Whilst the Parable of the Persistent Widow frames prayer in the setting of a courtroom, elsewhere in the New Testament prayer is spoken of as something happening in a throne room. Both places are intimidating, and a throne room, in the ancient world, was not a place to be entered lightly, or without invitation. The writer of the book of Hebrews, however, casts a vision of approaching God’s throne in a way that is, to say the least, surprising.

It is unknown whether, in the days that the first disciples waited in the upper room, and prior to the coming of the Holy Spirit, it was usual for individuals to stand up and preach. There certainly was a great deal of prayer (Acts 1:14) and an earnest searching of the scriptures during this time (Acts 1:20); only once is it recorded that ‘Peter stood up among the believers’ (Acts 1:15). However, after the Holy Spirit comes, the text of the Acts of the Apostles reports that, ‘Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd’ (Acts 2:14).

Someone recently asked me about the ‘watchfulness’ parables of Luke 12, and their meaning. Undoubtedly, they represent some of the less palatable and more challenging parables of Jesus and, as such, demand careful consideration. The parables cannot be read nonchalantly, and taken together, raise some serious theological questions concerning judgement, reward, salvation and damnation.

I’ve come to see more and more, that faith is a determination. It is something we must pick up when we wake up in the morning, and carry with us through our day, like a shield of protection. Of course, comparing faith to a shield is not an original thought and the apostle Paul, writing from prison to the Ephesians (in his great comparison between the Christian life and the dress and service of a Roman soldier) says, ‘In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one’ (Ephesians 6:16).

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,

“Never will I leave you;
never will I forsake you.”’

The second half of the Hebrews 13:5 is one of those verses worth looking at in the original Greek.

‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness’

The well-known verse found in 1 John 1:9 is worth memorising. It forms part of a wider exploration of the ongoing reality of sin in the life of the believer, along with a statement concerning the absolute provision of forgiveness found in Jesus Christ. That being said, Christians still suffer confusion over what Jesus actually did on the cross to forgive sin, how to appropriate that forgiveness, and most importantly what that forgiveness unlocks.