Author Archives: Sam Hailes

It’s been said many times before that becoming a Christian changes everything.

This truism got me thinking about how our faith impacts our relationships.

When Nicky and Sila Lee started their now famous Marriage and Parenting courses, they weren’t expecting non-Christians to turn up. But they soon found their courses, although built on Christian principles, were so practical that many outside of the church benefitted from them.

I recently came across a thought provoking paragraph on marriage in Tim Keller’s new book, Preaching. Here’s what the New York pastor had to say on how many in our culture view marriage:

‘A late-modern person…wants a spouse who “accepts me as I am” and neither demands that you change nor requires you to sacrifice any of your own substantial desires, interests, and dreams. This kind of marriage is a fiction – it doesn’t exist.”

It’s wedding season, and boy do I know it!

I’ve just about recovered from attending three weddings in less than three weeks. I don’t mean to complain, especially as I had the pleasure of being Best Man at two of them. The travelling, organising, and expense can certainly take their toll, but it’s always worth it.

A recent study has looked at two different ways of convincing people to pitch in to help wider society.

Imagine there’s a drought in your town, and the local authority need you to conserve water.

Click here. Click here. Click here. This is what the Internet screams at us. You’re reading this blog, but your brain will soon be telling you to click elsewhere. Why?

Part of the answer to that question is we’ve become used to seeing ‘clickbait’ (def. ‘content, especially that of a sensational or provocative nature, whose main purpose is to attract attention and draw visitors to a particular web page.’)

One of my favourite Christian authors is John Ortberg. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never read any of his books. The reason he’s one of my favourite authors is his book titles are always so memorable. For example, ‘Everybody’s Normal Till You Get To Know Them’. How true is that?!

John Lennon’s Imagine is a classic song, immediately recognisable by most people in the Western world. Rolling Stone magazine named it the third best song of all time.

The song starts, “Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try”. It may be easy to imagine there’s no heaven. But for Christians, it isn’t easy to picture what heaven will be like either.

Single men. They still live with their mums. They play video games all day long. They don’t have a proper job. They lack discipline and have little self-respect. They need to man up.

Does this description sound familiar?