Theodicy is one of the great challenges of faith. Here is a formulation of it: Either God wants to eliminate evil and cannot: then God is weak, which is not true of him,Or he can and does not want to: then God is begrudging, which is alien to him,Or he does not want to and…

“I am the way,” Jesus replied. “I am the truth and the life! You can only come to the Father through me.”  John 14:6 When we read this verse, it triggers a whole landscape of thoughts, a whole edifice of ideas and explanations that are not even present in the verse. What do we hear?…

In the aftermath of my message yesterday, let me give a more extended answer to why we at times seem to have to repeat prayer for it to be answered. During our journey of maturing from a child of God (teknon) into sons and daughters (huios), we not only change our communication style, but our…

Today, I preached at the Genesis Gathering. Here is the script: We are in the fifth episode of a series called “How to Make Sense of Prayer” and I called it “Prayer as a means of growth”. Let’s go. Last time, your pastor talked to us about the different ways we can pray. On a…

When we read John 13, there are two occasions that it mentions the devil taking over Judas’ mind or heart. And during supper, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him. John 13:2 And after the sop, then entered Satan into him. Jesus therefore saith unto him,…

Unanswered prayer is a subcategory of a much bigger question, namely why there is suffering in the world, the so-called theodicy. And theodicy is mainly a topic that flows from our image of God. We could therefore say that unanswered prayer is at the heart of theology. Let’s unravel this. You, and the whole church…