Chalmers' Blog

Saturday Snippets (June 12)

As well as reading a lot of books, I also read a ton of articles every week. Here are some of the articles that I’ve read recently and have found interesting, helpful, challenging and encouraging. I hope that they will be the same for you, my dear readers…

Don’t Hide Behind A Stiff Upper Lip

“I’m fine” We’ve all said it, even when it’s as far from the truth as possible. “I’m fine” We’ve said it even though we’ve just balled our eyes out in secret. “I’m fine” It’s a coping mechanism that portrays an image of strength, but in reality it’s a mask that hides the crumbling emotional life of a broken soul. Maybe you’re like me, growing up in the UK it’s expected that people keep a stiff upper lip. Emotions can often be spoken about in negative terms. Sadly, it’s not much different in the church.

Hope In An Anxious World

Anxiety seems to be on the rise, or it could just be that we’re more educated about it and therefore we see it more. The experience of anxiety is heart stopping, or at least that’s how it feels. Your mind is consumed with all the worst outcomes. Your heart is about to beat out of your chest. Your lungs can’t take in the air that they need to keep you alive. The end of near. That’s how it feels, or at least it did for me when I had a panic attack a few years ago. Everyone’s experience of anxiety will be different. Regardless, living with anxiety is not pleasant.

Saturday Snippets (June 5)

Don’t Cut Corners

Cutting corners, sounds easy but it is not sustainable, it is selfish and it is fraudulent. The other day I was scrolling through Twitter and came across this tweet from Brian Croft;

Trusting God in the Darkness

The book of Job is an interesting one; it can be a book that people run to and love reading, or a book that people sigh about and really struggle with. Job has been one of my favourite books of the Bible for years. I’m preparing to preach through Job over the summer so I really enjoyed diving into Ash’s new book ‘Trusting God in the Darkness’. Ash has written a more in-depth study of Job, which in my opinion, is probably one of the best non-academic commentaries out there on Job.

Saturday Snippets (May 29)

Is It The Fault Of Evangelism?

I recently watched a Speak Life discussion between Glen Scrivener and Paul Feesey, on a subject that I’ve been following for weeks, where they discuss the question “Could the recent issues in the church have been avoided if we placed more emphasis on building the church rather than evangelism?” The video is an hour long, but it is good. Check out Glen’s Twitter thread about it too. It is an interesting discussion, but the concern raised misses the mark, in my mind. Here’s why…

A Brief Theology of Periods (Yes, really)

Periods, probably not the topic you would expect a man to read about and review a book on. You probably won’t hear periods being mentioned in sermons or church services that often. I’d never heard it spoken about in church until a few months ago my allocated sermon text was Leviticus 11-15. That was fun. I must say that when I saw this new book by Rachel Jones, A Brief Theology of Periods (Yes, really), I wasn’t planning on reading it. But I’m glad I did.