David Turner Blog

In my last post, I referenced a book, Dirty Glory by Pete Greig and said I would post a review. So here it is! Pete founded the 24/7 prayer movement and  Dirty glory  is a kind of sequel to Red Moon Rising which told the story of the start of 24/7. I haven't read Red Moon Rising yet, but as Pete says at the start of Dirty Glory, it can be read apart from Red Moon. The book has great insight and makes important points about prayer, what it is and how we do it but above all else I simply found this book inspiring. The best compliment I can pay to Pete is that every time I had read a bit (be it a chapter or simply a few pages), I felt inspired to pray afterwards. I also found myself remembering moments and experiences with God that I had forgotten. As I was reading one day, I remembered a time I went on a prayer walk and having such a sense of God's presence that it was like all a swell of energy in me that I had to do something with, so I ran, as fast as I could (I was not d...

Stories are so powerful. Life is full of them. News stories, bedtime stories, jokes, experiences we have, life can be story after story. We all have stories that stirred us, that made us sit up and take notice or stories that made us sit back and reflect. Many of these stories, although new to us are old stories. Stories of Jews courage in concentration camps, policemen who have risked their lives for others, of a football team trapped in a cave, but some of these stories are of those we are close to, those we 'know' but yet there are stories yet untold. m I remember being on a team that was going to Romania, it was led by my dad. Before we went, we met several times. On the first occasion we were asked to tell our stories, how did we become a Christian? And what does that mean for us today? My Dad started, telling the story of before I was born, he and my mum thought they had lost me, but it turned out I was still alive and it was likely a twin who was lost. I had never he...

For my degree I have been studying a module on Faith and Science, one of the things I came across was the idea of the God of the gaps - that there are the things we know and things that we don't and God fills the gaps, where we don't understand something, God, must be the answer. As scientific discovery went on and explained more of the world that we live in, people began to believe that there was no need for the God of the gaps, we will begin to know and discover everything for ourselves. I have been wrestling with a few things of late. There is suffering in our world, and I know in my head and my heart the Christian response to such pain; that God meets us in our suffering, as shown by Jesus on the cross, that God has a desire for the world to be as it should rather than how it is. But this still leaves a gap, a gap between what is and what should be. What fills the gap? This has been my question to God of late. Is it our faith? We suffer and struggle, people die or are...