The Atheist Cacangelist
The New Atheist movement may be a publishing phenomena but it is also a political movement and as such carries all the dangers of fundamentalist involvement in politics.
New Atheist writers are able to dismiss all theology as useless as a chocolate teapot. They know that we largely live in an ahistorical society where despite the interest in genealogy people are rooted in the here and now and are largely ignorant of the past, thus enabling the New Atheists to make sweeping historical... Continue Reading
Charles Finney Does Not Live Here
Recent surveys show that many ostensibly evangelical congregations have updated Finney’s methods by doing essentially the same thing: manipulate your emotions with chord progressions.
At their best, the P&R churches are not trying to imitate the evangelical services with which you may be familiar. They are trying to be faithful to Scripture as they understand and confess it. They are trying to worship God in the way that he has revealed that he will be worshiped. Did you... Continue Reading
God’s Justification of the Ungodly
God justifies (declaring as righteous) sinful people who trust in Jesus Christ, rescuing them from their sin and divine judgment.
God had so loved him, all ungodly as he was, that He sent Christ to die for the ungodly. God’s judgment had fallen on Christ, who had been forsaken by God as He paid the penalty for people’s sins there on the cross. Twice recently I’ve had the opportunity to speak on the subject... Continue Reading
Why She Left the Church
Going out to meet some of the eighty-five million Americans who are the unchurched.
Many are like Nicole and they have left the church because they have enough people telling them about what to do and have never heard anyone tell them “It has been done.” They have left the church because the church was too busy giving them more rules to follow instead of preaching to them the gospel... Continue Reading
Are There Good and Bad Kinds of Accountability?
The ultimate aim of any accountability should be to lead us into the presence of the only One who grants grace.
Good accountability draws us into the presence of God in prayer. Why? Because only at the throne of grace before our merciful Father can we plead for escape from temptation, for holiness, and for restoration. Looking back at my former life as a Roman Catholic in New England, I can almost smell the varnish... Continue Reading
The Ebb and Flow of Christian Happiness
Why ‘Great Joy’ isn’t normal yet.
The day we stand before our God, and see Jesus face to face, will be no ordinary day. This will be no ordinary joy. This will be a day of great joy that will usher in an eternity of great and ever increasing joy. God has designed, for now, that our joy not always be great. The word joy appears more than 200... Continue Reading
“The Lord Laughed at Me” (Augustine)
He said it was a rebuke of God when he realized his own inadequacy – and it led him to a sorrow that even his friends could not console.
Augustine thought he could handle the difficulties of the ministry, but quickly realized that his own strength and skill were of no value. By experience he learned that he wasn’t as strong and skillful as he thought: it was as if God was laughing at Augustine for thinking he could do something on his own... Continue Reading
I’m Living Proof that the Lord is Close to the Brokenhearted
Suddenly, I found that I was only and always brokenhearted, and I had no idea how to handle the experience.
It was like I had woken up on a planet where the laws of physics had changed and I had to figure out how to walk all over again. And yet here I am, five years later, still a Christian. Believing more than ever that Jesus truly is all that I have, all that I... Continue Reading
The Statement on SJ&G Explained: Article 8, The Church
The church (ἐκκλησία) is the assembly of God's people who are saved by faith alone in Christ alone and gather together in local assemblies for both service and worship.
It has been God’s plan from the beginning for his people to associate together, help one another, and assemble for worship and service in a community of a local church. In short, the church is God’s will for your life. The high mark of the believer’s life should be centered in and through the local... Continue Reading
God Doesn’t Want You to Fix the World
God wants us to be a blessing to the world.
To be a blessing sums up what it means to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matt 5:43–45; Matt. 15:1–9;). To be a blessing is at the essence of any morality that Christians should strive to achieve. It’s the kind of morality or holiness or ethics that matters to the people around us. And YHWH... Continue Reading
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