I’d like you, if you would, please, to picture the face of the most difficult person in your life. Hold it there. Now think of the last few interactions you’ve had with them. ...

You and I will possibly never be the fastest, smartest, or most successful person in the room. But there is something that’ll get us to the front of the pack. Would you like to ...

Have you ever tried to kick a bad habit? It’s not easy. Whether it’s smoking, eating the wrong foods, being a nasty piece of work, gossiping – whatever it happens to be – ...

Can I be honest with you? I used to be … well, not a very nice person. In my younger years I was so focused on winning, on succeeding, that I’d walk over the top of anyone and ...

Anyone who’s ever brought up children knows how important it is to celebrate their achievements with them, and to be there for them when they’re hurting. We know that ...

So you’re cooking this great meal, but then you discover that you’re missing a key ingredient. Quick, down to the local grocery store. But when you arrive there’s a ...

Many people are missing the essential skills they need, to live the life they want to live. All too often, life skills are left to chance. We’re meant to absorb them by ...

Good life skills are essential to living a good, effective a fulfilling life. And yet in most cultures, the learning of those life skills is left to chance – particularly in ...

If someone wrote you a letter from prison with some advice for how you should live, would you accept that advice? I guess that depends, but you’d be sceptical, right? Most ...

Have you ever done something so bad, so wrong, so hurtful to someone you love, that you can’t imagine ever coming back from that? You can’t imagine that this relationship ...

Sometimes we’re faced with an ethical dilemma. On the one hand, you know what’s right and deep down you want to do the right thing. But the short-term rewards of doing the ...

Have you ever noticed how, when life’s toddling along well, you seem to have plenty of people around you. But when all of a sudden things take a turn for the worse, how so many ...

When you’re trying to live your life well … with goodness, with integrity … and yet everyone around you is behaving badly, you begin to wonder, “Is it worth it?” Well, ...

The world’s powerbrokers – national leaders, billionaires, celebrities, social media ‘influencers’ – all have a couple of things in common. For the moment, they carry a ...

The self-help sections of newspapers, or newsfeeds if you’ve gone digital, are bulging these days with worldly wisdom that ranges from the seductive through to the bizarre ...

Let’s face it, we only get one crack at living our lives on this earth. Before you know it, it’s over. So why waste it? I mean … we can live an ordinary life. A safe life. A ...

If you look around the world, there are more than a few despots ruling over nations, dictating how people should live and what they should believe. It’s not nice. But that ...

Do you know how sometimes you meet someone and they seem to have their act completely together – the perfect job, plenty of money and a family that you can only dream of? I was ...

There can scarcely be anything more frightening than an earthquake. With the ground shaking beneath your feet, you’re just waiting for the building to collapse around you and ...

Whatever language you happen to speak at home, new words and phrases are being added to your dictionary much more frequently than you might expect. But that’s by no means a new ...

We’ve all had that experience when someone not only does something for you (as though that weren’t enough) but does it with a good intention, with a pure heart. Isn’t that ...

The world seems, by and large, to be fixated on wealth, wouldn’t you agree? Money, money, money. How can I make more of it? How can I have even just a bit more to afford some of ...

Have you been asked for advice and, as you were sharing your thoughts, wondered why this person came to you in the first place? They don’t seem to want to know. They’re not ...

Let’s face it, we only get one crack at living our lives on this earth. Before you know it, it’s over. So why waste it? I mean … we can live an ordinary life. A safe life. A ...

It’s really quite striking, when you stop and think about it, how much the negativity and challenges of the past, coupled with the pressures that we face today, tend to distort ...

We’ve been chatting this week about achieving greatness – true greatness; not the sort of sham that our celebrity culture holds out, but the sort that impacts the lives of ...

Salt is something that most of us use daily to add flavour to otherwise boring food, or to enhance even further the flavour of the most delicious of foods. And yet, important ...

It never ceases to amaze me how tribalistic we’ve become without even being aware of it. It happens in sport –  okay, fine. It happens in politics – something I guess ...

Serving others is something that, on the one hand, we know we need to do. But on the other, we often find it inconvenient, undesirable … even downright demeaning. When you think ...

A lot of the bickering that goes on in this world is about who’s the greatest; who’s first; who’s going to be seen to be the most impressive, the leader of the pack. It ...

The desire to be thought well of is a secret that many harbour in their hearts. Oft times it spills over into our words, our behaviour … and at that point … well, let’s just ...

Let’s face it, we only get one crack at living our lives on this earth. Before you know it, it’s over. So why waste it? I mean … we can live an ordinary life. A safe life. A ...

It’s all too easy to fool ourselves into thinking that we’re rather more important in this world than we actually are; that our services are in high demand; that “busy, ...

Evil is something that we see all around us, if only we’ll look. Often though, we don’t look because it’s just all too much. So we just get on with life. But there’s one ...

I don’t know how many church services you’ve sat through in your life but I’ve lost count. It all began for me as a young child. Sitting still for an hour was excruciating. ...

Setting out on a new venture is always dicey. You take that first step somewhat tentatively. You want it to be a good start. You don’t want to upset people on day one. Back in ...

Whenever things press in on us – be they physical, emotional or spiritual – have you noticed this; temptation seems to come at you at a far greater rate of knots? It’s ...

Have you ever wondered what baptism is all about? It’s an odd little ritual that’s been practised for millennia – first in Judaism and then in Christianity. Even Jesus was ...

In my experience – perhaps in yours, too – God does some rather … well, odd things; things that we don’t expect; things that leave us wondering … why? Take for instance ...

Let’s face it, we only get one crack at living our lives on this earth. Before you know it, it’s over. So why waste it? I mean … we can live an ordinary life. A safe life. A ...

Let’s face it, we only get one crack at living our lives on this earth. Before you know it, it’s over. So why waste it? I mean … we can live an ordinary life. A safe life. A ...

So what keeps you going through the incessant daily grind of life; through the tough patches that come your way on such a regular basis? What are you looking forward to? What’s ...

There’s a tectonic shift going on in people’s mindsets – one that’s been evident for quite some time. It’s the global shift from a collective, mutually responsible world ...

Can I ask you today just to stop and think … what’s the highest priority in your life? Because your priorities end up dictating the course of your life. If we don’t think ...

Cleaning up your act, whatever act you’re needing to clean up in your life, is tough. Those old habits die hard. They just seem to want to cling to you and drag you down. Or is ...

Many a time we know all too well that we’re falling short – that we need to do better here or there in our lives – but it’s so hard to have all your bases covered at once. ...

Question: If God forgives us our sin through Jesus’ sacrifice on that blood-drenched Cross, do we then need to change the way we live, turn away from our sin that alienated us ...

Every now and then, it pays to go back to basics – both to ensure that we’re getting them right, and to remind ourselves of what’s truly important. And the single most ...

Many, many people believe in Jesus Christ – and yet somehow there’s a gap between what they believe and how they live.  It seems that other people are out there doing things ...

The idea of living a victorious life is a seductive one, but also one that’s easy to misconstrue in an age where success has become the holy grail of human existence. It’s all ...

Empathy is one of the most poignant and powerful expressions of love known to humanity. Being there for someone, aching with them, or indeed celebrating with them, just speaks ...

When you see a man walking down the street with a bunch of flowers, do you ever wonder why he bought them? Out of a spontaneous act of love, for a special occasion … or as an ...

Have you ever wondered why sometimes the joy you once had, the joy you believe God wants you to have, seems to have evaporated? Poof, gone! It’s almost as though God’s ...

When you stop and think about it, we know instinctively that our actions flow directly out of what’s going on in our heart. The problem is, all too often, we don’t stop and ...

When we head down the wrong path, when we know that what we’ve done is wrong, we instinctively want to run and hide from God. Crazy, right? Yet that’s exactly what we try to ...

With all that’s going on around the world, many of us are asking ourselves – when is all this evil going to end? And that’s not, by any stretch, an unreasonable question. ...

Many, many people believe in Jesus Christ – and yet somehow there’s a gap between what they believe and how they live.  It seems that other people are out there doing things ...

If only we realised the power of our words. I heard someone say once that words are containers of power. The things we say to others can either bring life or death, truly. I was ...

What do you do when you find yourself in a tough spot feeling completely alone? Come on! What do you do? Do you just suffer your way through it alone? Or do you reach out to God? ...

Life is mostly just about doing the same things day after day. As a wise mentor of mine likes to say, some days you just have to plod for God. But every now and then, you hit a ...

I have yet to meet someone who enjoys being disciplined; who loves it when someone else pulls them up for how they’re behaving. How about you? A good many people – and I ...

Have you ever wondered whether people notice that you’re different? With a gentleness perhaps, kindness, humility, warmth … wisdom. Or don’t they get that vibe from you? ...

If we’re going to be completely honest with ourselves, a good many of the things we desire in this world are selfish, misguided … just plain wrong. And come on, that ...

Most of us have a pretty good sense of the difference between right and wrong. And so we set about trying to do more right than wrong. Just a little bit more right. Just a little ...

So many people are asking the questions “How can I hear God speak to me?” and yet they leave their Bibles on a shelf somewhere gathering dust. There is such incredible power ...

Peace is about more than dealing with the stuff that happens to you – the people, the circumstances, the challenges … all those externalities. It also involves being ...

Okay, so how do you actually experience the stillness, the calmness, the peace of God – which He absolutely wants you to do – when the hurly-burly of life constantly crashes ...

Day-to-day, let me ask you, what drives your thinking? What causes you to do what you do; to be who you are? Most people, if they’re honest, would have to say … their ...

Here’s a blunt, inconvenient truth: your attitude towards the difficult people in your life can either maintain your sense of God’s peace or rob you of it. No, your peace ...

So many things in life can rob you of your peace. But right up there at the top of the list are our relationships. Those difficult people. The conflict. A sharp word, or even a ...

The stuff that life throws at us sometimes can be downright terrifying. Other times, it just seems to grind us down. Either way, what we really need is peace. Where, pray tell, do ...

Deception is all around us these days. Whilst editors and journalists have been putting their own spin on the so-called news for years, these days, because fake news is rampant, ...

So many people are asking the questions “How can I hear God speak to me?” and yet they leave their Bibles on a shelf somewhere gathering dust. There is such incredible power ...

So many people are asking the questions “How can I hear God speak to me?” and yet they leave their Bibles on a shelf somewhere gathering dust. There is such incredible power ...

There’s nothing worse than a whinger, is there? Someone who’s constantly complaining about everything as though the world owes them. Nothing’s ever good enough. No one’s ...

So, what are you hoping for in your immediate future? Doubtless some good things, yeah? And perhaps a blessed release from the pressures and problems of today. But things don’t ...

Teamwork is lauded everywhere you look – in successful companies, winning sporting teams, churches, families. It’s a great concept, but man, those other people can be such a ...

There are times when God feels a million miles away. And that’s rather an unsettling feeling. Even if you don’t love God, if you’re not there yet… still, you know ...

Being good, doing good, can be hard going. When everyone else is behaving badly – and how often does that happen?! – going against the flow is tough. Is it really worth it? ...

Let’s be honest, this thing those Christians call “the Bible” contains some very strange, very difficult-to-believe stories: Jesus turning water into wine; walking on water. ...

Do you mind if I ask you today, have you ever felt broken? Have you ever had this sense that something’s not right; that you just don’t have what it takes to deal with all the ...

In our natural human state of existence we presume that we are the centre of the universe.  Our needs, our comfort, our wants and desires and opinions and ….  We have a name ...

We all have hopes and dreams. One day this … one day that … And that’s a good thing, a very good thing. God works mightily through those dreams. But one day it comes time to ...

Have you ever had someone do something for you with a bad attitude? It kind of robs you of the joy of what they did, because they didn’t do it with a willing heart. The truth ...

There are times in life when no matter how hard we try, how much energy and dedication we throw at something, things just don’t seem to come together. There’s no clear way ...

The thought of being trapped, in whatever form that may take, is a pretty frightening one. Imagine being trapped in the cabin of a sinking ship. Imagine being trapped underground ...

I wonder if you’ll join me today for a stroll down memory lane – through those unexpected twists and turns, the long dry flat spots and the pleasant strolls through the woods, ...

Can I ask you today, how smart are you? As you look back on your life, how well have you followed along the path of wisdom? Perhaps you’ve done pretty well. Almost certainly ...

It doesn’t seem to matter all that much what group of people you get together, why they’re even a group in the first place, disagreements arise. Arguments ensue and ...

In our natural human state of existence we presume that we are the centre of the universe.  Our needs, our comfort, our wants and desires and opinions and ….  We have a name ...

Whilst the education system may have changed somewhat these days, the concept of pass or fail still exists. You either make the grade, or you don’t. You either graduate with ...

Perseverance is a word that we don’t much like, you and I, because it speaks of suffering through trials in order to make it through to the end. Who needs that? Not you, not me, ...

Some people absolutely love receiving gifts – they’re wired that way. It’s their love language, if you will – the way they receive love and affection. Others, not so much. ...

Let’s be honest. There are days when things just don’t seem to be going our way … at all. Other people are doing just fine. Other people seem to be blessed in their lives, ...

When you run into someone whom you haven’t seen in a while, how do you greet them? Or when you send them a letter (perhaps these days, more likely an email or message) how do ...

I wonder what it must be like for a sports man or woman to be chosen to represent their country in an international competition. The honour, the privilege. Amazing! Perhaps ...

We live in a world that focuses on the superstars … on the attractive people, the successful people, those who happen to be the flavour of the month … while the rest of us ...

There’s probably not a single person on this planet who doesn’t want to be wise. But there are a couple of problems with this whole wisdom thing. Firstly, it’s not always ...

Would you be free of the burden of sin? I think we’d all desperately like to be. And the good news is that that’s the very reason that Jesus came to this earth. To set you ...

I’m pretty sure we’d all agree that laws are, by and large, good. Not all of them of course, but most of them. Yet how useless is a law on the statute books that simply cannot ...