As used in ancient Babylon...

Take them away from home

(Dan 1:3) Separate them from supportive family, friends, church and anyone who know them well. Don't let them remember to phone, email or write back for prayer support. Make them think they're by themselves.

Change their reading habits

(Dan 1:4) Give them required reading of textbooks bursting with humanistic philosophy and all things anti-God. Keep them away from their Bible and helpful books using: lie-ins; late assignments; the internet; friendly flatmates; tiredness; nights out; and whatever else it takes.

Change their speaking habits

(Dan 1:4) Surround them with blasphemy, crude talk, dirty jokes, disrespectful comments and unloving conversation. Fill their discussions with agnosticism, atheism, pluralism and legitimate-sounding ideas. Keep them out of churches and prayer meetings where they will hear the language of their true homeland.

Change their food and drink habits

(Dan 1:5) Stuff them with take-aways, eat-ins, mass produced mush and microwave meals. Tell them their body doesn't matter if their soul is healthy. Play down the dangers of alcohol. Tell them they're strong and above temptation.

Change their identity

(Dan 1:7) Hide their connection to the living God. Steer them away from radical living by exaggerating the damage that being labelled as a stereotype causes. Keep their wonderful, life-changing, essential, unmatchable faith a secret and an embarrassment.

Threaten defeat

(Dan 1:19-21) Convince them that living differently is impossible, they'll never keep it up and it can only damage their chances of success in life. Make less important issues into big issues: their reputation; making friends; studying hard; fitting in; relating to people; being influential; and feeling comfortable.

Some bits and pieces to keep you busy...

Interesting: What rights have we lost as citizens? Are our civil liberties being eroded? Secondly, history is completed, in the past, unchangeable fact and is therefore objective isn't it? It could be, depending on how you look at it.

Apocalyptic: A workshop on how to go about tackling the apocalyptic genre. Six lectures, a handy booklet and three expositions demonstrating the approaches. Also, a simple reminder about purpose of Revelation to help keep focus when reading it.

Time Management: An interesting and immensely practical set of articles by C.J Mahaney. Plus Jonathan Edwards on the preciousness of time, in true puritan style.

Nominative, vocative, genitive, definite articles, dative clauses, dependant statements, intransitive verbs, double accusatives, rough breathing, elisions, first declension feminine nouns, alpha stems, relative pronouns, iota subscript, compound verbs, identical adjective, imperfect tense, conditional sentences, consonant stems, superlative adjectives, prohibitions, second person plural, passive voice, prepositions in the dative, deponent middle, reflexive personal pronouns, future actives, dipthongs, operative mood, consequent clauses, preparatory use of prepositions, subjunctive mood, purpose clauses, conjugations, indeclinable nouns, diaeresis, predicative position, attributive position, epsilon augment, genitive absolute, middle voice, verb stems, present passive, principal parts, agents and instruments, future middle, past participle, second aorist active, circumflexes, liquid verbs, demonstratives, imperative, infinitive, third declension neuter nouns, interrogative pronoun, emphatic negative future, gutturals, labials, dentals, articular infinitive, pluperfect indicative, periphrastic tenses, morphology...

Do you ever thank God that we have the Bible in our language?

I've been thinking about the future a lot recently. Who will I be? Who does God want me to be? What will I do? What does God want me to do? Which are my ideas and which are God's ideas? How do I tell the difference? How do my plans tie in with God's?

"I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to benefit you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jeremiah 29:11)

God has a plan for my life — and it's a good one.

The Lord's plans will stand forever; his ideas will last through all generations (Psalm 33:11).

His plan for me will be carried out, along with all his other plans.

People make all kinds of plans but it's the Lord's plan which will happen. (Proverbs 19:21)

My plans fail and change but God's never do.

People plan a course in their minds but the Lord determines their steps. (Proverbs 16:9)

I may decide on a route but even if I get it wrong, I can't mess up God's purposes.

Commit whatever you do to the Lord and your plans will succeed. (Proverbs 16:3)

True success is God's success. If I humbly submit to what God says then I won't muck up because my plans will be God's plans and God's plans never fail. God is in it for his glory. So am I.

People think I have a big family and I only have three syblings.

I know a family of 10 and I think they have a big family.

The Duggars, however, have just redefined my view of big. 18 kids! A miniature empire. Plus, all of their names being with J. Does that not get confusing: "Hey everyone, there's some post here for 'J. Duggar'"?