What price do you pay to follow Jesus? Five hundred years ago, the people of Europe whispered of a mysterious ‘Garden of Eden’ across the seas. It was a distant utopia better known as the Spice Islands, the home of cloves and nutmeg. In London and Paris, these intoxicating spices were worth their weight in… Read More The Price We Pay To Follow Jesus
In an effort to normalise pornography, there are people who point out that porn has been around since ancient times. That might be true, but porn today is like nothing the world has ever seen. Pornography is now everywhere. It’s available on almost every screen and smartphone on the planet. In the West, what was… Read More Pornography is a Public Health Crisis
Have you ever left a comment online taking a stand for Jesus, only to return an hour later to a barrage of criticism? Or sat in the lunchroom listening to someone unleash on the evils Christianity, not knowing how to respond? It’s a common experience. Standing for truth in the public square comes at a… Read More Feel Like a Fool? All Good, God Chose the Foolish Things
When I was 19, I made one of the biggest decisions of my life. I moved to the jungles of South-East Asia. If you know me now, that may sound like the course my life was always going to take. Let me assure you: it was anything but an inevitable decision at the time. My… Read More The Year in the Jungle That Changed My Life
Part 1 of 3 Last night on a mild winter’s evening in Adelaide, hundreds of people packed an auditorium, spilling into foyers and corridors in what became a standing-room only event. During a week of wall-to-wall media focus on same-sex marriage, it was by happy coincidence that a UK pastor had come to our city… Read More Same-Sex Marriage Might Set the Church Straight
The irony isn’t lost on me: Jesus said if we draw attention to ourselves when we fast, the attention we get will be our only reward. But I’m convinced that as 21st century believers, Jesus’ principle of discreetness in Matthew 6 is almost all we think about when we think about fasting. That means almost… Read More I Ate No Food for a Week: Here’s What I Learnt
Part 2: Nutmeg What if I told you that New York City owed its fame and fortune to a tiny, forgotten island in the backwaters of Indonesia? Today the Big Apple tops bucket lists. It’s the centre of global trade. With an iconic skyline and nicknames like Capital of the World and Centre of the Universe, no wonder Manhattan is home to some of… Read More Secrets of the Spice Islands
When my older sister happily married at 21, I was going to be just as happy and just as married by the time I was 21. So I thought. This year I turned 31, and I am very much single. The strangest thing about this isn’t my persisting life stage, but that it took me… Read More Last Year I Was Unmarried—Now I’m Single
