Saint’s Stories #10

SAINT VENANTIUS HONORIUS CLEMENTIANUS FORTUNATUS

A poet and hymn writer, this saint with a long name lived around 530-610 AD.

Hoffi Coffee

Well, at the closing ceremony for WEST, during my interview I was asked what I had lined up in terms of ministry. I jokingly said that I had nothing and would probably end up on Job Seeker’s Allowance. It turns out I can’t claim JSA since my wife is on a well enough paid job and because we’re savers not spenders!

God was Homeless for 300 Years

The other evening, I heard someone in our church talk about the building as the “House of God.” Clearly this is wrong. Amazingly, in God’s providence, I’m preaching this Sunday and one of my points in the sermon I’m re-using is on how we turn God into a pagan deity by saying that “we’re going to church to meet with God” which is essentially the same sort of point. In fact, if church buildings are God’s House, then that means that in the 300 years before God’s people started building church buildings, God was homeless!

Two Reasons Why Today, I Am God

Since the arrival of that great and reason fuelled ”I am” statement, no not by YHWH but by Descartes, “I think therefore I am”, we’ve been coming up with various different manifestations of me, the individual, supplanting the one true “I am”, God. Here are two examples in today’s culture:

New Attitude Conference 2007

I know it was like so last year, but I’ve only just got round to listening to them. Two talks that have probably had the most affect on me of any sermons or talks I’ve listened to in a long while are the two by John Piper. The first is called “Discern what pleases God: himself”, where John unpacks that God’s his highest aim and pleasure is himself. That it’s all about God displaying his splendour and his glory and how he is right, not tyrannical or arrogant, to do so. In fact, for him to not do so would be wrong. Then the second follows on, “Discern what pleases God: personal obedience. Here Piper discusses how we can fall into one of two traps with obedience, that of obeying as a basis for God’s grace or obeying to pay God back for his grace. He puts it better than I can so listen to them both for free, and the other talks, by clicking here. It will be thoroughly, thoroughly worth two hours of your time to listen at least to the two by John Piper.