I was reading an article on the Telegraph website about Allen Stanford’s aims to establish cricket as a sport in which discussing weighty issues, like buses travelling outside the cricket ground; pigeons dying due to high flying balls and so on and so forth, would give way to a boring game styled after football, when I stumbled across an article with the slightly leading title, “Intelligent people less likely to believe in God“.

I have very little doubt that the results of the survey are true, and that in academia, Christianity is very little represented. However, I don’t believe this is a shocking thing at all. The Bible speaks in several places of God choosing ‘the foolish things of the world’ and so on. One of the most remarkable things about the disciples was that they were uneducated, and yet put the religious leaders to shame. I think we become easily discouraged in witnessing when we cannot refute abiogenesis well enough to convince an atheist, or explain that the universe had to have a cause, and Jesus is eternal, and so he’s a worthy candidate.

We are not witnesses to a concept of God, we are witnesses to the Lord Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead and ascended to the right hand of the Father. Perhaps we should remember the answer of the man born blind, when he says:

Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.”

The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes.

As Christians, a miracle of healing has taken place in every one of our lives. There are countless examples of lives transformed by Jesus. We do not understand all of how this healing has taken place, we know only the surface of the man who performed it, and yet the fact it has taken place is not something that will be changed when we cease to have a clear view of some of the doctrines we found easy and obvious as children.

We do not not need to be scientists to be witnesses of Jesus, and we do not need to be discouraged when those who say they are (although the man on the street very rarely actually has any idea beyond the complete blarney they propogate on TV) give questions we cannot answer. None of this post is written to suggest that we should be ignorant or uninquisitive.

What is Grace?

Grace is to see what’s in my heart, my motives, my desires, to look beyond what I say and do, and still forgive me. It is not that the more you understand me, the easier it would be to forgive me, it is precisely the opposite. God gives wisdom freely, He gives His Holy Spirit freely. I have His scriptures freely, and in them is contained all that is necessary for life and Godliness. I have everything I need, yet still I sin.

The sheer amount God has fed me, the sheer amount He has given me. I have everything I need, and much more, and yet so often I despise that.

One of my friends was once struggling with the amount he had hurt his girlfriend, the things he had said to her, the way he broke up with her, and he knew it could never be the same. Yet, in all this, the only one we can be sure is not ashamed of us is the very one who sees more of our sin than anyone else.

But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.

The living water flows into the valleys. In the mountaintops you will find an energetic spring which flows away quickly, but only in the valley will you find a great flood.

Mary’s most treasured possession spilled out over the feet of Christ. Those who had never loved Him scorned her, not seeing a broken and contrite heart, the most fragrant burnt offering of all. As the fragrance of fine perfume filled the room, so did the fragrance of Christ. All things would be crushed under his feet, but there and then she placed herself willingly under His feet, and in Her brokenness, beautified the Temple of God.

The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.

“Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher; “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

Disconnected quotes? Not to my mind. Everything is empty without Christ. If I try to ‘find myself’ in anything other than a relationship with Christ I will find myself more lost than ever. My death was nothing less than a complete separation from the world. If I seek his face, I will lose myself, only to find my true self on the other side. If my love for the world is still alive, it is as it were, a zombie, because it was put to death on the cross 2000 years ago.

Becoming a Christian is nothing less than the ultimate act of trust. It is a death sentence on your very soul. If Christ died and did not rise, then your soul was put to death for nothing, and you are still dead. If I do not allow Christ into some aspect of my life, I will not find that part of my life unsatisfactory, but completely dead. The only way for us to live is in the Spirit. We are either in the Spirit or we are dead.

What we once found to satisfy us, we will not find satisfying again, whereas we could once work by ourselves, we can no longer. It is Christ himself who lives in us, or we are dead, and can do nothing. We can’t turn back, because there’s nothing to turn back to. It’s gone. Dead and buried. The branch which does not abide in the vine is dead, not sick.

God Bless.

If the protracted silence proceeding from this blog hasn’t made you give up hope forever, mayhap this post will come to you like rain in the midst of the desert, but perhaps more likely like rain after the sky has been ominous all day, and you hoped beyond hope it wouldn’t crack.

Doug: Wait! I’ve got a great story you should hear.
Max: AAAAAACCCCCHHHHHHH!
Sam: Keep it short, kid. My partner’s got a low tolerance for long stories.

So, what’s been happening to me?

First of all, as a follow on from my previous course. I know what and where I want to study. It must be a miracle. I said it would have to be in my last post, and I’m not going to swallow those words now.

I visited Oxford, and I was so thankful, because it was the most beautiful city I’d ever been to, and both me and Emma wanted to go there, it felt perfect. I was particularly interested in Magdalen College. This is the same college as CS Lewis went to. It has the most beautiful garden I’ve ever seen, and a deer lawn, and that really does it for me.

Perhaps that’s where I’ll go, but I really don’t expect it will be. Ignoring for now my results, let me tell you about Cambridge.

Cambridge’s Engineering presentation really inspired me. So much so that I’d say that even if I never go there, the inspiration was absolutely invaluable. I fell in love with Oxford city, but as for the engineering course, I’ll have to say Cambridge’s course was much more inspiring.

The impression I got at Oxford was that engineering was something they did extremely well, but it wasn’t a major department. The course seemed shrouded in mystery, and as much as I asked, the lecturer didn’t seem to understand I was looking for some inspiration to take up his course. I wasn’t told about any specific final year student projects, normal daily timetables or anything.

In Cambridge everything was laid out on the table, from the application process to the course contents. Cambridge do a general engineering course, and you don’t specialize until the second year, but the specialisation that inspired me most of all was ‘Geotechnical Engineering’. This is the point at which geography and engineering meet. Earth dams, tsunami-proof houses and landslide-proof pipes were all projects chosen by students. In my estimation, this is the best academic preparation for the mission field I can get. It gives me incredible joy to think how useful to God I could be with such skills, and that studying geography wasn’t wasted.

In addition to all this, Cambridge has a languages center as part of the engineering department itself, so I could carry on my German, and myabe take up another language too. Who knows? It’s in God’s hands anyway.

Now I get to my results. The sad thing is that they are not good enough for me to get into Cambridge yet.

1. German: A
2. Maths: A
3. Physics: B
4. Geography: C

I’ve dropped geography in response to these results in order to focus on the subjects I am good at, and thus raise my chances of getting to Cambridge. I prayed about this decision. I asked for peace before, during, and after making it, but now I must admit I am not certain of it. It doesn’t cause me to lose sleep at night, but I don’t know what God’s will is at all. I’m sure it’s not too late to change back, but God will bless me either way I’m sure. My mother told me, “Don’t worry about what God wants you to do all the time. God gives you desires, what do you want to do?” I want to be useful to God, but I felt so ill-equipped to make that decision, I feel so far from God. I wasn’t trusting him like I should have, and I knew it. Maybe God gave me those results to make me drop it, or maybe it was a challenge. Who knows?

That’s all for now, I might write some other post another day. God Bless

I have now finished my AS Level exams, I will be receiving my results sometime in the Summer. I now have three weeks at college which I will have to be using to prepare for next year. Apparently, I have to start thinking about university now. There also remains the task of choosing courses for next year. At the moment I’m expecting to carry on with all the courses I’m doing, but it does need prayer.

I really don’t know what I will be doing next year. I have absolutely no confidence in my planning ability for the future. God will have to do something pretty miraculous whatever happens, because I am stumped. The choice seems so vast. I’m not sure about any of the courses I wanted to study. Please pray that God would put the right choices on my heart.

On Friday the 22^nd I will be visiting Oxford with Emma and some other people in the College’s able and talented group. I found out today I will also be going to Mark, Jonathan and Alastair’s joint birthday party, which is also a leaving party for Jonathan and Monika, who are heading to Tenerife; and Henna, who is leaving for Aberdeen University. I had previously expected to be returning too late, but it turns out I will be back shortly after 7, leaving plenty of time.

I have started reading “The End of Poverty” by Jeffrey Sachs for my Geography course next year. I’ve never really read a book as part of any course before (except English of course), and it’s an interesting novelty. I feel like a real student or something.

I have a lot on my mind, and I am not doing the best spiritually either. Perhaps it is a good thing that now my greatest desire is to be holy, but it doesn’t feel like it. I suppose I can take comfort in:

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

Because I no longer have a feeling of assurance. God’s Word is all the assurance we need, but on the other hand, it is nice not to doubt you are saved, but I know I do not seek the presence of God in vain. Even if my sin does stand in the way.

I have gone through such feelings many times, and come out stronger, but it is hard to see that. I know I have nothing to be depressed about, but depression can be a trial like any other, even in the absence of anything to actually be sad about. From an objective perspective, my life is fantastic.

We might as well make it official, I don’t want to blog for a while, perhaps forever. There are a number of reasons I want to stop:

The only news I have any right to post on here is about myself, but that’s not very interesting, because whenever I think about myself for too long I end up getting depressed. To be honest, I absolutely hate self-examination now. I know I’m a sinner, I found that out a long time ago, but I’ll never be able to glorify God if I’m focussed in on myself. Frankly, when I look in at myself, I hate what I see.

The conclusion of the above paragraph is that I must focus outwards, and I have seen some absolutely amazing things happening over the last few weeks. God has been showering down his blessings in ways I’ve never seen before, but I find it very hard to write about such things, because most of them are answers to prayer concerning other people. It is for them to share such news, not me, and it would be wrong for me to share it.

It is other people that are really making me happy at the moment, so I want to talk with you, not tell you about me. Most people know about me. I also want to spend more time doing actual college work, and talking to one person in particular.

If you would really like to stay in touch, I would love to talk by e-mail or MSN.

MSN: fatpiegibbon [at] hotmail [dot] com
E-mail: peter.roberts [at] gmail [dot] com

If you are looking for someone to read, I recommend Confessing Evangelical. Some of Ally’s lenten guest posts look good too.

The wicked plots against the just,and gnashes at him with his teeth. The Lord laughs at him, for He sees that his day is coming.

The above verse comforted me when I thought of Richard Dawkins, because in the end of the day, however much harm wicked men may do, when their memory is erased, Christ will still be worshipped, and what they say makes not an ounce of difference to the majesty of our God.

It’s my birthday on Monday, and I’m going to be having a birthday party on Saturday, which should be fun. More about this later.

I’m now going with mummy to pick up three Japanese girls that will be staying a little while with us.

Why is legalism so tempting? My Christian life for the last while has revolved around doing particular acts, and if I do not do them, I feel I am close to forfeiting my salvation. In this I have sinned, and I know it. I have focussed so completely on myself and my spiritual walk, that I have lost much of the praise for God I used to have. It struck me this week when I realised I still felt guilty when I could think of no sin against anyone that had not been sorted out, but I’ve become subject once again to slavery, and not a slavery to Christ that sets free, but one that weighs down. I thank God he has given me repentance from these dead works.

If I was in the parable of the unrepentant servant, I would have forgiven my friend, but still tried to pay back the debt myself. Both this attitude and the attitude of that servant are an abomination, and I hope that if I have hurt any with my selfish attitude that they will forgive me.

Not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to think of anything as coming from ourselves, but our sufficiency comes from God, who has made us sufficient as ministers of the New Covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Just to clarify, I am not saying that what I have felt called to do has not been God’s will, but the attitude I have done it in, one of guilt, and not of praise to God, has been wrong.