Last year I ran my first ever marathon. I know I don’t look like much now, but back then I felt like a running machine. In the weeks before the Big 42, I began to wonder if I was ready. Even though I’d done lots of training, I wondered if I was fooling myself in thinking I could make it. So, I went online and looked up, ‘How can I know I’m ready to run a marathon?’ Most of the articles I read showed me that I’d done the training I needed to. But all of the articles told me th

1 Thessalonians 2: 7 - 13 A Sunday school class was asked to draw a picture of God. When the pastor stopped by to inspect their work, the children were thrilled to show him their drawings. One child had drawn God in the form of a brightly coloured rainbow. Another had drawn the face of an old man coming out of billowing clouds while another little boy drew a picture that looked a whole lot like Superman. Perhaps the best drawing was the one proudly displayed by a little girl

1 Thessalonians 4: 9 - 12 Mark Twain: "It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand." All God’s people said, “He’s right about that.” We know what he meant. You can spend years studying difficult Bible passages and come away more confused than when you started. Even the great apostle Peter confessed that some things Paul wrote were hard to understand. If Peter had trouble with Paul, we shouldn’t be surprised when

Tonight’s passage from Matthew is a picture that can be very familiar to us. Every time you drive past a Builder’s Warehouse, you’ll see men standing and sitting around with tools and signs which read ‘painter’ or ‘plumber’ or some other job. Every time I run or drive down Mimosa road I pass two dozen men at two busy intersections sitting around and waiting for someone to stop and ask for a day-labourer. All down Ouklip there are men who stand around waiting for the offer of

1 Thessalonians 4: 1 - 8 There are not many things from which the Bible tells us to abstain. The word itself is used only 7 times in the NT — 3 times in the book of Acts, once in 1 Timothy and once in 1 Peter. The other 2 times are found in 1 Thessalonians. Whenever we find a command to abstain in the Bible, we ought to take it seriously. We have come to one such command in our text. It is so simple and clear that can be no debate about it. God commands believers to abstain f