The Saints: Ordinary Means for Extraordinary Ends
Our good and gracious God redeems, inhabits, and glorifies himself through normal people
“What a normal guy, I thought throughout the service. He was a World War II veteran, a dad, a husband. He was simply faithful—to God and to his church—and the Lord ministered to others through him. What if we—as ordinary Christ-followers—followed in his footsteps? What if we, who are normal and unexceptional, simply pursued faithfulness?”... Continue Reading
When You Pray, It’s Okay to Plagiarize
Though we know it by rote through overlearning, we can never exhaust the theology of the Lord's Prayer
Fabricating a prayer as one “ought” is an impossible task. Christians feel, in a visceral as well as cognitive way, the insufficiency of their prayers that is our “always a sinner” nature. Our words are failing and ill-suited because we so often live by sight and not by faith. Our approach to the Holy One... Continue Reading
Remember Your God
In our prayers, we need to remember who God is and what He has done
“We remind ourselves that though we don’t know or understand the future, God does. We remember all he has done for us in Christ. It’s not the strength of our faith that sustains us during confusing times. It’s who our faith is in.” Life is filled with questions: What should I do? How will... Continue Reading
Our Hearts Are Made for Thanksgiving
To receive the simplest building blocks of life—relationships, nurture and nurturing, sustenance, opportunities for cultivation, sun and rain—is to walk with God with joy unhindered.
We’re told we must make it our goal to enjoy the simplest of things, like strawberries and coffee and teaching multiplication tables to second-graders. In other words, the routine and the mundane that we rarely think much about. But they are gifts given to all people—the bread, the water, the work of our hands—and Solomon,... Continue Reading
Clarifying Scripture’s Perspicuity: A Look at the Old Testament
As John Frame expresses, “When God speaks, he at the same time assures us that he is speaking.”
In Deuteronomy 6:6–7, God spoke to Israel and said: “these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you... Continue Reading
My Times are in Your Hand
Trust is what we do because we know the person who is in control.
David was living through times that were full of anguish and tears. And yet he is able to say these times were in God’s hand. Not the Devil’s hand, or the hand of his enemies, or the hand of fate. They were under the Lord’s control, they were in his keeping. And he trusted the... Continue Reading
Hope Springs Eternal
Christians know the hope that there is purpose behind all of it, an overruling providence that sustains in the darkness and points toward the light.
I remember some years ago when my sixteen year-old neighbor spent a summer trying to learn how to ride a skateboard. He persisted through embarrassing falls and hostile temperature. And why? I fancy it was because it seem a cool thing to do (and perhaps the girls would love him for it). By the same... Continue Reading
The Bible Doesn’t Say Jesus Walked Through Locked Doors
The body with which Jesus entered the tomb was the same body with which He rose three days later.
Christians have built up an entire folk theology around the alleged discontinuity between Jesus’ body pre and post-resurrection. But the teaching of Scripture and Christian history places clear boundaries on our speculations. Jesus rose with a real human body. He still has it. Flesh and blood may not inherit the kingdom of God, but flesh... Continue Reading
The ABC’S of Reformed Apologetics
If Christians are to bring the Gospel to the world they should do so through a Reformed apologetical method.
This is what Van Til sought to do in his own day in his responses to modern philosophy.2 It is only through a truly reformed, presuppositional apologetic that we may adequately challenge the wisdom of the world. What exactly, then, are the central theological tenets of a reformed apologetic? During the later part of... Continue Reading
Poor Interpretation Lets Us “Believe” the Bible While Denying What It Actually Says
In order to delight and meditate on the law of the Lord, we must understand correctly what Scripture actually says.
You can believe in the inspiration and even inerrancy of God’s Word, but because your subjective interpretation doesn’t center on the author’s (and Author’s) intention, but on what seems right to you and the secular or church culture, the Bible isn’t really your authority. You don’t let it correct your thinking but walk away with... Continue Reading