Spot the deliberate mistake! There is no such thing as “properly”. OK, so I wrote this in brainstorm format, but I think it works better that way. It’s about prayer and spirituality and how these things look in ordinary life. Hope it helps.

Prayer should be raw. True. Honest. Say what you really think, otherwise you’ll go no-where. It should be instinctive. Intuitive. Pray for what you want, not for what you think you should want. And never feel guilty for praying for yourself.

Don’t do all the talking, however. Don’t pray and then hang up the phone. Keep listening. When God speaks it’s nothing flashy, most of the time. It sounds just the same as your own thoughts, only there’s a peace and a sense of life and cleanness about them. People either take spirituality too seriously, or they make it spooky. It’s neither, even though it is serious and it is “mystical”.

The word “spirit” is from the Latin word “spiritus” meaning breath. Spirituality is as ordinary, everyday and easy as breathing.

Stay alert for “promptings”. Sometimes it doesn’t feel right to be so “honest” (i.e. moan about something), but to be grateful, or to pray for someone else instead.

As you grow up you realise that some problems aren’t just going to go away. Some problems are quite big and threatening.

It’s now that faith really counts. To know that there’s someone looking out for you, who sees everything, knows what’s going on, knows how to sort it and bring something good and valuable out of it.

People criticise faith because they say it’s just a comfort blanket for people who can’t handle life. They’re so wrong. This is so much deeper than comfort. Faith puts you in painful sitautions. (Sometimes painful situations are required to sort out other painful situations.)

Faith isn’t just a thread of comfort that runs through my life, it’s more like a chain like the chains that those chain ferries use. Without my faith, my life loses its cohesion. With it, things have a focus, a destination.

And when the focus and destination disappear from view, at least you’ve got the gap where they were — that’s enough to give hope. Faith turns problems into fertile fields waiting to produce a harvest. Faith never allows you to have a victim mentality, it always enables you to trust that whatever you face has a meaning that goes beyond your own life and that it will be something that contributes towards your future. Faith shows me that the only option left to me is to take responsibility, it’s never a crutch that lets me cross my fingers and hope that the Bad Thing goes away.

This is the best blog I’ve read in a long time. Phil Pringle takes a verse or two, and annotates the revelation that he gets from it.

This is a great way to read the Bible. My Bible is covered with notes in passages that have really spoken to me. I really recommend doing it if you find the Bible hard to understand. It breaks it open so that you can begin to digest it, and it’s better than underlining, because you can never remember why you underlined it in the first place!

Anyway, Phil’s blog is over at http://philpringle.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/grace-and-work/ (it’s a link to a recent post, well worth the read!).

I’m reading Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life by Alister McGrath.

It’s one of the most refreshing books I’ve ever read, I think. I studied biology at university, and I have amused myself for endless hours thinking about the tension between creationism and science. This book doesn’t address that issue directly, but does talk around it somewhat, focussing on some of the claims made by Richard Dawkins as to the validity of faith in the wake of science.

Happily, McGrath doesn’t try to settle the question as to whether evolution is true or not. That’s a far too complicated and scientific question to try to resolve in one book, and it’s one that will only really be solved given another hundred or so years of research and development. Evolution is too big and too fundamental to modern biology. Creationists treat it as though it were a sideline theory that can be done away with harmlessly, but it’s not: it’s the whole foundation of current biological thinking, with massive implications for every single discipline within biology, from animal behaviour to biochemistry.

C.S. Lewis said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” Evolution has the same position in biology. The view currently is that evolution makes sense of literally everything. To question evolution is to question biology, it’s that central.

Which is why it was such a wonderful relief to find McGrath leaving the question to the scientific community. Christianity is open to such a lot of intellectual ridicule because of the noisy protestations of a few people who treat evolution like some great evil of society, like drugs. They argue that it leaves people thinking that life is pointless, and that people are worthless, the product of a series of accidents.

Well, I think that’s rot. It’s lazy thinking and bad theology. No-one got depressed because they learnt about evolution. You can’t blame post-modernist despair on science. No, post-modernist despair is the fault of post-modernism, which in turn is the fault of, you guessed it, human nature. To blame despair on evolution is exactly the same as criticising faith because fundamentalists exist. Evolution produces despair no more than faith produces narrow-mindedness.

No, the thrust of McGrath’s book is pointing out where Dawkins draws invalid conclusions about faith, and the impact that science has on faith, with focus on evolutionary thinking. I don’t want to go into too much detail, since you should just buy the book if you’re interested. But the main impact this book has had on me has been to restore my intellectual dignity. Dawkins makes some pretty offensive comments about people with faith, and reading some of the material about creationism on the internet, you begin to wonder if he isn’t right. McGrath, unlike those creationist cranks, is cool-headed, and writes with clarity, logic and authority.

If you’re a Christian and have been struggling with the question of evolution and faith, I recommend this book. If you have a perception that logic and reason are a threat to faith, I recommend this book.

Finally, if you’re an atheist, and you see Christians as people who have left their brains behind, I recommend this book. No, in fact I challenge you to read this book and really think about what it says.

So, this blog has consisted, on the whole, of silly posts about whole milk and my love of crisps, but I’ve only really cursorily touched on the whole point of my entire life — which is Jesus Christ!

Yes it’s true, the main focus of my life is my faith. It fully is! It’s the first consideration in any decision I make, long term or short term. There are things in my life, big things, that I have given up and turned away from because of it. And there are things that I’ve done that have been prompted by my faith too, such as the Leadership Academy which I am currently enrolled in. (This is like a Bible college, I suppose you could call it that. But that makes it sound like we all wear cardigans and learn how to not have sex before marriage. Which is not what Christianity is about!)

I love being a Christian because it’s so positive. Sure, there are things it forbids, but I’ve found that not doing those things has led to things like emotional stability, strong sense of identity and future, great mental health, better relationships, positive outlook on life … I could go on!

There’s this constant drive to live for more than just me. It’s like a never ending challenge, and it’s so great! I live with an ever present drive to move forward in life and do everything well, it’s really encouraging.

So that’s like a brief dip into why I love it. It gives me a sense of meaning and purpose. But I also think that’s half the picture. Everyone is looking for meaning, it’s a natural human drive, but I don’t think that’s enough. It has to be true, too.

I’ve heard people talk about their beliefs, and I can appreciate that they’re personal things, beliefs, but they have to be true. Otherwise they’re not beliefs — you might more properly call them attitudes. For me, it’s not enough just to have a positive attitude towards life, though that’s obviously crucial. What you believe about it has to be true.

I’ve heard people say that they think things happen for a reason. Or that there is “something”. But I would say that these things need to be investigated further! For me, I have always had a sense that God exists. I just look around at the world, and this seems apparent to me. There’s too much beauty and it all works too well for it not to the the product of some enormous, expansive, creative intellect.

So if there is a God, or even if you reduce that to “there could be a God,” I would say that it’s worth looking into! Come to your own conclusions, don’t just go along with what people say. Do your own thinking, it’s too important a question to leave with a vague sense of “something”.

My faith is characterised by seeking out the truth. I’m not afraid of the truth; I love asking questions and trying to find answers. If it turns out that it’s true that God doesn’t exist, then that’s that. I can’t change the truth, I can only respond to it and change my life accordingly. So my faith is something that is developed. It grows as I learn more about life.

Well this has been a bit rambly. I hope that it’s piqued some interest!

So I found something I wrote a while ago. I think it’s brilliant. Wrote this for myself, and then forgot about it, but it’s worth sharing with the world — I hope you catch its spirit!

Is it just a dream that would be nice? It calls to you, and you know it would be excellent, you can sense its purity, perfection, and its desirability, but you aren’t pursuing it.

Or … do you follow it, think about it, pray about it. Fast for it! Are you clearing up your life, letting God change you by putting out the fires that you can put out, and expecting him to come and put out those you cannot, those which are too deep, out of reach?

God will honour prayers that are in accordance with his will. He will act slowly, but he is generous. Pray for more than you can imagine. Pray and dream about more areas that are accessible to you at the moment. Start getting a break-out mind that pushes the limits on your imagination. Like little soldiers, they will energetically and faithfully stab away at the walls of your prison, day and night. Erode limitations, dissolve them with dreams of possibility. God’s light is an active, forceful light. Gentle to you, but lethal and destructive to darkness.

Spend more time with God than you ever have before. Every time you pray, don’t settle for a sense, or a feeling. Go for focus. Get words. Get a kick. Every time you worship, seek to lift him up. Seek to be in tune to the Holy Spirit. There is always more. There is always more!

So, there are certain parts of the Christian journey that you have to get used to. They are like problems that keep developing so that in order to solve them, you need to keep developing the solution. The trick is to remember that this is called growth, and it’s a process that won’t stop!

One feeling to get used to, if you’re a Christian (or if you’re living a positive, forward moving life) is a feeling of frustration mixed with confusion. Sometimes it will be stronger than other times, but it will always be there in the background. This is not something that limits your life, nor is it a drain. It’s more like a constant reminder that there is always more.

The way to get rid of the feeling is to move into it and find out what it wants. If you let it, it will push you into a bigger person. If you ignore it it’ll take over until you can’t sleep at night, and then you’re moving into “a part of me died” territory. The one thing you can’t do is get rid of it, because it represents your future.