1 Corinthians 9:19-20, 22-23 Paul had an incredibly clear focus for his life. His longing was that everyone should have the opportunity to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. He wanted them to know that Jesus loved them so much that he died for t...
1 Corinthians 8:1-2 In writing this letter to the Corinthians, Paul didn’t dodge any of the difficult issues. I suspect that most of us are tempted to avoid grasping nettles, but Paul took on one nettle after another with remarkable confidence. T...
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Everything seemed to be going wrong in the Corinthian church. The Christians had become arrogant and were making up their own rules. There was, for example, a case of incest in the church and no action had been taken. There...
1 Corinthians 4:16-17 When I was learning to play the cello, my teacher always told me to look carefully at other cellists. He told me that this was really important because I would learn something from all of them. It’s just the same with the Ch...
1 Corinthians 4:7 Try to take a few minutes to write a description of your life. You will need to include things like your health, family, friendships, job, house, car, bicycle and other possessions. Then look over the list and remind yourself tha...
1 Corinthians 3:18-19 Every day we are bombarded with powerful images of what it means to be successful. The advertising and entertainment industries feed us with a continual stream of pictures of wealthy, powerful, glamorous and successful peopl...
1 Corinthians 3:10-11 Every building needs firm foundations. I’ve just been reading up about the process of preparing good foundations for a self-build. As you can imagine, it’s a major task involving a careful examination of the land with the he...
1 Corinthians 3:5-6 The divisions that had opened up in the church in Corinth were clearly causing great problems. Divisions always waste time and energy and Paul was eager to put a stop to them. We cannot be sure why people had grouped behind Pa...
1 Corinthians 2:1-2 For the apostle Paul, the cross of Christ lay right at the heart of his message. Take away the cross and he had no good news to share. But he also recognised that it was a really difficult message to pass on. As a Jew he was e...
1 Corinthians 1:10 In this letter, Paul does a lot of straight talking to the Corinthian church. It is significant that the first issue he addresses is unity, because everything depends on it. A disunited church cannot possibly be effective and 2...
1 Corinthians 1:4-5 These are incredibly generous words aren’t they? But they are also rather surprising when you know what follows. This letter to the church in Corinth is full of very serious criticisms of their life together. Indeed, at times...
1 Corinthians 1:1 This is a fairly familiar beginning to one of Paul’s letters, but what interests me today are the last five words “and from our brother Sosthenes”. We always refer to this letter as coming from Paul, and I don’t think I’ve ever...
Psalm 10:1 This is one of many psalms of lament. Like many such psalms it is really a psalm of complaint. David is not at all happy and he wants God to know it. His life is dominated by evil people, and he can’t believe that God doesn’t get invol...
Psalm 9:1-2 It’s good for us to ask the question: “What is praise?” It certainly isn’t simply a matter of singing a few Christian songs, beautiful as they may be. And it doesn’t necessarily happen when we attend a service of worship. It has to do...
Psalm 8:3-4 I know very, very little about astronomy. However, whenever I hear about it, I find it mind-blowing. I totally understand where David was coming from in this psalm. Let me give you a few facts about our amazing universe. Light travels...
