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Millennium Kids are Champions of Hope

The inspiring story of a group of children who wanted to make a difference and achieved more than they could have ever imagined!

 

Risky Business

David Hamilton asks how churches and charities can minimise risk by avoidng the ostrich syndrome!

 

It's time to step out

Face to face with AGI's new National Leader PJ Booth.

 

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Psalms at Coffee Break - Psalm 145

The usual Hebrew word for ‘Psalm’ means a song of praise and this Psalm lives up to that meaning more than most.

I will praise your name for ever and ever. (v1)

Every day I will praise you (v2). All you have made will praise you (v10). Let every creature praise his holy name for ever and ever (v 21).

Praise offered to God, just like praise offered to people can be hollow and even self-serving. Or, at times, can be just a habit of speech . . . using ‘Praise the Lord’ as a sentence filler. However in this Psalm the praise is anything but meaningless; we are given the context and reasons for praise.

The Psalmist spells out why God is to be praised. He is ‘great’ (v3), full of goodness (v7), gracious (v8), faithful (v13) . . . and so on, I count over thirty attributes of God mentioned as grounds for praise. Since we can’t look at them all here, we’ll take this verse as just about the highest point of any description of God.

The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. (v8)

This verse will be variously translated because it uses the Hebrew word chesed, to which no English Bible version has ever really done justice. In this rendering it actually colours the whole verse. Perhaps the closest translation is ‘loving kindness’, often used in the AV/KJV, though oddly not here.

This compassion or loving kindness is the very opposite idea to ‘cold charity’… “Here’s €10, but don’t ever let me see you again”.

It is mercy with love, it is mercy with patience. It sums up how God treats us, but is seldom how we treat one another. It is the amazing nature of grace, undeserved favour, freely given.

Over against the legalism that can give religion a bad name, over against the pharisaism that puts a magnifying glass to our faults, is this loving kindness that forgives us, bandages our wounds and carries our cares.

It is the Father running to meet the broken son on his return (Luke 15 : 20). It is Jesus.

No wonder the Psalmist was inspired to this great outpouring of praise, praise with attitude.

How much is enough? 

We're interested to know what our readers think.  VOX Reader Polls give you the chance to speak out about different issues and hear what other people think as well!

At the Living Faith Conference 2012 Dr Craig Blomberg said, "One tradition is give a tithe 10%. Did you know that a tithe (10%) is never a standard in either Old or New Testament?  The “whole tithe” referred to in Malachi 3 was 23.33%."

So what do you think? What percentage should Christians give?