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Writing for Lent 2025 - The Book of Matthew

I recently stumbled across a fascinating Youtube channel called IMBeggar . From their website: “IMbeggar is about finding new, different, creative, positive, entertaining, hard-hitting, and most importantly, accessible ways to talk about God” What draw my attention to this channel was a video about Lent. Here is a link to it: Lent is a 40 day fast leading up to Easter weekend traditionally practiced by the Catholic and Orthodox church. Starting 46 days before Easter (the fast often excludes Sunday’s), and is intended as a time of preparation and focus before celebrating the Passion week of Jesus. Something that I’ve been doing each year during Lent is writing out one of the Gospel narratives by hand. I call this “Writing for Lent”. This is an interesting exercise as I am forced to slow down and take in every word from the Scriptures. If the 30 Day Bible Shred is a sprint, Writing for Lent is a slow stroll through the park. I can take in every little details and peice of literat...
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Bible Shred 2025 Key Takeaways

I think this was my 11th year doing the 30-day Bible Shred. I decided to go for a bit of a challenge and read from a paper Bible rather than a digital or audio Bible. I haven’t don’t that for many years as its takes quite a bit more allocation time and attention. To make things more interesting I used a KJV pocket sized Bible that I found at a second hand book store. I wasn’t able to read through every allocated day. There were 7 days that I struggled to catch up, so I listened via audio Bible, and have since re-read those missed sections. This year’s reading felt different, and I can’t quite articulate why. But one theme that really stood out to me was something that I can only describe as the DIVINE INCONSISTENCY OF GOD. Let me explain. Although God describes Himself as the one who outworks judgement of His people, He very easily averts His judgement if there are those who intercept and and repent. I’ve heard those who object to the claimed good natu...
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Year in Review 2024?

At the end of each year, many technology based companies release some sort of “year in review” based on the usage data they’ve collected on me over the year. The most well known of these is Spotify’s “Wrapped” playlist which tells me my top songs, artists and newest genres I’ve listened to. For the last couple of years my Spotify Wrapped summary has primarily been a combination of worship music (what’s usually played on our living room speaker) and the Wiggles (what is also usually played on our living room speaker). It’s a fun way to see interaction data from an often used platform. But I’ve been wondering what a report like this would look like if it were to be based on my own spiritual discipline of reading and studying the Bible with the purpose of getting to know God intimately. I’m not talking about Bible app usage, but all the areas that can’t quite be defined by a digital metric. I’ve devised a bit of a thought experiment that I’m using to help me do a personal year in rev...
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30 Day Bible Shred 2025

The Bible Shred 2025 is coming up! Each year this is a personal challenge that many understake to read through the whole Bible (yes, the entire Bible) in 30 days. The goal is to: To overview the whole Bible. Try and get as much of the Scripture into your brain at the start of the year. But the Bible is a very big body of text, and 30 days is not a lot of time. Here are some of my favourite tips and suggestions that I’ve found have really helped me over the years that I’ve been doing this. 1) Find a format that is appropriate for your season of life The three primary formats for the Bible is a physical paper Bible, a digital Bible read through apps or ereaders, or audio Bibles. They all have their benefits and limitations, so its best to find an option that works for you that will help you accomplish your goal. Physical bibles often let you notice a lot more, but take dedicated time and space to read. If you have young kids or travel frequently, then this may not be the ...
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Organising My Mental Priorities

We’ve been in our house for just over two years now. Our street is a part of a brand new suburb, and a vast majority of our neighbours are in the same demographic as us who are building their first home. But I noticed that many of my neighbours park their cars along the sidewalk or in the driveway. Many of them don’t use their garage to park their cars. When I’ve gone out for walks and taken a sneakly peak into their garage, I’ve observed that their garages are full of stuff taking up the space where their car should be parked. I’ve been adamant that I wanted to use my garage to park my car, and not primarily for storage. To accomplish this, I’ve done a few things. Firstly I got rid of junk and stuff I didn’t need. Secondly, I organised what was left over into shelves and hooks on the walls to ensure there was enough room to park my car. And thankfully I’ve been about to manage this! I’ve noticed parallels in my own mindset towards making space and time for studying the Bible. ...
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Writing for Lent 2024 Takeaways

During the 40 days of Lent, I wrote out the book of Mark by hand. I have a previous blog post explaining why I did this and how I did it , but I’d love to share with you some of my key takeaways and thoughts. Jesus’s Baptism I kept coming back to these verses at Jesus’s baptism. 9 It came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And immediately, coming up from the water, He saw the heavens parting and the Spirit descending upon Him like a dove. 11 Then a voice came from heaven, “You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Mark 1:9–11 (NKJV) Jesus’s baptism is an important part of His journey, it is also a powerful indicator of who He is and His role on earth. There are two interesting aspects of Jesus’s baptism that stand out to me. The tearing of the heavens. And immediately, coming up from the water, He saw the heavens parting and the Spirit descending upon Him like a dove. Mark 1:10...
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Book Review: Fallen by Tim Chaffey

I’ve recently finished a book by Dr Tim Chaffey called “Fallen”. In it he explores just 4 verses in the Bible. You may be wondering how an entire book can be written on just 4 verses of the Bible - but these are some of the most misinterpreted and misunderstood verses of the Bible. They are found in Genesis 6:1-4 and go like this: “Genesis 6:1–4 (ESV) When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” 4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.” If you’ve never read or seen this section of Genesis, then you are likely confused ...
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