What is love?

I do not mean this as a rhetorical question. I want you now to pause for a few seconds or minutes, and answer this question for yourself. What emotions come up when you think of love? To whom does your mind turn? If we were play a word association game, and you are given to word "love" and need to say the first thing that comes into your mind, without hesitation, what would it be? Do you think of your lover, spouse or crush? Are you reminded of a family member, a child or parent, or a really close friend? Do you perhaps think of God and the church? Read more …

It is Sunday morning. The small boy is shuffling around on a cold, hard, wooden pew. The service has not yet started; there is still a hushed murmur hanging over congregation as they wait for the dominee (pastor) to arrive through the almost secret door in the wall next to the large, relatively ornate wooden pulpit. The boy looks at his mother, who is staring intently in front of her, and so he also casts his glance forwards and upwards to the still empty pulpit. Like every week before, his eyes again catch the gold coloured embroidered wording on the crimson coloured altar cloth. It reads: "God is Liefde" (God is Love). Read more …

Many people—Christian or otherwise—will at some point wonder about the "problem of prayer". The "problem of prayer" asks whether there is any point to prayer: God knows everything, including the future, so why bother to pray? If everything is already predetermined, how can prayer change God's mind?

This problem can be further compounded by a perceived "lack of answers" to prayer.

In this article, I aim to briefly address these two concerns and describe why a Christian should not be distressed about either of them. Read more …

In an age where it is easy to find information—indeed, these days information comes to you unsolicited—and easy to propagate, how carefully do we think about the information that comes to us, and that we share? In this article I explore the pitfalls of "meme" culture. Read more …

It is the favourite counterfactual of Christians who grew up in the 90s. It was a modern creed, both a declaration of faith and a moral compass: if Jesus was in my situation, what would He do (WWJD)? Read more …

I have added a new section to the website for hosting resources. This will help the reader find existing content, such as my sermons, easier. But it is also to host additional content which no longer has a home. Read more …

After having been quiet on Siyach for a while, I have decided to roll up my update on this year's Equip conference (and Boland Men's conference) with a personal update to shed some light on why things have been so quiet. Read more …

In this article in my series on the Bible, I am going to look at how to read the Bible. In particular I am going to focus on two areas: how to read the Bible for the first time, and how to read the Bible in general. Read more …