Queen's Road Cell

" You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. ” Matthew 5:13 “ Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another. " Mark 9:50 " Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. " Luke 14:34,35 Reflecting on the recent sermon on Matthew 5:13  brought to mind questions about why the use of salt as an analogy in the Bible. Questions that might shed further insight could be “Scientifically can salt lose its saltiness and how?” or asking ourselves “What are the characteristics of salt that we can glean about being a good Christian”. This led me to think about this o...

With the story of the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18 as the background we covered the topic of forgiveness at the meeting. I thought it would be easiest to summarise the evening's discussions in the form of questions about forgiveness. 1. What is forgiveness? Forgiveness is letting go, not holding grudges, being free from feeling negative emotions about a person or a situation. It is not feeling that someone who has wronged us still owes us anything, whether an apology or restitution. 2. What is the basis of our ability to forgive? When we are wronged, it is hard to forgive because we feel that our sense of justice has been violated. So the one who has wronged us must be made to pay for the offense to restore balance to the Force (OK, I'm kidding here). The parable of the unmerciful servant teaches us that we who are forgiven sinners by God have a different formula for calculating when the scales balance. We did not receive justice from God, we received grace to cover a...

We covered some basic questions that Joshua's BB boys asked him at devotions. If God is all-powerful, why doesn't He make everybody worship Him? I now cannot remember who said what! I think Joshua said he framed this in terms of relationship. Relationships cannot be forced. You can't force someone to love you. On reflection this may be slightly simplistic. God, being God, would have the ability to make us sincerely and truly love Him. Even so, we who are made in the image of God have the ability to choose to love Him. I did not mention this, but we are held responsible for our moral choices (e.g. to love God or not). This is not to be confused with 'free will'. Our wills are bound by sin and we are spiritually dead. And so we are told that we cannot love God and come to Him unless he enables us to do so. But that is probably a bit much to throw at Sec 1 boys all at once. Why is there a hell? This is a tough question because teaching that non-believers go t...

I shared that this was a difficult study to prepare for, not just because the passages and ideas seemed to be all over the place, but because there were so many areas in which I felt I fell short. My introductory comment was that we Protestants tend to think of righteousness solely as something we recieve by imputation from Christ (2 Cor 5:21), not necessarily something we seek to develop and achieve through effort. And yet Scripture encourages us to "strive... for...holiness, without which no one will see the Lord" (Heb 12:14). If we do not exhibit practical as well as positional righteousness, then, we place ourselves at risk of "losing our salvation" (if you are Arminian), or proving that you were never one of the elect (if you are Calvinist). Hebrews 12:5 and James 1:14-15 remind us that sinning starts in small ways, but then grows to destroy our lives and the lives of many others. We spent a great deal of time talking about sins of speech mentioned in Col 3...

The main discussion item was triggered off by Andrew and Deanne, who arrived first for dinner, then found no one else around (Joyce and I were upstairs). "The rapture has happened!" they said. So the question was= Will there be two returns of Christ - one invisible, then one visible, or only one? Will Christ return once to take up His people secretly, then once again to judge the world in a way that everyone will see? So I said that Biblical passages about Christ's return are divided into 2 groups - one group (e.g. Matt 24:44, 25:13) tells us that we 'do not know the day or the hour'. The other group tells us of signs of His imminent return. These include the preaching of the gospel to all nations(Greek= ethne = people groups)(Matt 24:14), a time of tribulation (Matt 24:15-22), false Christs (Matt 24:23-24) and signs in the heavens (Matt 24:29-30). We can then know the broad requirements for Christ's return, but never the exact time or date. Nevertheless...