Good morning 2011

Well, its a new year. I have to say that last year could have gone a little better and I am hoping for a much better one this year. Looking out over a fresh new year I have to say that this year does have the potential to be one of the best in my life. It is going to be very busy and it is going to be a lot of hard work but I am confident that the benefits will be huge.

So what does 2011 have in store for me? Well for one thing I plan to continue this blog and have some interesting plans for things to do, watch this space for what I hope to be some very interesting posts this year. I am also planning to start studying towards my first theological qualification this year and am hoping to be accepted on to a training scheme in Canada in September, again keep a look out and I will post updates. There is a new Bible study class in my Church I will be helping to run and the quest for a new job to start in March too. So far a busy year planned and hopefully it will be a lot of fun and a very exciting journey.

In addition to this I have my ongoing Soldier's Challenge, an upcoming Lent fast and likely a few more ideas like that to boot. I will also be embarking on my first structured personal Bible study and will likely be using thoughts and ideas from that on here from time to time. There are some ideas I left hanging last year that will be picked up and some interesting thoughts that I will be following too. There is all this and much more planned too.

So that leaves me with one final thing to talk about in this post, New Years Resolutions. I wonder how many people make these and actually stick to them for the whole year. Well last night, actually just a little before mid night I was reading a blog written by a blogger called Suz at Saved to Serve. It is worth checking this blog out, it is one of the many great blogs out there that I follow. In this post however she is challenging herself to stick to these resolutions of William Booth's this year instead of making up her own. I have been inspired by this post to forget my ideas for New Years resolutions and also attempt to stick to these 6 resolutions for an entire year;

I do promise - my God helping -

1. That I will rise every morning sufficiently early to wash, dress, and have a few minutes, not less than 5, in private prayer.

2. That I will, as much as possible, avoid all that babbling and idle talk in which I have lately so sinfully indulged.

3. That I will endeavor in my conduct and deportment before the world and my fellow servants especially to conduct myself as a humble, meek and zealous follower of Christ, and by serious conversation and warning endeavor to lead them to think of their immortal souls.

4. That I will read no less than four chapters in God’s Word every day.

5. That I will strive to live closer to God, and to seek after holiness of heart and leave providential events with God.

6. That I will read over this every day or at least twice a week.

“God help me, enable me to cultivate a spirit of self-denial and to yield myself a prisoner of love to the redeemer of the world.”
“I feel my own weakness, and without God’s help I shall not keep these resolutions. The Lord have mercy upon my guilty soul.”
                                        (William Booth at age 20)

These are 6 powerful and difficult resolutions to stick too and I will surely need Gods help to achieve them. But in attempting them, even if I fail, there is sure to be much progress made and a huge amount of benefit to be made from doing it. So I will try to keep you all up to date with my progress in this new challenge for this New Year.

So Happy New Year to all of my readers, I hope that you all had a great time last night whatever you chose to do, but most of all I wish you a God filled and God blessed New Year, may all His plans prosper in you this year.

Read the doctrines

This week the challenge that I have been doing is to read the doctrines of The Salvation Army. This is quite an important one for me as I am currently following plans which will with God's blessings lead me into full time ministry with The Salvation Army. I am proud to be a member of The Salvation Army, actually I am writing this post sat in McDonald's wearing my uniform, and feel that each and every member should know what it is that we stand for and why we believe what we believe.

Salvation Army doctrines

We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were given by inspiration of God, and that they only constitute the Divine rule of Christian faith and practice.

We believe that there is only one God, who is infinitely perfect, the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of all things, and who is the only proper object of religious worship.

We believe that there are three persons in the Godhead-the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, undivided in essence and co-equal in power and glory.

We believe that in the person of Jesus Christ the Divine and human natures are united, so that He is truly and properly God and truly and properly man.

We believe that our first parents were created in a state of innocency, but by their disobedience they lost their purity and happiness, and that in consequence of their fall all men have become sinners, totally depraved, and as such are justly exposed to the wrath of God.

We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ has by His suffering and death made an atonement for the whole world so that whosoever will may be saved.

We believe that repentance towards God, faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and regeneration by the Holy Spirit, are necessary to salvation.

We believe that we are justified by grace through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and that he that believeth hath the witness in himself.

We believe that continuance in a state of salvation depends upon continued obedient faith in Christ.

We believe that it is the privilege of all believers to be wholly sanctified, and that their whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We believe in the immortality of the soul; in the resurrection of the body; in the general judgment at the end of the world; in the eternal happiness of the righteous; and in the endless punishment of the wicked.

So there they are, the doctrines of The Salvation Army. These doctrines are the core of our faith as a Church and vital to our life as Christians practising our faith in this branch of the body of Christ. As a member of The Salvation Army I do believe these doctrines although I do not claim to always be 100% happy with what they mean. However when I have issue with them it is normally problems such as the fact that we believe in the endless punishment of the wicked. As someone who has a considerable number of friends who are scientists and part of what I call Dawkin's Disciples I sometimes worry that these people may fall into the category of wicked due to their active stance against God and Jesus.

There is not a lot I can really say about the doctrines without turning this post in to one of epic length. I think that after doing this challenge I have been inspired to do a series looking at the beliefs I have from the Church I belong to. So look out for that coming up, probably in the new year. However I have a little bit of a back log of things I want to write about stacking up and not much time in which to do the relevant research, but hopefully the holidays will provide me with time to catch up.

So reading the doctrines is done. Well not quite, there is a little more I want to do with them as I said but essentially the task as set out by the challenge is done. But I am intending to memorise these doctrines for myself as well as write on them for you guys to hopefully read in the future.

Now all that is left is for me to let you know what task has come out of the hat for me to complete this week. The task that I pulled out of the hat was to write out my salvation testimony. Now this is something that The Salvation Army seems to do a lot, from the very early days of William Booth testimonies have been integral to our fellowship. In my view a testimony is a very organic thing, it grows and evolves with you as you grow in your Christian faith, if it doesn't then maybe you should be a little worried. So This week I will write out my salvation testimony, which will be different to any I have written before and unlike any I am likely to write in the future but it will be an interesting snapshot into my Christian life as it stands right now. Please check back next week to read the post and testimony I produce and also I hope you will keep checking in the future for when I post further on the doctrines.

All the best things in life require sacrifice

Being a Christian is hard. Very hard. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you. Jesus never said it would be easy for us, in fact there are many quotes where he tells us how hard it will be. And not just Jesus, many of His servants and martyrs throughout history have reminded and shown us just how much being a Christian can cost us. The book I am currently reading, Blood and Fire by Roy Hattersley, mentions a Bible verse that I have been trying to find for weeks. The verse is Matthew 5:10-12;


Matthew 5:10-12 (MsgB)  
    "You're blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God's kingdom. 
    "Not only that-count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens-give a cheer, even!-for though they don't like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble. 


Christians have always faced persecution, everywhere it goes, in all times. Be it ancient Rome or modern day China, Christians have never been completely without persecution in some form somewhere. There are places and times when Christianity has flourished and it has been easy to be a Christian with no worries of ever being persecuted.


William Booth, the founder of The Salvation Army, lived his life by the verses above. Whenever he came up against opposition or persecution, even out and out violent abuse he held firm to what he believed to be God's plan. To have the conviction to follow God's calling wherever it leads, whenever the call arrives is the way that we should be. To have the faith to step out of the boat when we know we have nothing but Jesus is what we should be aiming for. And it is not that we "just" have Jesus, He is more than enough, He is more than we need, more than we can handle. There is nothing that we can not do if we have Jesus on our side, there is nothing impossible with God.


If we have Jesus in our sights, if we are aiming to have eternal life though Him then we must be prepared to make the sacrifice required. If Jesus, our Lord, Saviour and King sacrificed His life for us then how can we complain when he asks us to sacrifice a portion of our wage or a period of our life? They say that everyone has a price at which they can be bought, is it the case that you have a price at which you are unwilling to pay for eternal live with Christ Jesus? 


The title of this post is "All the best things in life require sacrifice" and if it is not true for all things it is at least true for the best thing in life. For what is better than the prize of eternal life with the Father and the Son in Heaven? If you too believe that this is the best thing life has to offer then ask yourself, "Am I holding anything back from God?". This means everything from money and time right up to and including your entire life. Whatever God asks is fair, whatever God requires you to do is the right price. Not only that, but if you do follow God He will not only repay you with eternal life, but He will also help you bear the burden here on Earth. Yes being a Christian does require sacrifice, yes it is going to be very hard, but I believe it will all be worth it, do you?

Google "William Booth"

So we are on to week 8 of the Soldiers Challenge and so far it is going really well. It has been something that I thought I would struggle with and something I would find very difficult to keep going. However that has not been the case, the tasks so far have not been to much of a challenge so far and the momentum is beginning to build so that when the more tasking challenges come round the impetus will be there to continue despite the difficulty.

So this weeks challenge was to google "William Booth", although this one is a fairly easy challenge to do it is a somewhat important challenge because William Booth is the founder of the organisation I am a part of. Knowing about the history of the organisation I am part of and knowing the principles that it is founded on is very important if I am wanting to go out in to the world and win souls for Jesus through this organisation. It has also fallen at an interesting point in my journey into learning about the Salvation Army because I have just finished reading a biography on William and Catherine Booth and the early Salvation Army and have just started reading the book Blood and Fire which is similar in scope to the book I have just finished but much grander in its execution.

So lets have some William Booth facts;

1. William Booth was born on the 10th April 1829 in Sneinton in Nottingham.
2. He was the only son of the 4 surviving children of Samuel and Mary Booth.
3. William was apprenticed at 13 to a pawnbrokers.
4. He married Catherine Mumford
5. William had 8 children
6. He died on the 20th August 1912 in London

These are facts that are easily found out about William Booth just by checking the internet on sites such as Wikipedia. However the most important fact is that William Booth was a God led minister who had a passion to save souls by any means necessary. Booth was determined to see people saved for God from the depths of sin and depravity. He saw the need of the poor and destitute in "Darkest England" and decided that something needed to be done.

It is not really possible to talk about the amazing work done by Booth that was carried on by The Salvation Army, the organisation be founded. But that is not what this post is about, this post is about encouraging myself and those who are reading it to go out there and discover the work of these Saints such as Booth and to think about how we can continue this work now and in the future. It may be that you are not a member of The Salvation Army and you are not hugely interested in it or its work, but my thought is that we should learn about whatever organisation or Church we are a part of. But also we should know what we can about other Christians and Christian organisations in the world and the work they are doing.

So next week we have a somewhat different task to do, a task that for me personally is going to be a little difficult to do. The challenge is to pray for your government leaders each day this week. There are two reasons that this will be difficult for me, the first is that although my prayer life is improving and growing day by day it is still something I have struggled to remember to do on a daily basis. The other reason is that I do not support or believe in the policies of the current government and find it difficult to support them when they seem to be so actively attacking everything I believe should be done to fix the problems we have. However this may be a good thing for me to do, to pray for the leaders to see sense over policy decisions and to try and prevent our society crumbling under our noses. Check back next week on the Soldiers Challenge tab and see how it goes and see what will be the task following that.