You Can’t Tell Me What To Do! I’m Free!
We’ve been called to holiness and that should be the driving desire that constantly overrides our fleshly pursuits.
As conscientious believers, our default position should always be closer to subjection to righteousness, not some personal autonomy that pushes the bounds of our liberty. I mean, it’s still very important to know that we aren’t slaves to legalism, but more importantly, we need to remember that we are still slaves in a godly, profitable... Continue Reading
Planning Like Immortals
Let us remember that we are dust, and let us prepare by faith to live righteously and to die confidently, trusting in the Lord, in whose hands is life everlasting.
We plan like immortals, but we are feeble and frail. We plan like immortals, but we are the dust of the earth. We plan like immortals, but we cannot guarantee a moment of our lives under the best of circumstances. In this present season, we certainly cannot presume upon the future. How are you... Continue Reading
Trusting God in The Midst of Disappointment
In your life right now there may be many types and kinds of disappointments.
When Israel went into Babylonian captivity, Jeremiah sent them a letter. They were no doubt disappointed. They faced tough days. God wanted them to know something very important: God’s plan rules. Even though they did not know the plan, even though they were disappointed, even though they were being told something much different by the... Continue Reading
Limited Atonement
Christ’s atonement is the climax of God’s long-anticipated salvation, so why would anyone want to limit it?
Of course, at one level, everyone limits Christ’s atonement: some limit its scope (it is for God’s elect only); others limit its efficacy (it does not save everyone for whom it was intended). Thus, it’s not whether one will limit Christ’s atonement; it’s just how. For this reason, I propose a more positive and less... Continue Reading
Never Read a Bible Verse (and Never Listen To a Sermon Clip)
"Instead, always read a paragraph at least.”
If we want to properly understand any given verse of the Bible, we need to set it within its wider context. After all, words spoken to a single prophet in ancient Israel have a very different context than words spoken to an entire congregation in New Testament Rome. These different contexts mean the very same... Continue Reading
What Only Suffering Can Say
How Trials Feed the Flame of Witness
Believers like Elisabeth Elliot, Joni Eareckson Tada, and Gerald Sittser have astonished the world, declaring the sufficiency of Christ even in the hottest fires. Elliot buried two husbands: one was murdered on the mission field and the other died of cancer after four years of marriage. Tada, a quadriplegic who was injured in a diving... Continue Reading
Why Read the Book of Obadiah?
Without Obadiah, our Christian faith would be woefully deficient.
I personally cannot remember a time anyone mentioned to me they were studying through Obadiah in their devotions. I cannot even remember the last time I heard a sermon on Obadiah—if at all. I am willing to bet you could say the same. Perhaps, that’s because Obadiah is hard to understand. Lost somewhere in... Continue Reading
Cessationism
cessationism, the doctrine that the spiritual gifts that communicate or confirm divine revelation ceased with the death of the last Apostle.
How is it fair to blame Pentecostal/charismatic Christians for misunderstanding cessationism when the only cessationists they know deny the abiding reality of so-called sign gifts of tongues, miracles, and prophecy more because they are afraid of the unusual than because of a well-developed, biblical argument? “They worship that way because they don’t have the... Continue Reading
The End of Creation: Soli Deo Gloria
Ignoring the clear revelation of God’s truth, in the final analysis, proves to be a costly mistake that will have consequences that extend into eternity.
The German astronomer, Johannes Kepler, accepted biblical revelation and understood the importance of giving credit where credit is due: “The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God.”1To do any less would be tantamount to theological treason.... Continue Reading
2 Things You Need to Know about the Exclusivity of Christ
Your spiritual conversations may coast rather smoothly until you land on the exclusivity of Christ.
To speak of the exclusivity of Christ is just a way of saying, along with the apostles, that “There is no other name given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). It is simply an affirmation of Jesus’ own words when he spoke to his disciples in the upper room just before... Continue Reading