As born-again believers we need to have a high view of the divine inspiration of scripture, as high as Jesus’ view was. But our ultimate preoccupation should not be with the scripture itself but with the Christ to whom the scriptures point us to.

Church history has always shown the same thing. Once the high view of scripture has been abandoned by any group, any denomination, any church the downhill slide of it’s theology and practice into worldliness, compromise and error is inevitable.

Hebrews 4:13 tells us - "And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account." God is the God of the unexpected, at least from our perspective. God is near and far at the same time and encourages us to never be afraid of the unexpected because so often it's how He grows us and at the centre of any unexpected moment we find Jesus is there with us.

Jesus came to identify himself with us so that we may have a new identity with him. We can identify with him reversing the 'Who told you' from Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. If we truly know who we are following, who we belong to then the how of denying ourselves and losing our lives can be trustingly be placed in His hands. Jesus Christ is our Who.

Ps Col Stringer shares with us a great word about the grace of God.

Did you know most Christians believe the phrase "God helps those who help themselves" is in the bible, but it's not. We all live in a world where the value we place on what is good is based on our own ideology. Jesus was confronted by a man who asked him what he had to do to be good and Jesus responds with the words "Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God."

If God is good why do bad things happens has been a question no doubt we all have asked at some time or another. To understand this we need to look at how do we justify a good God in an evil world, this is called Theodicy. When we look at God revealing himself to Moses at the burning bush we see a Theophany and to understand God in an evil and suffering world we often think Theodicy but we really need Theophany - God revealed and with us.

We all desire success in some way or another and usually the main reason most people want to be successful is to have a good and happy life, but when things don't work the way we want or perceive we often as believers think God where are you? God’s idea of success and our cultures idea of success can often be far apart, and Gods will for our lives may be totally different for what we want for our lives. The more we know and understand the intrinsic glory, holiness and goodness of the God of the bible the less we will be disappointed by the god of our imagination the one we think He is.

Many of us have at some time heard someone say - Why doesn't God just take away the pain, the suffering, the evil especially against innocents. It can be a difficult question to look at however the bible shows us the story of Job a man who God said was was righteous and yet suffering still came his way. This was in contrast to the belief of Retribution which Job and his friends believed in.