Whatever Happened to “Surrendering to Ministry”?
A surrendered life is integral to a healthy ministry.
Too many pastors are textual acrobats, contorting their preaching to avoid Scripture’s sharper edges. Such preachers have become adept at explaining away angular texts and dodging confrontational verses. On the contrary, the preacher’s charge is clear: “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke and exhort with great patience and... Continue Reading
400 to 1: Are You Willing to Contend?
Asking the Lord to raise up saints who keep watch, contend earnestly for the faith, and who hold fast to the truth.
Our age of relativism requires us firmly to adhere and fiercely to defend the truths of the Word of God. Our age of humanism necessitates the Church to fight tenaciously for a biblical anthropology and soteriology. Our age of low-churchism compels us to be faithful in maintaining the truths of the gospel and the purity,... Continue Reading
Is Everything Sad Going to Come Untrue?
Why We Need Eschatology Now More than Ever
Eschatology is not a topic that should be reserved for theologians or scholars. It is a topic for every Christian, and, for that matter, every person. We all live in a dark world. And there is no message more relevant to those living in a dark world than a message about how that world will... Continue Reading
What Is the Prayer of Faith?
True prayer can never be divorced from real holiness.
The struggles we sometimes experience in prayer are often part of the process by which God gradually brings us to ask for only what He has promised to give. The struggle is not our wrestling to bring Him to give us what we desire, but our wrestling with His Word until we are illuminated and... Continue Reading
The Sanctifying Grace of Inefficiency
There may come times in our lives—like this season of sustained seclusion—when efficiency slips through our fingers.
If you’re in a season that seems “wasteful” because of the current pandemic, or because of where you live, or chronic illness, or crying babies, or elderly parents who need your help, or whatever other reason you can’t “get it all done,” then perhaps this is the training ground that God has readied for you.... Continue Reading
God’s Calling on Men to Be Protectors
When someone with a specific vocation not only abandons that vocation but pursues its opposite, we recognize that something especially heinous has happened.
Our problem today is that God’s design in creation, reflected in the differing vocations given to men and women, is something that sinners routinely try to suppress or distort (Rom. 1:18). And sadly, they do so to their own hurt. Last night, John Piper participated in a panel discussion about complementarianism, and today T4G... Continue Reading
Born for These Unstrange Days
Whether we live or we die, we are here by the very will of God for such a time as this.
Covid-19 is the great revealer when it comes to our homes. Many of us are spending more time at home than ever before, as are our children. We may be shocked to learn that we don’t really like being home, at least not when everyone else is there, too. Perhaps what we’re discovering is that... Continue Reading
Not Too Clean
God wouldn't have given us all those "one another" passages if it was going to be an easy road.
Just as an immaculate barn might be a nice place to visit, a problem-free church may have some attraction to us. But it’s the barn with the messes on the floor and smell of animals that will see “abundant crops” at harvest time. Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant... Continue Reading
The Image and the Anti-Image
As God’s image, Adam represents God on earth and is created to remain submissive to and wholly dependent on God.
The fate of the godly and the ungodly are intertwined. The godly are those who enjoy a restored image, whereas the ungodly are those who have a perverted image or an “anti-image.” The term anti-image, used throughout this essay, refers to an individual who is hostile to God and is the opposite of those who... Continue Reading
Don’t Wait to Be Done with Sin
What Mercy Says in Calamity
The answer Jesus gave accomplished, in one stroke, a number of crucial theological corrections. It removed unwarranted social stigma from victims of such calamities and their families by emphasizing that their guilt wasn’t necessarily worse than anyone else’s. It undercut anyone’s errant belief that their current lack of suffering amounts to God’s endorsement of their... Continue Reading