Depression Fought Hard to Have Him
William Cowper (1731–1800)
What shall we learn from the life of William Cowper? The first lesson is this: We fortify ourselves against the dark hours of depression by cultivating a deep distrust of the certainties of despair. Despair is relentless in the certainties of his pessimism. God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He... Continue Reading
Puritans Drank Beer, Loved Sex, and Didn’t Burn Witches
Not as puritanical as you thought.
The colonizers of New England have been portrayed for more than 100 years as drab, glum and pleasure-hating. But scholars of that period of American history say the facts tell a different story, not only about the Pilgrims but the Puritans, a similar and larger religious group that settled a few years later in Massachusetts.... Continue Reading
Intellectual Excercises
The goal of God's revelation is the utter absorption of the mind of the new humanity in the contemplation and adoration of the eternal God.
The issues raised by the Christian faith are not (of course) merely academic. They are issues of life and death. But they are intellectual, for they have to do with the truth. And the best academic traits—patience, fairness, orderliness, clarity—are graces that the Church ought to covet. The idea that the Christian faith is... Continue Reading
Judah First
The promise that the Redeemer would come from the tribe of Judah is paramount to understanding so much of what we read in the books of Moses, the prophets, the Gospel narratives, the epistle to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse.
What is significant about the Genesis 49:8-12 prophecy (often called the ‘Shiloh prophecy’) is that it reveals the office that the Messiah would hold according to the tribe in which He would appear. The scepter would not depart from Judah until ‘Shiloh’ came. Built into the prophecy was the history of the Kings of Israel.... Continue Reading
How the Bible’s Irony Combats the Prosperity Gospel
While God does not promise to give us physical health and material prosperity during the church age, he does promise full spiritual and physical health in the new heavens and earth.
God does often bless our efforts with material prosperity, but not because he is obliged to in response to a promise. He does so as a foreshadowing of the eternal new creation to come, when Christians will experience eternal spiritual and material prosperity. I do believe in an ultimate “health and wealth gospel,” since there... Continue Reading
Ready…Steady…Go!
The proof and fruit of saving grace is sanctified hearts in ready, faithful, servants.
Are we not examples to the flock that we feed? Should we not be at the front of the queue in visiting persecuted believers, tending the sick, clothing the naked, welcoming immigrants, supplying hungry Christians, or helping those who struggle while engaged in Kingdom business? In my personal devotions this morning I was forcibly... Continue Reading
Your Listening Habits Are Harming Your Relationship with God
No one is listening, even though most people are talking, texting, or typing.
We need daily time with God in his Word and in prayer, as well as time with God’s people (Heb. 10:25). We need time to hear God’s story to teach us about how things really are. We need time to turn off the noise and listen to his goodness again—first, in his Word and second,... Continue Reading
How Does Jesus’ Temptation Link Him to Israel?
He came to do what Israel had failed to do.
No sooner had God brought His son (Ex. 4:22), Israel, out of Egypt and through the waters that He brought him into the wilderness for forty years—to be tested by Him and tempted by the evil one. In similar fashion, after bringing Jesus up out of Egypt (Matt. 2:15) and through the waters of baptism,... Continue Reading
There Are No Extraordinary Means
Ordinary means are so much better.
Recently in my reading I came across this sentence from a theologian and it stopped me in my tracks: “There are no extraordinary means of grace in the Christian life.” I lingered over that line for a while as it delivered a broadside to most of my Christian walk. How many years have I spent... Continue Reading
Were the Gospels Meant to Be Taken as Historical Testimony?
If the most comprehensive accounts of the life of Jesus were never intended to provide us with historical testimony, any further discussion about the resurrection of Jesus or the trustworthiness of the Bible is pointless.
No one denies that the earliest records of the life of Jesus were based on the testimonies of women and men who had committed themselves to follow Jesus—but a text doesn’t become unhistorical simply because it happens to be a testimony as well. The crucial question isn’t whether testimonies from believers in Jesus were some... Continue Reading