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“A world view is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story/myth or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being” James Sire (The Universe Next Door, IVP)

We all have worldviews though we may not realise we do... and we might have a false or partially false one... we probably all have inconsistencies.

Looking at the world John Calvin wrote: “There is no colour in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice” And yet, from the Bible he observed, “the heart is an idol factory” People are lovers but we love the wrongthings, turning created things into our gods.

CS Lewis warns, tread carefully around idols:
 “It is our painful duty to wake the world from an enchantment. The real universe is prob…

People pray. It doesn't seem to matter too much what you believe. Muslim or Hindu, Christian or Atheist cry out to someone or something. Who hasn't found themselves in a hard place and cried out "O, God..." or in better times and cried "Thank God..."

Download MP3: Hearing God speak through prayer (30mins).

We pray. Yet, it's hard. You lie on your bed to pray and it feels like the words bounce back off the ceiling as you address your petitions to the light fittings. You find a quiet place to pray and suddenly everything you've procrastinated about for days seems urgent. You pray and you pray and you pray and nothing happens and so you give up. Or, you think my life is already too full and too busy, I have no time to pray. And the biographies of the greats who rise before dawn to pray make it worse.

When I'm weak I think I can't pray until I'm stronger. When I'm strong I don't feel the need to pray so much. I'm caught between a…

The destruction of the Dawlish sea wall and railway feels like a pretty good image for the experience of hardship in this life. Recently life has felt quite like wave after waves crashing in relentlessly... health, circumstances, finances... each wave leaves its own small mark but the culmulative effect of all of them is where the destruction comes.

The problem of suffering is suggested by some to be the issue that nails Christianity. What it certainly is is the issue that arises most commonly because our shared experience of life here is of a world that while laced with beauty very often seems quite brutal.

Don Carson very helpfully says,
"you only have to live long enough and you will suffer." Every worldview has to deal with it somehow... James Sire writes:
 “A world view is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (c…