Pastor Kevan Dobsin

Sometimes the best place to start when exploring the wonderful world of apologetics is with some of our own questions. What are some of the big questions you or your children have? What about some of the loved ones in our lives or our neighbours or coworkers? What questions do they have? Why not ask them? You might be surprised how much you love exploring the answers.

It would be an understatement to say that humans are a chatty bunch. We may not get all our steps in or get enough sleep or eat all the right foods, but we definitely talk. On average, each one of us speaks approximately 16,000 words a day , and with 8 billion people in the world, that means there are 12,800,000,000,000,000 words spoken every day. Maybe we should ask ourselves, “What is good conversation?” What is healthy conversation for Christian pilgrims and how do we avoid careless, unhealthy or destructive conversation?

Whenever you’re reading your Bible, pray first and ask the Holy Spirit to be your Teacher and to give you understanding of what you’re reading. You will notice a marked difference when you recognize your need for the Holy Spirit to give you illumination and when you acknowledge Him as your Teacher and Interpreter.

Signs are there to help us reach our destination and to prevent our journey from going off course or potentially ending in disaster. In some cases, recognizing signs could be the difference between life and death. It makes sense that God might want to use signs to communicate with us in our faith journey and that every Christian needs to understand God’s signs along the way.

Is it possible that this explosion of passion for food in our generation is just evidence of a deeper spiritual hunger that’s gone unfulfilled? Might this rampant hunger be a sign that we’re on the verge of a great spiritual food awakening as people discover true fulfillment in Christ? Just as foodies love to share their passion for all things food, maybe it’s time we allow our hunger and passion for Jesus to be evident in everything we do so that others can experience Him for themselves and taste and see that the LORD is good.

If you’ve ever felt unsure of your own abilities or how far you can go with your life – look at Paul. If you’ve ever felt like you’ve made too many mistakes, missed too many opportunities and don’t deserve redemption – you must get to know Paul. Or maybe you’ve been under such intense stress and pressure that you’re not sure if you can take it. Again, we have this example in Paul.

So what is opportunity? Is it something everyone has? Is it something rare or is there an abundance of it? Is opportunity easy to recognize or hard to spot? If “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, is it possible that opportunity is also in the eyes of those who can see it?

When we take that first step of faith to follow Jesus and receive Him as our Lord, the Bible says we experience a spiritual birth – we become “born again”. This new birth isn’t physical, it’s spiritual. We come alive and awakened to a whole new world. The power of sin is broken over us and we experience forgiveness along with a new-found freedom and sense that God loves us and has great purpose for our lives.

Even if we lose something that’s not considered high value, we still deal with the emotions of frustration or sadness. When we lose something and can’t find it, it sits in the back of our mind as something unresolved. We feel responsible and sometimes horrible about losing it. There’s also a sense of frustration about the time we’ve taken up trying to find the item or the expense of having to replace it. It’s painful to think about.