In Matthew 12.22-37, Jesus is accused of working his miracles and casting out demons by using dark arts, black magic, in particular by Beelzebub, the prince of demons.
The shock of finding the Son of God vilified as being in league with Satan, the best man who ever lived being accused of being evil, should perhaps prepare us to meet the recent upsurge of anti-Christian rhetoric in our own time.
The first thing we have in Genesis 1 is God alone creating all that is not God: 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth'.
Thus we have not many gods, ranked in order and responsible for various parts of creation, but one God who is the maker of heaven and earth and everything in them (compare Psalm 33.6, Acts 4.24, 14.15, 17.25) including all spiritual beings (Colossians 1.16).
I want to stress the importance of all work, the importance of your work in God's sight.
But let me say at the start that you will always be more important than your work and that your character matters to God more than your achievements. In a society which has little to say about the first and endlessly exalts the second, this is a vital Christian perspective.
Don Cormack, author of Killing Fields, Living Fields, describes to Peter Lewis what life was like before the Khmer Rouge seized control, and tells how the Cambodian church is now faring.
PL: Don, I'd like to start with you. What kind of home did you grow up in?
We are to pray 'lead us not into temptation' but in a sceptical age, how do we deal with the temptation to doubt? Peter Lewis shows us how.
Satan's primary and most persistent temptation is the temptation to unbelief and rebellion: opposing God's will with our ambition, his sovereignty with our self-advancement, his glory with our pride.
It was a strange sight - a blind boy flying a kite with his father's help. A friend of the family watching dared to ask him a question: 'What do you get out of this when you can't see the kite?' The answer was simple enough, the boy replied: 'I can't see it, but I can feel the pull.'
Christians might make a similar reply to the questions, 'Why pray to a God you can't see? Why put so much effort into an exercise so unquantifiable?' The answer might be: 'I can't see what is happening, but I can feel the pull.' It's true, I know, that often in the matter of a steady, faithful, disciplined prayer-life we think more in terms of 'push' than 'pull'! And so the question suggests itself: 'Why pray?'
