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New Year, Read through the Bible

 —  James Oakley

Christians need breadth as well as depth as we read the Bible. As we enter a new year, why not resolve to start the habit of reading right through the Bible - not just once this year, but as part of a routine that will feed and sustain you for the rest of your life. Here are 3 tools to help you do so, and a copy of the Bible reading plan I use personally.

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Beware of Apathy

 —  James Oakley

As we look at the visit of the Magi in Matthew 2, the obvious lead human characters in the story are Herod, the Magi, and Jesus himself. These are the lead protagonists and antagonists.

Whilst the Jewish priests are more flat, functionary characters, we mustn't miss the contrast Matthew deliberately paints between them and the Magi.

Michael Green comments:

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Anglican Fissure - A Tale of Three Loves

 —  James Oakley

In 1960, C S Lewis published a book entitled The Four Loves. It has become a classic. He explains that there are four different Greek words for our English word "love", and they have different meanings. There is the bond of love within a family, the love of friendship, erotic love, and charity. This latter, translating the Greek word agape (ἀγαπη), is the love of God, and the pinnacle of Christian virtue, the love that sums up God's requirements.

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Intel Driver and Support Assistant Download location

 —  James Oakley

This is one of those technology blog posts to solve a specific problem. It's unlikely to concern my regular readers, but in time it will be picked up by search engines and ask a question I was asking and in which I'm almost certainly not alone.

Intel Driver & Support Assistant

Intel have produced a free piece of software that you can install on a Windows computer called the Intel Driver & Support Assistant.

Love the devil?

 —  James Oakley

I was recently asked a great question that made me go away and think awhile.

The question is a simple one: Jesus tells us to love our enemies. The devil is our enemy. So does this mean we should love the devil?

Here's the answer I gave:


That’s a great question. Certainly the devil is called “our enemy” in 1 Peter 5:8.

Let me give several answers, starting with the simplest, getting progressively more involved.

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Calvin on Peter walking on the water

 —  James Oakley

I most recently preached on Matthew 14:24-33 (the story of Jesus walking on the water) in January 2018. There is a debate with this story as to whether Peter's request to join Jesus on the water reflected his great faith and is something we should emulate (we too need to "get out of the boat"), or whether Peter was being foolish and reckless.

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How to: Shrink image size for OpenStack VM to the storage used

 —  James Oakley

I have recently solved a problem which may trouble others, so I share the problem and its solution with you here.

The world of the problem: OpenStack on RamNode

There are a number of web hosting providers I'm fond of (having tried many others I'd never touch again). One of those good ones is RamNode. They sell many kinds of hosting products, but I use them when I want low cost virtual private servers that I can rely upon.

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