It was the first Sunday of the year and we were visiting a large church in our town. After the service an enthusiastic young man came up and told me, 'The Lord has shown me you are in full-time Christian ministry.'
(How did the Lord do that? Was it a miracle? Was it because I sat at the front with a big Bible open in front of me?) Then he said, 'I have a word from the Lord for you: you will go to the next level this year!' I can’t honestly say that prediction was false – presumably I did indeed go to the next level in something that year, even if it was only my favourite computer game – but it didn’t trouble me. Why not? Because I believe in the sufficiency of Scripture.
'Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.' (Jude 3)
An unhealthy drivenness in churches?
Someone once said that the purpose of the news media is the manufacture and maintenance of anxiety. I think he …