Disappointment brings a lot of things out in the human heart. It shows us what our expectations really were in doing this or that. It also brings to light our true motives. We were nice to the introverted person because their sullenness actually annoyed us; we got up early to pray because we thought it would make us happier; we gave up holiday time for outreach because we hate being left out. 

We need to start at the beginning of the Christian walk, for it is here that we sow the seeds of what we are to become. It needs to be said from the start that none of us begins life with any material advantage over anyone else. From God’s perspective, until we are known by him, we are forgotten, dwelling in death in the ‘land of forgetfulness’. Ps 88:12. In fact, the Bible calls us enemies of God.

The Problem of Evil, the theological conundrum of why a loving God allows suffering, has been disputed for millennia. No doubt the debate will continue until the crack of doom, when all arguments will cease. The interest of this booklet is not with this question at all. Our enquiry is concerned with something more subtle in its difficulty: the moral goodness we ascribe to our own perceptions. Jesus put it this way:‘But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!’ Matt 6:23. All understanding begins at the point of knowing this: that God alone is light and that our natural tendency, whether we trust in Christ or not, is to perceive reality, ourselves and even God, according to another kind of light. Our failure to perceive this leads us into the greatest darkness of all. 

The condition of sin was not the only thing humanity inherited from Adam and Eve’s disobedience. We also inherited the consequences of sin upon all creation. Those consequences include the most fundamental result – we could say natural – to the ordinary human being. We are talking about fear, manifesting in anxiety. The good news is that we can find freedom from this way of living. The answer is to become motivated by faith alone.

Nobody likes to think that life is meaningless. Most people, if asked, would say that there is some purpose in being alive – even if they don’t know what that purpose might be. There appears to be something built into us that tells us our lives should amount to something. The question is: ‘Amount to what?’. In this booklet we will explore the nature of futility. Not for its own sake; but as a means of finding life’s real purpose. We find out that futility exists to point us towards the truth. 

A week after Christ’s ascension into heaven, on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was sent to the Christian church. It was a moment of revelation, supernatural power and salvation. It was the point at which the young church was endued with the ability to take the gospel out to the nations. On that, all Christians seem to agree. But what is the significance of this event for today’s church? Few questions have been more divisive in recent church history. The purpose of this booklet is not to answer old arguments, but to place the events of Pentecost in their broad biblical framework.

Reality is not a word we hear used very often today. What do we mean by it? In simple terms, it means the way things actually are. This sounds like a statement of the very obvious. And it is; but often, it’s the most obvious things that escape our notice. All of the greatest inventions are obvious with hindsight. But nobody knew about them until one person looked at things in a different way. This is what we invite you to do as you read this booklet.