Ask Someone Older Than You
If you only receive counsel when it agrees with you, you’re not really receiving counsel.
“Without counsel plans fail” (Proverbs 15:22), and not only wedding plans. Do you want to take the wrong job, or buy the wrong house, or join the wrong church? Then ignore the godly people in your life who made those decisions years ago (and have seen many others do so). When your next major... Continue Reading
Your Suffering Can Be the Pathway to Greater Godliness
Why do God’s children undergo pressures, suffering, and deadly peril?
In our spiritual lives, as in our professional lives, and in sports and hobbies, we improve and excel by handling failure and learning from it. Only in cultivating discipline, endurance, and patience do we find satisfaction and reward. And those qualities are most developed through some form of suffering. Mountain climbers could save time... Continue Reading
How Should We Benefit From Communion?
I would like to try and answer the question by highlighting an often-neglected aspect of the Lord's Supper: its corporate and covenantal character.
We too easily—and unbiblically—think of the Christian life in personal, singular categories. I do not mean for one moment that the Christian faith is not personal, or that there is no such thing as individual faith. Yet God’s people are one, and salvation brings us into the one Body of Christ, His Church (1 Cor.... Continue Reading
Of Calvin, Social Justice, And The Theology Of The Cross
There is a case to be made that Calvin was implicitly Amillennial in his eschatology.
A theology of glory is a theology that 1) seeks to present one’s self to God on the basis of works; 2) that elevates human reason above divine revelation. The theology of the cross looks to Christ and his righteousness imputed, received through faith alone, resting in Christ alone, according to the Scripture alone. For... Continue Reading
Instead of Worrying
There are lots of things to worry about: money, health, family, career—you can fill in the rest.
The good news is that the Scriptures give us clear direction when the burdens of life press in upon us. Paul was a man who had a lot to worry about. There were all those struggling new churches, his concern for those who had not yet heard the gospel, not to mention his own health... Continue Reading
I Want Christlike, Bible Reflexes
The gasps, sneers, and eye-rolls may tempt us to soft-pedal the Bible’s teaching, but they can also strengthen our resolve.
When the swirling cultural debates are kicking up dust around us, we don’t answer the question from the standpoint of what the experts (even the religious experts) are saying. We are not thinking about sexuality, gender, marriage, and issues of life based upon what the editorial pages or headlines news says. Instead, we follow Jesus’s... Continue Reading
God Never Forgets His Promises
In the words of the Westminster Confession, God in His providence “upholds, directs, disposes and governs all creatures, actions and things” to bring about a sovereignly pre-determined plan (5.1).
Providence has wider issues in mind than merely our personal comfort or gain. In answer to the oft-cited question in times of difficulty, “Why me?” the forthcoming answer is always, “Them!” He allows us to suffer so that others may be blessed. Joseph suffered in order that his undeserving brothers might receive blessing. The... Continue Reading
Christians Should Say “No” to Revoice’s “Vocation of Yes”
The Revoice conference would clearly not have proceeded as it did if all the speakers shared a firm understanding that same-sex orientation is, in fact, disordered.
Last week, Hill wrote a report on the conference for First Things entitled “Revoice And a Vocation of Yes.” Before Hill wrote this piece, he and other Revoice organizers had already engaged in extended written back-and-forth with conservative thinkers like Al Mohler, Denny Burk, and Robert Gagnon. I would like to offer three more thoughts of my... Continue Reading
The Lost Art of Hospitality
Perhaps you never thought about it, but hospitality is the key to so many areas of the Christian life.
As I think about the practice of hospitality, I see it as being one of the greatest tools that God can use in our personal sanctification. I’ve also seen how it can be an incredible tool God uses in the lives of our children and their walks with Christ. There are four areas that I’d... Continue Reading
Social Injustice and the Gospel
As believers, “we know . . . that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19), so worldly power structures are—and always have been—systemically unjust to one degree or another.
The evangelicals who are saying the most and talking the loudest these days about what’s referred to as “social justice” seem to have a very different perspective. Their rhetoric certainly points a different direction, demanding repentance and reparations from one ethnic group for the sins of its ancestors against another. It’s the language of law,... Continue Reading