Faith is not quite the leap into the dark that many people assume.

It is usually about making a reasonable jump based on trustworthy information. Buying a car or house, meeting up with some new friends from work, following a direction using satnav - all of these are expressions of faith where the ‘believer’ has listened to something and then acted on it.

A student recently asked me about proof and I answered with a diagram which eventually became this cartoon. You can only finally have proof when you have taken the step of faith. You can only be sure of your purchase once you have it in your hands, you know that you believed your friends correctly when they arrived at the place that they had promised.

Similarly, when Jesus promises new life, forgiveness, joy, hope… that he will take up residence in your life with a fresh vibrancy - all of this remains uncertain unless you 1. take in the information (which means mainly absorbing the content of the Bible) and then 2. make faith steps based on it.

My personal experience is that when we listen and then respond to the call that Jesus makes on our lives - THEN he brings proof in His own time in His own way. While I am very happy (and willing) to discuss the trustworthiness of the Bible documents I cannot prove the reality of a living God. That is an experience that is open for you to find out for yourself.

This challenge is both scary and exciting.

Thanks to Mike Tindall for suggesting the text.

Tags: Faith, Evangelism, Father, Grace, Jesus, Joy, Listening, Prayer, Redemption, Repentance, Crisis, Thankyou

From Joshua 2.
Commissioned by Scripture Union for the Wordlive site.

Tags: Scripture Union, Death, Evangelism, Faith, Friendship, Grace, Listening, Mission, Crisis, Wide/Narrow

I recently did a series of teaching/preaching slots for an 11-14year-olds weekend away with my Church. Here are the slides that summarised a lot of what I was doing. Seasoned Youthworkers will spot that it is a fairly simple Gospel outline. I include them here because they might be of use to someone out there. Get in touch if you want to use them. Click to enlarge.


1: You and god. The lower case g is deliberate. I was asking a few questions about what our genuine thoughts are - separate from parent views etc. How do we picture the idea of a divine being?


2. God and you! I then turned the tables and posed the thought that if God is in fact real, our ideas are less important than His. What does He make of us? That is the real crucial question - a bit like John Blanchard posing ‘Does God believe in Atheists?’.


3. We then did a massive group session involving reflecting on what makes us who we are, what our current gifts and blessings are, plus how we view the future. What do we hope for?


4. I then rehearsed the amazing Gospel big storyline: firstly that God has given us everything but we have shut him out. We are a bit like insurgent rebels.


But also we are victims in some measure. We live with the ‘virus’ effects of sin and often suffer in a dark and broken world.


What does God really think of us? He knew that we wouldn’t stand a chance at the judgement and sent Jesus to gently rescue us from hostage hostilities while also dealing with our rebellious track record.

The cross of Christ is the decisive master stroke, the special move, the ultimate in rescue activity.


5. We can now begin to reconsider our vision of a life in the future with God living in us and us in Him. Through Jesus there is the most wonderful opportunity for a life of fulness and hope.

Tags: Evangelism

Originally based around Acts13v16,23-25.
Commissioned by Scripture Union for the Wordlive site.

Tags: Bible, Evangelism, Jesus, Law, OT, Scripture Union

Before this post fills with pungent bitterness I will just get it out of my system and move on: we paid a lot of money to take our child to see the ‘Mr Men Live’ roadshow and were utterly disappointed. It was mainly a very-thinly arranged set of miss-aimed karaoke numbers with little to make up for the promise of seeing those people of Hargreaves’ creation. He would be ashamed of it, I am sure.

Now I have vented - and if you are still reading - I will add that those expensively disappointing seats provided me with the inspiration for how to frame this personal tale of frustrated hopelessness. While I have experienced/shared a number of serious lows, I am confident that in Jesus there is always hope which is well qualified and can draw relief from the gloomiest of depths.

Are you facing anything similar? Is the path you are on unendingly grim?
Put yourself in the hands of the most qualified One. Trust me when I say that he can be found through trust and a simple prayer. When life is so very tough, what can you stand to lose in turning to King Jesus?

The wonderful epilogue text can be found at the end of the passage here.

Tags: Crisis, Devil, Evangelism, Faith, Jesus, Grace, Isolation, Joy, Redemption, Storms, Thankyou

Come back for more - this is a twelve part series.

Many thanks to Martin Saunders at Youthwork Magazine for commissioning this series.

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Tags: Youthwork Magazine, Jesus, Wisdom, Friendship, Isolation, Redemption, Repentance, Technology, Holiness, Grace, Faith, Evangelism, Crisis, Bible

An image about the division being stirred up in Antioch found in Acts 14v1-7.

Commissioned by Scripture Union for the Wordlive site.

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Tags: Sin, Evangelism, Discrimination, Faith, Politics, Religion, Storms, Scripture Union

Some general illustrations to illustrate some strategic thoughts on church growth.





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Tags: Jesus, Bible, The Plant, Friendship, Evangelism, illustration

This one came off the back of some work I have been doing in Proverbs. Truth is wrongly characterised as being private, personal, malleable. If something is true it is True regardless of whether you accept it. Christians are no different from anyone else in this - we are all prone towards ignoring things that don't suit us.

The epilogue text is the famous Mars Hill message by Paul where he speaks directly into a situation of self-delusion with the Truth of the Resurrection.

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Tags: Truth/Lies, Wisdom, Evangelism, Jesus, Listening, Repentance, Sin

Another short moving image version of illustrations I produced last year.

“All people are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of the Lord endures forever.”
1Peter 1v24-25

Tags: Crisis, Death, Evangelism, Father, Sin, Wisdom, Youth/Age, thelongwalkhomeblog

This is a short moving image version of the illustrations I produced for this post last year.

"For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."
Colossians 1v13-14

Tags: Jesus, Evangelism, Faith, Holiness, Judge, Law, Bible, Sin, thelongwalkhomeblog

I started playing around with my iPhone and doing a bit of a mashup with a few different apps until I came up with an alternative cartooning/illustration style over the holidays¹. Here is the result. Don't worry that it makes little sense - it sort of fits into the obscure wordless cartoon thing I have been into for a while now.


The story is kind of about someone finding faith when the other person shares the Gospel story with them.²

¹more details of my experi-mentalism can be found on the scrapbook site here.
²yes I used/borrowed the icons for the most recent epiloguetv cartoon about Wikileaks.

Tags: Jesus, Evangelism, Crisis, Faith, Friendship, Heaven, Bible, 3D

My personal view concerning 3D in movies is a cynical one. Much of the feeling stems from the sense that it is something being used to squeeze cash rather than push creativity*. This cartoon is really asking questions about whether the thing you are trying to say is worth actually saying in the first place.

With the epilogue text, Paul is making the strong point that when it comes to the message of Jesus Christ, you should avoid 'dressing it up' because it doesn't need it. In fact, he goes further in talking about treasure in jars of clay - meaning that the very format often tends to be less appealling purely because it brings God greater honour! The jars in the passage refer to the unimpressive, broken lives of the Christian believers including Paul.

Technology employed to clearly communicate the core message is one thing - using it as a way of disguising the content is quite another.

Which brings me to an ironic twist. I spent ages making a flashy colour cartoon (see below). In the end I realised that I was making too many points - trying combine some thoughts on the recent 'aggressive secularism' debate that the Pope stoked up as well as the 3D-dress-up ideas. In the end it stank of confusion so much that I had to go back and do something much more basic due to time pressures. The end version (above) is literally a pen-and-ink jar of clay. (UPDATE: I couldn't resist improving it during a free stretch of time...)

So there you go: you can't dress stuff up if it is a pigs ear in the first place. I include the rejected version by way of humble confession...



(*I also don't like having a restricted head-movement and sweaty eyeballs, but that is probably something to do with my strange biological set-up.)

Tags: Art, Consumerism, Entertainment, Evangelism, Film, Hypocrisy, Listening, Science, Truth/Lies, Wide/Narrow, Wisdom, 3D

The recent Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill is reportedly the worst eco-disaster in US history. The powerful image of this stuff leaking endlessly into an unsuspecting environment is disturbing to say the least. This is the kind of image that Jesus evokes in Matthew 15 when he talks about the natural condition of the human heart. Though wonderfully made in God's image, we are also capable - and regularly achieve - the most polluting of choices.

And by this, I am not necessarily talking about being some kind of Hitler figure. We often recognise that we let ourselves down in ways that seem surprising. When a person looks honestly at their life they often see that life took some darker turns because of deep-rooted selfishness that they were often powerless to prevent.

The Bible is wonderfully clear on the solution to this issue - there is a theme that develops throughout the Old Testament timeline of people being made 'new' in some special way. This culminates in Jesus Christ, who make the explicit promise to not only 'top kill' the rusty pipe of sin, but also replace the flow with something altogether different - something linked to source and giver of life: God Himself.

Tags: Evangelism, Faith, Jesus, Repentance, Sin, Truth/Lies

Wisdom can take different forms depending on whether it has it's sights set on this world or the next.

Here is the text for the epilogue.

Tags: Death, Evangelism, Faith, Friendship, Grace, Heaven, Jesus, Patience, Thankyou, Truth/Lies, Wide/Narrow

What a fab way to start the new year. After two years of work, this was released onto the iPhone/iTouch app store:



Some blurb from a recent e-newsletter:

Jason Ramasami is an RE teacher who wants to make the Bible memorable and accessible to students who may have little or no interest in following the Christian faith. Two years ago he embarked on the ambitious project of creating a wordless comic of the main events of Jesus' life for visual learners.

Somewhere along the line the project developed further into an iPhone/iPod Touch app that was approved in December for worldwide distribution.

The Jesus Comic (which is easily searchable in iTunes) is a 150 page comic that moves through 12 chapters and is intended as a discussion kick-starter - not a replacement for the Bible. So far feedback has been very positive -

"This comic is really inspiring; the first genuinely fresh retelling of the good news about Jesus that I have seen in ages. It manages to be faithful to the original text, yet visually creative at the same time. Required viewing!"

"It provoked discussion with my wife, our son and daughter. They spotted some stuff that I didn't and I spotted some that they didn't. This was fun!”

The accompanying website gives some further guidance on interpreting the bigger Bible narrative, but the main idea isn't to be a digital tract but an intriguing and fresh way of reflecting on the life of Jesus.

Jason is asking people to have a look and to recommend/rate it if they enjoy what they experience.

More info website:
http://www.thejesuscomic.com

App store link for the full version:
http://www.iTunes.com/apps/jesuscomic

App store link for the free sampler version:
http://www.iTunes.com/apps/jesuscomicnativity

Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Jesus-Comic/222779070030?ref=nf

Twitter feed:
http://twitter.com/theJesusComic

Tags: NT, Redemption, Jesus, Evangelism, Faith, Christmas, Art, thejesuscomic

My friends Kev and Kath are getting married in about three weeks. It is a massive chapter change for them and wonderfully they have included us in the celebrations. After stumbling upon a new personal style of adorning text, Kath asked me to do some more and this was the result.

It is an extended meditation on the Christian worldview narrative - from the Creation, to the Fall, to Jesus' Cross-work and finally the consummation.





May God richly bless this couple as they step out in awe of the truly BIG day. All the rest will fall into place.

Tags: Adoption, Art, Crisis, Devil, Doxology, Evangelism, Faith, Heaven, Jesus, Judge, NT, OT, Prayer, Repentance, Wedding, Sin

This piece has a whole host of problems. It started as something to do with the BNP claiming Jesus' point of view for their racist agenda and then became something more to do with being possessively small-minded with the Gospel growing. There are also problems with my application of scripture. Sigh.

But I really like the artwork.

Tags: Evangelism, Heaven, Jesus, Prayer, Repentance, Sin, Truth/Lies

Although the 2 Corinthians 4 text is quoted at length within the cartoon it helps to see the whole thing here.

Although it took a while to draw*, this piece came fairly quickly to me when I heard someone at our local church talking about signing up to become 'flu-friends' and assist collecting Tamiflu in the local community when people are incapacitated.

From a Christian point of view this leads directly into parallels with what Jesus did in coming to this world with a cure for our greatest ailment. The text in 2 Corinthians 4 is great as well because it combines the rescue mission of Jesus with our own weary efforts at making a difference.

In particular my heart goes out to Akik, Mike, Andy and the Stovell gang. I hope that this is a useful piece for your efforts.

*and also it is worth noting that this is the first cartoon for many years that I have produced virtually 1:1 ratio. I used a 0.05 pen to ink it initially.

Tags: Swine flu, Redemption, Jesus, Friendship, Evangelism, Death

The Bible epilogue text can be found here (you may have to scroll down a bit to find the exact part...).

March of the Penguins had come out and was doing very well with the christian cinema-going public. I have a number of friends who don't agree with the christian worldview and one thing I am quite keen on is trying to explain my perspective in the most effective way possible. This strip picks up on my unease with the so-called 'intelligent design' debate. Personally I think that it isn't the best way of 'selling' the christian faith because nothing gets there better than talking about Jesus. It has some value to reflect on good things in the world around us (and this is undoubtedly a strong point in the film) but to use it for some mildly political christian point is (to me) a bit of a shame.

I used the Balaam's Donkey idea of a talking animal here, and the pengui-logue reinforces it.

This is a good example of the EN editor's editorial insight. John Benton has occasionally stepped in to encourage me in one direction or another. On this strip he later commented on the need to avoid criticising christians, which is a good thing. My original 'pitch' for this strip was to do something jokey about church culture, but he came back to me with the better idea of taking a satirical view of the non-christian world - which has proven to be be a much more healthy exercise as I have been pushed to reflect on the world outside the church and how it does/does not relate to the perspective in the Bible. A good editor is a life-saver.

Tags: Film, Evangelism, Wisdom, apologetics, Evolution, atheism

The Bible epilogue text can be found here (you may have to scroll down a bit to find the exact part...).

The Christian Institute had made some responses to the discussion on a proposed 'incitement to religious hatred' law. A worrying aspect of the issue was that a law that was intended to protect religious views could end up being used to legislate against faiths like christianity. I had listened to some testimonies of people from around the world where they had been hounded and eventually thrown out of their own countries due to this kind of law being passed. I wanted to reflect on the changes implicit in this law.

A couple of my friends’ boys are mentioned in the dedication. I think it speaks for itself.

Tags: Law, Evangelism, apologetics, atheism, Wisdom, Truth/Lies, Crisis, Judge

Based on virtually all of my chats with non-christian people I can say that they find it amazing that christians have any intellectual rigour whatsoever. Most of the time there is incredulity and surprise at any suggestion that being a christian is something you can use your mind for. While evidence and argument will never 'prove' it in the way that you might work out my DNA using scientific analysis, there is a substantial and reassuring amount of evidence that accompanies the outrageous claims of Jesus Christ. The aim of this strip is to turn the tables and highlight the regular conclusion (in my experience) that prejudice and narrow mindedness often keep people from becoming convinced by christian truth.

The letter Y is a key player in this strip, and it follows a strong symmetry which I really enjoyed using. The afro character is loosely based on myself as my dad, who had a magnificent one in the 1970s.

Tags: apologetics, Evangelism, Eyewitnesses, Truth/Lies

If you look closely you can see an Xray of my shoulder complete with the staples that were holding my operation wound together. Yes, this one was drawn with no drawing, post motorbike crash.

Tags: Mel Gibson/The Passion, Film, Jesus, apologetics, Evangelism, Redemption

This cartoon suffers from the text being far too small. Give me a break, I was inexperienced with the form.

Tags: WMD's, Evangelism, apologetics, Discrimination, Crisis