Extended singleness is a reality that many, young and old, face today. God is not surprised by this. Rather, He has called his people to live in “such a time as this.” In such a time, the Church has a responsibility not only to recover and uphold the institution of marriage but to graciously help... Continue Reading

In our church-shopping, individualistic culture, we would be wise to take into consideration the warnings in Scripture against only doing what is right in our own eyes. There is great wisdom in learning from the spiritual giants of the past who wrestled down important theological issues far better than we are likely to do today.... Continue Reading

Beginning on the very day of Livingstone’s death, the British naval patrol was instructed to prevent the export of slaves from the eastern coastal ports. Just five weeks after his death the great slave market at Zanzibar was permanently closed. Less than two years later “all conveyance of slaves by land under any conditions” was... Continue Reading

Bavinck’s claim is that every person must honestly deal with the assumed faith necessary even in the sensory and knowledge processes themselves. Facing this reality leads directly to the necessary relationship between metaphysics and science. One needs faith as a habitus, Bavinck supposed, because it is the means of disciplining reason, lest it fall by... Continue Reading

In Mark 1, Jesus spoke and acted with divine power and authority. He could receive the diseased to himself and could send them away well. If he can overcome a man’s skin-diseased condition, what else can he do, and what greater works can he accomplish? For example, what can he do about the problem of... Continue Reading

I’ve learned that one part of true faith-filled “waiting” is quietness. “In quietness and trust shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15). Quietness is the opposite of striving and panic. It speaks of peaceful rest, a calm while at the storm’s center. As the psalmist put it, when mountains tremble, waters roar, nations rage and kingdoms totter, the trusting... Continue Reading

We are responsible to make disciples, but Christ will build his church. And he will do so until the end of the age, when he comes again in glory to unite the two kingdoms into one perfect eternal kingdom.    Churches as formal, local institutions have been given a very specific, singular mission in this... Continue Reading

If sexual attraction is one powerful force that God built into the world to counteract the individual’s inclination to self-absorption, then the combination of technological and cultural assaults on this urge doesn’t threaten only the formation of families, the basic unit of society. It also threatens something even more foundational: the nature of the person... Continue Reading

[Jesus] consented to His Father sending Him [on this] mission and was well content to do that errand. Indeed, so hearty was His consent that He took delight in it: “I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:8). “Jesus saith unto them, My meat is... Continue Reading

We need to recognize how unhealthy our addiction to “cost-free moral preening” is. The constant need to be better than “those people”—and to be seen being better—betrays a deep spiritual anxiety that no amount of political posturing can cure.   At least since the movie Inherit the Wind butchered the history of the 1925 Scopes “monkey trial,” many Americans—especially those on the... Continue Reading