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This is Rough Around The Halo, a site about following Jesus in the middle of real life: not the polished, picture-perfect version, but the everyday reality of joy and struggle, hope and disappointment, grace and perseverance. Here you’ll find honest, biblical, and practical reflections on discipleship, church life, identity, culture, and the challenge of walking faithfully with Christ when life gets hard — sometimes thoughtful, sometimes humorous, sometimes challenging, but always aimed at helping people keep going when faith & life collide.
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If I Prophesy, Does That Make Me a Prophet?
I can run. Not particularly quickly, and nobody from Team GB needs to start worrying, but I can technically put one foot in front of the other fast enough for it to count as running. That doesn’t make me a runner.
I can also cook. I can make a banging omelette, a passable roast dinner and several meals involving chicken that taste suspiciously similar despite supposedly being completely different recipes. I’m definitely not a chef.
So here’s my question. If I prophesy, does that make me a prophet?
Does God Make Empty Threats?: When God says judgement is coming… and then it doesn’t
A little while ago I wrote an article called Does God Change His Mind? Yes, No, Maybe? I finished it reasonably happy with where I’d landed. Then my brain did what my brain tends to do and found another problem.
If God knows everything, if He doesn’t change His mind in the way that we do, and if His character is the same yesterday, today and forever, what are we supposed to do with those moments in Scripture where God announces judgement… and then doesn’t do it? Because He knew He wasn’t going to do it. And if God knew He wasn’t going to do the thing He said He was going to do, surely what He said was… a lie?
Obviously, I’m not foolish enough to suggest God is a liar. Apart from being a fairly catastrophic theological hill to die on, Jesus describes Himself as the way, the
Does God Change His Mind?: Yes…No…Maybe?
Some questions sound simple until you actually try to answer them. Then you realise they are less like a tidy little theological puzzle and more like trying to untangle Christmas lights that were clearly packed away by someone who wants to make you suffer. Too soon for a Christmas reference?
“Does God change his mind?” is one of those questions, so don’t expect me to have a nice tidy completely satisfactory answer in this short article, but I’m going to give it a crack anyway.
You see, in number of places in the Bible, God seems to change course. Moses prays, and God relents from judgment. Nineveh repents, and God does not bring the disaster Jonah preached about. Hezekiah prays, and his life is extended. There are moments where God seems to respond, reconsider, relent, and act differently because people pray, repent, or cry out to him.
But then, on another page, the Bible says God does not change. “I am the Lord, and I do not change” in Malachi 3:6. “God is not a man, so he does not lie. He is not human, so he does not change his mind” in Numbers 23:19. Then Hebrews 13:8 tells us, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
So which is it?
Obsessed or Neglected?: How Jewish Is Christianity?
We All Know That One Person…Every church has at least one. You know the person I mean.
Somewhere along the line they discovered the Jewish roots of Christianity and got a little carried away. What started as a healthy interest in Israel somehow became a borderline fixation.
Now before anyone gets upset, the Jewish roots of Christianity are absolutely a thing. The problem comes when people start treating them as though they're the whole thing.
Some people are only a hop, skip and a jump away from changing their name to Shiloh, turning up to church in a skull cap, and wondering whether a prayer meeting that doesn't include praying for Israel is really a prayer meeting at all.