Seven Letters Seven Dangers: The Doctrinaire Church
Remember your first love in the Lord Jesus. Return to him.
Let me ask you this, beloved church of God, when you speak the truth do people know that you love them? I do not mean do you say you love them. No, I mean do they sense your love? Can they feel your love? Can they feel a tenderness, a gentleness, a compassion in your... Continue Reading
The Color of Preaching
What we need is to return to a biblical theology of the church, right worship, and right preaching.
Strangely, for all the problems the New Testament addresses, it yet brings the people of God (culturally divided as they were) into one church to participate in one worship service to the one triune God. The gospel was the bridge that transcended barriers. What color is God? This is a strange question, but one... Continue Reading
The Pastoral Challenge of Ministering God’s Law and Gospel in Difficult Cases
In such cases, there are no easy paths forward.
I can assure you that when facing these kinds of pastoral challenges it is wonderful to have a team of elders with whom I can think, pray, study and minister. Left to myself, each of those cases would have been handled with far less wisdom and care than they warranted. A challenge every faithful... Continue Reading
Saved by Grace But Entertained by Sin
Am I communing comfortably with sin?
Jesus teaches against both the act of sin and the stirring up of our desire for sin. He goes further to say that the means by which such desires might be stirred (the eyes or the hand) should be cut off lest we stumble. When my entertainment puts sin on display so that it awakens... Continue Reading
My Great Ministry Dream
Making it to the end of your ministry still walking with and faithfully serving Christ is not something any pastor should ever take for granted.
I want to make it to the end of my ministry without falling into disqualifying sin. I want to make it to the end of my ministry still loving Jesus, still learning his Word, still committed to my family, still tender-hearted toward the church, still praying for and sharing the Gospel with lost souls, and... Continue Reading
Love of the World
One of the markers of Christian genuineness is separation from the world.
God, not the world, must have first place in His children’s hearts. (Matthew 10:37; Philippians 3:20) We must remember that what God is against here is not planet Earth, but the invisible, spiritual system of evil dominated by Satan. This world system keeps people in bondage, blinds their hearts, and opposes God and all that... Continue Reading
The Message of the Cross Is Enough
teaser The social justice winds are blowing through evangelicalism. Today, the culture is making demands upon the church of Jesus Christ and sadly, some leaders are willing to cave to such cultural pressures in order to appear successful. What’s even more troubling is such success is being equated with biblical fidelity. In an age... Continue Reading
We Run a Paradoxical Race
Our aim is less to win and more to help others finish.
The difficulty comes when we inevitably have churches that have large proportions of people at different places. Where do we pitch the preaching? How do we engage in Bible study that everyone can engage with? How do we make sure that we are simple enough for the new folk to understand whilst having enough meat... Continue Reading
How to Build a Whitewashed Tomb
"Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts...."
Why “whitewashed”? Because Jesus knew what His Spirit would later inspire the Apostle Paul to write (2 Cor. 11:13-15): “For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also,... Continue Reading
The Full Effect of Steadfastness
Through testing, we discover that our faith is stronger than we realized.
Steadfastness is not an end in itself. It is part of our sanctification, whereby we are more and more conformed to the image of Christ and more and more die to sin and live to righteousness. Displaying the image of Christ, for His glory, is the end. The full effect of steadfastness is that we... Continue Reading