An Abuse Survivor Speaks To The Church
"The agonizing truth is how absent minded my parents and the church community were while I was being sexually victimized."
We are at a critical time in the history of the church where we have been given the opportunity to rise up and to truly learn how to love. If the church can awaken in response by being aware and conscious of the suffering victim in the midst of their own congregation, then there is... Continue Reading
The Failure of Status-Quo Christianity
When we are accepted by the world and our message becomes innocuous, we lose our effectiveness.
As I wrote in 1989, like the church of Sardis in Revelation 3, “we have become the ‘perfect model of inoffensive Christianity’ (G. B. Caird), ‘having a reputation of being alive, yet being dead’ (Rev. 3:1). Like Sardis, we have so come to terms with our pagan environment that we provoke almost no opposition and... Continue Reading
For Evangelicalism, The Sky Is Not Falling But The Ground Is Shifting
The mission force is now living in and engaging a very different (and more challenging) mission field.
As I’ve written in USAToday, I believe the future of America will likely resemble the modern Pacific Northwest. While the majority there still claims to be Christian, it is more secular and progressive than other parts of the country. However, there is a significant population of convictional Christians who are living on mission in a... Continue Reading
Image Bearers at Planned Parenthood
When we dehumanize these dehumanizers we not only fall on the sword of our own hypocrisy, but embrace a Pelagian pride.
The devil delights when we diminish the horror of abortion, when we turn it into a mere political issue. He delights when we embrace the socially acceptable moral outrage against Kermit Gosnell or the selling of baby parts. But even when we rightly recognize abortion for just what it is, the cold-blooded murder of our... Continue Reading
How Not To Apply Reprobation
We are not to base our rejection of God on a presumption that he has not chosen us. Scripture, when it speaks of reprobation, does not apply it in this manner.
One may be reprobate, but one is not to assume this in deciding how to live. All the more so, since “the decrees of predestination are unknown to us,” as the 1553 edition of Article 17 says. Interesting use of the plural “decrees” there. In my former article on The Darker Side of Predestination,... Continue Reading
Does God Really Expect Gays to Be Celibate?
God has complete authority over my life, and He tells me exactly what He wants from me in His Word.
Do not for a second think that being celibate is natural for me. It is not. But it is a decision I have made using my will, not my feelings, because I have given my life to someone who demands complete allegiance. If you don’t understand the demand of Jesus to deny self and take... Continue Reading
An Open Letter To Anne Lamott
The slow release of these videos and the mounting outrage they’ve provoked have prompted some very ungainly statements from Planned Parenthood supporters — including you.
As a Christian, I know you care about justice. At minimum, that’s what this scandal is about. When Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them,” he didn’t mean for us to hasten the meeting so we could cash in on their organs. Dear Anne, I started reading... Continue Reading
When the Sexual Purity Movement Sounds the Same as LGBT Culture
"So many of us are coming out of the closet," seventeen-year-old Lara McCalman told the New York Times. "I’ve had so much fun saying no. I’m a virgin and proud of it."
This language presents sexuality as key to our identity. And it isn’t merely about how we behave, what we do, or even whom we are attracted to. It is about who we are at the core of our being. Sexual desires and decisions are now linked to other strange terms like human flourishing. And this... Continue Reading
Children: What Should We Do When They Stray?
Whenever I am counseling the Christian parents of a rebellious child, there are five things that I always remind them of.
When I hear about the spiritual straying of the children of believers, I remember that everyone of us needs the same thing–the grace of God in the Gospel. I remember the power of the message of Christ crucified. I remember that part of my task, as a minister of that Gospel, is to remind Christian... Continue Reading
God’s Rest for God’s People
This wonderful rest — from which, in one sense, every other blessing we could ever desire on earth or in heaven flows — is nothing less than the rest of God Himself.
One of the surprising things about the Gospel is that Almighty God Himself invites us into His own rest! Most of us would probably give some money to someone suffering with a disease or to a newly released prisoner, but we would be less likely to invite him to live in our homes. But that... Continue Reading
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