On Tuesday a representative of the Barnabas Fund came to speak at BH – had been expecting the main guy, Patrick Sookhdeo, but his roads got flooded. Did you know that 1 in 10 Christians are persecuted…

We saw videos of the church in Iraq, Indonesia, North Korea and Egypt… Christians are offered great incentives to convert to Islam, and are ostracised or worse if they don’t. The humbling thing about these brothers and sisters is they’re so much more passionate about Jesus, so much more bold in evangelism, and so joyful in the face of trials.

CJ Mahaney, speaking on True Greatness from Mark 10, praises God for unanswered prayers. I’m like “What?”, that’s the time I don’t want to praise God, because he hasn’t answered my prayers, he hasn’t done what I asked, was he listening, does he care? These are the questions of course which expose my heart, they expose a wrong view of God…

“God is sovereign, not sentimental” – should add to that that God is both sovereign AND good, he works all things for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28), so we know that we can trust God when our prayers are not answered, because he is working out his good and perfect will. He is not sentimental, not a therapist in the sky, not a kindof Father Christmas, he gives us what we need, and answers prayers in his perfect timing.

Unanswered prayers also expose false motives, when we resent God for not bowing to our whims, we see our selfish motives, we see that we desire earthly treasure, earthly happiness and pleasure. We see that our prayers did not come from a desire for personal holiness and for the glory of God, but too often from selfish ambition and a desire to order our lives by our own plans and purposes, not God’s.

But, when we praise God for unanswered prayers, we purify ourselves, we turn away from our false view of God, we expose and repent of our false motives. God gets the glory and we learn to trust him more. I didn’t really used to think I was a proud person, (occasionally I was quite proud of that) but I see more and more that my pride is in the form of self-reliance, not trusting God’s plans and his timing, not trusting that he will work for good in all situations. Maybe, praising God for not answering my stupid selfish prayers is the best prayer I can pray…

In my search for some new podcasts I checked out a bit of Alistair Begg at his radio ministry site, Truth for Life. And was really impressed with the message I listened to – One Thing. There were three points; one thing I know (John 9:25), one thing I do (Philippians 3), one thing I ask (Psalm 27:4)… it was the first point that struck me

One thing I know…

John 9:25 – One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!

Of all the things I know in life (not that much to be fair), surely this is the greatest – there was a time when I was blind, spiritually dead, but now I can see, now I’m alive!
Lloyd-Jones puts it like this…

“I am a Christian solely and entirely because of the grace of God and not because of anything that I have thought or said or done. He brought me to know that I was dead, “dead in trespasses and sins”, a slave to the world, and the flesh, and the devil, that in me “dwelleth no good thing”, and that I was under the wrath of God and heading for eternal punishment.

One more film. I still had more vouchers. Also this is one of the few things I actually specifically asked for for Christmas – and didn’t get. Anyway, believe it or not I hadn’t seen this until just now. When me and my dad went to the cinema back in August, the showing was sold out… so we went home, and I never got round to seeing it. Sad times.

But I have seen it now, and it was pretty good, a worthy finale to the trilogy. The question has been asked who would win in a fight between Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer (notice, both JBs), and I am torn, clearly Kiether Sutherland could take Matt Damon, but Bourne is seriously hard, Bauer wouldn’t last long.

Anyway, I liked the film, the scenes in London were particularly good, can’t go wrong taking out a Guardian reporter! The best bit is the very end… now I quite like Julia Stiles (Nicky Parsons), she’s easy on at least one of the senses, but for the whole Trilogy she never smiles once – except at the very end, it’s beautiful! Nothing special, or particularly surprising or unique, but it’s just so much better than James Bond (another JB) or your average action film, although to be fair Daniel Craig will give it a good go.