In Depth:  Graham Heaps

We are living in days in which many Christians have been plunged into great financial difficulties.

This is often through no fault of their own. Our country is in the throes of significant economic recession, and it seems likely that far greater financial heartaches are just around the corner for our stagnating economy.

What is life really like in your home, when the doors are closed and the world is shut out?

Perhaps it is not all that your Christian friends imagine! I guess that most of those who saw David’s delight in bringing the ark to Jerusalem, and experienced his personal thoughtfulness and generosity in the gift of food to all in the vast hungry crowd, would have been staggered to see the verbal brawl he had with his wife Michal when he arrived home.

(From one who still remembers what it was like to be one.)

What can you, as a teenager, expect from your parents? Much the same as the young Jesus experienced when he was on the verge of adulthood!

(From one who is ashamed of his efforts as a parent, but profoundly grateful for God’s blessing on his youngsters.)

In the following article, I have tried to warn your teenage children what to expect from their parents, by looking at the closing verses of Luke 2.

In this brief article on the vital subject of church planting, I am drawing principles from Acts 16.

An approach that is more practical, and that gives insights into the ways of reaching our materialistic and apathetic society, would be very valuable, but is beyond my competence.

The ending of a pastorate is often a difficult time for all concerned. Indeed, even in the most satisfactory circumstances, when a pastor is confident that he has been called elsewhere by God, and his family and both congregations recognise God’s wise hand in the move, the change is still a difficult one to manage.

For the pastor, eager for the new challenge and opportunities that the Lord’s providence is bringing him, there is still the pain of leaving his friends behind.

So much of the book of Acts is so encouraging that it comes as quite a shock to see Luke including the closing verses of chapter 15, where we read of a heated dispute between Paul and Barnabas.

Yet we need a realistic appreciation of how easy it is for the closest of friends in the leadership of a local church not only to disagree and fall out, but to divide with bitterness and go their own separate ways. And the Holy Spirit does so much more than show us the dangers of such division. He shows us the underlying attitudes that can cause divisions to arise over such practical issues as the suitability of a young man like John Mark for responsibility in an outreach venture.

Have you ever asked yourself what is the biggest difference between our churches (and lives as Christians) and those we read of in the New Testament?

Could it be our lack of power? It is salutary to read Luke's account of Paul's lonely ministry in Athens. He sounds disappointed with the effects of Paul's sermon to the Areopagites - that only a few men and a number of women became followers of Paul and believed! Such effects would be talked about for many years in most of our churches!

While reading through the Old Testament book of Judges recently, I was struck by the reaction of a man called Manoah to the news that his wife was to have a baby. The news had come in a very unusual way.

It wasn't that his previously barren wife had started to feel sick or completed a pregnancy test. The angel of the Lord had come to her with the message that at last she would bear a child to her husband.

In 1981 20th-Century Fox released a David Puttnam film about two British athletes who won gold medals in the Olympic Games in Paris almost 60 years before (in 1924). The film won critical acclaim and has been shown many times on television since then.

It brought to the public eye Eric Liddell, a Christian man who turned down the opportunity to compete in the 100 metres, the blue riband event at the Games, because its heats were to be held on a Sunday.

150 years ago on November 5 one of the English-speaking world's greatest theologians was born near the town of Lexington, Kentucky, in the USA.

He was Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield. Today his name is indissolubly linked with that of Princeton Seminary at which he taught theology for more than three decades. There is something rather appropriate about the fact that Warfield was born on Guy Fawkes Day, for in the last 30 or more years he has often been attacked and vilified, even by confessing evangelicals, for his insistence that the Bible is the infallible and inerrant word of God.

Over the years I have heard, read (and preached!) teaching from the Bible on how to be a good wife. Although I haven't felt the need of it personally (!), it has often seemed generally helpful, if somewhat superficial.

Surprisingly, however, I have seen (or heard) very little teaching in the church on how to improve as a husband.

April 25 2000 sees the 200th anniversary of the death of William Cowper. Today he is known and loved for his intense, experimental God-centred hymns - and rightly so.

Yet in his own day he was Britain's foremost contemporary poet, and, through his Christian poetry led many people to Christ. This is all the more remarkable when we realise his poetry was written against the background of great spiritual depression, and almost continuous lack of assurance concerning his own salvation.

Most Christians face pressures in the workplace, and there is no doubt that the threat of unemployment is one of the greatest stresses.

Job security is not what it was. Though recent unemployment figures are falling, in the present economic climate, many firms find that their futures are far from secure.

'I'd really like to help out, but I'm under pressure at work.'

How many pastors have heard these words from godly church members in response to a request to consider helping with the children's work or standing for the office of deacon?

Some months ago we looked at suicide among Christians. Here Graham Heaps returns to this sad subject.

Though it was 25 years ago, I remember the occasion very well. It was Sunday morning, my fiancee and I were in a church in the south of England, not far from where my parents lived.