobsmacked at the tirade that poured out of him when asked about what he would do if he ever met God.

Christianity Today published a brilliant article at the start of January telling the readers where there is the most persecution going on actively against the Church. Unsurprisingly, North Korea, China and Iraq all feature in the top 50 countries where physical persecution goes on, with North Korea listed as the worst of all.

Christmas needs us as Christians to claim it back from the World. Especially in the developed world, Christians themselves get caught up in the commercial aspect of the season and don’t think about the spiritual meaning except on Christmas Day itself.

Jesus Christ was God in living flesh, man and God reconciled in a single presence for a period of time here on planet earth, walking among us, talking to us and sharing everything from the mundane to the miraculous.

There’s a lot in the New Testament about forgiveness. Jesus speaks of it so many times there’s not enough space to fit all the references in here. In the letters and Acts there’s a heavy emphasis on forgiving those who have wronged us, but there’s less said about consequences.