Occasionally in our walk as Christians we are challenged by those who fail to see, or who choose not to see, the truth of God’s word. Periodically every few months, on twitter, I will get an atheist crop up once in a while who will instantly demand evidence that I was an atheist and also for proof that God exists. Today’s blog post is inspired by one such encounter already but I’ve blogged about it before. There is no nice opening hello there is only immediate skepticism, ridicule, challenge and mockery. I’ve learned over time now to simply and politely remove myself from such conversations because they never achieve anything whatsoever and only remain circular and without end. It pains me though to still see other Christians though slipping into this trap where they believe it is their obligation to defend the faith on a platform as daft as Twitter. So why is it not then?

I’ve been learning a lot of lessons lately about God’s plan for my life and he continues to reveal himself very cleverly in the situations and circumstances in my life. One such way is in my gym activities over the last 5-6 weeks where I am now working much smarter not harder. I have proper rest days rather than working out every single day. I also work out groups of muscles rather than single muscles in isolation. I found this was inadvertently teaching me a valuable lesson about my spiritual life which I have begun to implement already. I read the Bible every day however I don’t always “study” it properly and perhaps I don’t always appreciate what is actually being communicated by it. So what did I do about that?

You know… it’s easy for us to either forget God altogether, or worse still blame him, during our more challenging moments in life. A number of events got me thinking about this – both of which happened last night – one to myself and one to a colleague. My problem was very inconvenient, and costly, but I was able to see through the veil of difficulty to see the positives out of what happened and how God was working to help me out. It started after a busy day at work when I was driving to pick my son’s up from the house where my ex-wife now lives. On the way I heard a noise like something banging on the back of my car – which ended almost as soon as it had started. I didn’t give it much thought after then until I picked up my sons and then went grocery shopping. When we returned we found the back right tire was completely deflated! This is an immediate problem and inconvenience because of a number of factors.

I was shocked this morning when I spoke to a good friend of mine who, purely because of the skin colour of his girlfriend, is suffering some quite shocking abuse from his own kin. I don’t want to name names, ethnicity nor religion of this person or his girlfriend for sake of keeping this as an “open” and impartial post. In our sheltered lives, and since a lot of anti-racist legislation has come into force, we don’t often see or experience these kind of problems ourselves. Nowadays its becoming increasingly rare and increasingly “un-cool” at the same time. For me this is a most welcome development in our society. Multi-culturalism has had to fight tooth and nail for its rightful place in this world but yet we still see some very strong racist, intolerant and bigoted attitudes. The worst part is when it comes from someone who claims to be a person of strong and adherent faith (whatever that faith may be).

I had already mentioned in a previous post back in January that my dad had surprised me by asking about possibly coming to the church. He has also been asking me many questions recently about the church, my faith, and the turnaround in my life over the last few years. Our discussions have covered things like creation, common myths and assumptions about Christianity, faith, life after death and pretty much any questions about faith you would expect anyone of any age to ask. The technique that I have alluded to several times over the last couple of years is so simple I don’t know why more Christians don’t do the same. It is simply to not just share your testimony but to be your testimony. You should not be the one that actively goes out and gets people but it should be that they should be drawn to you. I have demonstrated this now, effectively, with my two youngest sons and now my father.