Hi. My name is Dave. I'm a Christian, a husband, a dad, a leader, a drummer, a punk and other things too. Above all, I trust and follow Jesus and I want to help more people trust and follow Jesus. Why? Because I believe that knowing God personally is why we're all here and trusting and following Jesus is the only way to do that.
This is my website. It's got a variety of stuff on from over the years. Click on the links below to find what you're looking for...
Why follow Jesus?
This is where I explain a bit more about knowing God personally and the evidence for Jesus.
for that supports his claims and resurrshow myself a bit more about Jesus and what it means to trust and follow him. There's also articles I written here about the evidence for
Books of the Bible
Questions and Answers
Tutor Group Resources
Everything else
Baptism
This little article isn't EVERYTHING about baptism but just a few things you need to know if you're considering it.
There are 2 kinds of baptism that Christian churches tend to do. One is "infant baptism" (where babies get sprinkled with some water and people pray for them and their parents) and the other is "believer's baptism" (where the person has already made their own decision to trust and follow Jesus and gets dunked right under some water to show it). This article is about the second kind.
What is baptism? This short video explains quite a bit about what the Bible says. You might want to go through it carefully and explore the Bible passages mentioned to learn more.
If you're interested in getting baptised in this way, there's a few questions that might be helpful before going further...
If you answered "no" or "not sure" to any of the questions above, baptism shouldn't be your next step. Instead, keep exploring what it means to follow Jesus by reading the Bible, being part of a local church, or attending an Alpha course (or something like it). Discover as much of the truth as you possibly can!
Some key passages from the video to explore further:
If you're a Christian and you haven't been baptised in this way, do chat to your church leaders about it and chat to me if you like. Most importantly, talk to Jesus about it and then do what he says! :)
There are 2 kinds of baptism that Christian churches tend to do. One is "infant baptism" (where babies get sprinkled with some water and people pray for them and their parents) and the other is "believer's baptism" (where the person has already made their own decision to trust and follow Jesus and gets dunked right under some water to show it). This article is about the second kind.
What is baptism? This short video explains quite a bit about what the Bible says. You might want to go through it carefully and explore the Bible passages mentioned to learn more.
If you're interested in getting baptised in this way, there's a few questions that might be helpful before going further...
- Do you believe God loves you and created you to know him and be part of his kingdom family?
- Do you believe your sin once separated you from God so that you couldn't know him or experience his love?
- Do you believe Jesus is God's only solution for your sin problem and that he died in your place, for your sin and rose again from the dead?
- Have you responded to this good news by giving your sin to Jesus and trusting him to forgive you and bring you into the relationship with God for which you were made?
If you answered "no" or "not sure" to any of the questions above, baptism shouldn't be your next step. Instead, keep exploring what it means to follow Jesus by reading the Bible, being part of a local church, or attending an Alpha course (or something like it). Discover as much of the truth as you possibly can!
Some key passages from the video to explore further:
- The Holy Spirit lives in every believer (Ephesians 1:13, 1 Corinthians 12:13)
- Water baptism is commanded (Matthew 28:19, Acts 2:38)
- It's publicly saying you trust and follow Jesus (Acts 19:4-5)
- It's publicly showing that Jesus has died for you, to wash you from your sin (Acts 22:16)
- It's about death, burial and resurrection life with Jesus (Romans 6:4, Colossians 2:12)
- It's a reminder that you are in Christ and he is with you always (Galatians 3:27)
- It's for normal Christians, not 'super Christians' (Acts 8:36)
If you're a Christian and you haven't been baptised in this way, do chat to your church leaders about it and chat to me if you like. Most importantly, talk to Jesus about it and then do what he says! :)
Q&A at SELCC (now Generations Camps)
SELCC Big Questions and Answers 2017
Thanks to everyone at SELCC for a fab week last week. As promised, here's all your questions with partial answers and Bible verses from me, plus some questions to help you think about how to apply what God is saying! You can download it all at the link above.
Thanks again for being brilliant and for wanting to trust and follow Jesus more and share his life-saving good news with everyone. Remember, we didn't return you guys at the end of the week - we sent you! You're on a mission! Have a great year and maybe I'll see you again.
Thanks for having me. :)
Thanks to everyone at SELCC for a fab week last week. As promised, here's all your questions with partial answers and Bible verses from me, plus some questions to help you think about how to apply what God is saying! You can download it all at the link above.
Thanks again for being brilliant and for wanting to trust and follow Jesus more and share his life-saving good news with everyone. Remember, we didn't return you guys at the end of the week - we sent you! You're on a mission! Have a great year and maybe I'll see you again.
Thanks for having me. :)
Why does God allow suffering and evil in the world?
This question comes up a lot. If God is supposed to love us and be
all-powerful, why doesn’t he put a stop to all the suffering and evil that goes
on in his world?
Many people conclude that a powerful,
loving God cannot possibly exist because suffering does. They’ll say, “If God exists then he can’t
possibly be both loving and powerful.
He’d either be loving enough to stop suffering but not powerful enough
to stop it, or he’d be powerful enough to stop it but not loving enough to do
so.” This so-called logic assumes it’s
not possible for a perfectly loving and powerful God to exist whilst suffering
and evil exists. The problem is, this
assumption is wrong.
Think about this question: Is it possible that there is a perfectly
loving and powerful God, who has perfectly good reasons beyond our present
understanding for allowing the suffering and evil we see in the world?
Yes or no?
Whatever your answer, it reveals what you think about God. If you say NO, you don’t think God could
possibly be any better than you are or know things you don’t know. But this isn’t the God the Bible speaks
about. If on the other hand you answer
YES, then you already know that God, by definition must be better than us in
every way and know everything, including many things that are beyond our
grasp. This is the God the Bible speaks
about.
Isaiah
55:9
“As
the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and
my thoughts than you thoughts.”
Psalm
139:17-18
How
precious to me are you thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them! Were
I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.
Romans
11:33
Oh,
the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths
beyond tracing out!
So we should acknowledge that any answers
we come up with to the question of why God allows suffering and evil in his
world are only going to be partial answers because no-one could possibly know
what God knows.
But God has given us enough to go on so
that we have a few partial answers that should help us.
1. Pain helps us.
I know it sounds strange but imagine a
world in which when a toddler stumbled into a fire, instead of jumping back
when it hurt them, they didn’t feel anything and got badly burned. That would be awful! One of the reasons leprosy is such a tragic
disease is that it renders a person’s pain receptors useless so that they don’t
feel anything when their bodies are getting badly damaged. It’s a disease that takes pain away! But this turns out not to be a good thing at
all.
Pain shows us when something is wrong so
that urgent action can be taken.
2. Something is wrong with the world.
Most suffering in the world can be traced
back to selfish human actions but not all of it. Sometimes this world simply kills us. Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Tornadoes, etc. The Bible tells us that the world we live in
is broken or cursed not to work in the way it should.
Romans
8:20
For
the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the
will of the one who subjected it…
The reason God has allowed this world to be
cursed or broken is because of sin. The
Bible says that it wasn’t just people who were negatively affected when people
rebelled against God – the world was too.
When God explains the consequences of people’s sin in Genesis, he says…
Genesis
3:17-18
“Cursed
is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life. It will
produce thorns and thistles for you…”
This world needs rescuing!
So pain helps us know when something is
wrong. Something IS wrong with our
world. But it’s not just our world…
3. Something is wrong with us.
The Bible makes it clear that each of us
are sinners by nature and by choice. We
have a sin problem. And it’s this sin
problem that causes most of the suffering and evil that we see in our world, in
the lives of those around us and in our own lives too.
Paul wrote something in the Bible that we
should all be able to identify with:
Romans
7:24
What
a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me
from this body that is subject to death?
If we want God to do something about the
evil in the world, we should expect him to have a few problems with us
too.
Romans
3:23
All
have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
We need to be honest and own up! We each need rescuing from the suffering we
cause because of the evil in our own hearts.
GOOD NEWS: Perfect in the beginning!
God created everything perfect in the
beginning. There was no suffering back
then. Everything was good.
Genesis
1:31
God
saw all that he had made, and it was very good.
The Bible also tells us that God is good
and has good plans. More than that – the
Bible tells us that God is perfect and has perfect plans!
Deuteronomy
32:4
He is
the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and
just is he.
God didn’t create evil and suffering but he
did create the possibility for it and he knew that it would happen. Nothing surprises God.
So why did God create in the first place,
knowing full well that suffering and evil would come?
GOOD NEWS: Perfect in the end!
The same passage that I mentioned earlier,
which describes our world’s current broken state, also describes its future
state…
Romans
8:20-21
For
the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the
will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be
liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of
the children of God.
The Bible also describes the ultimate
future of this world and God’s people who have been saved by Jesus…
Revelation
21:3-4
And I
heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people,
and he will dwell with them. They will
be his people, and God himself will be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their
eyes. There will be no more death’ or
mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
God created in the beginning, even though
suffering would come (including his own), because he knew that the end would be
worth everything that went before.
Relient K, a punk band of Christians, has a
brilliant song about this in which they sing…
‘The end will justify the pain it took to get us there.’
This is hard for us to imagine, wait – it’s
impossible for us to imagine, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.
1
Corinthians 2:9
“What
no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” –
the things God has prepared for those who love him.
GOOD NEWS: The Perfect One loves us and died to save us!
We can be part of this world’s perfect
future by trusting in what Jesus did for us on the cross. We can belong to God forever!
The Bible says that Jesus is ‘Immanuel’,
which means ‘God with us’ (Matthew 1:23) and it also tells us that he was given
the name ‘Jesus’ because he would save his people from their sins (Matthew
1:21).
Jesus came as God to suffer for all
suffering. He was sinless, spotless,
perfect. He was God himself, coming to
rescue us!
2
Corinthians 5:21
God
made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the
righteousness of God.
Hebrews
4:15
For
we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathise with us in our
weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are –
yet he did not sin.
When Paul asked who would rescue him from
‘this body that is subject to death’, he went straight on to answer his own
question…
Romans
7:24-25
What
a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me
from this body that is subject to death?
Thanks be to God, who delivers me thought Jesus Christ our Lord!
Jesus offers us forgiveness, friendship
with God, life to the full and life forever.
The whole story of the Bible is about how God wants to rescue his people
and this earth. We have been offered the
chance to outlive the suffering and evil we see in this world and to be free
from it forever. The only question is…
Are you in?
Alpha questions
Here's some questions that came up in Alpha on Sunday and my brief answers. Hope it's helpful!
What is the Trinity?
Are the gospels about Jesus reliable?
Why doesn't God answer all my prayers?
What is the Trinity?
Are the gospels about Jesus reliable?
Why doesn't God answer all my prayers?
"Unanswered" prayer
People
have often been put off God because they haven't had what they asked
for in prayer. They might say things like, "God didn't give me what I
asked for", or "God didn't help me when I needed him most."
So why doesn't God answer all our prayers?
The purpose of prayer isn't primarily or only about getting stuff we need or want. If it was, we could say prayer doesn't always work. But prayer DOES always work. It's just that the purpose of prayer is more than just asking for things.
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
Prayer isn't like a vending machine. Prayer is to help us in a relationship with God. Prayer is how we talk to him.
Just as when a child asks their parent for something, when we do ask God for things, he can answer in one of three ways: YES, NO or LATER. So in this sense, God always answers prayer. It's just that sometimes he says 'no' and sometimes he says 'later'.
Sometimes the reason people don't feel close to God is because they're not! If a person hasn't given their sin to Jesus and asked him to forgive them yet, this is probably the reason it might feel like their prayers aren't getting through.
Isaiah 59:2
But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.
In contrast, the Bible says those who trust and follow Jesus can pray confidently, knowing there's nothing that needs to separate them from God's love any more.
Hebrews 14:6
Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
I hope this helps a little. There's lots more God wants to say in the Bible about prayer. Hit the link below...
More on prayer in the Bible
So why doesn't God answer all our prayers?
The purpose of prayer isn't primarily or only about getting stuff we need or want. If it was, we could say prayer doesn't always work. But prayer DOES always work. It's just that the purpose of prayer is more than just asking for things.
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
Prayer isn't like a vending machine. Prayer is to help us in a relationship with God. Prayer is how we talk to him.
Just as when a child asks their parent for something, when we do ask God for things, he can answer in one of three ways: YES, NO or LATER. So in this sense, God always answers prayer. It's just that sometimes he says 'no' and sometimes he says 'later'.
Sometimes the reason people don't feel close to God is because they're not! If a person hasn't given their sin to Jesus and asked him to forgive them yet, this is probably the reason it might feel like their prayers aren't getting through.
Isaiah 59:2
But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.
In contrast, the Bible says those who trust and follow Jesus can pray confidently, knowing there's nothing that needs to separate them from God's love any more.
Hebrews 14:6
Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
I hope this helps a little. There's lots more God wants to say in the Bible about prayer. Hit the link below...
More on prayer in the Bible