James's Weblog

I thought it might help if I wrote down my thoughts so far on the Psalms: What kind of literature are they? How are they to be read and interpreted today?

I recently spent a very happy day with Dr Garry Williams at The John Owen Centre studying the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture. (That's to say: Take the sentence "The Bible is the word of God"? How does that statement relate to other areas of theology - like what God is like, and the acts by which he makes himself known in history? What do we mean when we say "The Bible is the word of God"? What are we not saying when we say that? What biblical data would support that assertion?) A happy, and a very useful, day.

I think this post from Steve Jeffery is very helpful

2 Samuel 6 describes what King David did when the Ark of the LORD was brought into the city of Jerusalem.

http://www.creativeminorityreport.com/2010/11/awesome-pop-up-hallelujah… is well worth a look.

The post links to this clip on youtube:

I'm delighted to see that a new edition of Operation World is due to be published tomorrow.

(paid link)

Amazon are showing a price of £11.14 for the paperback (paid link); or £21.24 for the paperback book and a CD-ROM copy (paid link). It is also available in hardcover (paid link).

"Once you are convinced that your people need — I say need — the whole Word of God, and you get over the shock to your indolent flesh that you are not in the ministry for an easy job, you simply roll up your sleeves, and having gathered, or being in process of gathering, the most helpful library of commentaries and reference books you can find, you get down to it: and book by book you give your people a balanced diet of the truth." (William Still, The Work of the Pastor (p

The Lord's Supper is the world in miniature; it has cosmic significance. Within it we find clues to the meaning of all creation and all history, to the nature of God and the nature of man, to the mystery of the world, which is Christ. It is not confined to the first day, for its power fills seven. Though the table stands at the center, its effects stretch out to the four corners of the earth. (Leithart, Blessed are the Hungry (paid link), page 11)

For those of you who belong to a small group at church, Richard Perkins has a couple of excellent posts on how you can belong to one so as to make it thrive, and how to belong to one so as to make it struggle.

Back in June, I changed my web hosting provider.

As there are a fair few pitfalls to choosing a new web host, I thought I'd put this post up here to help others through the issues. I'm sure there are more worthwhile tips out there, so please free free to leave a comment.

As this has turned into a fairly lengthy post, let's start with:

Contents

1. Separate domain registration and hosting
2. Choose the country for your web servers to be in
3. Read the reviews of others

The Bible repeatedly says that idols, being false gods, are little use. There is plenty of mockery of them to make the point. I love this detail...

The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, they found Saul and his sons fallen on Mount Gilboa. And they stripped him and took his head and his armour, and sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to carry the good news to their idols and to their people. (1 Chronicles 10:8-9)